Aaron's Rod, D. H. Lawrence [book recommendations for young adults .TXT] 📗

of his flute—it was still in his pocket. And he wondered if it was safe to leave it.

“I suppose no one will steal from the overcoat pockets,” he said, as he sat down.

“My dear chap, they’d steal the gold filling out of your teeth, if you happened to yawn,” said Argyle. “Why, have you left valuables in your overcoat?”

“My flute,” said Aaron.

“Oh, they won’t steal that,” said Argyle.

“Besides,” said Lilly, “we should see anyone who touched it.”

And so they settled down to the vermouth.

“Well,” said Argyle, “what have you been doing with yourself, eh? I haven’t seen a glimpse of you for a week. Been going to the dogs, eh?”

“Or the bitches,” said Aaron.

“Oh, but look here, that’s bad! That’s bad! I can see I shall have to take you in hand, and commence my work of reform. Oh, I’m a great reformer, a Zwingli and Savonarola in one. I couldn’t count the number of people I’ve led into the right way. It takes some finding, you know. Strait is the gate—damned strait sometimes. A damned tight squeeze. . . .” Argyle was somewhat intoxicated. He spoke with a slight slur, and laughed, really tickled at his own jokes. The man Levison smiled acquiescent. But Lilly was not listening. His brow was heavy and he seemed abstracted. He hardly noticed Aaron’s arrival.

“Did you see the row yesterday?” asked Levison.

“No,” said Aaron. “What was it?”

It was the socialists. They were making a demonstration against the imprisonment of one of the railway-strikers. I was there. They went on all right, with a good bit of howling and gibing: a lot of young louts, you know. And the shop-keepers shut up shop, and nobody showed the Italian flag, of course. Well, when they came to the Via Benedetto Croce, there were a few mounted carabinieri. So they stopped the procession, and the sergeant said that the crowd could continue, could go on where they liked, but would they not go down the Via Verrocchio, because it was being repaired, the roadway was all up, and there were piles of cobble stones. These might prove a temptation and lead to trouble. So would the demonstrators not take that road—they might take any other they liked.—Well, the very moment he had finished, there was a revolver shot, he made a noise, and fell forward over his horse’s nose. One of the anarchists had shot him. Then there was hell let loose, the carabinieri fired back, and people were bolting and fighting like devils. I cleared out, myself. But my God—what do you think of it?”

“Seems pretty mean,” said Aaron.

“Mean!—He had just spoken them fair—they could go where they liked, only would they not go down the one road, because of the heap of stones. And they let him finish. And then shot him dead.”

“Was he dead?” said Aaron.

“Yes—killed outright, the Nazione says.”

There was a silence. The drinkers in the cafe all continued to talk vehemently, casting uneasy glances.

“Well,” said Argyle, “if you let loose the dogs of war, you mustn’t expect them to come to heel again in five minutes.”

“But there’s no fair play about it, not a bit,” said Levison.

“Ah, my dear fellow, are you still so young and callow that you cherish the illusion of fair play?” said Argyle.

“Yes, I am,” said Levison.

“Live longer and grow wiser,” said Argyle, rather contemptuously.

“Are you a socialist?” asked Levison.

“Am I my aunt Tabitha’s dachshund bitch called Bella,” said Argyle, in his musical, indifferent voice. “Yes, Bella’s her name. And if you can tell me a damneder name for a dog, I shall listen, I assure you, attentively.”

“But you haven’t got an aunt called Tabitha,” said Aaron.

“Haven’t I? Oh, haven’t I? I’ve got TWO aunts called Tabitha: if not more.”

“They aren’t of any vital importance to you, are they?” said Levison.

“Not the very least in the world—if it hadn’t been that my elder Aunt Tabitha had christened her dachshund bitch Bella. I cut myself off from the family after that. Oh, I turned over a new leaf, with not a family name on it. Couldn’t stand Bella amongst the rest.”

“You must have strained most of the gnats out of your drink, Argyle,” said Lilly, laughing.

“Assiduously! Assiduously! I can’t stand these little vermin. Oh, I am quite indifferent about swallowing a camel or two—or even a whole string of dromedaries. How charmingly Eastern that sounds! But gnats! Not for anything in the world would I swallow one.”

“You’re a bit of a SOCIALIST though, aren’t you?” persisted Levison, now turning to Lilly.

“No,” said Lilly. “I was.”

“And am no more,” said Argyle sarcastically. “My dear fellow, the only hope of salvation for the world lies in the re-institution of slavery.”

“What kind of slavery?” asked Levison.

“Slavery! SLAVERY! When I say SLAVERY I don’t mean any of your damned modern reform cant. I mean solid sound slavery on which the Greek and the Roman world rested. FAR finer worlds than ours, my dear chap! Oh FAR finer! And can’t be done without slavery. Simply can’t be done.— Oh, they’ll all come to realise it, when they’ve had a bit more of this democratic washer-women business.”

Levison was laughing, with a slight sneer down his nose. “Anyhow, there’s no immediate danger—or hope, if you prefer it—of the re- instituting of classic slavery,” he said.

“Unfortunately no. We are all such fools,” said Argyle.

“Besides,” said Levison, “who would you make slaves of?”

“Everybody, my dear chap: beginning with the idealists and the theorising Jews, and after them your nicely-bred gentlemen, and then perhaps, your profiteers and Rothschilds, and ALL politicians, and ending up with the proletariat,” said Argyle.

“Then who would be the masters?—the professional classes, doctors and lawyers and so on?”

“What? Masters. They would be the sewerage slaves, as being those who had made most smells.” There was a moment’s silence.

“The only fault I have to find with your system,” said Levison, rather acidly, “is that there would be only one master, and everybody else slaves.”

“Do you call that a fault? What do you want with more than one master? Are you asking for several?—Well, perhaps there’s cunning in THAT.— Cunning devils, cunning devils, these theorising slaves—” And Argyle pushed his face with a devilish leer into Aaron’s face. “Cunning devils!” he reiterated, with a slight tipsy slur. “That be-fouled Epictetus wasn’t the last of ‘em—nor the first. Oh, not by any means, not by any means.”

Here Lilly could not avoid a slight spasm of amusement. “But returning to serious conversation,” said Levison, turning his rather sallow face to Lilly. “I think you’ll agree with me that socialism is the inevitable next step—”

Lilly waited for some time without answering. Then he said, with unwilling attention to the question: “I suppose it’s the logically inevitable next step.”

“Use logic as lavatory paper,” cried Argyle harshly. “Yes—logically inevitable—and humanly inevitable at the same time. Some form of socialism is bound to come, no matter how you postpone it or try variations,” said Levison.

“All right, let it come,” said Lilly. “It’s not my affair, neither to help it nor to keep it back, or even to try varying it.”

“There I don’t follow you,” said Levison. “Suppose you were in Russia now—”

“I watch it I’m not.”

“But you’re in Italy, which isn’t far off. Supposing a socialist revolution takes place all around you. Won’t that force the problem on you?—It is every man’s problem,” persisted Levison.

“Not mine,” said Lilly.

“How shall you escape it?” said Levison.

“Because to me it is no problem. To Bolsh or not to Bolsh, as far as my mind goes, presents no problem. Not any more than to be or not to be. To be or not to be is simply no problem—”

“No, I quite agree, that since you are already existing, and since death is ultimately inevitable, to be or not to be is no sound problem,” said Levison. “But the parallel isn’t true of socialism. That is not a problem of existence, but of a certain mode of existence which centuries of thought and action on the part of Europe have now made logically inevitable for Europe. And therefore there is a problem. There is more than a problem, there is a dilemma. Either we must go to the logical conclusion—or—”

“Somewhere else,” said Lilly.

“Yes—yes. Precisely! But where ELSE? That’s the one half of the problem: supposing you do not agree to a logical progression in human social activity. Because after all, human society through the course of ages only enacts, spasmodically but still inevitably, the logical development of a given idea.”

“Well, then, I tell you.—The idea and the ideal has for me gone dead— dead as carrion—”

“Which idea, which ideal precisely?”

“The ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call goodness, charity, benevolence, public spirited-ness, the ideal of sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity—all the lot—all the whole beehive of ideals—has all got the modern bee- disease, and gone putrid, stinking.—And when the ideal is dead and putrid, the logical sequence is only stink.—Which, for me, is the truth concerning the ideal of good, peaceful, loving humanity and its logical sequence in socialism and equality, equal opportunity or whatever you like.—But this time he stinketh—and I’m sorry for any Christus who brings him to life again, to stink livingly for another thirty years: the beastly Lazarus of our idealism.”

“That may be true for you—”

“But it’s true for nobody else,” said Lilly. “All the worse for them. Let them die of the bee-disease.”

“Not only that,” persisted Levison, “but what is your alternative? Is it merely nihilism?”

“My alternative,” said Lilly, “is an alternative for no one but myself, so I’ll keep my mouth shut about it.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“I tell you, the ideal of fairness stinks with the rest.—I have no obligation to say what I think.”

“Yes, if you enter into conversation, you have—”

“Bah, then I didn’t enter into conversation.—The only thing is, I agree in the rough with Argyle. You’ve got to have a sort of slavery again. People are not MEN: they are insects and instruments, and their destiny is slavery. They are too many for me, and so what I think is ineffectual. But ultimately they will be brought to agree— after sufficient extermination—and then they will elect for themselves a proper and healthy and energetic slavery.”

“I should like to know what you mean by slavery. Because to me it is impossible that slavery should be healthy and energetic. You seem to have some other idea in your mind, and you merely use the word slavery out of exasperation—”

“I mean it none the less. I mean a real committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being.”