“You’re a terrible fellow,” said Butcher. “If you had your way, you’d leave us stark naked. We should all be standing on our little island in the savage state of the Ancient Britons—figuratively.” He hiccuped.
“Yes, figuratively. But in reality the country would be armed better than it ever had been before. And by the sacrifice of these famous ‘national characteristics’ we cling to sentimentally, and which are merely the accident of a time, we should lay a soil and foundation of unspecific force, on which new and realler ‘national flavours’ would very soon sprout.”
“I quite agree,” Butcher jerked out energetically.
He ordered another lager.
“I agree with what you say. If we don’t give up dreaming, we shall get spanked. I have given up my gypsies. That was very public-spirited of me?” He looked coaxingly.
“If every one would give up their gypsies, their jokes, and their gentlemen—‘Gentlemen’ are worse than gypsies. It would do perhaps if they reduced them considerably, as you have your Gitanos.—I’m going to swear off humour for a year. I am going to gaze on even you inhumanly. All my mock matrimonial difficulties come from humour. I am going to gaze on Bertha inhumanly, and not humorously. Humour paralyses the sense for reality and wraps people in a phlegmatic and hysterical dream-world, full of the delicious swirls of the switchback, the drunkenness of the merry-go-round—screaming leaps from idea to idea. My little weapon for bringing my man to earth—shot-gun or what not—gave me good sport, too, and was of the best workmanship. I carried it slung jauntily for some time at my side—you may have noticed it. But I am in the tedious position of the man who hits the bull’s-eye every time. Had I not been disproportionately occupied with her absurdities, I should not have allowed this charming girl to engage herself to me.
“My first practical step now will be to take this question of ‘engaging’ myself or not into my own hands. I shall disengage myself on the spot.”
“So long as you don’t engage yourself again next minute, and so on. If I felt that the time was not quite ripe, I’d leave it in Fräulein Lunken’s hands a little longer. I expect she does it better than you would.”
Butcher filled his pipe, then he began laughing. He laughed theatrically until Tarr stopped him.
“What are you laughing at?”