III
i
I brought a certain amount of enthusiasm to bear upon my new life. The idea of working in co-operation with 'the friend of Blake' was a powerful incentive to perseverance. I wrote in the Journal, which I began to keep at this time:
'I have had a great deal to learn and to do in this swift-flown fortnight. And I have found both the learning and the doing very pleasant to me. It would seem that my just-past struggle for existence partook, all along, greatly of the cul-de-sac; whereas this new life is like an open road that leads to a great city: that city has to be reached: certain things have to be done, which things constitute a "cause." There can be no doubt that a definite aim, object, end is the making of a man.'
But the next week came a reaction. I began to weary of the details of my work, more weary of the people with whom I was thrown, and there was growing in me a deaf unrecognised notion in connection with Mr. Brooke that would have partaken, had I let it, of disillusionment. Hear the Journal of three days later, à propos of a dinner at a Mr. Starkie's, a friend of Mr. Brooke's, where I had met some, what I called, 'travellers':
'"Travellers" are an aggravating tribe. They seem to expect you to know their books better than they do themselves: to pretend that no one else ever went where they went, or, if some one else undeniably did go,—then that that some one else went the wrong way, came back the wrong way, and made rather a fool than otherwise of himself every bit of the way! People
