The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection. W. Somerset Maugham

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СКАЧАТЬ had denied him, with the result that he got a first class. And much good it's done him.'

      Alec shrugged his shoulders.

      'It wasn't that I cared for mathematics, but it taught me to conquer the one inconvenient word in the English language.'

      'And what the deuce is that?'

      'I'm afraid it sounds very priggish,' laughed Alec. 'The word _impossible_.'

      Dick gave a little snort of comic rage.

      'And it also gave you a ghastly pleasure in doing things that hurt you. Oh, if you'd only been born in the Middle Ages, what a fiendish joy you would have taken in mortifying your flesh, and in denying yourself everything that makes life so good to live! You're never thoroughly happy unless you're making yourself thoroughly miserable.'

      'Each time I come back to England I find that you talk more and greater nonsense, Dick,' returned Alec drily.

      'I'm one of the few persons now alive who can talk nonsense,' answered his friend, laughing. 'That's why I'm so charming. Everyone else is so deadly earnest.'

      He settled himself down to make a deliberate speech.

      'I deplore the strenuousness of the world in general. There is an idea abroad that it is praiseworthy to do things, and what they are is of no consequence so long as you do them. I hate the mad hurry of the present day to occupy itself. I wish I could persuade people of the excellence of leisure.'

      'One could scarcely accuse you of cultivating it yourself,' said Lucy, smiling.

      Dick looked at her for a moment thoughtfully.

      'Do you know that I'm hard upon forty?'

      'With the light behind, you might still pass for thirty-two,' interrupted Mrs. Crowley.

      He turned to her seriously.

      'I haven't a grey hair on my head.'

      'I suppose your servant plucks them out every morning?'

      'Oh, no, very rarely; one a month at the outside.'

      'I think I see one just beside the left temple.'

      He turned quickly to the glass.

      'Dear me, how careless of Charles! I shall have to give him a piece of my mind.'

      'Come here, and let me take it out,' said Mrs. Crowley.

      'I will let you do nothing of the sort I should consider it most familiar.'

      'You were giving us the gratuitous piece of information that you were nearly forty,' said Alec.

      'The thought came to me the other day with something of a shock, and I set about a scrutiny of the life I was leading. I've worked at the bar pretty hard for fifteen years now, and I've been in the House since the general election. I've been earning two thousand a year, I've got nearly four thousand of my own, and I've never spent much more than half my income. I wondered if it was worth while to spend eight hours a day settling the sordid quarrels of foolish people, and another eight hours in the farce of governing the nation.'

      'Why do you call it that?'

      Dick Lomas shrugged his shoulders scornfully.

      'Because it is. A few big-wigs rule the roost, and the rest of us are only there to delude the British people into the idea that they're a self-governing community.'

      'What is wrong with you is that you have no absorbing aim in politics,' said Alec gravely.

      'Pardon me, I am a suffragist of the most vehement type,' answered Dick, with a thin smile.

      'That's the last thing I should have expected you to be,' said Mrs. Crowley, who dressed with admirable taste. 'Why on earth have you taken to that?'

      Dick shrugged his shoulders.

      'No one can have been through a parliamentary election without discovering how unworthy, sordid, and narrow are the reasons for which men vote. There are very few who are alive to the responsibilities that have been thrust upon them. They are indifferent to the importance of the stakes at issue, but make their vote a matter of ignoble barter. The parliamentary candidate is at the mercy of faddists and cranks. Now, I think that women, when they have votes, will be a trifle more narrow, and they will give them for motives that are a little more sordid and a little more unworthy. It will reduce universal suffrage to the absurd, and then it may be possible to try something else.'

      Dick had spoken with a vehemence that was unusual to him. Alec watched him with a certain interest.

      'And what conclusions have you come to?'

      For a moment he did not answer, then he gave a deprecating smile.

      'I feel that the step I want to take is momentous for me, though I am conscious that it can matter to nobody else whatever. There will be a general election in a few months, and I have made up my mind to inform the whips that I shall not stand again. I shall give up my chambers in Lincoln's Inn, put up the shutters, so to speak, and Mr. Richard Lomas will retire from active life.'

      'You wouldn't really do that?' cried Mrs. Crowley.

      'Why not?'

      'In a month complete idleness will simply bore you to death.'

      'I doubt it. Do you know, it seems to me that a great deal of nonsense is talked about the dignity of work. Work is a drug that dull people take to avoid the pangs of unmitigated boredom. It has been adorned with fine phrases, because it is a necessity to most men, and men always gild the pill they're obliged to swallow. Work is a sedative. It keeps people quiet and contented. It makes them good material for their leaders. I think the greatest imposture of Christian times is the sanctification of labour. You see, the early Christians were slaves, and it was necessary to show them that their obligatory toil was noble and virtuous. But when all is said and done, a man works to earn his bread and to keep his wife and children; it is a painful necessity, but there is nothing heroic in it. If people choose to put a higher value on the means than on the end, I can only pass with a shrug of the shoulders, and regret the paucity of their intelligence.'

      'It's really unfair to talk so much all at once,' said Mrs. Crowley, throwing up her pretty hands.

      But Dick would not be stopped.

      'For my part I have neither wife nor child, and I have an income that is more than adequate. Why should I take the bread out of somebody else's mouth? And it's not on my own merit that I get briefs--men seldom do--I only get them because I happen to have at the back of me a very large firm of solicitors. And I can find nothing worthy in attending to these foolish disputes. In most cases it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, and each side is very unjust and pig-headed. No, the bar is a fair way of earning your living like another, but it's no more than that; and, if you can exist without, I see no reason why Quixotic motives of the dignity of human toil should keep you to it. СКАЧАТЬ