第84章

'No!They were a mingy lot.'He laughed suddenly.'The Colonel used to say:Lad,the English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow,a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage.They're the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented:full of conceit of themselves,frightened even if their boot-laces aren't correct,rotten as high game,and always in the right.That's what finishes me up.Kow-tow,kow-tow,arse-licking till their tongues are tough:yet they're always in the right.Prigs on top of everything.Prigs!A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each--'

Connie laughed.The rain was rushing down.

'He hated them!'

'No,'said he.'He didn't bother.He just disliked them.There's a difference.

Because,as he said,the Tommies are getting just as priggish and half-balled and narrow-gutted.It's the fate of mankind,to go that way.'

'The common people too,the working people?'

'All the lot.Their spunk is gone dead.Motor-cars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck that last bit out of them.I tell you,every generation breeds a more rabbity generation,with india rubber tubing for guts and tin legs and tin faces.Tin people!It's all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing,and worshipping the mechanical thing.Money,money,money!All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man,making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve.They're all alike.The world is all alike:kill off the human reality,a quid for every foreskin,two quid for each pair of balls.What is cunt but machine-fucking!--It's all alike.Pay 'em money to cut off the world's cock.Pay money,money,money to them that will take spunk out of mankind,and leave 'em all little twiddling machines.'

He sat there in the hut,his face pulled to mocking irony.Yet even then,he had one ear set backwards,listening to the storm over the wood.

It made him feel so alone.

'But won't it ever come to an end?'she said.

'Ay,it will.It'll achieve its own salvation.When the last real man is killed,and they're all tame:white,black,yellow,all colours of tame ones:then they'll all be insane.Because the root of sanity is in the balls.Then they'll all be insane ,and they'll make their grand ~auto da fe.You know auto da fe means act of faith?Ay,well,they'll make their own grand little act of faith.They'll offer one another up.'

'You mean kill one another?'

'I do,duckie!If we go on at our present rate then in a hundred years'

time there won't be ten thousand people in this island:there may not be ten.They'll have lovingly wiped each other out.The thunder was rolling further away.

'How nice!'she said.

'Quite nice!To contemplate the extermination of the human species and the long pause that follows before some other species crops up,it calms you more than anything else.And if we go on in this way,with everybody,intellectuals,artists,government,industrialists and workers all frantically killing off the last human feeling,the last bit of their intuition,the last healthy instinct;if it goes on in algebraical progression,as it is going on:then ta-tah!to the human species!Goodbye!darling!the serpent swallows itself and leaves a void,considerably messed up,but not hopeless.

Very nice!When savage wild dogs bark in Wragby,and savage wild pit-ponies stamp on Tevershall pit-bank!te deum laudamus !'

Connie laughed,but not very happily.

'Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshevists,'she said.

'You ought to be pleased that they hurry on towards the end.'

'So I am.I don't stop 'em.Because I couldn't if I would.'

'Then why are you so bitter?'

'I'm not!If my cock gives its last crow,I don't mind.'

'But if you have a child?'she said.

He dropped his head.

'Why,'he said at last.'It seems to me a wrong and bitter thing to do,to bring a child into this world.'

'No!Don't say it!Don't say it!'she pleaded.'I think I'm going to have one.Say you'll he pleased.'She laid her hand on his.

'I'm pleased for you to be pleased,'he said.'But for me it seems a ghastly treachery to the unborn creature.

'Ah no!'she said,shocked.'Then you can't ever really want me!You can't want me,if you feel that!'

Again he was silent,his face sullen.Outside there was only the threshing of the rain.

'It's not quite true!'she whispered.'It's not quite true!There's another truth.'She felt he was bitter now partly because she was leaving him,deliberately going away to Venice.And this half pleased her.

She pulled open his clothing and uncovered his belly,and kissed his navel.Then she laid her cheek on his belly and pressed her arm round his warm,silent loins.They were alone in the flood.

'Tell me you want a child,in hope!'she murmured,pressing her face against his belly.'Tell me you do!'

'Why!'he said at last:and she felt the curious quiver of changing consciousness and relaxation going through his body.'Why I've thought sometimes if one but tried,here among th'colliers even!They're workin'

bad now,an'not earnin'much.If a man could say to 'em:Dunna think o'

nowt but th'money.When it comes ter wants ,we want but little.

Let's not live for money--'

She softly rubbed her cheek on his belly,and gathered his balls in her hand.The penis stirred softly,with strange life,but did not rise up.The rain beat bruisingly outside.

'Let's live for summat else.Let's not live ter make money,neither for us-selves nor for anybody else.Now we're forced to.We're forced to make a bit for us-selves,an'a fair lot for th'bosses.Let's stop it!

Bit by bit,let's stop it.We needn't rant an'rave.Bit by bit,let's drop the whole industrial life an'go back.The least little bit o'money'll do.For everybody,me an'you,bosses an'masters,even th'king.The least little bit o'money'll really do.Just make up your mind to it,an'you've got out o'th'mess.'He paused,then went on:

'An'I'd tell 'em:Look!Look at Joe!He moves lovely!Look how he moves,alive and aware.He's beautiful!An'look at Jonah!He's clumsy,he's ugly,because he's niver willin'to rouse himself I'd tell 'em:Look!look at yourselves!one shoulder higher than t'other,legs twisted,feet all lumps!

What have yer done ter yerselves,wi'the blasted work?Spoilt yerselves.