The Inheritors by Ford Madox Ford;Joseph Conrad
page 52 of 225 (23%)
page 52 of 225 (23%)
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I felt a sudden attack of what, essentially, was nostalgia. The fact that I was really leaving an old course of life, was actually and finally breaking with it, became vividly apparent. Lea, you see, stood for what was best in the mode of thought that I was casting aside. He stood for the aspiration. The brooding, the moodiness; all the childish qualities, were my own importations. I was a little ashamed to tell him, that--that I was going to live, in fact. Some of the glory of it had gone, as if one of two candles I had been reading by had flickered out. But I told him, after a fashion, that I had got a job at last. "Oh, I congratulate you," he said. "You see," I began to combat the objections he had not had time to utter, "even for my work it will be a good thing--I wasn't seeing enough of life to be able to...." "Oh, of course not," he answered--"it'll be a good thing. You must have been having a pretty bad time." It struck me as abominably unfair. I hadn't taken up with the _Hour_ because I was tired of having a bad time, but for other reasons: because I had felt my soul being crushed within me. "You're mistaken," I said. And I explained. He answered, "Yes, yes," but I fancied that he was adding to himself--"They all say that." I grew more angry. Lea's opinion formed, to some extent, the background of my life. For many years I had been writing quite as much to satisfy him as to satisfy myself, and his coldness chilled me. He thought that my heart was not in my work, and I did not want Lea to think that of me. I tried |
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