England renewed! The country has been warned; it has learnt its lesson.The disasters and anxieties of the war have sunk in.
England has become serious....Oh! there are big things before us to do; big enduring things!"One evening we walked up to the loggia of a little pilgrimage church, I forget its name, that stands out on a conical hill at the head of a winding stair above the town of Locarno.Down below the houses clustered amidst a confusion of heat-bitten greenery. I had been sitting silently on the parapet, looking across to the purple mountain masses where Switzerland passes into Italy, and the drift of our talk seemed suddenly to gather to a head.
I broke into speech, giving form to the thoughts that had been accumulating.My words have long since passed out of my memory, the phrases of familiar expression have altered for me, but the substance remains as clear as ever.I said how we were in our measure emperors and kings, men undriven, free to do as we pleased with life; we classed among the happy ones, our bread and common necessities were given us for nothing, we had abilities,--it wasn't modesty but cowardice to behave as if we hadn't--and Fortune watched us to see what we might do with opportunity and the world.
"There are so many things to do, you see," began Willersley, in his judicial lecturer's voice.
"So many things we may do," I interrupted, "with all these years before us....We're exceptional men.It's our place, our duty, to do things.""Here anyhow," I said, answering the faint amusement of his face;"I've got no modesty.Everything conspires to set me up.Why should I run about like all those grubby little beasts down there, seeking nothing but mean little vanities and indulgencies--and then take credit for modesty? I KNOW I am capable.I KNOW I have imagination.Modesty! I know if I don't attempt the very biggest things in life I am a damned shirk.The very biggest! Somebody has to attempt them.I feel like a loaded gun that is only a little perplexed because it has to find out just where to aim itself...."The lake and the frontier villages, a white puff of steam on the distant railway to Luino, the busy boats and steamers trailing triangular wakes of foam, the long vista eastward towards battlemented Bellinzona, the vast mountain distances, now tinged with sunset light, behind this nearer landscape, and the southward waters with remote coast towns shining dimly, waters that merged at last in a luminous golden haze, made a broad panoramic spectacle.
It was as if one surveyed the world,--and it was like the games Iused to set out upon my nursery floor.I was exalted by it; I felt larger than men.So kings should feel.
That sense of largness came to me then, and it has come to me since, again and again, a splendid intimation or a splendid vanity.Once, I remember, when I looked at Genoa from the mountain crest behind the town and saw that multitudinous place in all its beauty of width and abundance and clustering human effort, and once as I was steaming past the brown low hills of Staten Island towards the towering vigour and clamorous vitality of New York City, that mood rose to its quintessence.And once it came to me, as I shall tell, on Dover cliffs.And a hundred times when I have thought of England as our country might be, with no wretched poor, no wretched rich, a nation armed and ordered, trained and purposeful amidst its vales and rivers, that emotion of collective ends and collective purposes has returned to me.I felt as great as humanity.For a brief moment I was humanity, looking at the world I had made and had still to make....
12
And mingled with these dreams of power and patriotic service there was another series of a different quality and a different colour, like the antagonistic colour of a shot silk.The white life and the red life, contrasted and interchanged, passing swiftly at a turn from one to another, and refusing ever to mingle peacefully one with the other.I was asking myself openly and distinctly: what are you going to do for the world? What are you going to do with yourself?
and with an increasing strength and persistence Nature in spite of my averted attention was asking me in penetrating undertones: what are you going to do about this other fundamental matter, the beauty of girls and women and your desire for them?
I have told of my sisterless youth and the narrow circumstances of my upbringing.It made all women-kind mysterious to me.If it had not been for my Staffordshire cousins I do not think I should have known any girls at all until I was twenty.Of Staffordshire I will tell a little later.But I can remember still how through all those ripening years, the thought of women's beauty, their magic presence in the world beside me and the unknown, untried reactions of their intercourse, grew upon me and grew, as a strange presence grows in a room when one is occupied by other things.I busied myself and pretended to be wholly occupied, and there the woman stood, full half of life neglected, and it seemed to my averted mind sometimes that she was there clad and dignified and divine, and sometimes Aphrodite shining and commanding, and sometimes that Venus who stoops and allures.
This travel abroad seemed to have released a multitude of things in my mind; the clear air, the beauty of the sunshine, the very blue of the glaciers made me feel my body and quickened all those disregarded dreams.I saw the sheathed beauty of women's forms all about me, in the cheerful waitresses at the inns, in the pedestrians one encountered in the tracks, in the chance fellow travellers at the hotel tables."Confound it!" said I, and talked all the more zealously of that greater England that was calling us.
I remember that we passed two Germans, an old man and a tall fair girl, father and daughter, who were walking down from Saas. She came swinging and shining towards us, easy and strong.I worshipped her as she approached.
"Gut Tag!" said Willersley, removing his hat.
"Morgen!" said the old man, saluting.
