Told by an Idiot Read Online Free PDF Page B

Stanley was drunk with beauty; she was plunging deep into the æsthetic movement on whose surface Vicky played.
    “You know, Rome,” she puckered her forehead over it, “more and more I feel that the
merely
æsthetic people are on the wrong tack. Beauty for ourselves can’t be enough; it’s got to be made possible for every one. . . . That’s where Vicky and her friends are off it. A lily in a blue vase all to yourself isn’t enough. All this . . .” she looked round at the Liberty room, the peacock patterns, the willow pattern china, the oak settle, “all this—it’s not fair we should be able to have it when every one can’t. It’s greedy . . .”
    “Every one’s greedy.”
    “No,” said Stanley, and her eyes glowed, for she was thinking of her splendid friends. “
No
. Greediness is in every one, but it can be conquered. Socialism is the way. . . . I wish you could meet Evelyn Peters. She’s joined the Socialist Democratic Federation. . . . I want to ask her here to stay, in June. She’s not just an ordinary person, you know. She’s splendid. She’s six years older than me, and enormously cleverer, and she’s read everything and met every one. . . . I can’t tell you how I feel about her. . . .”
    Obvious, thought Rome, how Stanley felt, with her shining eyes and flushed cheeks and shy, changing voice. In love; that was what Stanley was. Stanley was for ever in and out of love; she had been the sameall through her schooldays. So had Vicky, but with Vicky it was men, and less romantic and earnest. Stanley was always flinging her whole being prostrate in adoring enthusiasm before some one or something, funny child. She was looking at Rome now in shy, gleaming hesitation, wondering if Rome were despising her, laughing at her, but not able to keep Evelyn Peters to herself. To say, “Evelyn Peters is my friend,” was an exquisite æsthetic joy, and made their friendship a more real, achieved thing.
    Rome felt a little uncomfortable behind her bland nonchalance; Stanley’s emotions were so strong.

7
Grandpapa
     
    When Maurice was there Stanley did not talk about her friends; such talk was not suitable for Maurice, whose own friendships were so different. Often in these days they talked politics. Maurice was a Radical.
    “Chamberlain’s the man,” he said, “Chamberlain and Dilke. Whiggery’s played out; dead as mutton. Mild Liberalism has had its day. Yes, pater, your day is over. The seventies have been the hey-day of Liberalism. I grant you it’s done well—Education Act, Irish Disestablishment, abolition of tests, and so on. Such obvious reforms, you see, that every sane person has
had
to be a Liberal. That’s watered Liberalism down. Now we’ve got to go further, and only the extremists will stick on; the old gang will desert. Radicalism’s the only thing for England now.”
    Maurice, pacing the room with his quick little steps, his hands in his pockets, his chin in the air, would talk thus in his crisp, rapid, asseverating voice, even tograndpapa, who had, when he had done the same thing as a schoolboy, ordered him out of the room for impertinence. Grandpapa and Maurice did not, in fact, each really like the other—obstinate age and opinionated youth. Because grandpapa was in the room, Maurice said, “They’ve returned old Bradlaugh for Northampton all right. Now we shall see some fun,” and grandpapa said, “Don’t mention that abominable blasphemer in my presence.”
    Papa said gently, with his cultured tolerance, “A good deal, I fancy, has been attributed to Bradlaugh of which he has not been guilty.”
    “Are you denying,” inquired grandpapa, “that the fellow is a miserable blaspheming atheist and a Malthusian?”
    “An atheist,” papa admitted, discreetly passing over the last charge, “no doubt he is. And very undesirably coarse and violent in his methods of controversy and propaganda. But I am not sure that the charge of blasphemy is a fair one, on the evidence