Labrador (N.L.) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Love stories, English
"Well, I mean that all these things are seeking after a sort of
co-operation that's greater than our power even of imaginative
realization; that's what I mean. The kingdom of Heaven, the communion of
saints, the fellowship of men; these are things like high peaks far out
of the common life of every day, shining things that madden certain
sorts of men to climb. Certain sorts of us! I'm a religious man, I'm a
socialistic man. These calls are more to me than my daily bread. I've
got something in me more generalizing than most men. I'm more so than
many other men and most other women, I'm more socialistic than you...."
"You know, Marjorie, I've always felt you're a finer individual than me,
I've never had a doubt of it. You're more beautiful by far than I, woman
for my man. You've a keener appetite for things, a firmer grip on the
substance of life. I love to see you do things, love to see you move,
love to watch your hands; you've cleverer hands than mine by far.... And
yet--I'm a deeper and bigger thing than you. I reach up to something you
don't reach up to.... You're in life--and I'm a little out of it, I'm
like one of those fish that began to be amphibian, I go out into
something where you don't follow--where you hardly begin to follow.
"That's the real perplexity between thousands of men and women....
"It seems to me that the primitive socialism of Christianity and all the
stuff of modern socialism that matters is really aiming--almost
unconsciously, I admit at times--at one simple end, at the release of
the human spirit from the individualistic struggle----
"You used 'release' the other day, Marjorie? Of course, I remember. It's
queer how I go on talking after you have understood."
"It was just a flash," said Marjorie. "We have intimations. Neither of
us really understands. We're like people climbing a mountain in a mist,
that thins out for a moment and shows valleys and cities, and then
closes in again, before we can recognize them or make out where we are."
Trafford thought. "When I talk to you, I've always felt I mustn't be too
vague. And the very essence of all this is a vague thing, something we
shall never come nearer to it in all our lives than to see it as a
shadow and a glittering that escapes again into a mist.... And yet it's
everything that matters, everything, the only thing that matters truly
and for ever through the whole range of life. And we have to serve it
with the keenest thought, the utmost patience, inordinate veracity....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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