登陆注册
19968100000149

第149章 THE THIRD(8)

"Damn by all means.I never knew a topic so full of justifiable damns.But you two did choose it.You ought to stick to your undertaking."I turned upon him with a snarl in my voice."My dear Britten!" Icried."Don't I KNOW I'm doing wrong? Aren't I in a net? Suppose I don't go! Is there any right in that? Do you think we're going to be much to ourselves or any one after this parting? I've been thinking all last night of this business, trying it over and over again from the beginning.How was it we went wrong? Since I came back from America--I grant you THAT--but SINCE, there's never been a step that wasn't forced, that hadn't as much right in it or more, as wrong.You talk as though I was a thing of steel that could bend this way or that and never change.You talk as though Isabel was a cat one could give to any kind of owner....We two are things that change and grow and alter all the time.We're--so interwoven that being parted now will leave us just misshapen cripples....

You don't know the motives, you don't know the rush and feel of things, you don't know how it was with us, and how it is with us.

You don't know the hunger for the mere sight of one another; you don't know anything."Britten looked at his finger-nails closely.His red face puckered to a wry frown."Haven't we all at times wanted the world put back?" he grunted, and looked hard and close at one particular nail.

There was a long pause.

"I want her," I said, "and I'm going to have her.I'm too tired for balancing the right or wrong of it any more.You can't separate them.I saw her yesterday....She's--ill....I'd take her now, if death were just outside the door waiting for us.""Torture?"

I thought."Yes."

"For her?"

"There isn't," I said.

"If there was?"

I made no answer.

"It's blind Want.And there's nothing ever been put into you to stand against it.What are you going to do with the rest of your lives?""No end of things."

"Nothing."

"I don't believe you are right," I said."I believe we can save something--"Britten shook his head."Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you,"he said.

His indignation rose."In the middle of life!" he said."No man has a right to take his hand from the plough!"He leant forward on his desk and opened an argumentative palm."You know, Remington," he said, "and I know, that if this could be fended off for six months--if you could be clapped in prison, or got out of the way somehow,--until this marriage was all over and settled down for a year, say--you know then you two could meet, curious, happy, as friends.Saved! You KNOW it."I turned and stared at him."You're wrong, Britten," I said."And does it matter if we could?"I found that in talking to him I could frame the apologetics I had not been able to find for myself alone.

"I am certain of one thing, Britten.It is our duty not to hush up this scandal."He raised his eyebrows.I perceived now the element of absurdity in me, but at the time I was as serious as a man who is burning.

"It's our duty," I went on, "to smash now openly in the sight of every one.Yes! I've got that as clean and plain--as prison whitewash.I am convinced that we have got to be public to the uttermost now--I mean it--until every corner of our world knows this story, knows it fully, adds it to the Parnell story and the Ashton Dean story and the Carmel story and the Witterslea story, and all the other stories that have picked man after man out of English public life, the men with active imaginations, the men of strong initiative.To think this tottering old-woman ridden Empire should dare to waste a man on such a score! You say I ought to be penitent--"Britten shook his head and smiled very faintly.

"I'm boiling with indignation," I said." I lay in bed last night and went through it all.What in God's name was to be expected of us but what has happened? I went through my life bit by bit last night, I recalled all I've had to do with virtue and women, and all I was told and how I was prepared.I was born into cowardice and debasement.We all are.Our generation's grimy with hypocrisy.Icame to the most beautiful things in life--like peeping Tom of Coventry.I was never given a light, never given a touch of natural manhood by all this dingy, furtive, canting, humbugging English world.Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! The shame of it! The very savages in Australia initiate their children better than the English do to-day.Neither of us was ever given a view of what they call morality that didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as the meanest discretion, an abject submission to unreasonable prohibitions! meek surrender of mind and body to the dictation of pedants and old women and fools.We weren't taught--we were mumbled at! And when we found that the thing they called unclean, unclean, was Pagan beauty--God! it was a glory to sin, Britten, it was a pride and splendour like bathing in the sunlight after dust and grime!""Yes," said Britten."That's all very well--"I interrupted him."I know there's a case--I'm beginning to think it a valid case against us; but we never met it! There's a steely pride in self restraint, a nobility of chastity, but only for those who see and think and act--untrammeled and unafraid.The other thing, the current thing, why! it's worth as much as the chastity of a monkey kept in a cage by itself!" I put my foot in a chair, and urged my case upon him."This is a dirty world, Britten, simply because it is a muddled world, and the thing you call morality is dirtier now than the thing you call immorality.Why don't the moralists pick their stuff out of the slime if they care for it, and wipe it?--damn them! I am burning now to say: 'Yes, we did this and this,' to all the world.All the world!...I will!"Britten rubbed the palm of his hand on the corner of his desk.

"That's all very well, Remington," he said."You mean to go."He stopped and began again."If you didn't know you were in the wrong you wouldn't be so damned rhetorical.You're in the wrong.

同类推荐
  • 韩非子

    韩非子

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Robinson Crusoe

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 皇经集注

    皇经集注

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 涅槃宗要

    涅槃宗要

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 慈明瑞象灯仪

    慈明瑞象灯仪

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 绝情道士在都市

    绝情道士在都市

    金瓜道人一觉醒来,发现自己不是在熟悉的乾元大陆的金云观里,而是成为了一个地球华国少年。这个本是金云观菜田里的一个南瓜变成的妖道,因为刚蜕人形没有多久,还没有人类的感情,面对纷纷扰扰的都市风云,他会……
  • 看过很多云,依然只爱你

    看过很多云,依然只爱你

    或许我们的爱并不像小说中那样的轰轰烈烈,但我们爱过,并且很深很深。等到我风烛残年的时候,我仍会记得,在我年轻时曾有那么一段,刻骨铭心的爱恋……
  • 明伦汇编官常典勋爵部

    明伦汇编官常典勋爵部

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • tfboys之篱下浅笙歌

    tfboys之篱下浅笙歌

    她和他,一个花痴,一个男神。多年以后,她,从开朗变得冷漠,变得让人捉摸不透。他,被她的闺蜜陷害了,从此不再属于她了。王俊凯,你不属于我,但我还是爱你的。————流离流离,允许我最后再说一声,我爱你。————王俊凯
  • 混搭

    混搭

    20世纪90年代初,李静还是个普通的专科毕业生。而戴军则是个初中就逃出校园的社会小青年,做过民工,当过驯兽师,后来在深圳夜总会做夜场歌手。就是这样两个混社会混得跌跌撞撞的年轻人,因为对梦想着迷般的坚持,一步一步向未来、向彼此靠近。李静从电影学院毕业之后进入央视又离开央视,成为中国首批电视制片人,并一手缔造了《超级访问》。戴军也因为这个节目和李静站在了一起。他们不是夫妻,却在12年的时光里培养了比夫妻更深的默契。他们相得益彰地混搭在一起,成为彼此最真实的励志书。
  • 末日撑天

    末日撑天

    末日小说;上古盘古世界本该破碎,是女娲和盘古一样撑住了我们的天,可是下次又是谁?女娲的后手,是否能成功?末日中黎瞳明该何去何从?小说+很有爱~!!!
  • 三生盛宠仙夫好妖娆

    三生盛宠仙夫好妖娆

    一场仙界大宴上,身为百花仙的参白离在不知的情况下被夺走了初夜。一夜情?看着茶几上的那张白色字条,某人眯了眯眼,誓要把偷了自己初夜的男人揪出来,千刀万剐!然,一入凡间深似海,才一下凡便被一僧人拼命纠缠,那僧人长得甚是好看但却眼力劲不好,竟扬言道她是妖!噗!参白离差点被他活活气死!再然,途中她不断的被妖魔鬼怪偷袭,甚至致命,蹲在房顶上,她不禁细想,直觉的是有人在想要她死!会是谁?是那个让她下凡拼命寻找的男人?还是另有其人?望了望天的交界处,参白离的心突然剧痛翻滚。
  • 武极虚空

    武极虚空

    一位来自现代世界的少年,意外来到一个尚武成风的世界,这里的环境也让他下定决心,立志追逐武道的极致。然而在这里他将面对从未有过的坎坷之路,被亲生父亲废掉修为,被世家子弟欺辱,一个毫无立足之本,平平凡凡的少年将如何应对?他一路高声赞歌,披荆斩棘,剑指九天,直破苍穹,武道之极,怒破虚空!
  • 步踏乾坤

    步踏乾坤

    武之极,不为金钱,不为权贵。为的,是那不被天道命运所束缚的自由!吞天下万兽,炼最强战体!
  • 赋灵者

    赋灵者

    一场“伪宿舍惊魂”,竟让陈南搭上中间人这条线,他会成为舍友嘴中所说的:成为神秘人的猎物吗?桃源村的陈南在师傅的帮助,觉醒往昔记忆,前往陌生世界。