The summer evenings sounded a very different music from that thin wheedling of April.It was now a soft steady vibration, the incessant drone and throb of locust and cricket, and sometimes the sudden rasp, dry and hard, of katydids.Gissing, in spite of his weariness, was all fidgets.He would walk round and round the house in the dark, unable to settle down to anything; tired, but incapable of rest.What is this uneasiness in the mind, he asked himself? The great sonorous drumming of the summer night was like the bruit of Time passing steadily by.Even in the soft eddy of the leaves, lifted on a drowsy creeping air, was a sound of discontent, of troublesome questioning.Through the trees he could see the lighted oblongs of neighbours' windows, or hear stridulent jazz records.Why were all others so cheerfully absorbed in the minutiae of their lives, and he so painfully ill at ease? Sometimes, under the warm clear darkness, the noises of field and earth swelled to a kind of soft thunder: his quickened ears heard a thousand small outcries contributing to the awful energy of the world--faint chimings and whistlings in the grass, and endless flutter, rustle, and whirr.His own body, on which hair and nails grew daily like vegetation, startled and appalled him.Consciousness of self, that miserable ecstasy, was heavy upon him.
He envied the children, who lay upstairs sprawled under their mosquito nettings.Immersed in living, how happily unaware of being alive! He saw, with tenderness, how naively they looked to him as the answer and solution of their mimic problems.But where could he find someone to be to him what he was to them? The truth apparently was that in his inward mind he was desperately lonely.Reading the poets by fits and starts, he suddenly realized that in their divine pages moved something of this loneliness, this exquisite unhappiness.But these great hearts had had the consolation of setting down their moods in beautiful words, words that lived and spoke.His own strange fever burned inexpressibly inside him.Was he the only one who felt the challenge offered by the maddening fertility and foison of the hot sun-dazzled earth? Life, he realized, was too amazing to be frittered out in this aimlesssickness of heart.There were truths and wonders to be grasped, if he could only throw off this wistful vague desire.He felt like a clumsy strummer seated at a dark shining grand piano, which he knows is capable of every glory of rolling music, yet he can only elicit a few haphazard chords.
He had his moments of arrogance, too.Ah, he was very young! This miracle of blue unblemished sky that had baffled all others since life began--he, he would unriddle it! He was inclined to sneer at his friends who took these things for granted, and did not perceive the infamous insolubility of the whole scheme.Remembering the promises made at the christening, he took the children to church; but alas, carefully analyzing his mind, he admitted that his attention had been chiefly occupied with keeping them orderly, and he had gone through the service almost automatically.Only in singing hymns did he experience a tingle of exalted feeling.But Mr.Poodle was proud of his well-trained choir, and Gissing had a feeling that the congregation was not supposed to do more than murmur the verses, for fear of spoiling the effect.In his favourite hymns he had a tendency to forget himself and let go: his vigorous tenor rang lustily.Then he realized that the backs of people's heads looked surprised.The children could not be kept quiet unless they stood up on the pews.Mr.Poodle preached rather a long sermon, and Yelpers, toward twelve-thirty, remarked in a clear tone of interested inquiry, "What time does God have dinner?"Gissing had a painful feeling that he and Mr.Poodle did not thoroughly understand each other.The curate, who was kindness itself, called one evening, and they had a friendly chat.Gissing was pleased to find that Mr.Poodle enjoyed a cigar, and after some hesitation ventured to suggest that he still had something in the cellar.Mr.Poodle said that he didn't care for anything, but his host could not help hearing the curate's tail quite unconsciously thumping on the chair cushions.So he excused himself and brought up one of his few remaining bottles of White Horse.Mr.Poodle crossed his legs and they chatted about golf, politics, the income tax, and some of the recent books; but when Gissing turned the talk on religion, Mr.Poodle became diffident..Gissing, warmed and cheered by the vital Scotch, was perhaps too direct.
"What ought I to do to 'crucify the old man'?" he said.Mr.Poodle was rather embarrassed.
"You must mortify the desires of the flesh," he replied."You must dig up the old bone of sin that is buried in all our hearts."There were many more questions Gissing wanted to ask about this, but Mr.Poodle said he really must be going, as he had a call to pay on Mr.and Mrs.Chow.
