"Yes," he said, "she's a dear good woman. Her book— well— her book is cheap, awkward, vulgar,— but it's good. It's unpalteringly ugly and simple and good. Evidently it's best to be good. It pays.... Anyhow it's bound to pay in the long run."
He pushed Flavio's chair to the wall near the door: by its side he placed the wash-stand from the left of his armchair. He disposed the armchair also against the wall, leaving a cleared space of garret-coloured drugget between the dead fire and the bed. This was his gymnasium.
"If a book like that pays," he reflected, "it must be that there's a lot of people who care for books about the Good. Why not do one of that sort instead of casting folk-lore and history before publishers who turn and rend you? The pity is that the Good should be so dreadfully dowdy. Evidently το καλον and το ἀγαθον are just as distinct as they were in the days of the Broad-browed One. Sophisms again! Why can't you be honest and simple instead of subtile and complex? You're just like your own cat ambuscading a ping-pong ball as strategically and as scrupulously as though it were a mouse. For goodness' sake don't try to deceive yourself. It's all very well to pose before the world: but there's no one here to see you now. Strip, man, strip stark. You perfectly know that the Good always is admirable, whether it be dowdy or chic; and that what you call the Beautiful is no more than a matter of opinion, worth,— well, generally speaking, not worth six and eight-pence."
He threw all his clothes on the armchair: picked his trousers out of the heap and folded them lengthwise over the towel-rail: powdered his arm with borax and bound cotton-wool over it: looked at his dumb-bells while he brushed his hair: sprayed the room with eucalyptus; and got into bed. Extreme fatigue and pain rendered him almost hysterical. His thoughts expressed themselves in ejaculations when he had tied a handkerchief over his eyes, straightened his legs, and laid his right cheek on the pillow.
"Yes! It pays to be good— just simple goodness pays. I know, oh I know. I always knew it.
"God, if ever You loved me, hear me, hear me. De profundis ad Te, ad Te clamavi. Don't I want to be good and clean and happy? What desire have I cherished since my boyhood save to serve in the number of Your mystics? What but that have I asked of You Who made me?
"Not a chance do You give me— ever— ever— .
"Listen! How can I serve You? How be happy, clean, or good, while You keep me so sequestered?
"Oh I know of that psalm where it is written that You set apart for Yourself the godly. Am I godly? Ah no: nor even goodly. I'm Your prisoner writhing in my fetters, fettered, impotent, utterly unhappy.
"Only he, who is good and clean, is happy. I am clean, God, but neither good nor happy. Not alone can a man be good or happy. Force, which generates no one thing, is not force. All intelligence must be active, potent. I'm intelligent. So, O God, You made me. Therefore I must be active. Of my nature I must act. For the chance to act, I languish. I am impotent and inactive always. He, who wishes to be good, strives to do good. Deeds must be done to others by the doer. Therefore I, in my loneliness, am futile. Friends? And which of them have You left me faithful these twelve years of my solitude, God? Not one. Andrews, faithless; and Aubrey, faithless; Brander, faithless; Lancaster, faithless; Strages, faithless and perfidious; Scuttle also; Fareham, Roole, and Nicholas, faithless; Tatham, faithless; that detestable and deceitful Blackcote who came fawning upon me crying 'Courage! You shall suffer no more as you have suffered!' and then robbed me of months and years of labour. Ah! and Lawrence, my little Lawrence, faithless.
"Women? What do I know of women. Nothing.
"Fiat justitia— well, there's Caerleon. But a bishop is very far above me; and his friendship is only condescension,— honest, genial, kind, but— condescension. Still, he wishes me well. I truly think it. But if only he would believe me, trust me, shew faith in me, and absolutely trust me,— I might do what the mouse did for the lion.
"Strong? But why do I name my splendid master. Strong of nature and Strong of name and station, Strong of body and Strong of mind, immensely my superior altogether, knowing all my weakness and all my imperfection: who, to me, is as much like You as any man can be! It is only grand indulgence and urbanity on his part which make him know me; and, when the sun lacks splendour, only then will Megaloprepes need me, only then Kalos Kagathos perchance may need me.
"Why, O God, have You made me strange, uncommon, such a mystery to my fellow-creatures, not a 'man among men' like other people?
"Do I want to appear like other people?
"No, no, certainly not: but— Lord God, am I such a ruffian as to merit exile?
"Oh of course I'm a sinner, vile and shameful. But, God, look at the wreck which You have let them make of me and my life. You have some purpose in it all. Oh you must have, if You are, God; and I know that You are. O God, I thank You.
"But look,— haven't I tried and toiled and suffered? Yet You never allow me any satisfaction, any gain or reward for all my trouble. No: but You always let some shameless brigand rob me, snatching the fair fruit of my labours.
"Yes: I know how I dream of certain pleasures, certain luxuries, cleanness, whiteness, freshness, and simplicity, and the life of quiet healthful vigorous and serene well-doing, all in secret, and all unostentatious, which, when once I achieve success, I will have. I know all about that. But You know also I that never should use success in that way, if You gave it to me. Now did I ever use success for myself and not for others? No: I couldn't endure the eternal silent wistful vision of Your Maiden-Mother.
"You know why I want freedom, power, and money— just to make a few people happy, just to put things right a bit, just to make things easy, just to straighten out tangled lives whose tangles make me rage because I myself am helpless. Is that wrong? No— I swear my aim is single and unselfish. I don't want credit even. You well know that You made me all-denuded of the power of loving anybody, of the power of being loved by any Self-contained, You have made me. I shall always be detached and apart from others.
"Murmur? No. I never have murmured— nor will murmur.
"Truly, though, I should like to love, to be loved: but, so long I have been alone and lonely, I suppose I must go on like that always till the end. They are frightened of me, even when they come to the very verge of loving. They are frightened because of certain labels which I frequently use to put on others: frightened lest I should fit them also some day with a label. Oh, often they have told me that they wouldn't like me to be against them.
"I will stop that, O God, if You desire it. But, instead of it, what? I think You mean me not to waste the one talent You have given. Then, I beg of You, give me scope. I must act.
"No: I am not doing well at present— not my best. Oh, I know it, and I loathe it. All my life is a pose. Somehow or other I have taken the pose, or stolid stupids force me into the pose, of strange recondite haughty genius, very stubtile, very learned, inaccessible,— everything that's foolish. God, You know what a sham I am: how silly this is: how very little I know really. Don't I know it too? Don't I always tell them? Then they say that I'm modest— me— ha!— modest!
Here's the truth, by my One Hope of Salvation. I am frightened of all men, known and unknown; and of women I go into violent terror: though I always do say superb and hard things to the