It was like a buried treasure, jealously kept for the
event of his one day catching up with life: not the bare scramble for a
living that here went by that name, but Life with a capital L, the
existence he had once confidently counted on as his--a tourney of
spiritual adventuring, of intellectual excitement, in which the prize
striven for was not money or anything to do with money. Far away,
thousands of miles off, luckier men than he were in the thick of it. He,
of his own free will, had cut himself adrift, and now it was too late.
But was it? Had the time irretrievably gone by? The ancient idea of
escape, long dormant, suddenly reawoke in him with a new force. And,
once stirring, it was not to be silenced, but went on sounding like a
ground-tone through all he did. At first he shut his ears to it, to
dally with side issues. For example, he worried the question why the
breaking-point should only now have been reached and not six months, a
year ago. It was quibbling to lay the whole blame on Ocock's shoulders.
The real cause went deeper, was of older growth. And driving his mind
back over the past, he believed he could pin his present loss of grip to
that fatal day on which he learnt that his best friend had betrayed him.
Things like that gave you a crack that would not mend. He had been
rendered suspicious where he had once been credulous; prone to see evil
where no evil was. For, deceived by Purdy, in whom could he trust? Of a
surety not in the pushful set of jobbers and tricksters he was condemned
to live amongst.
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