Other men were. They
married the women they loved, and dropped into quiet lives of daily
work and regular incomes, and were content in them. Yes; but that
was insufficient argument.
They had not within them the suffocating weight of a desire
ungratified, the stifling sense of a power unused. Nature, who has
appointed no greater joy for us than the exercise of the capacities
she has given us, has also no heavier, bitterer burden she can lay
upon us than these capacities barred down in us unemployed. As I
thought, my father's words recurred to me, "A secretary, a clerk or
a shoeblack." It was improbable I should descend to the shoeblack.
It was possible that I could become a secretary or a clerk. A
secretary or a clerk! The idea amused me. I leaned my elbows on my
knees, my forehead on my hands, as I sat and stared down at the
bear-skin rug at my feet and saw a vision of fifth-rate existence
pass before me. A suburban villa or squalid London lodgings; the
hurried early breakfast served by a slavey; the tram or bus to the
city; the society of seedy clerks; the pipe instead of the cigar;
the public billiard room instead of the club; the omnibus instead of
the hansom; the fortnight up the Thames instead of the spring at
Cairo. A day of uncongenial work--but at the end of it Lucia!
The thought seemed to come suddenly and stunningly through my brain
like a bullet.
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