All I ask is to
live among human beings with whom I have half an idea in common--men
who sometimes raise their noses from the ground, instead of eternally
scheming how to line their pockets, reckoning human progress solely in
terms of l.s.d. No, I've sacrificed enough of my life to this country.
I mean to have the rest for myself. And there's another thing, my dear--
another bad habit this precious place breeds in us. It begins by making
us indifferent to those who belong to us but are out of our sight, and
ends by cutting our closest ties. I don't mean by distance alone. I have
an old mother still living, Mary, whose chief prayer is that she may see
me once again before she dies. I was her last-born--the child her arms
kept the shape of. What am I to her now? . . . what does she know of me,
of the hard, tired, middle-aged man I have become? And you are in much
the same box, my dear; unless you've forgotten by now that you ever had
a mother."
Mary was scandalised. "Forget one's mother? . . . Richard! I think
you're trying what dreadful things you can find to say . . . when I
write home every three months!" And provoked by this fresh piece of
unreason she opened fire in earnest, in defence of what she believed to
be their true welfare. Richard listened to her without interrupting;
even seemed to grant the truth of what she said. But none the less, even
as she pleaded with him, a numbing sense of futility crept over her.
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