you and I have always
loved the same things. And so I married him; and at the time, and oh, for
ever so long, I didn't understand how it was; how it was all wrong, and
how he and I didn't really belong to each other a bit, because he's in
one lot of people, and I'm in another. He's in the top lot, that gets
things, and I'm in the under lot, with you and father and all the poorer
people who don't get things, and have to find life nice in spite of it.
I'd deserted really; and father and Felicity knew I had; only I didn't
know, or I'd never have done it. I only got to understand gradjully"
(Lucy's long words were apt to be a blur, like a child's), "when I saw
what a lot of good things Denis and his friends had, and how I had to
have them too, 'cause I couldn't get away from them; and oh, Peter, I've
felt smothered beneath them! They're so heavy and so rich, and shut
people out from the rest of the world that hasn't got them, so that
they can't hear or see each other. It's like living in a palace in the
middle of dreadful slums, and never caring. Because you _can't_ care,
however much you try, in the palace, the same as you can if you're down
in the middle of the poorness and the emptiness. Wasn't it Christ who
said how hardly rich men shall enter into the kingdom of heaven? And it's
harder still for them to enter into the other kingdoms, which aren't
heaven at all. It's hard for them to step out from where they are and
enter anywhere else. Peter, can anyone ever leave their world and go into
another. I have failed, you see. Denis would never even begin to try; he
wouldn't see any object. I don't believe it can be done. Except perhaps
by very great people. And we're not that. People like you and me and
Denis belong where we're born and brought up. Even for the ones who try,
to change, it's hard. And most of us don't try at all, or care ... Denis
hardly cares, really. He's generous with money; he lets me give away as
much as I like; but he doesn't care himself. Unhappiness and bad luck and
disgrace don't touch him; he doesn't want to have anything to do with
them; he doesn't like them. Even his friends, the people he likes, he
gets tired of directly they begin to go under. You know that. And it's
dreadful, Peter. I hate it, being comfortable up there and not seeing and
not hearing and not caring. Seems to me we just live to have a good time.
Well, of course, people ought to do that, it's the thing to live for, and
I usen't to