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What a lie and sham all civility is, all good breeding, all culture and refinement, while one poor ragged wretch drags hungry on the earth!" "But this is Socialism!" said Lewisham. "No Ism," said Chaffery, raising his rich voice. "Only the ghastly truth of things the truth that the warp and the woof of the world of men is Lying. Socialism is no remedy, no ism is a remedy; things are so."
"I am." "Maggie," said Mr. Chaffery to Mrs. Chaffery, "there is a class of being upon whom delicacy is lost to whom delicacy is practically unknown. Has your daughter got her marriage lines?" "Mr. Chaffery!" said Lewisham, and Mrs. Chaffery exclaimed, "James! How can you?" Chaffery shut his penknife with a click and slipped it into his vest-pocket.
On Tuesday Lewisham returned from Vigours' at five at half-past six he would go on to his science class at Walham Green and discovered Mrs. Chaffery and Ethel in tears. He was fagged and rather anxious for some tea, but the news they had for him drove tea out of his head altogether. "He's gone," said Ethel. "Who's gone? What! Not Chaffery?" Mrs.
"It's not that," said Lewisham. "Now I am prepared to maintain," said Chaffery, proceeding with his proposition, "that Honesty is essentially an anarchistic and disintegrating force in society, that communities are held together and the progress of civilisation made possible only by vigorous and sometimes even, violent Lying; that the Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general Good.
Lewisham, it was remarked by Miss Heydinger, made but a poor figure in this discussion. Once or twice he seemed about to address Lagune, and thought better of it with the words upon his lips. Lagune's treatment of the exposure was light and vigorous. "The man Chaffery," he said, "has made a clean breast of it. His point of view " "Facts are facts," said Smithers.
And to do this needs just three things a sound body, a sound intelligence, and a sound will ... A sound will." Chaffery paused on the repetition. "No other happiness endures. And when all men are wise, all men will seek that life. Fame! Wealth! Art! the Red Indians worship lunatics, and we are still by way of respecting the milder sorts.
"Don't you think perhaps" a little ripple of laughter passed across his mind "he had a skeleton key?" Lagune's face lingered amusingly in Lewisham's mind as he returned to Clapham. But after a time that amusement passed away. He declined upon the extraordinary fact that Chaffery was his father-in-law, Mrs.
Chaffery his mother-in-law, that these two and Ethel constituted his family, his clan, and that grimy graceless house up the Clapham hillside was to be his home. Home! His connexion with these things as a point of worldly departure was as inexorable now as though he had been born to it. And a year ago, except for a fading reminiscence of Ethel, none of these people had existed for him.
"I suppose they are," said Lewisham flatly, and frowned at the fireplace. Chaffery eyed him. "I am talking wisdom. To-night I am talking a particular brand of wisdom. I am broaching some of my oldest and finest, because as you will find one day this is a special occasion. And you are distrait!" Lewisham looked up. "Birthday?" he said. "You will see.
He rose, but Ethel was before him. He concealed his anxiety as well as he could; and was relieved when he heard the front door close again and her footsteps pass into the bedroom by the passage door. He reverted to Chaffery. "Has it ever occurred to you," asked Chaffery, apparently apropos of nothing, "that intellectual conviction is no motive at all?
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