In the course of a day or so they had touched on nearly every phase in the growth of Man and Woman from that remote and brutish past which has left its traces in human bones mingled with the bones of hyaenas and cave bears beneath the stalagmites of Wookey Hole near Wells.In those nearly forgotten days the mind of man and woman had been no more than an evanescent succession of monstrous and infantile imaginations.That brief journey in the west country had lit up phase after phase in the long teaching and discipline of man as he had developed depth of memory and fixity of purpose out of these raw beginnings, through the dreaming childhood of Avebury and Stonehenge and the crude boyhood of ancient wars and massacres.Sir Richmond recalled those phases now, and how, as they had followed one another, man's idea of woman and woman's idea of man had changed with them, until nowadays in the minds of civilized men brute desire and possession and a limitless jealousy had become almost completely overlaid by the desire for fellowship and a free mutual loyalty."Overlaid," he said."The older passions are still there like the fires in an engine." He invented a saying for Dr.Martineau that the Man in us to-day was still the old man of Palaeolithic times, with his will, his wrath against the universe increased rather than diminished.If to-day he ceases to crack his brother's bones and rape and bully his womenkind, it is because he has grown up to a greater game and means to crack this world and feed upon its marrow and wrench their secrets from the stars.
And furthermore it would seem that the prophet Martineau had declared that in this New Age that was presently to dawn for mankind, jealousy was to be disciplined even as we had disciplined lust and anger; instead of ruling our law it was to be ruled by law and custom.No longer were the jealousy of strange peoples, the jealousy of ownership and the jealousy of sex to determine the framework of human life.There was to be one peace and law throughout the world, one economic scheme and a universal freedom for men and women to possess and give themselves.
"And how many generations yet must there be before we reach that Utopia?" Miss Grammont asked.
"I wouldn't put it at a very great distance.""But think of all the confusions of the world!""Confusions merely.The world is just a muddle of states and religions and theories and stupidities.There are great lumps of disorderly strength in it, but as a whole it is a weak world.It goes on by habit.There's no great idea in possession and the only possible great idea is this one.The New Age may be nearer than we dare to suppose.""If I could believe that!"
"There are many more people think as we do than you suppose.
Are you and I such very strange and wonderful and exceptional people?""No.I don't think so."
"And yet the New World is already completely established in our hearts.What has been done in our minds can be done in most minds.In a little while the muddled angry mind of Man upon his Planet will grow clear and it will be this idea that will have made it clear.And then life will be very different for everyone.That tyranny of disorder which oppresses every life on earth now will be lifted.There will be less and less insecurity, less and less irrational injustice.It will be a better instructed and a better behaved world.We shall live at our ease, not perpetually anxious, not resentful and angry.And that will alter all the rules of love.Then we shall think more of the loveliness of other people because it will no longer be necessary to think so much of the dangers and weaknesses and pitifulliesses of other people.We shall not have to think of those who depend upon us for happiness and selfrespect.We shall not have to choose between a wasteful fight for a personal end or the surrender of our heart's desire.""Heart's desire," she whispered."Am I indeed your heart's desire?"Sir Richmond sank his head and voice in response.
"You are the best of all things.And I have to let you go."Sir Richmond suddenly remembered Miss Seyffert and half turned his face towards her.Her forehead was just visible over the hood of the open coupe.She appeared to be intelligently intent upon the scenery.Then he broke out suddenly into a tirade against the world."But I am bored by this jostling unreasonable world.At the bottom of my heart Iam bitterly resentful to-day.This is a world of fools and brutes in which we live, a world of idiotic traditions, imbecile limitations, cowardice, habit, greed and mean cruelty.It is a slum of a world, a congested district, an insanitary jumble of souls and bodies.Every good thing, every sweet desire is thwarted--every one.I have to lead the life of a slum missionary, a sanitary inspector, an underpaid teacher.I am bored.Oh God! how I am bored! I am bored by our laws and customs.I am bored by our rotten empire and its empty monarchy.I am bored by its parades and its flags and its sham enthusiasms.I am bored by London and its life, by its smart life and by its servile life alike.I am bored by theatres and by books and by every sort of thing that people call pleasure.I am bored by the brag of people and the claims of people and the feelings of people.Damn people! Iam bored by profiteers and by the snatching they call business enterprise.Damn every business man! I am bored by politics and the universal mismanagement of everything.I am bored by France, by AngloSaxondom, by German self-pity, by Bolshevik fanaticism.I am bored by these fools' squabbles that devastate the world.I am bored by Ireland, Orange and Green.Curse the Irish--north and south together! Lord! how IHATE the Irish from Carson to the last Sinn Feiner! And I am bored by India and by Egypt.I am bored by Poland and by Islam.I am bored by anyone who professes to have rights.
Damn their rights! Curse their rights! I am bored to death by this year and by last year and by the prospect of next year.
