Backwater : $b Pilgrimage, Volume 2 — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Backwater : $b Pilgrimage, Volume 2
John Stuart Mill · en
“Perhaps you go for walks instead?”
“Well, I generally stay in bed and have a rest.”
That dreadful room with the dreadful man hiding in it and reading
“Tit-Bits” and staying in bed in it on bright Sunday mornings.
How heavily they were treading on the orange and yellow faces of the Tom
Thumbs scattered over the short green grass.
“How much do you think people could marry on?” said Mr. Parrow suddenly
in a thin voice.
“Oh well, that depends on who they are.”
“I suppose it does do that.”
“And where they are going to live.”
“D’you think anyone could marry on a hundred and fifty?”
“Of course,” said Miriam emphatically, mentally shivering over the
vision of a tiresome determined cheerful woman with a thin pinched
reddish nose, an everlasting grey hat and a faded ulster going on year
after year; two or three common children she would never be able to
educate, with horribly over-developed characters. It was rather less
than the rent of their house. “Of course, everything would depend on the
woman,” she said wisely. After all a hundred and fifty, with no doubt
and anxiety about it was a very wonderful thing to have. Probably
everybody was wasteful, buying the wrong things and silly things,
ornaments and brooches and serviette rings; ... and not thinking things
out and not putting things down in books and not really enjoying
managing the hundred and fifty and always wanting more. It ought to be
quite jolly being thoroughly common and living in a small way and having
common neighbours doing the same.
“But you think if a man could find a young lady who could agree about
prices it would be possible.”
“Of course it would.”
The houses on the eastern ridges of Brighton came into sight in the
distance and stood blazing in the sunlight. There was a high half
broken-down piece of fencing at the edge of the cliff to their left a
little ahead of them, splintered and sunlit.
“How much a week is a hundred and fifty a year?”
“Three pound.”
They gravitated towards the fence and stood vaguely near it looking out
across the unruffled glare of the open sea. Why had she always thought
that the bright blue and gold ripples seen from the beach and the
promenade on jolly weekdays was the best of the sea? It was much more
lovely up there, the great expanse in its quiet Sunday loneliness. You
could see and think about far-off things instead of just dreaming on the
drowsy hot sands, seeing nothing but the rippling stripes of bright blue
and bright gold. She put her elbows on the upper bar. Mr. Parrow did the
same and they stood gazing out across the open sea--Mr. Parrow was
probably wondering how long they were going to stand silently there and
thinking about his tea ... of course; let him stand--until Eve’s voice
sounded near them in a dimpling laugh. They walked home in a row, Eve
and Mr. Green in the centre, asking riddles one against the other. Every
time Miriam spoke Mr. Parrow laughed or made some little responsive
sound.