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The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook Practical
Strategies for Living with Someone Who Has Borderline
Personality Disorder Randi Kreger Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Randi Kreger
ISBN(s): 9781572242760, 1572242760
Edition: Workbook
File Details: PDF, 3.28 MB
Year: 2002
Language: english
“Kreger gives an incredible amount of information, yet meets the needs of
many types of readers. The anecdotes are memorable, the tasks are engaging,
and the structure allows people to read it on an intellectual or emotional level.
Most importantly, she has provided a great bridge between the high-level,
abstract BPD theories and research and the realities of everyday life.”
—Patricia Davis, family member of a person with BPD

“The workbook is absolutely extraordinary. It’s a masterpiece and one of a

kind. I couldn’t put it down. The Action Steps are right on target. Like Stop
Walking on Eggshells, this book is another work of art.”
—Rita Closson, M.A.
 THE
Stop Walking
on Eggshells
WORKBOOK
Practical Strategies
for Living with
Someone Who Has
Borderline
Personality Disorder

RANDI KREGER with james paul shirley , l . m . s . w .

New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

 Publisher’s Note
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the
understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert
assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Lyrics from “This Too Will Pass” written by Carrie Newcomer. Published by CARRIE NEWCOMER MUSIC/Administered
by BUG. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Quotes from I’m Not Supposed to Be Here by Rachel Reiland are reprinted with her permission. Published by Eggshells Press,
2002.
Quotes and recommendations from Teresa Whitehurst are printed with her permission.
Quotes from Helen S. are printed with her permission.
Quotes from Shannon Mike are printed with her permission.
Quotes from “Non-guy” are used with his permission.

Copyright © 2002 by Randi Kreger

New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
5674 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609

Cover design by Amy Shoup

Edited by Brady Kahn
Text design by Tracy Powell-Carlson

Paperback:

ISBN-10 1-57224-271-X
ISBN-13 978-1-57224-271-0

Ebook:

ISBN-13: 978-1-57224-715-4

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America
New Harbinger Publications’ website address: www.newharbinger.com

10 09 08

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
This book is dedicated to my husband, Robert L. Burko, a man who says he does not believe
in unconditional love but gives it nevertheless. His love, acceptance, and willingness to
support me and my BPD work over these past years have made this workbook possible and
enriched the lives of thousands of people he will never know. Thank you.
Hold tight, hold hands with me
All is trouble just as far as you can see
So here we are and here we stand
So we’ll stare it down just to prove that we can
And ride it out to the last
It’s true, this too will pass.

Small comfort when it goes so deep

And you roll at night in fitful sleep
I’ll tell you what I know
As sure as trouble comes
Yah, trouble will go
I’ll say it though you didn’t ask
It’s true, this too will pass.

So lay it down, lay it down right here.

All your sorrows, all your troubles and your fears.

I can’t tell you how it goes this far

Or explain why it gets so damn hard
Or there are times that shine like jewels
And will be all the brighter for what you’ve been through
So hold these times tightly clasped
It’s true, this too will pass.

So out of the darkest place

And the hardest times that you’ve ever had to face
We’re more tender than some would believe
And we still find it hard to ask for what we need
But don’t give up too fast
It’s true, this too will pass
It’s true, this too will pass.

—Carrie Newcomer, “This Too Will Pass”

 Contents

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

Part 1
From Confusion to Clarity: Understanding BPD
Chapter 1
Walking on Eggshells: Does Someone in Your Life Have BPD Traits? 9

Chapter 2
Defining BPD: The DSM-IV and Cognitive Distortions 27

Chapter 3
Defining BPD: The Subtypes 41

Chapter 4
Getting Together: Relationship Behavior Patterns 55

Chapter 5
Brainwashing 101: How BPD Behavior Affects You 71
viii The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook

Chapter 6
Beyond Denial: Accepting What You Cannot Change 91
(And Changing What You Can)

Chapter 7
Treasuring Yourself: Owning Your Own Reality 107

Chapter 8
Clearing the FOG: Fear, Obligation, and Guilt 129

Chapter 9
Being Heard: Communicating with a Borderline 139

Part 2
Making Wise Decisions and Implementing Them
Chapter 10
Considering Options and Making Decisions 157

Chapter 11
Finding Qualified Professional Help 175

Appendix A
Reading List and Resources 181

Appendix B
Glossary 189

Appendix C
Safety Plan for Domestic Violence Situations 197

References 199

Index 203
 Foreword

I n addition to directly helping friends and family members of people with Border-
line Personality Disorder (BPD), this workbook offers mental health professionals
a hopeful new approach for their clients who are in relationships with borderlines.
Just as Al-Anon can be the practitioner’s best friend in dealing with clients affected
indirectly by alcoholism, Stop Walking on Eggshells (Mason and Kreger 1998) and
this companion workbook, along with online support groups, can be the beginning
of a community of support for people affected indirectly by BPD.
Today, BPD treatment has many of the same problems that faced addictions
treatment in the early 1970s. At that time society tended to view addiction as a fail-
ure of personal morality as well as a deeply shameful personal problem. While
most mental health practitioners were not quite so moralistic, many were still pes-
simistic about addiction and considered it difficult to treat at best. Two practices
changed these attitudes. First, clinicians became more willing to work with
self-help groups as allies in the treatment process. Secondly, they began including
family members as an integral part of the treatment process. Consequently,
improvements began to occur as those in the field began to recognize the indirect
effects of addiction—i.e., codependence—as a separate interpersonal component
that helps feed the cycle of addiction and needs separate clinical attention.
The same principles that worked with addiction are now proving to work
where BPD is concerned. The commonsense simplicity of Kreger’s interpersonal
approach works, where the older, more limited intra-psychic individual
approaches have often failed. In my role as a therapeutic consultant on Kreger’s
Internet family of support groups called “Welcome to Oz,” I have seen people get
results when they apply the principles contained in this workbook. I have heard
people who are trying hard to cope with friends, partners, or family members with
x The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook

BPD repeatedly insist that these online support groups—supplemented with infor-
mation in Stop Walking on Eggshells (SWOE), Kreger’s earlier book—have helped
them more quickly and effectively than counseling did. (Research conducted by
Kreger and statistics professor Edith Cracchiolo [Cracchiolo and Kreger 1997]
showed that 75 percent of the [then 250] members of Welcome to Oz had sought
professional help for their problems dealing with their significant others.)
Increasingly, I am now hearing online support group participants say they
wish their therapists had had the information in SWOE, or wish that their thera-
pists had referred them to Kreger’s Web site and Welcome to Oz support groups.
The combination of pertinent information, together with interpersonal support, is
working.
The goal of this workbook is to re-create some of the helpful experiences of
reading SWOE and participating in an online support group. Using realistic sce-
narios based on compilations of real-life experiences, Kreger and I take the reader
through a series of Action Steps designed to build knowledge and confidence in
applying the principles described in SWOE. The result is not an academic descrip-
tion of Borderline Personality Disorder, but rather a guide to help you cope with
the problem behavior BPD causes.
Hopefully, the long-term result of our work will be a growing community of
people who speak a common language, who know some techniques for dealing
with BPD, and who understand how to apply those techniques in real-life situa-
tions. If this workbook helps just one person take back control of his or her life,
then we will have succeeded.
—James Paul Shirley, M.S.W.
 Acknowledgments

A lthough I am listed as the “author” of this workbook, there is no shortage of peo-

ple whose contributions made this work possible. First, a heartfelt thanks to the
primary contributors to this workbook, including James Paul Shirley, M.S.W., who
reviewed the book and wrote many of the Action Steps, and editor and writer
Wynne Brown, who was instrumental in editing the draft and writing certain sec-
tions about borderline offspring. Additional contributors include Rachel Reiland,
author of I’m Not Supposed to Be Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disor-
der (2002); Kathy Winkler, my coauthor of Hope for Parents: Helping Your Borderline
Son or Daughter without Sacrificing Your Family or Yourself (Winkler and Kreger
2000); and Kim Williams-Justesen, my coauthor of Love and Loathing: Protecting
Your Mental Health and Legal Rights When Your Partner Has Borderline Personality
Disorder (Kreger and Williams-Justesen 1999). Thank you all.
In cyberspace, a thank-you to all those who created and participated in our
Welcome to Oz (WTO) Internet community of friends and family members of
those with Borderline Personality Disorder. The feedback from WTO members
was invaluable in making this publication as effective as possible. I am also grate-
ful for the continuing guidance and assistance of Rita Closson, M.A., social psy-
chologist and list patrol chief, as well as Edith, James, Eric, and Deborah. This
workbook reflects the accomplishments of all the WTO facilitators and their
friends, past and present, who have consistently reminded me that the destructive-
ness of borderline behavior can be tempered or even eliminated by using the tech-
niques in Stop Walking on Eggshells and this workbook.
In the “real” world, special thanks to those who made this workbook possible:
my Stop Walking on Eggshells coauthor Paul Mason, M.S., my husband Robert
Burko, my guardian angel Edith Cracchiolo, and all the staff at New
xii The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook

Harbinger—especially Patrick Fanning (my mentor through this project). From the
owners to the people who work in customer service, everyone has been enthusias-
tic, supportive, and flexible. Their decisions to print Stop Walking on Eggshells and
this workbook have helped thousands of people reclaim their lives.
Keeping up with orders for Stop Walking on Eggshells and the booklets I pub-
lish is a sensitive, crucially important job. Merci beaucoup to Alan, Mary Jane, and
the staff at PIP Printing for keeping the booklets quickly flowing even when
checks get backlogged, and Nancy, Diane, and all the staff at Book Clearing House
in New York for their high-caliber service and compassion to callers.
Mental health writers whose work especially inspired me include Jan Black
and Greg Enns and their incredible book Better Boundaries: Owning and Treasuring
Your Own Life (1997); self-help author Beverly Engel, primarily for her book Loving
Him without Losing You (2000); Christine Ann Lawson, Understanding the Borderline
Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Rela-
tionship (2000); and Susan Forward and Donna Frazier, especially their book Emo-
tional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation and Guilt to
Manipulate You (1997).
In addition to James Paul Shirley and Paul Mason, clinicians who graciously
gave me their time for an interview for this workbook include George Smith,
L.I.C.S.W., associate director of outpatient personality disorders service at McLean
Hospital; and Teresa Whitehurst, Ph.D., clinical instructor at Harvard Medical
School and director of the Cambridge Family Language Project.
Finally, thanks for the encouragement and validation of Mary, J.T., and a few
others who kept reminding me that this work is important and that I need to keep
going, no matter what. You all sustain me and make it all possible.
Introduction
2 The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook

never set out to dedicate more than five years to researching and writing about
I how the behavior of those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) affects
family members. You don’t choose some jobs, they choose you. Or as singer/song-
writer Carrie Newcomer puts it in “Close Your Eyes,” “How I got this job I’ll
never know, but when it calls, you can’t refuse to go.”
My involvement with BPD began as a personal quest. In the early 1990s, I
learned that a person who had had a large influence on my life suffered from some
of the traits of BPD. Since I had never heard of this disorder, I eagerly looked for
information about how such distorted behavior affects loved ones. I discovered
that few clinicians knew the answers—or, frankly, were even looking.
I found this extraordinary. Borderline Personality Disorder by definition nega-
tively involves other people, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) (APA 1994), the standard reference for the diagnosis
and treatment of psychiatric illnesses. To others, people with BPD can appear to be
emotionally or verbally abusive, manipulative, deceitful, invalidating, demanding,
lacking in empathy, illogical, unfair, self-absorbed, and abusive to children. This is
a result of their inner pain. But the effects can still be devastating. Why wasn’t
anyone studying this?
According to the DSM-IV, BPD affects 2 percent of the population, about 6
million people in North America. But that statistic is artificially low. When I give
workshops to clinicians, about half of them say that they have learned to put the
client’s secondary diagnosis (common ones include depression, eating disorder, or
substance abuse) on the client’s chart. They do this for two reasons: one, some
insurance companies refuse to pay for treatments for personality disorders. They
consider them “incurable” despite medications and therapies that have been
shown to improve BPD symptoms. Secondly, mental health practitioners want to
protect BPD patients from the dreaded “Borderline Stigma”—its main symptom
being a scarlet “B” carved in patients’ foreheads by other practitioners who blame
them for not getting better or choose not to treat people with this diagnosis. There-
fore, I believe that 2 percent figure is a gross underestimate.
Assuming that each borderline individual (BP) affects three other people, BPD
behavior impacts 30 million people. The price is enormous: high-conflict divorce,
substance abuse, suicide, lost productivity, criminal activity, domestic violence,
hospitalization, therapist burnout, and more. The total amount of money and pro-
ductivity lost is unknown, but is probably in the millions of dollars.
But money is not my greatest concern. I do this work to help prevent abusive
borderlines who refuse treatment from being abusive to children (who are at risk
of becoming borderline themselves) and to empower partners who feel helpless to
stop emotional, verbal, and even physical abuse. Even though borderlines usually
do not intend to be abusive, their actions can be abusive. And verbal and emo-
tional abuse is just as bad as physical abuse in terms of contributing to BPD. In
other words, my mission is prevention, not treatment, of BPD.
When I realized that I couldn’t depend on the mental health profession, the
media (which mostly covers illnesses with celebrity spokespeople), or even public
or private mental health organizations to provide support and information about
 Introduction 3

the many different ways BPD affects the sufferer and the people around them, I
decided to start an Internet support group and write a book (eventually called Stop
Walking on Eggshells) with therapist Paul Mason, M.S.
Our hope was to validate the experiences of the millions of “nonborderlines,”
or non-BPs (partners, friends, or family member of a person with BP); increase
awareness of all types of the disorder; and teach coping methods and healthier
behaviors to family members and friends who experience BPD behavior as confus-
ing, chaotic, or abusive. While Paul squeezed whatever he could out of the scien-
tific studies, I started speaking with other people related to borderlines the only
place I could find them: on the Internet and America Online.
In order to share stories, in December 1995 I started an Internet listserv sup-
port group with the technical help of a computer guru from the Netherlands. The
Welcome to Oz list (the title refers to Dorothy’s disorientation when she travels
from Kansas to Oz) has blossomed into a family of groups, totaling 2,000
members.
Paul Mason and I used these Internet discussions as a blueprint for Stop
Walking on Eggshells (SWOE), which New Harbinger published in July 1998. “The
Little Book that Could” went on to sell 45,000 copies (as of this writing) and make
Amazon.com’s “Movers and Shakers” list several times. Not bad for a specialized
book originally rejected by thirty publishers because the audience was “too nar-
row” and “no one ever heard of Borderline Personality Disorder.”
Using the tools and information in Stop Walking on Eggshells, as well as their
own insights and support gained from each other, readers and online support
group participants began to take back control of their lives—even when their dis-
ordered family member or friend refused treatment or joint-relationship problem
solving. The site and list helped spur others to develop their own sites and lists,
creating a wellspring of information on the Internet about BPD.
I went on to found my own publishing company, Eggshells Press, and pro-
duce materials that Stop Walking on Eggshells could not address in detail for lack of
space. These include Love and Loathing: Protecting Your Mental Health and Legal
Rights When Your Partner Has Borderline Personality Disorder (Kreger and
Wiliams-Justesen 1999); Hope for Parents: Helping Your Borderline Son or Daughter
without Sacrificing Your Family or Yourself (Winkler and Kreger 2000); the three-set
CD You’re My World: A Non-BP’s Guide to Custody (see appendix A); and I’m Not
Supposed to Be Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder (Reiland 2002).
Most authors have little contact with their readers. But because of the Internet
support groups and several in-person gatherings, I was able to assess how well
non-BPs were understanding and using the principles and techniques in Stop
Walking on Eggshells (also known as SWOE). Over the years, dozens of list mem-
bers told me that SWOE was so densely packed with information that they had to
read it several times, highlighting important sections and making notes in the mar-
gins. Clearly, BP and non-BP interactions are so complex that people need assis-
tance to apply the material in SWOE to their own lives.
For example, people wanted to know, “Why did the BP in my life do this?”
”What should I have done in this situation?” and “What does this confusing
4 The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook

behavior mean?” BPD is a complex disorder, and intellectual knowledge doesn’t

necessarily translate into personal enlightenment. Most importantly, it takes time
and feedback for non-BPs to go through the stages of grief and the five stages of
the BP/non-BP relationships detailed in SWOE.
Thus, the idea for this workbook was born. It is not based on scientific studies;
they don’t exist. It’s not a scientific book about BPD; in fact, it’s not about BPD. It’s
about how to live with someone who has the disorder and still feel in control of
your own life. It’s based on my own experiences with BPs and non-BPs, interviews
with clinicians, and my work cofacilitating the Welcome to Oz lists for five years.
In order to show you how BPD behavior works in real life, some of the exercises,
or Action Steps, use portions of I’m Not Supposed to Be Here.
This workbook is also not a non-BP “bible” (as some people refer to SWOE)
because too many variables exist to make the work complete. People with BPD act
in a variety of ways—some 180 degrees differently—making the needs of family
members and friends extremely different as well. The concerns of non-BPs also
differ according to the type of relationship between BP and non-BP. Therefore,
rather than try to make this workbook everything to everyone, I’ve decided to
keep things as simple and universal as possible. For more specific information,
you may wish to read SWOE and the material listed in the bibliography.
But if you want this workbook to really help you, you can’t just read it. You
need to do the Action Steps in the order presented, and practice the techniques.
Ideally, you’ll have already read Stop Walking on Eggshells or plan to do so at the
same time you go through this workbook (although it’s not required). If you can’t
find SWOE in your local bookstore or library, see appendix A for information on
how to get this book.
I also recommend a visit to the New Harbinger Web site (www.
NewHarbinger.com), which offers books and tapes about related issues, such as
narcissistic parents, boundaries, anger, assertiveness, stress, anxiety, substance
abuse, trauma, self-forgiveness, parenting, and other issues pertinent to readers.
They also carry a self-help book for those who wish to overcome BPD called The
Angry Heart: Overcoming Borderline and Addictive Disorders (Santoro and Cohen
1997).
One last significant bit of information. Many BPs are in a great deal of emo-
tional anguish and are regular users of the mental health system. These BPs are
well known to clinicians and some mental health organizations because they are
low-functioning BPs who readily admit that they have problems. If you are read-
ing this book, however, you are probably in a relationship with someone who has
borderline traits but is in denial about it. SWOE readers and WTO members are
almost always in relationships in which the person who has borderline traits not
only refuses treatment but feels that any problems in the relationship are the other
person’s fault.
Most clinicians and BPD organizations I have come into contact with work
with families where a diagnosis has been made, each person takes some responsi-
bility, and family members sometimes work in treatment together. They are
 Introduction 5

unfamiliar with the high-functioning, non-self-harming BPs, and one group even
denies that they exist.
The difference between working with the non-BPs of low-functioning BPs
who acknowledge they have a problem and the non-BPs of high-functioning ones
who do not admit to having a problem is as different as working with alcoholics in
denial and alcoholics in treatment or Alcoholics Anonymous. If the BP in your life
is willing to work in treatment and try new ways of relating, wonderful! You’re
already halfway there. If not, be aware that this workbook will help you do what
you need to do to take care of yourself and, most importantly, any children who
are involved. I believe that while adults are capable of making their own decisions
about relationships, minor children are not. The BP can be a powerful, fearsome
force, and adults who understand what’s going on are morally bound—I believe—
to protect these children. Appendix C contains specific suggestions for safely
removing yourself and any children who are involved from abusive situations.
I hope this workbook helps you better understand yourself and the BP in your
life, and enables you to make the best decisions for yourself and any children who
rely on your love, support, and protection.
Other documents randomly have
different content
 In due course to the next section where a fool of a little fellow, surely no
doctor, eyed him up and down and said:
“Anything to complain of?”
“Yes,” said Somers. “I’ve had pneumonia three times and been
threatened with consumption.”
“Oh. Go over there then.”
So in his stalky, ignominious nakedness he was sent over to another
section, where an elderly fool turned his back on him for ten minutes,
before looking round and saying:
“Yes. What have you to say?”
Somers repeated.
“When did you have pneumonia?”
Somers answered—he could hardly speak, he was in such a fury of rage
and humiliation.
“What doctor said you were threatened with consumption? Give his
name.” This in a tone of sneering scepticism.
The whole room was watching and listening. Somers knew his
appearance had been anticipated, and they wanted to count him out. But he
kept his head. The elderly fellow then proceeded to listen to his heart and
lungs with a stethoscope, jabbing the end of the instrument against the flesh
as if he wished to make a pattern on it. Somers kept a set face. He knew
what he was out against, and he just hated and despised them all.
The fellow at length threw the stethoscope aside as if he were throwing
Somers aside, and went to write. Somers stood still, with a set face, and
waited.
Then he was sent to the next section, and the stethoscoping doctor
strolled over to the great judgment table. In the final section was a young
puppy, like a chemist’s assistant, who made most of the jokes. Jokes were
all the time passing across the room—but Somers had the faculty of
becoming quite deaf to anything that might disturb his equanimity.
The chemist-assistant puppy looked him up and down with a small grin
as if to say, “Law-lummy, what a sight of a human scare-crow!” Somers
looked him back again, under lowered lids, and the puppy left off joking for
the moment. He told Somers to take up other attitudes. Then he came
forward close to him, right till their bodies almost touched, the one in a
navy blue serge, holding back a little as if from the contagion of the naked
one. He put his hand between Somers’ legs, and pressed it upwards, under
the genitals. Somers felt his eyes going black.
“Cough,” said the puppy. He coughed.
“Again,” said the puppy. He made a noise in his throat, then turned aside
in disgust.
“Turn round,” said the puppy. “Face the other way.”
Somers turned and faced the shameful monkey-faces at the long table.
So, he had his back to the tall window: and the puppy stood plumb behind
him.
“Put your feet apart.”
He put his feet apart.
“Bend forward—further—further—”
Somers bent forward, lower, and realised that the puppy was standing
aloof behind him to look into his anus. And that this was the source of the
wonderful jesting that went on all the time.
“That will do. Get your jacket and go over there.”
Somers put on his jacket and went and sat on the form that was placed
endwise at the side of the fire, facing the side of the judgment table. The
big, gaunt collier was still being fooled. He apparently was not very
intelligent, and didn’t know what they meant when they told him to bend
forward. Instead of bending with stiff knees—not knowing at all what they
wanted—he crouched down, squatting on his heels as colliers do. And the
doctor puppy, amid the hugest amusement, had to start him over again. So
the game went on, and Somers watched them all.
The collier was terrible to him. He had a sort of Irish face with a short
nose and a thin black head. This snub-nose face had gone quite blank with a
ghastly voidness, void of intelligence, bewildered and blind. It was as if the
big, ugly, powerful body could not obey words any more. Oh God, such an
ugly body—not as if it belonged to a living creature.
Somers kept himself hard and in command, face set, eyes watchful. He
felt his cup had been filled now. He watched these buffoons in this great
room, as he sat there naked save for his jacket, and he felt that from his
heart, from his spine went out vibrations that should annihilate them—blot
them out, the canaille, stamp them into the mud they belonged to.
 He was called at length to the table.
“What is your name?” asked one of the old parties. Somers looked at
him.
“Somers,” he said, in a very low tone.
“Somers—Richard Lovat?” with an indescribable sneer.
Richard Lovat realised that they had got their knife into him. So! He had
his knife in them, and it would strike deeper at last.
“You describe yourself as a writer.”
He did not answer.
“A writer of what?”—with a perfect sneer.
“Books—essays.”
The old buffer went on writing. Oh, yes, they intended to make him feel
they had got their knife into him. They would have his beard off, too! But
would they! He stood there with his ridiculous thin legs, in his ridiculous
jacket, but he did not feel a fool. Oh, God, no. The white composure of his
face, the slight lifting of his nose, like a dog’s disgust, the heavy,
unshakeable watchfulness of his eyes brought even the judgment-table to
silence: even the puppy doctors. It was not till he was walking out of the
room, with his jacket about his thin legs, and his beard in front of him, that
they lifted their heads for a final jeer.
He dressed and waited for his card. It was Saturday morning, and he was
almost the last man to be examined. He wondered what instructions they
had had about him. Oh, foul dogs. But they were very close on him now,
very close. They were grinning very close behind him, like hyænas just
going to bite. Yes, they were running him to earth. They had exposed all his
nakedness to gibes. And they were pining, almost whimpering to give the
last grab at him, and haul him to earth, a victim. Finished!
But not yet! Oh, no, not yet. Not yet, not now, nor ever. Not while life
was life, should they lay hold of him. Never again. Never would he be
touched again. And because they had handled his private parts, and looked
into them, their eyes should burst and their hands should wither and their
hearts should rot. So he cursed them in his blood, with an unremitting curse,
as he waited.
They gave him his card: C 2. Fit for non-military service. He knew what
they would like to make him do. They would like to seize him and compel
him to empty latrines in some camp. They had that in mind for him. But he
had other things in mind.
He went out into accursed Derby, to Harriet. She was reassured again.
But he was not. He hated the Midlands now, he hated the North. They were
viler than the South, even than Cornwall. They had a universal desire to
take life and down it: these horrible machine people, these iron and coal
people. They wanted to set their foot absolutely on life, grind it down, and
be master. Masters, as they were of their foul machines. Masters of life, as
they were masters of steam-power and electric-power and above all, of
money-power. Masters of money-power, with an obscene hatred of life, true
spontaneous life.
Another flight. He was determined not to stop in the Derby Military
Area. He would move one stage out of their grip, at least. So he and Harriet
prepared to go back with their trunks to the Oxfordshire cottage, which they
loved. He would not report, nor give any sign of himself. Fortunately in the
village everybody was slack and friendly.
Derby had been a crisis. He would obey no more: not one more stride. If
they summoned him he would disappear: or find some means of fighting
them. But no more obedience: no more presenting himself when called up.
By God, no! Never while he lived, again, would he be at the disposal of
society.
So they moved south—to be one step removed. They had been living in
this remote cottage in the Derbyshire hills: and they must leave at half-past
seven in the morning, to complete their journey in a day. It was a black
morning, with a slow dawn. Somers had the trunks ready. He stood looking
at the dark gulf of the valley below. Meanwhile heavy clouds sank over the
bare, Derbyshire hills, and the dawn was blotted out before it came. Then
broke a terrific thunderstorm, and hail lashed down with a noise like
insanity. He stood at the big window over the valley, and watched. Come
hail, come rain, he would go: forever.
This was his home district—but from the deepest soul he now hated it,
mistrusted it even more than he hated it. As far as life went, he mistrusted it
utterly, with a black soul. Mistrusted it and hated it, with its smoke and its
money-power and its squirming millions who aren’t human any more.
Ah, how lovely the South-west seemed, after it all. There was hardly any
food, but neither he nor Harriet minded. They could pick up and be
wonderfully happy again, gathering the little chestnuts in the woods, and
the few last bilberries. Men were working harder than ever felling trees for
trench-timber, denuding the land. But their brush fires were burning in the
woods, and when they had gone, in the cold dusk, Somers went with a sack
to pick up the unburnt faggots and the great chips of wood the axes had left
golden against the felled logs. Flakes of sweet, pale gold oak. He gathered
them in the dusk, in a sack, along with the other poor villagers. For he was
poorer even than they. Still, it made him very happy to do these things—to
see a big, glowing pile of wood-flakes in his shed—and to dig the garden,
and set the rubbish burning in the late, wistful autumn—or to wander
through the hazel copses, away to the real old English hamlets, that are still
like Shakespeare—and like Hardy’s Woodlanders.
Then, in November, the Armistice. It was almost too much to believe.
The war was over! It was too much to believe. He and Harriet sat and sang
German songs, in the cottage, that strange night of the Armistice, away
there in the country: and she cried—and he wondered what now, now the
walls would come no nearer. It had been like Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the
Pit and the Pendulum—where the walls come in, in, in, till the prisoner is
almost squeezed. So the black walls of the war—and he had been trapped,
and very nearly squeezed into the pit where the rats were. So nearly! So
very nearly. And now the black walls had stopped, and he was not pushed
into the pit, and the rats. And he knew it in his soul. What next then?
He insisted on going back to Derbyshire. Harriet, who hated him for the
move, refused to go. So he went alone: back to his sisters, and to finish the
year in the house which they had paid for him. Harriet refused to go. She
stayed with Hattie in London.
At St. Pancras, as Somers left the taxi and went across the pavement to
the station, he fell down: fell smack down on the pavement. He did not hurt
himself. But he got up rather dazed, saying to himself, “Is that a bad omen?
Ought I not to be going back?” But again he thought of Scipio Africanus,
and went on.
The cold, black December days, alone in the cottage on the cold hills—
Adam Bede country, Snowfields, Dinah Morris’ home. Such heavy, cold,
savage, frustrated blackness. He had known it when he was a boy. Then
Harriet came—and they spent Christmas with his sister. And when January
came he fell ill with the influenza, and was ill for a long time. In March the
snow was up to the window-sills of their house.
“Will the winter never end?” he asked his soul.
May brought the year’s house-rent of the Derbyshire cottage to an end:
and back they went to Oxfordshire. But now the place seemed weary to
him, tame, after the black iron of the North. The walls had gone—and now
he felt nowhere.
So they applied for passports—Harriet to go to Germany, himself to
Italy. A lovely summer went by, a lovely autumn came. But the meaning
had gone out of everything for him. He had lost his meaning. England had
lost its meaning for him. The free England had died, this England of the
peace was like a corpse. It was the corpse of a country to him.
In October came the passports. He saw Harriet off to Germany—said
good-bye at the Great Eastern Station, while she sat in the Harwich-Hook of
Holland express. She had a look of almost vindictive triumph, and almost
malignant love, as the train drew out. So he went back to his
meaninglessness at the cottage.
Then, finding the meaninglessness too much, he gathered his few pounds
together and in November left for Italy. Left England, England which he
had loved so bitterly, bitterly—and now was leaving, alone, and with a
feeling of expressionlessness in his soul. It was a cold day. There was snow
on the Downs like a shroud. And as he looked back from the boat, when
they had left Folkestone behind and only England was there, England
looked like a grey, dreary-grey coffin sinking in the sea behind, with her
dead grey cliffs and the white, worn-out cloth of snow above.
Memory of all this came on him so violently, now in the Australian
night, that he trembled helplessly under the shock of it. He ought to have
gone up to Jack’s place for the night. But no, he could not speak to
anybody. Of all the black throng in the dark Sydney streets, he was the most
remote. He strayed round in a torture of fear, and then at last suddenly went
to the Carlton Hotel, got a room, and went to bed, to be alone and think.
Detail for detail he thought out his experiences with the authorities,
during the war, lying perfectly still and tense. Till now, he had always kept
the memory at bay, afraid of it. Now it all came back, in a rush. It was like a
volcanic eruption in his consciousness. For some weeks he had felt the great
uneasiness in his unconscious. For some time he had known spasms of that
same fear that he had known during the war: the fear of the base and
malignant power of the mob-like authorities. Since he had been in Italy the
fear had left him entirely. He had not even remembered it, in India. Only in
the quiet of Coo-ee, strangely enough, it had come back in spasms: the
dread, almost the horror, of democratic society, the mob. Harriet had been
feeling it too. Why? Why, in this free Australia? Why? Why should they
both have been feeling this same terror and pressure that they had known
during the war, why should it have come on again in Mullumbimby?
Perhaps in Mullumbimby they were suspect again, two strangers, so much
alone. Perhaps the secret service was making investigations about them. Ah,
canaille!
Richard faced out all his memories like a nightmare in the night, and cut
clear. He felt broken off from his fellow-men. He felt broken off from the
England he had belonged to. The ties were gone. He was loose like a single
timber of some wrecked ship, drifting over the face of the earth. Without a
people, without a land. So be it. He was broken apart, apart he would
remain.
CHAP: XIII. “REVENGE!” TIMOTHEUS CRIES
At last he had it all out with himself, right to the bitter end. And then he
realised that all the time, since the year 1918, whether he was in Sicily or
Switzerland or Venice or Germany or in the Austrian Tyrol, deep in his
unconsciousness had lain this accumulation of black fury and fear, like
frenzied lava quiescent in his soul. And now it had burst up: the fear, then
the acute remembrance. So he faced it out, trembling with shock and
bitterness, every detail. And then he tried to reckon it all up.
But first, why had it all come back on him? It had seemed so past, so
gone. Why should it suddenly erupt like white hot lava, to set in hot black
rock round the wound of his soul? Who knows? Perhaps there is a
periodicity even in volcanic eruption. Or perhaps it was this contact with
Kangaroo and Willie Struthers, contact with the accumulating forces of
social violence. Or perhaps it was being again in a purely English-speaking
country, and feeling again that queer revulsion from the English form of
democracy. He realised that the oh-so-pleasant democracy of the English
lower classes frightened him, always had frightened him. Yet everybody
was so very pleasant and easy-going down in Mullumbimby. It really
seemed so free.
Free! Free! What did it mean? It was this very ultra-freedom that
frightened him, like a still pause before a thunderstorm. “Let him that
thinketh he stand take heed lest he fall.”
Or perhaps it was just the inversion of the season, the climate. His blood,
his whole corporeal being, expected summer, and long days and short
nights. And here he had wilfully come into the Southern hemisphere, with
long starry nights of winter, and the late sun rising north-east behind the
sea, and travelling northwards up the sky, as if running away, and setting in
a cold glare north-west, behind the bluey-black range. It should have been
bird-nesting time, and leaves and flowers and tall corn and full summer
with cherry blossom fallen and cherries beginning to change colour.
Whereas the grass was sere and brown, the earth had gone winter-numb, the
few deciduous trees were bare, and only the uncanny coral tree flared its
flowers of red-hot iron.
 Perhaps it was just this: the inversion of the seasons, the shock to his
blood and his system. For, of course, the body has its own rhythm, with the
sun and with the moon. The great nerve ganglia and the subtle glands have
their regular times and motions, in correspondence with the outer universe.
And these times and motions had suddenly received a check from the outer
universe: a distinct check. He had had an inkling of what it would be when,
from the ship in the Indian Ocean he had seen the great and beloved
constellation Orion standing on its head as if pitching head foremost into
the sea, and the bright dog Sirius coursing high above his heels in the outer
air. Then he had realised the inversion in the heavens.
And perhaps it was this inversion which had brought up all that
corrosive and bitter fire from the bowels of his unconscious, up again into
his full consciousness. If so, then let it be so.
One thing he realised, however: that if the fire had suddenly erupted in
his own belly, it would erupt one day in the bellies of all men. Because
there it had accumulated, like a great horrible lava pool, deep in the
unconscious bowels of all men. All who were not dead. And even the dead
were many of them raging in the invisible, with gnashing of teeth. But the
living dead, these he could not reckon with: they with poisonous teeth like
hyænas.
Rage! Rage! Rage! The awful accumulations that lie quiescent and
pregnant in the bowels of men. He thought of the big gaunt collier with the
blunt, seal-like face shorn of its intelligence, squatting naked and ghastly on
his heels. It passes, it passes for the time being. But in those moments there
is an inward disruption, and the death-hot lava pours loose into the deepest
reservoirs of the soul. One day to erupt: or else to go hard and rocky, dead.
Even the athletic young man who wanted to be approved of. Even he. He
had not much true spunk. But what was he feeling now? Unless, of course,
he had got into business and was successfully coining money. That seemed
to be the only safety-valve: success in money-making. But how many men
were successful, now?
Of course it was all necessary, the conscription, the medical
examinations. Of course, of course. We all know it. But when it comes to
the deepest things, men are as entirely irrational as women. You can reason
with a sex-angry woman till you are black in the face. And if for a time you
do overcome her with reason, the sex-anger only arises more hideously and
furiously, later. Perhaps in another guise.
There is no arguing with the instinctive passional self. Not the least use
in the world. Yes, you are quite right, quite right in all your contentions.
But! And the But just explodes everything like a bomb.
The conscription, all the whole performance of the war was absolutely
circumstantially necessary. It was necessary to investigate even the secret
parts of a man. Agreed! Agreed! But—
It was necessary to put Richard Lovat and the ugly collier through that
business at Derby. Many men were put through things a thousand times
worse. Agreed! Oh, entirely agreed! The war couldn’t be lost, at that hour.
Quite, quite, quite! Even Richard, even now, agreed fully to all these
contentions. But—!
And there you are. But—. He was full of a lava fire of rage and hate, at
the bottom of his soul. And he knew it was the same with most men. He felt
desecrated. And he knew it was the same with most men. He felt sold. And
he knew most men felt the same.
He cared for nothing now, but to let loose the hell-rage that was in him.
Get rid of it by letting it out. For there was no digesting it. He had been
trying that for three years, and roaming the face of the earth trying to soothe
himself with the sops of travel and new experience and scenery. He knew
now the worth of all sops. Once that disruption had taken place in a man’s
soul, and in a stress of humiliation, under the presence of compulsion,
something has broken in his tissue and the liquid fire has run out loose into
his blood, then no sops will be of any avail. The lava-fire at the bottom of a
man’s belly breeds more lava fire, and more, and more—till there is an
eruption. As the lava fire accumulates, the man becomes more and more
reckless. Till he reaches a pitch of dehumanised recklessness, and then the
lid is blown off, as the top is blown off a hill to make a new volcano. Or
else it all sets into rocky deadness.
Richard felt himself reaching the volcanic pitch. He had as good as
reached it. And he realised that the Russians must have reached it during the
war: that the Irish had got there: that the Indians in India were approaching
the point: that the whole world was gradually working up to the pitch. The
whole world. It was as inevitable as the coming of summer. It might be
soon—it might be slow. But inevitable it was. Or else the alternative, the
dead-rock barrenness.
But why? Why, oh why? Is human life just opposed to human reason?
The Allies did have to win the war. For it would certainly not have been any
better letting Germany win. Unless a very great disaster might have
shocked men to their deeper senses. But doubtful. Things had to go as they
went.
So, it was just Thomas Hardy’s Blind Fate? No, said Lovat to himself,
no. Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt. The Fates lead on the willing
man, the unwilling man they drag.
The Fates? What Fates? It takes a willing man to answer. Man is not a
creature of circumstance, neither is he the result of cause-and-effect
throughout the ages, neither is he a product of evolution, neither is he a
living Mind, part of the Universal Mind. Neither is he a complicated make-
up of forces and chemicals and organs. Neither is he a term of love. Neither
is he the mere instrument of God’s will. None of these things.
Man lives according to his own idea of himself. When circumstances
begin really to run counter to his idea of himself, he damns circumstances.
When the running-counter persists, he damns the nature of things. And
when it still persists, he becomes a fatalist. A fatalist or an opportunist—
anything of that sort.
Whose fault is it? Fate’s? Not at all. It is man’s fault for persisting in
some fixed idea of himself.
Yet, being an animal saddled with a mental consciousness, which means
ideas, man must have some idea of himself. He just must, and those that
deny it have got a more fixed idea than anybody.
Man must have some idea of himself. He must live hard, hard, up to this
idea of himself.
But the idea is perishable. Say what you like, every idea is perishable:
even the idea of God or Love or Humanity or Liberty—even the greatest
idea has its day and perishes. Each formulated religion is in the end only a
great idea. Once the idea becomes explicit, it is dead. Yet we must have
ideas.
When a man follows the true inspiration of a new, living idea, he then is
the willing man whom the Fates lead onwards: like St. Paul or Pope
Hildebrand or Martin Luther or Cromwell or Abraham Lincoln. But when
the idea is really dead, and still man persists in following it, then he is the
unwilling man whom the Fates destroy, like Kaiser Wilhelm or President
Wilson, or, to-day, the world at large.
For the idea, or ideal of Love, Self-sacrifice, Humanity united in love, in
brotherhood, in peace—all this is dead. There is no arguing about it. It is
dead. The great ideal is dead.
How do we know? By putting off our conscious conceit and listening to
our own soul.
So then, why will men not forgive the war, and their humiliations at the
hands of these war-like authorities? Because men were compelled into the
service of a dead ideal. And perhaps nothing but this compulsion made
them realise it was a dead ideal. But all those filthy little stay-at-home
officers and coast-watchers and dirty-minded doctors who tortured men
during the first stages of the torture, did these men in their souls believe in
what they were doing? They didn’t. They had no souls. They had only their
beastly little wills, which they used to bully all men with. With their wills
they determined to fight for a dead ideal, and to bully every other man into
compliance. The inspiring motive was the bullying. And every other man
complied. Or else, by admitting a conscientious objection to war, he
admitted the dead ideal, but took refuge in one of its side-tracks.
All men alike, and all women, admitted and still admit the face value of
the ideal of Love, Self-sacrifice, and Humanity united in love, brotherhood,
and peace. So, they persist in the dead ideal. Fata nolunt. Fata nolunt. Then
see how the fates betray them. In their service of the defunct ideal they find
themselves utterly humiliated, sold. In England, Italy, Germany, India,
Australia, that had been the one word men had used to describe their
feeling. They had been sold. But not before they had sold themselves. Now
then. The moment a man feels he has been sold, sold in the deepest things,
something goes wrong with his whole mechanism. Something breaks, in his
tissue, and the black poison is emitted into his blood. And then he follows a
natural course, and becomes a creature of slow, or of quick, revenge.
Revenge on all that the old ideal is and stands for. Revenge on the whole
system. Just revenge. Even further revenge on himself.
Men revenged themselves on Athens, when they felt sold. When Rome,
persisting in an old, defunct ideal, gradually made her subjects feel sold,
they were revenged on her, no matter how. Constantinople and the
Byzantine Empire the same. And now our turn. “Revenge,” Timotheus
cries. And Timotheus is just everybody, except those that have got hold of
the money or the power.
There is nothing for it but revenge. If you sow the dragon’s teeth, you
mustn’t expect lilies of the valley to spring up in sweet meekness.
And Kangaroo? Kangaroo insisted on the old idea as hard as ever,
though on the Power of Love rather than on the Submission and Sacrifice of
Love. He wanted to take his revenge in an odour of sanctification and Lily
of the Valley essence. But he was the mob, really. See his face in a rage. He
was the mob: the vengeful mob. Oh, God, the most terrifying of all things.
And Willie Struthers? The vengeful mob also. But if the old ideal had
still a logical leaf to put forth, it was this last leaf of communism—before
the lily-tree of humanity rooted in love died its final death. Perhaps better
Struthers than Kangaroo.
“But what about myself?” said Richard Lovat to himself, as he lay in the
darkness of Sydney, his brain afire. For the horrible bitter fire seemed really
to have got into his brain, burst up from his deepest bowels. “What about
me? Am I too Timotheus crying Revenge?”
Oh, revenge, yes, he wanted to be avenged. He wanted to be avenged.
Especially when he felt tangled up in the horrible human affair, the ideal
become like an octopus with a ghastly eye in the centre, and white arms
enwreathing the world. Oh, then he wanted to be avenged.
But now, for the moment he felt he had cut himself clear. He was
exhausted and almost wrecked—but he felt clear again. If no other ghastly
arm of the octopus should flash out and encircle him.
For the moment he felt himself lying inert, but clear, the dragon dead.
The ever-renewed dragon of a great old ideal, with its foul poison-breath. It
seemed as if, for himself, he had killed it.
That was now all he wanted: to get clear. Not to save humanity or to help
humanity or to have anything to do with humanity. No—no. Kangaroo had
been his last embrace with humanity. Now, all he wanted was to cut himself
clear. To be clear of humanity altogether, to be alone. To be clear of love,
and pity, and hate. To be alone from it all. To cut himself finally clear from
the last encircling arm of the octopus humanity. To turn to the old dark
gods, who had waited so long in the outer dark.
 Humanity could do as it liked: he did not care. So long as he could get
his own soul clear. For he believed in the inward soul, in the profound
unconscious of man. Not an ideal God. The ideal God is a proposition of the
mental consciousness, all-too-limitedly human. “No,” he said to himself.
“There is God. But forever dark, forever unrealisable: forever and forever.
The unutterable name, because it can never have a name. The great living
darkness which we represent by the glyph, God.”
There is this ever-present, living darkness inexhaustible and
unknowable. It is. And it is all the God and the gods.
And every living human soul is a well-head to this darkness of the living
unutterable. Into every living soul wells up the darkness, the unutterable.
And then there is travail of the visible with the invisible. Man is in travail
with his own soul, while ever his soul lives. Into his unconscious surges a
new flood of the God-darkness, the living unutterable. And this unutterable
is like a germ, a fœtus with which he must travail, bringing it at last into
utterance, into action, into being.
But in most people the soul is withered at the source, like a woman
whose ovaries withered before she became a woman, or a man whose sex-
glands died at the moment when they should have come into life. Like
unsexed people, the mass of mankind is soulless. Because to persist in
resistance of the sensitive influx of the dark gradually withers the soul,
makes it die, and leaves a human idealist and an automaton. Most people
are dead, and scurrying and talking in the sleep of death. Life has its
automatic side, sometimes in direct conflict with the spontaneous soul.
Then there is a fight. And the spontaneous soul must extricate itself from
the meshes of the almost automatic white octopus of the human ideal, the
octopus of humanity. It must struggle clear, knowing what it is doing: not
waste itself in revenge. The revenge is inevitable enough, for each denial of
the spontaneous dark soul creates the reflex of its own revenge. But the
greatest revenge on the lie is to get clear of the lie.
The long travail. The long gestation of the soul within a man, and the
final parturition, the birth of a new way of knowing, a new God-influx. A
new idea, true enough. But at the centre, the old anti-idea: the dark, the
unutterable God. This time not a God scribbling on tablets of stone or
bronze. No everlasting decalogues. No sermons on mounts, either. The dark
God, the forever unrevealed. The God who is many gods to many men: all
things to all men. The source of passions and strange motives. It is a
frightening thought, but very liberating.
“Ah, my soul,” said Richard to himself, “you have to look more ways
than one. First to the unutterable dark of God: first and foremost. Then to
the utterable and sometimes very loud dark of that woman Harriet. I must
admit that only the dark god in her fighting with my white idealism has got
me so clear: and that only the dark god in her answering the dark god in me
has got my soul heavy and fecund with a new sort of infant. But even now I
can’t bring it forth. I can’t bring it forth. I need something else. Some other
answer.”
Life makes no absolute statement: the true life makes no absolute
statement. “Thou shalt have no other God before me.” The very
commandment suggests that it is possible to have other gods, and to put
them before Jehovah. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” But, oh
deepest of perplexing questions, how do I love myself? Am I to love my
neighbour as if he were myself? But my very love makes me know that he
isn’t myself, and that therein lies his lovableness, unless I am a conceited
prig. Am I to love my neighbour as much as myself? And how much do I
love myself? It is a wildly problematic commandment. Supposing I love my
neighbour more than myself. That again is a catastrophe.
Since every man must love himself in a different way—unless he is a
materialist or a prig—he must love his neighbour in a different way. So
Christ’s commandment is as large as life, and its meaning can never be
fixed. I sometimes hate myself: and my neighbour as myself.
Life makes no absolute statement. It is all Call and Answer. As soon as
the Call ceases, the Answer is invalid. And till the Answer comes, a Call is
but a crying in the wilderness. And every Answer must wait until it hears
the Call. Till the Call comes, the Answer is but an unborn fœtus.
And so it is. Life is so wonderful and complex, and always relative. A
man’s soul is a perpetual call and answer. He can never be the call and the
answer in one: between the dark God and the incarnate man: between the
dark soul of woman, and the opposite dark soul of man: and finally,
between the souls of man and man, strangers to one another, but answerers.
So it is for ever, the eternal weaving of calls and answers, and the fabric of
life woven and perishing again. But the calls never cease, and the answers
never fail for long. And when the fabric becomes grey and machine-made,
some strange clarion-call makes men start to smash it up. So it is.
Blessed are the pure in heart. That is absolute truth, a statement of living
relativity, because the pure in heart are those who quiver to the dark God, to
the call of woman, and to the call of men. The pure in heart are the listeners
and the answerers. But Rameses II. was no doubt as pure in heart as John
the Evangel. Indeed perhaps purer, since John was an insister. To be pure in
heart, man must listen to the dark gods as well as to the white gods, to the
call to blood-sacrifice as well as to the eucharist.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. It depends. If it means listening. Not if it
means taking up a permanent attitude.
Blessed are the peacemakers. It depends. If it means answering. Not if it
means enforcing the peace, like policemen.
Blessed are the meek. It depends on the occasion.
Blessed are they that mourn. It depends altogether.
Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness. Ah, yes,
but the righteousness of the profound listener, and of the answerer who will
answer come what may. Not any other righteousness of the commandment
sort.
Blessed are ye when men shall despise you. Nay, nay, it is rather:
unblessed are the despisers——
After all his terrific upheaval, Richard Lovat at last gave it up, and went
to sleep. A man must even know how to give up his own earnestness, when
its hour is over, and not to bother about anything any more, when he’s
bothered enough.
CHAP: XIV. BITS.
The following day Somers felt savage with himself again. “Fool that I am,
fool!” he said, mentally kicking himself. And he looked at the big pink
spread of his Sydney Bulletin viciously. The Bulletin was the only
periodical in the world that really amused him. The horrible stuffiness of
English newspapers he could not stand: they had the same effect on him as
fish-balls in a restaurant, loathsome stuffy fare. English magazines were too
piffling, too imbecile. But the “Bully,” even if it was made up all of bits,
and had neither head nor tail nor feet nor wings, was still a lively creature.
He liked its straightforwardness and the kick in some of its tantrums. It beat
no solemn drums. It had no deadly earnestness. It was just stoical, and
spitefully humorous. Yes, at the moment he liked the Bulletin better than
any paper he knew, though even the Bulletin tried a dowdy bit of swagger
sometimes, especially on the pink page. But then the pink page was just
“literary,” and who cares?
Who cares, anyhow? Perhaps a bit sad, after all. But more fool you for
being sad.
So he rushed to read the “bits.” They would make Bishop Latimer forget
himself and his martyrdom at the stake.
“1085: The casual Digger of war-days has carried it into civvies. Sighted
one of the original Tenth at the Outer Harbour (Adelaide) wharf last week
fishing. His sinker was his 1914 Star.”
Yes, couldn’t Somers just see that forlorn Outer Harbour at Adelaide,
and the digger, like some rag of sea-weed dripping over the edge of the
wharf, fishing, and using his medal for a weight?
“Wilfrido: A recent advertisement for the Wellington (New Zealand) Art
Gallery attracted 72 applicants. Among them were two solicitors (one an
Oxford M.A.); five sheep-farmers, on whose lands the mortgagee had
foreclosed; and a multitude of clerks. The post is not exactly a sinecure,
either: it demands attendance on seven days a week at £150 p.a.”
Then a little cartoon of Ivan, the Russian workman, going for a tram-
drive, and taking huge bundles of money with him, sackfuls of roubles, to
pay the fare. The “Bully” was sardonic about Bolshevism.
 “Ned Kelly: Hearing the deuce of a racket in the abo (aborigines) camp
near our place, we strolled over to see what was wrong, and saw a young
Binghi giving his gin a father of a hiding for making eyes at another buck.
Every respectable Binghi has the right to wallop his missis, but this one laid
it on so much that he knocked her senseless. This enraged her relatives, and
they went for him en masse, while two or three gins applied restoratives to
the battered wife. She soon came round, and, seeing how things were,
grabbed a waddy and went to the assistance of her lord and master. In the
end the twain routed the phalanxed relations. Same old woman, whatever
her line!”
Bits about bullock drivers and the biggest loads on record, about the
biggest piece of land ploughed by a man in a day, recipes for mange in
horses, twins, turnips, accidents to reverend clergymen, and so on.
“Pick: In the arid parts out back the wild birds infallibly indicate to the
wayfarer when the water in his bag must be vigorously conserved. If in the
early morning they descend in flocks to the plain, and there collect the
globules of dew among the dry stalks of grass, it means that every tank,
gilgal and puddle-hole within a bird’s drinking flight has gone dry.”
“Cellu Lloyd: Before you close down on mangey horses here’s a cure
I’ve never known to fail. To one bullock’s gall add kerosene to make up a
full pint. Heat sufficiently to enable it to mix well, not forgetting, of course,
that half of it is kerosene. When well mixed add one teaspoonful of
chrysophanic acid. Bottle and shake well. Before applying take a hard
scrubbing brush and thoroughly scrub the part with carbolic soap and hot
water, and when applying the mixture use the brush again. In one case I
struck a pair of buggy ponies that had actually bitten pieces from each
other, and rubbed down a hundred yards or so of fence in trying to allay the
burning itch. Two months afterwards they were growing hair and gaining
condition, and not a trace of mange remained. It is wonderful, however,
how lightly some horse-owners treat the matter. When a horse works hard
all day, and spends the night rubbing a fence flat in his itch frenzy, he at
once loses condition and usefulness; but in most cases the owner builds the
fence stronger instead of giving the unfortunate animal the necessary
attention.”
This recipe brought many biting comments in later issues.
 Somers liked the concise, laconic style. It seemed to him manly and
without trimmings. Put ship-shape in the office, no doubt. Sometimes the
drawings were good, and sometimes they weren’t.
“Lady (who has just opened door to country girl carrying suitcase): ‘I am
suited. A country girl has been engaged, and I’m getting her to-morrow.’
“Girl: ‘I’m her; and you’re not. The ’ouse is too big’.”
There, thought Somers, you have the whole spirit of Australian labour.
“K. Sped: A week or two back a Mildura (Vic.) motorcyclist ran over a
tiger-snake while travelling at 35 m.p.h. Ten minutes later the leg became
itchy, and shortly afterwards, feeling giddy, he started back to the local
hospital. He made a wobbly passage and collapsed at the hospital gates. He
was bad for a week, and was told that if the reptile had not struck him on
the bone he would never have reached the ward. The snake must have
doubled up when the wheel struck it, and by the merest fluke struck the
rider’s leg in mid-air.”
“Fraoch: I knew another case of a white girl marrying an aboriginal
about 20 years ago on the Northern Rivers (N.S.W.). She was rather pretty,
a descendant of an English family. Binghi was a landed proprietor, having
acquired a very decent estate on the death of a former spinster employer.
(Binghi must have had ’a way wid ’im’). He owned a large, well-furnished
house, did himself well, and had a fair education, and was a good rough-
rider. But every year the ‘call of the wild’ came to him, and he would leave
his wife and kids (they had three) and take himself to an old tumble-down
hut in the bush, and there for a month or two live in solitude on his natural
tucker. Under the will of the aforesaid spinster, upon Binghi’s demise the
estate was to revert to her relatives. With an optimism that was not without
a pathos of its own, they used to trot out every outlaw in the district for their
dusky friend to ride; but his neck was still intact when I left.”
“Sucre: Peering through her drawing-room window shortly before lunch,
the benevolent old suburban lady saw a shivering man in a ruined overcoat.
Not all the members of the capitalist classes are iron-souled creatures bent
on grinding the faces of the afflicted, yet virtuous poor. Taking a ten shilling
note from a heavily-beaded bag, she scribbled on a piece of paper the
words: Cheer Up, put both in an envelope, and told the maid to give it to
the outcast from her. While the family was at dinner that evening a ring
sounded at the front door. Argument followed in the hall between a hoarse
male voice and that of the maid. ‘You can’t come in. They’re at dinner.’ ‘I’d
rather come in, miss. Always like for to fix these things up in person.’ ‘You
can’t come.’ Another moment and the needy wayfarer was in the dining-
room. He carefully laid five filthy £1 notes on the table before his
benefactress. ‘There you are, mum,’ he said, with a rough salute. ‘Cheer Up
won all right. I’m mostly on the corner, race days, as your cook will tell
you; an’ I’d like to say that if any uv your friends—’ ”
Bits, bits, bits. Yet Richard Lovat read on. It was not mere anecdotage. It
was the sheer momentaneous life of the continent. There was no
consecutive thread. Only the laconic courage of experience.
All the better. He could have kicked himself for wanting to help
mankind, join in revolutions or reforms or any of that stuff. And he kicked
himself still harder thinking of his frantic struggles with the “soul” and the
“dark god” and the “listener” and the “answerer.” Blarney—blarney—
blarney! He was a preacher and a blatherer, and he hated himself for it.
Damn the “soul,” damn the “dark god,” damn the “listener” and the
“answerer,” and above all, damn his own interfering, nosy self.
What right had he to go nosing round Kangaroo, and making up to Jaz or
to Jack? Why couldn’t he keep off it all? Let the whole show go its own gay
course to hell, without Mr Richard Lovat Somers trying to show it the way
it should go.
A very strong wind had got up from the west. It blew down from the
dark hills in a fury, and was cold as flat ice. It blew the sea back until the
great water looked like dark, ruffled mole-fur. It blew it back till the waves
got littler and littler, and could hardly uncurl the least swish of a rat-tail of
foam.
On such a day his restlessness had driven them on a trip along the coast
to Wolloona. They got to the lost little town just before mid-day, and looked
at the shops. The sales were on, and prices were “smashed to bits,” “Prices
Smashed to Bits,” in big labels. Harriet, of course, fascinated in the Main
Street, that ran towards the sea, with the steep hills at the back. “Hitch your
motor to a star.—Star Motor Company.” “Your piano is the most important
article of furniture in your drawing-room. You will not be proud of your
drawing-room unless your piano has a Handsome Appearance and a
Beautiful Tone. Both these requisites—”
 It was a wonderful Main Street, and, thank heaven, out of the wind.
There were several large but rather scaring brown hotels, with balconies all
round: there was a yellow stucco church with a red-painted tin steeple, like
a weird toy: there were high roofs and low roofs, all corrugated iron: and
you came to an opening, and there, behold, were one or two forlorn
bungalows inside their wooden palings, and then the void. The naked bush,
sinking in a hollow to a sort of marsh, and then down the coast some sort of
“works,” brick-works or something, smoking. All as if it had tumbled
haphazard off the pantechnicon of civilisation as it dragged round the edges
of this wild land, and there lay, busy but not rooted in. As if none of the
houses had any foundations.
Bright the sun, the air of marvellous clarity, tall stalks of cabbage palms
rising in the hollow, and far off, tufted gum trees against a perfectly new
sky, the tufts at the end of wire branches. And farther off, blue, blue hills. In
the Main Street, large and expensive motor-cars and women in fuzzy fur
coats; long, quiescent Australian men in tired-out-looking navy blue suits
trotting on brown ponies, with a carpet-bag in one hand, doing the
shopping; girls in very much-made hats, also flirtily shopping; three boys
with big, magnificent bare legs, lying in a sunny corner in the dust; a lonely
white pony hitched as if forever to a post at a street-corner.
“I like it,” said Harriet. “It doesn’t feel finished.”
“Not even begun,” he laughed.
But he liked it too: even the slummyness of some of the bungalows
inside their wooden palings, drab-wood, decrepit houses, old tins, broken
pots, a greeny-white pony reminding one of a mildewed old shoe, two half-
naked babies sitting like bits of live refuse in the dirt, but with bonny,
healthy bare legs: the awful place called “The Travellers’ Rest—Mrs
Coddy’s Boarding Home”—a sort of blind, squalid, corner-building made
of wood and tin, with flat pieces of old lace-curtain nailed inside the
windows, and the green blinds hermetically drawn. What must it have been
like inside? Then an open space, and coral-trees bristling with red crest-
flowers on their bare, cold boughs: and the hollow space of the open
country, and the marvellous blue hills of the distance.
The wind was cold enough to make you die. Harriet was disgusted at
having been dragged away from home. They trailed to the sea to try and get
out of it, for it blew from the land, and the sun was hot. On the bay one lone
man flinging a line into the water, on the edge of the conch-shaped, sloping
sands. Dark-blue water, ruffled like mole-fur, and flicked all over with froth
as with bits of feather-fluff. And many white gannets turning in the air like
a snow-storm and plunging down into the water like bombs. And fish
leaped in the furry water, as if the wind had turned them upside-down. And
the gannets dropping and exploding into the wave, and disappearing. On the
sea’s horizon, so perfectly clear, a steamer like a beetle walking slowly
along. Clear, with a non-earthly clarity.
Harriet and Somers sat and ate sandwiches with a little sand, she dazed
but still expostulating. Then they went to walk on the sea’s edge, where the
sands might be firm. But the beach sloped too much, and they were not
firm. The lonely fisherman held up his thin silvery line for them to pass
under.
“Don’t bother,” said Somers.
“Right O!” said he.
He had a sad, beery moustache, a very cold-looking face, and, of course,
a little boy, his son, no doubt, for a satellite.
There were little, exquisite pink shells, like Venetian pink glass with
white veins or black veins round their sharp little steeples. Harriet loved
them, among her grumbles, and they began to gather them: “for trimmings,”
said Harriet. So, in the flat-icy wind, that no life had ever softened and no
god ever tempered, they crouched on the sea’s edge picking these
marvellous little shells.
Suddenly, with a cry, to find the water rushing round their ankles and
surging up their legs, they dragged their way wildly forward with the wave,
and out and up the sand. Where immediately a stronger blast seized Lovat’s
hat and sent it spinning to the sea again, and he after it like a bird. He
caught it as the water lifted it, and then the waste of waters enveloped him.
Above his knees swirled the green flood, there was water all around him
swaying, he looked down at it in amazement, reeling and clutching his hat.
Then once more he clambered out. Harriet had fallen on her knees on the
sand in a paroxysm of laughter, and there she was doubled up like a sack,
shrieking between her gasps:
“His hat! His hat! He wouldn’t let it go”—shrieks, and her head like a
sand-bag flops to the sand—“no—not if he had to swim”—shrieks—“swim
to Samoa.”
 He was looking at his wet legs and chuckling with his inward laughter.
Vivid, the blue sky: intensely clear, the dark sea, the yellow sands, the
swoop of the bay, the low headlands: clear like a miracle. And the water
bubbling in his shoes as he walked rolling up the sands.
At last she recovered enough to crawl after him. They sat in a sand-
hollow under a big bush with odd red berries, and he wrung out his socks,
and all he could of his underpants and trousers. Then he put on his socks
and shoes again, and they set off for the station.
“The Pacific water,” he said, “is so very seaey, it is almost warm.”
At which, looking at his wet legs and wet hat, she went off into shrieks
again. But she made him be quick, because there was a train they could
catch.
However in the Main Street they thought they would buy another pair of
socks. So he bought them, and changed in the shop. And they missed the
train, and Harriet expostulated louder.
They went home in a motor-bus and a cloud of dust, with the heaven
bluer than blue above, the hills dark and fascinating, and the land so remote
seeming. Everything so clear, so very distinct, and yet so marvellously
aloof.
All the miles alongside the road tin bungalows in their paling fences: and
a man on a pony, in a long black overcoat and a cold nose, driving three
happy, fleecy cows: long men in jerseys and white kerchiefs round their
necks, à la Buffalo Bill, riding nice slim horses; a woman riding astride top
speed on the roadside grass. A motor-car at the palings of one of the
bungalows. A few carts coming.
And the occupants of the ’bus bouncing and bobbing like a circus,
because of the very bumpy road.
“Shakes your dinner down,” said the old woman with the terribly home-
made hat—oh, such difficult, awful hats.
“It does, if you’ve had any,” laughed Harriet.
“Why, you’ve ’ad your dinner, ’aven’t you?”
As concerned as if Harriet was her own stomach, such a nice old woman.
And a lovely little boy with the bright, wide, gentle eyes of these
Australians. So alert and alive and with that lovableness that almost hurts
one. Absolute trust in the “niceness” of the world. A tall, stalky, ginger man
with the same bright eyes and a turned-up nose and long stalky legs. An
elderly man with bright, friendly, elderly eyes and careless hair and careless
clothing. He was Joe, and the other was Alf. Real careless Australians,
careless of their appearance, careless of their speech, of their money, of
everything—except of their happy-go-lucky, democratic friendliness.
Really nice, with bright, quick, willing eyes. Then a young man, perhaps a
commercial traveller, with a suit-case. He was quite smartly dressed, and
had fancy socks. He was one of those with the big, heavy legs, heavy thighs
and calves that showed even in his trousers. And he was physically very
self-conscious, very self-conscious of Lovat and Harriet. The driver’s face
was long and deep red. He was absolutely laconic. And yet, absolutely
willing, as if life held no other possibility than that of being an absolutely
willing citizen. A fat man with a fat little girl waiting at one of the corners.
“Up she goes!” he said as he lifted her in.
A perpetual, unchanging willingness, and an absolute equality. The same
good-humoured, right-you-are approach from everybody to everybody.
“Right-you-are! Right-O!” Somers had been told so many hundreds of
times, Right-he-was, Right-O!, that he almost had dropped into the way of
it. It was like sleeping between blankets—so cosy. So cosy.
They were really awfully nice. There was a winsome charm about them.
They none of them seemed mean, or tight, or petty.
The young man with the fine suit and the great legs put down his money,
gently and shyly as a girl, beside the driver on the little window-ledge. Then
he got out and strode off, shy and quick, with his suit-case.
“Hey!”
The young man turned at the driver’s summons, and came back.
“Did yer pay me?”
The question was put briskly, good-humouredly, with a touch even of
tenderness. The young man pointed to the money. The driver glanced round
and saw it.
“Oh! Right you are! Right-O!”
A faint little smile of almost tender understanding, and the young man
turned again. And the driver bustled to carry out some goods. The way he
stooped to pick up the heavy wooden box in his arms; so willing to stoop to
burdens. So long, of course, as his Rights of Man were fully recognised.
You musn’t try any superior tricks with him.
Well, it was really awfully nice. It was touching. And it made life so
easy, so easy.
Of course these were not government servants. Government servants
have another sort of feeling. They feel their office, even in N.S.W.—even a
railway-clerk. Oh, yes.
So nice, so nice, so gentle. The strange, bright-eyed gentleness. Of
course, really rub him the wrong way, and you’ve got a Tartar. But not
before you’ve asked for one. Gentle as a Kangaroo, or a wallaby, with that
wide-eyed, bright-eyed, alert, responsible gentleness Somers had never
known in Europe. It had a great beauty. And at the same time it made his
spirits sink.
It made him feel so sad underneath, or uneasy, like an impending
disaster. Such a charm. He was so tempted to commit himself to this strange
continent and its strange people. It was so fascinating. It seemed so free, an
absence of any form of stress whatsoever. No strain in any way, once you
could accept it.
He was so tempted, save for a sense of impending disaster at the bottom
of his soul. And there a voice kept saying: “No, no. No, no. It won’t do.
You’ve got to have a reversion. You can’t carry this mode any further.
You’ve got to have a recognition of the innate, sacred separateness.”
So when they were walking home in a whirl of the coldest, most flat-
edged wind they had ever known, he stopped in front of her to remark:
“Of course you can’t go on with a soft, oh-so-friendly life like this here.
You’ve got to have an awakening of the old recognition of the aristocratic
principle, the innate difference between people.”
“Aristocratic principle!” she shrieked on the wind. “You should have
seen yourself, flying like a feather into the sea after your hat. Aristocratic
principle!” She shrieked again with laughter.
“There you are, you see,” he said to himself. “I’m at it again.” And he
laughed too.
The wind blew them home. He made a big fire, and changed, and they
drank coffee made with milk, and ate buns.
 “Thank heaven for a home,” he said, as they sat in the dark, big rooms at
Coo-ee, and ate their buns, and looked out of the windows and saw here as
well a whirl of gannets like a snowstorm, and a dark sea littered with white
fluffs. The wind roared in the chimney, and for the first time the sea was
inaudible.
“You see,” she said, “how thankful you are for a home.”
“Chilled to the bone!” she said. “I’m chilled to the bone with my day’s
pleasure-outing.”
So they drew up the couch before the fire, and he piled rugs on her and
jarrah chunks on the fire, and at last it was toastingly warm. He sat on a
little barrel which he had discovered in the shed, and in which he kept the
coal for the fire. He had been at a loss for a lid to this barrel, till he had
found a big tin-lid thrown out on the waste lot. And now the wee barrel with
the slightly rusty tin lid was his perch when he wanted to get quite near the
fire. Harriet hated it, and had moments when she even carried the lid to the
cliff to throw it in the sea. But she brought it back, because she knew he
would be so indignant. She reviled him however.
“Shameful! Hideous! Old tin lids! How you can sit on it. How you can
bring yourself to sit on such a thing, and not feel humiliated. Is that your
aristocratic principle?”
“I put a cushion on it,” he said.
As he squatted on his tub this evening in the fire-corner, she suddenly
turned from her book and cried:
“There he is, on his throne! Sitting on his aristocratic principle!” And
again she roared with laughter.
He, however, shook some coal out of the little tub on to the fire, replaced
the tin lid and the cushion, and resumed his thoughts. The fire was very
warm. She lay stretched in front of it on the sofa, covered with an eider-
down, and reading a Nat Gould novel, to get the real tang of Australia.
“Of course,” he said, “this land always gives me the feeling that it
doesn’t want to be touched, it doesn’t want men to get hold of it.”
She looked up from her Nat Gould.
“Yes,” she admitted slowly. “And my ideal has always been a farm. But I
know now. The farms don’t really belong to the land. They only scratch it
and irritate it, and are never at one with it.”
 Whereupon she returned to her Nat Gould, and there was silence save for
the hollow of the wind. When she had finished her paper-backed book she
said:
“It’s just like them—just like they think they are.”
“Yes,” he said vaguely.
“But, bah!” she added, “they make me sick. So absolutely dull—worse
than an ‘At Home’ in the middle classes.”
And after a silence, another shriek of laughter suddenly.
“Like a flying-fish! Like a flying-fish dashing into the waves! Dashing
into the waves after his hat—”
He giggled on his tub.
“Fancy, that I’m here in Coo-ee after my day’s outing! I can’t believe it.
I shall call you the flying-fish. It’s hard to believe that one was so many
things in one day. Suddenly the water! Won’t you go now and do the tailor?
Twenty to eight! The bold buccaneer!”
The tailor was a fish that had cost a shilling, and which he was to
prepare for supper.
“Globe: There can’t be much telepathy about bullocks, anyhow. In
Gippsland (Vic.) last season a score of them were put into a strange
paddock, and the whole 20 were found drowned in a hole next morning.
Tracks showed that they had gone each on his own along a path,
overbalanced one after the other, and were unable to clamber up the rocky
banks.”
That, thought Richard at the close of the day, is a sufficient comment on
herd-unity, equality, domestication, and civilisation. He felt he would have
liked to climb down into that hole in which the bullocks were drowning and
beat them all hard before they expired, for being such mechanical logs of
life.
Telepathy! Think of the marvellous vivid communication of the huge
sperm whales. Huge, grand, phallic beasts! Bullocks! Geldings! Men! R. L.
wished he could take to the sea and be a whale, a great surge of living
blood: away from these all-too-white people, who ought all to be called
Cellu Lloyd, not only the horse-mange man.
Man is a thought-adventurer. Man is more, he is a life-adventurer. Which
means he is a thought-adventurer, an emotion-adventurer, and a discoverer
of himself and of the outer universe. A discoverer.
“I am a fool,” said Richard Lovat, which was the most frequent
discovery he made. It came, moreover, every time with a new shock of
surprise and chagrin. Every time he climbed a new mountain range and
looked over, he saw, not only a new world, but a big anticipatory fool on
this side of it, namely, himself.
Now a novel is supposed to be a mere record of emotion-adventures,
flounderings in feelings. We insist that a novel is, or should be, also a
thought-adventure, if it is to be anything at all complete.
“I am a fool,” thought Richard to himself, “to imagine that I can flounder
in a sympathetic universe like a fly in the ointment.” We think of ourselves,
we think of the ointment, but we do not consider the fly. It fell into the
ointment, crying: “Ah, here is a pure and balmy element in which all is
unalloyed goodness. Here is attar of roses without a thorn.” Hence the fly in
the ointment: embalmed in balm. And our repugnance.
“I am a fool,” said Richard to himself, “to be floundering round in this
easy, cosy, all-so-friendly world. I feel like a fly in the ointment. For
heaven’s sake let me get out. I suffocate.”
Where to? If you’re going to get out you must have something to get out
on to. Stifling in unctuous sympathy of a harmless humanity.
“Oh,” cried the stifling R. “Where is my Rock of Ages?”
He knew well enough. It was where it always has been: in the middle of
him.
“Let me get back to my own self,” he panted, “hard and central in the
centre of myself. I am drowning in this merge of harmlessness, this
sympathetic humanity. Oh, for heaven’s sake let me crawl out of the
sympathetic smear, and get myself clean again.”
Back to his own centre—back—back. The inevitable recoil.
“Everything,” said R. to himself, in one of those endless conversations
with himself which were his chief delight, “everything is relative.”
And flop he went into the pot of spikenard.
“Not quite,” he gasped, as he crawled out. “Let me drag my isolate and
absolute individual self out of this mess.”
Which is the history of relativity in man. All is relative as we go flop
into the ointment: or the treacle or the flame. But as we crawl out, or flutter
out with a smell of burning, the absolute holds us spellbound. Oh to be
isolate and absolute, and breathe clear.
So that even relativity is only relative. Relative to the absolute.
I am sorry to have to stand, a sorry sight, preening my wings on the
brink of the ointment-pot, thought Richard. But from this vantage ground
let me preach to myself. He preached, and the record was taken down for
this gramophone of a novel.
No, the self is absolute. It may be relative to everything else in the
universe. But to itself it is an absolute.
Back to the central self, the isolate, absolute self.
“Now,” thought Richard to himself, waving his front paws with
gratification: “I must sound the muezzin and summon all men back to their
central, isolate selves.”
So he drew himself up, when—urch!! He was sluthering over the brim
of the ointment pot into the balm of humanity once more.
“Oh, Lord, I nearly did it again,” he thought as he clambered out with a
sick heart. “I shall do it once too often. The bulk of mankind haven’t got
any central selves: haven’t got any. They’re all bits.”
Nothing but his fright would have struck this truth out of him. So he
crouched still, like a fly very tired with crawling out of the ointment, to
think about it.
“The bulk of people haven’t got any central selves. They’re all bits.”
He knew it was true, and he felt rather sick of the sweet odour of the
balm of human beatitudes, in which he had been so nearly lost.
“It takes how many thousand facets to make the eye of a fly—or a
spider?” he asked himself, being rather hazy scientifically. “Well, all these
people are just facets: just bits, that fitted together make a whole. But you
can fit the bits together time after time, yet it won’t bring the bug to life.”
The people of this terrestial sphere are all bits. Isolate one of them, and
he is still only a bit. Isolate your man in the street, and he is just a
rudimentary fragment. Supposing you have the misfortune to have your
little toe cut off. That little toe won’t at once rear on its hind legs and begin
to announce: “I’m an isolated individual with an immortal soul.” It won’t.
But your man in the street will. And he is a liar. He’s only a bit, and he’s
only got a minute share of the collective soul. Soul of his own he has none:
and never will have. Just a share in the collective soul, no more. Never a
thing by himself.
Damn the man in the street, said Richard to himself. Damn the collective
soul, it’s a dead rat in a hole. Let humanity scratch its own lice.
Now I’ll sound my muezzin again. The man by himself. “Allah
bismallah! God is God and man is man and has a soul of his own. Each man
to himself! Each man back to his own soul! Alone, alone, with his own soul
alone. God is God and man is man and the man in the street is a louse.”
Whatever your relativity, that’s the starting point and the finishing point:
a man alone with his own soul: and the dark God beyond him.
A man by himself.
Begin then.
Let the men in the street—ugh, horrid millions, crawl the face of the
earth like lice or ants or some other ignominy.
The man by himself.
That was one of the names of Erasmus of Rotterdam.
The man by himself.
That is the beginning and end, the alpha and the omega, the one
absolute: the man alone by himself, alone with his own soul, alone with his
eyes on the darkness which is the dark god of life. Alone like a pythoness
on her tripod, like the oracle alone above the fissure into the unknown. The
oracle, the fissure down into the unknown, the strange exhalations from the
dark, the strange words that the oracle must utter. Strange, cruel, pregnant
words: the new term of consciousness.
This is the innermost symbol of man: alone in the darkness of the cavern
of himself, listening to soundlessness of inflowing fate. Inflowing fate,
inflowing doom, what does it matter? The man by himself—that is the
absolute—listening—that is the relativity—for the influx of his fate, or
doom.
The man by himself. The listener.
But most men can’t listen any more. The fissure is closed up. There is no
soundless voice. They are deaf and dumb, ants, scurrying ants.
That is their doom. It is a new kind of absolute. Like riff-raff, which has
fallen out of living relativity, on to the teeming absolute of the dust-heap, or
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