Page 15 (1/2)

"REAL LIFE IS MEETING"

MARK did not knohether it was minutes or hours later that he found hi Frost, and still fasting The Professor caht over their recent conversation Mark, who judged that some show of reluctance would , replied that he did not quite understand what one stood to gain by co-operation with the Macrobes He saw that the motives on which anism But he did not yet see as to be substituted for these irrational round henceforere actions to be justified or condeless It presupposes a ht which descends fro elericultural community Motives are not the causes of action but its by-products When you have attained real objectivity you will recognise all motives as subjective epiphenomena You will then have no motives and you will find that you do not need them"

"I see," said Mark The philosophy which Frost was expounding was by no ical conclusion of thoughts which he had always hitherto accepted and which at this e that his own assumptions led to Frost&039;s position combined hat he saw in Frost&039;s face and had experienced in this cell, effected a coelists in the world ht not have done the job so neatly

"And that," continued Frost, " is why a systeiven to you It is like killing a nerve That whole system of instinctive preferences, whatever ethical, aesthetic, or logical disguise they wear, is to be simply destroyed"

After that Frost took Mark fro room When the meal was over Frost led him to the ante-rooeon&039;s overalls and aand dribbling Head Frost took not the slightest notice of it He led him across the room to an arched door in the far wall

Here he paused and said, "Go in You will speak to no one of what you find here I will return presently"

The room, at first, was an anti-cli table, eight or nine chairs, soe step-ladder in one corner There were no s; it was lit by an electric light which produced, better than Mark had ever seen it produced before, the illusion of a cold, grey place out of doors

A man of trained sensibility would have seen at once that the roorotesquely but sufficiently to produce dislike Mark felt the effect without analysing the cause, and the effect grew as ti about him, he next noticed the door The point of the arch was not in the centre; the thing was lopsided Once again, the error was not gross The thing was near enough to the true to deceive you for athe mind after the deception had been unmasked He turned and sat with his back to itone mustn&039;t let it become an obsession

Then he noticed the spots on the ceiling; little round black spots at irregular intervals on the pale mustard-coloured surface He deter to count theularly placed Or weren&039;t they? They suggested soliness consisted in the fact that they kept on suggesting it and then frustrating expectation He realised that this was another trap He fixed his eyes on the table He got up and began to walk about He had a look at the pictures

Soed to a school hich he was fa woman who held her mouth wide open to reveal the fact that the inside of it was thickly overgroith hair It was very skilfully painted in the photographic ianteaten by anotherin a flat, sadly coloured sea beneath a summer sunset But most of the pictures were not of this kind Mark was a little surprised at the predominance of scriptural thelance that one discovered certain unaccountable details Who was the person standing between the Christ and the Lazarus ? And ere there so many beetles under the table in the Last Supper? What was the curious trick of lighting thatseen in delirium? When once these questions had been raised the apparent ordinariness of the pictures beca of certain dreams Every fold of drapery, every piece of architecture, had a rasp but which withered the mind

He understood the whole business now Frost was not trying to iven to the word " insanity " To sit in the room was the first step towards what Frost called objectivity-the process whereby all specifically huht becorees in the asceticis of abo in dirt and blood, the ritual perfor quite fair with hih which they theh coffin of a rooan to produce on Mark an effect which his instructor had probably not anticipated As the desert first teaches men to love water, or as absence first reveals affection, there rose up against this background of the sour and the crooked so else-souely called the "Norht about it before But there it was-solid,you could touch, or eat, or fall in love with It was all ht and the rooks cawing at Cure Hardy He was not thinking in ) he was having his first deeply ht Frost returned He led Mark to a bedroolealasses and silver, and Frost told hi up the Deputy Director if the patient spoke or stirred He hi; indeed, it would be useless, for the patient did not understand English

Frost retired Mark glanced round the roo to have a meal Perhaps a smoke first

"Damn!" he said as he put his hand into his pocket and found it empty At the same moment he noticed that theat him "I&039;m sorry," said Mark, "I didn&039;t mean--" and then stopped

The man sat up in bed and Jerked his head towards the door

"Ah?" he said enquiringly "I beg your pardon," said Mark "Ah?" said the lish, then?" said Mark "Ah!" said the man After a pause of several seconds he said, "Guv&039;ner!" Mark looked at hiy, " you ha&039;nt got such a thing as a bit of baccy about you ? Ah?"

"I think that&039;s all we can do for the present," said Mother Dimble "We&039;ll do the flowers this afternoon" She was speaking to Jane, and both were in as called the Lodge-a little stone house beside the garden door at which Jane had been first ad it for the Maggs fas&039;s sentence expired to-day, and Ivy had gone off by train on the previous afternoon to spend the night with an aunt in the tohere he was iates

In Mrs Diame and a ritual It woke in Jane memories of sixteenth century epithalamions-old superstitions, jokes, and sentimentalities about bridal beds and bowers Mother Dimble, for all her nineteenth-century propriety, struck her this afternoon as being herself an archaic person

Ivy had discussed her own story with Jane only the day before Mr Maggs had stolen some money from the laundry that he worked for He had done this before he ot into bad coether he had gone "as straight as straight"; but the little crime had been unearthed and come out of the past to catch hi of this story Ivy had not see to petty theft and a term of imprisonment, so that Jane would have had no opportunity to practise, even if she had wished, that almost technical " kindness " which some , people reserve for the sorrows of the poor On the other hand, she was given no chance to be revolutionary or speculative-to suggest that theft was no more criminal than all wealth was criranted She had been " ever so upset " about it It seereat deal in one way, and not to matter at all in another It had never occurred to her that it should alter her relations with her husband-as though theft, like ill health, were one of the nor married

Mrs Dimble went back to the house presently to fetch so touch to the bedroo a little tired, knelt on the -seat and put her elbows on the sill and her chin in her hands The sun was al back to Mark if Mark were ever rescued fro accepted; it was not horrifying, but flat and insipid She ain But it was that " again " which so took the savour out of the good resolution-like going back to a suain" she felt guilty at her lack of anxiety Almost at the same moment she found that she was a little anxious Hitherto she had always somehow assumed that Mark would come back The possibility of his death now presented itself She had no direct ee of Mark dead, that face dead, in the id, those hands and arood and ill so different froht and useless like a doll&039;s She felt very cold Yet the sun was hotter than ever, almost impossibly hot for the time of year It was very still, too, so still that she could hear thethe path outside theThis path led to the door in the garden wall The bird hopped on to the threshold of that door, and on to so just inside the door This person was only a few yards away, and she must have been very quiet for Jane not to have noticed her

A flame-coloured robe, in which her hands were hidden, covered this person froh ruff-like collar, but in front it was so low or open that it exposed her large breasts Her skin was darkish and Southern and glowing, almost the colour of honey Some such dress Jane had seen worn by a Minoan priestess on a vase from Cnossus The head, poised ht at Jane It was a red-cheeked, wet-lipped face, with black eyes-almatic expression It was not by ordinary standards at all like the face of Mother Dinised it It was Mother Di left out, and the oht, for its energy crushed her; but then she half changed her ht, "It is I who aht, but then onceme It doesn&039;t see me" She tried to look aside from the face-succeeded-and saw for the first time that there were other creatures present-a whole crowd of ridiculous little nome-like little men, insufferably familiar, frivolous, and irrepressible There was no doubt that they, at any rate, wereon their heads, turning sohtened; partly because the war was indignation A suspicion which had crossed her mind before now returned with irresistible force; the suspicion that the real universe ht be simply silly It was closely hter-loud, careless, hter on the lips of bachelor uncles-which had often infuriated her in childhood

The giantess rose They were all colow and a noise like fire the flame-robed woe wo brightness, crackling, and sent up a cloud of dense black smoke, and a sticky, resinous sht Jane, " they&039;ll set the house on fire" The outrageous littlehay of the room In a few seconds the bed was athrough the air, feathers flying everywhere "Look out! Look out, can&039;t you?" shouted Jane, for the giantess was beginning to touch various parts of the room with her torch She touched a vase on the mantelpiece Instantly there rose from it a streak of colour which Jane took for fire She was justhad happened to a picture on the wall It happened faster and faster all round her The very top-knots of the dwarfs were now on fire But just as the terror of this beca up fro the torch had touched was not fla up the legs of the bed, red roses were sprouting froe lilies rose to her knees and waist, shooting out their yellow tongues at her

"Jane! Jane!" said the voice of Mrs Dimble suddenly "What on earth is the matter?"

Jane sat up The room was empty, but the bed had all been pulled to pieces

"Are you ill, child?" asked Mother Dimble

"I ht Don&039;t bother I can get up by myselfreally"

Mr Bultitude&039;s mind was as furry and as unhuman as his body He did not re a fire, nor his first snarling and terrified arrival at the Manor, nor the stages whereby he had learned to love and trust its inhabitants He did not know that he loved and trusted them now He did not know that they were people, nor that he was a bear Everything that is represented by the words I and Me and Thou was absent froolden syrup, he did not recognise either a giver or a recipient His loves ht, if you wished, be all described as cupboard loves But if by a cupboard love youyou would be quitethe beast&039;s sensations He was no oist than he was like a human altruist There was no prose in his life The appetencies which a hu aspirations which absorbed his whole being, infinite yearnings, stabbed with the threat of tragedy and shot through with the colours of Paradise One of our race, if plunged for a , iridescent pool of that pre-Adarasped the absolute: for states below reason and states above it have a superficial reseht down in the central warmth and di had happened to hi muzzled He was always muzzled out of doors, not because there was any fear of his becoerous but because of his partiality for fruit and for the sweeter kinds of vegetables But today the precaution had been forgotten and the bear had passed a very agreeablethe turnips Now -in the early afternoon-he had approached the garden wall There was a chestnut tree within the hich the bear could easily climb, and from its branches he could drop down on the far side He was standing looking up at this tree Mrs Maggs would have described his state of , "He knows perfectly well he&039;s not allowed out of the garden" That was not how it appeared to Mr Bultitude He had no iven him certain inhibitions Aof the emotional weather, when the as too close; but et beyond that wall If the pressure behind this impulse could be translated into huy than a thought One arden The bees all went away, over the wall And to follow bees was the obvious thing to do There was a sense in the bear&039;s reen lands beyond the wall, and hives, and bees the size of sparrows, and there, walking, trickling, oozing toor someone stickier, sweeter, than honey itself

Three times Mr Bultitude turned away from the tree and the wall, but each tian to cliot up into the fork he sat there for a long time He sat there for nearly half an hour Sometimes his mind wandered froot down on the outside of the wall When he found that the thing had really happened he becarassy bank on the very edge of the road

A ht It was driven by a man in the livery of the NICE, and another man in the same livery sat beside him

"HulloI say!" said the second man "Pull up, Sid What about that?"

"What?" said the driver

"Haven&039;t you got eyes in your head?" said the other

"Gor," said Sid, pulling up "A bloody great bear I say-it couldn&039;t be our own bear, could it?"

"Get on," said his "

"You don&039;t think she could have done a bunk? There&039;d be hell to pay for you and ot here if she had done a bunk Bears don&039;t go forty miles an hour But hadn&039;t we better pinch this one?"

"We haven&039;t got no orders," said Sid "No And we haven&039;t failed to get that blasted wolf either, have we?"

"Wasn&039;t our fault"

"Course it wasn&039;t our fault But the boss won&039;t take no notice of that It&039;s get on or get out at Belbury"

"Get out?" said Sid "I wish to hell I kne to"

Len spat over the side and there was a moment&039;s silence "Anyway," said Sid presently, " what&039;s the good of taking a bear back?"

"Well, isn&039;t it better than co?" said Len "I know they want another one And here it is free"

"All right," said Sid ironically, " if you&039;re so keen on it, just hop out and ask him to step in"

"Dope," said Len

"Not on my bit of dinner, you don&039;t," said Sid "You&039;re a bucking good reasy parcel "It&039;s a good thing for you I&039;m not the sort of chap who&039;d split on you"

"You done it already," said the driver "I know all your little ga-s liquid from a bottle When it was saturated, he opened the door and went a pace forward, about six yards from the bear He threw the sandwich to it