Except that there was marrying and giving in marriage, it was just as
though he had died and gone to heaven. Heaven is the absence of worry
and of ambition. Heaven is where you want nothing you haven't got.
Heaven is finality. And this was finality. On the September morning,
after the honeymoon and the settling down, he arose leisurely, long
after his wife, and, putting on the puce dressing-gown (which Alice much
admired), he opened the window wider and surveyed that part of the
universe which was comprised in Werter Road and the sky above. A sturdy
old woman was coming down the street with a great basket of assorted
flowers; he took an immense pleasure in the sight of the old woman; the
sight of the old woman thrilled him. Why? Well, there was no reason,
except that she was vigorously alive, a part of the magnificent earth.
All life gave him joy; all life was beautiful to him. He had his warm
bath; the bath-room was not of the latest convenience, but Alice could
have made a four-wheeler convenient. As he passed to and fro on the
first-floor he heard the calm, efficient activities below stairs. She
was busy in the mornings; her eyes would seem to say to him, "Now,
between my uprising and lunch-time please don't depend on me for
intellectual or moral support. I am on the spot, but I am also at the
wheel and must not be disturbed."
Then he descended, fresh as a boy, although the promontory which
prevented a direct vision of his toes showed accretions. The front-room
was a shrine for his breakfast. She served it herself, in her-white
apron, promptly on his arrival! Eggs! Toast! Coffee! It was nothing,
that breakfast; and yet it was everything. No breakfast could have been
better. He had probably eaten about fifteen thousand hotel breakfasts
before Alice taught him what a real breakfast was. After serving it she
lingered for a moment, and then handed him the _Daily Telegraph_, which
had been lying on a chair.
"Here's your _Telegraph_," she said cheerfully, tacitly disowning any
property or interest in the _Telegraph_. For her, newspapers were men's
toys. She never opened a paper, never wanted to know what was going on
in the world. She was always intent upon her own affairs. Politics--and
all that business of the mere machinery of living: she perfectly ignored
it! She lived. She did nothing but live. She lived every hour. Priam
felt truly that he had at last got down to the bed-rock of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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