human
So that was your wife at Claridge's yesterday afternoon?
gpt
I know that Lady Clanarton is a terrible gossip, she went on.
human
Was she telling me the truth when she said that your married life was not an entire success?
gpt
She was telling you the truth,
human
I like to know everything, she suggested quietly.
gpt
You must remember that we shall probably become intimates.
human
I did my wife the injustice of marrying her for money, Tallente explained.
gpt
She married me because she thought that I could provide her with a social position such as she desired. Our marriage was a double failure. I found no opportunity of making use of her money, and she was discontented with the value she received for it. We have within the last few days agreed to separate. Now you know everything, he added, with a little smile,
human
I like to know everything about the people I am interested in, she admitted.
gpt
Besides, your story sounds so quaint. It seems to belong, somehow or other, to the days of Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen. I suppose that is because I always feel that I am living a little way in the future.
human
Turn your chair around towards me, she invited.
gpt
This is the hour I like best of any during the day. Do you see what a beautiful view I have of the Houses of Parliament? And there across the river, behind that mist, the cesspool begins. Sometimes I lie here and think. I see right into Bermondsey and Rotherhithe and all those places and think out the lives of the people as they are being lived. Then I look through those wonderful windows there--how they glitter in the sunshine, don't they!--and I think I hear the men speak whom they have sent to plead their cause. Some Demosthenes from Tower Hill exhausts himself with phrase-making, shouts himself into a perspiration, drawing lurid, pictures of hideous and apparent wrongs, and a hundred or so well-dressed legislators whisper behind the palms of their hands, make their plans for the evening and trot into their appointed lobbies like sheep when the division bell rings. It is the most tragical epitome of inadequacy the world has ever known.
human
Have you Democrats any fresh inspiration, then?
gpt
Of course we have, she rapped out sharply.
human
It isn't like you to ask such a question. The principles for which we stand never existed before, except academically. No party has ever been able to preach them within the realm of practical politics, because no party has been comprehensive enough. The Labour Party, as it was understood ten years ago, was a pitiful conglomeration of selfish atoms without the faintest idea of coordination. It is for the souls of the people we stand, we Democrats, whether they belong to trades unions or not, whether they till the fields or sweat in the factories, whether they bend over a desk or go back and forth across the sea, whether they live in small houses or large, whether they belong to the respectable middle classes whom the after-the-war legislation did its best to break, or to the class of actual manual laborers.
gpt
I don't see what place a man like Miller has in your scheme of things,
human
Miller is a limpet, she said.
gpt
He has posed as a man of brains for half a generation. His only real cleverness is an unerring but selfish capacity for attaching himself to the right cause. We can't ignore him. He has a following. On the other hand, he does not represent our principles any more than Pitt would if he were still alive.
human
What will be your position really as regards the two main sections of the Labour Party? he asked.
gpt
We are absorbing the best of them, day by day, she answered quickly.
human
What is left of either will be merely the scum. The people will come to us. Their discarded leaders can crawl back to obscurity. The people may follow false gods for a very long time, but they have the knack of recognising the truth when it is shown them.
gpt
You have the gift of conviction,
human
Our cause speaks, not I, she declared.
gpt
Every word I utter is a waste of breath, a task of supererogation. You can't associate with Stephen Dartrey for a month without realising for yourself what our party means and stands for. So--enough. I didn't ask you here to undertake any missionary work. I asked you, as a matter of fact, for my own pleasure. Take another cigarette and pass me one, please. And here's another cushion, she added, throwing it to him.
human
You look as though you needed it.
gpt
So far as entertaining you is concerned, he confessed,
human
I fear I am likely to be a failure. I am beginning to feel like a constant note of interrogation. There is so much I want to know.
gpt
Proceed, then. I am resigned, she said with a smile.
human
About yourself. I just knew of you as the writer of one or two articles in the reviews. Why have I never heard more of you?
gpt
One reason, she confided,
human
But what was your upbringing? he asked.
gpt
Your father, for instance?
human
Is this going to be a pill for you? she enquired, with slightly wrinkled forehead.
gpt
He was professor of English at Dresden University. We were all living there when the war broke out, but he was such a favourite that they let us go to Paris. He died there, the week after peace was declared. My mother still lives at Versailles. She was governess to Lady Clanarton's grandchildren, hence my presence yesterday in those aristocratic circles.
human
And you live here alone?
gpt
With my secretary--the fuzzyhaired young person who was just getting rid of Mr. Miller for me when you arrived. We are a terribly advanced couple, in our ideas, but we lead a thoroughly reputable life. I sometimes think, she went on, with a sigh,
human
Your own opinions? he asked curiously.
gpt
I suppose they, too, are a little revolutionary, so far as regards our social laws?
human
I dare not even define them, she acknowledged,
gpt
How old are you?
human
Twenty-four,
gpt
And supposing you fell in love--taking it for granted that you have not done so already--should you marry?
human
To tell you the truth, she confided, with a somewhat evasive air,
gpt
I have been so busy thinking out life for other people that I have never stopped to apply its general principles to myself.
human
You are a sophist,
gpt
I have not your remarkable insight,
human
How this came about I don't even quite know,