1000
PARTISAN REVIEW
Sven was on his feet immediately. "I should like that so much"
he exclaimed.
"Are you coming, Richard?" asked his father, but Richard was
deep in a first reading of
The Possessed
and merely shook his head.
Mr. Newman bounded lightly across the treetrunks that lay in
the path, his sandals thumping against his heels.
"Of course when I say that Saxons and British dwelt side by
side, I don't deny that there
were
cases of horrible violence" they
could hear him saying, and Sven's answering voice replying "But
violence, I think, is often so beautiful."
"How happy Edwin seems" said Mrs. Rackham to her daughter.
"That boy's quite right, he
has
got the spirit of 'continual youth' as
he called it."
Monica made no answer. "I'm going down to the stream again"
she said.
"I've never seen him look so young and gay" went on Mrp
Rackham.
"How funny" said her daughter, as she walked away. "I was
just thinking how absurd he looked, like a scout-master or some–
thing."
If
I was one of those Virginia Woolf mothers, thought Mrs.
Rackham, I should have been told what all this means long ago. It's
much better as it is, however, she decided. Fond as I am of Monica,
I wouldn't be able to help, whatever may be wrong. She has no
power of resignation, no ability to seek refuge, she insists on fighting,
on living even when life is unpleasant. Edwin, too, has that same
total absorption in the affair of the moment. They want to wring
every drop out of life. She smiled as she thought how they must
despise her for living so much in books. A secondhand life they would
probably call it. I prefer to have my people pre-digested, she decided,
its easier, yes and wiser. To-day's undercurrents, for instance, how
wearying! ... and life was so short. She turned to her book, then
laughed out loud as it came to her how little even she profited from
her reading. Let me remember Miss Woodhouse's folly in interfering
in the affairs of others she said, and began her twenty-third reading
of
Emma.
Monica took the lime-green coat she was carrying over her arm
