I've had a
telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen."
She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one
pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling. He
took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a real
affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for other
people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so vitally
disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her shoulder
and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in Stephen a
certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at Cambridge, and in
the Law Courts dried, but still preserving something of its possessive
and assertive quality, and the second thing he did was to say, "No, I'm
damned!"
In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude
towards this situation and all the difference between two classes of the
population. Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: "Well, I'm damned!"
Stephen, by saying "No, I'm damned!" betrayed that before he could be
damned he had been obliged to wrestle and contend with something, and
Cecilia, who was always wrestling too, knew this something to be that
queer new thing, a Social Conscience, the dim bogey stalking pale about
the houses of those who, through the accidents of leisure or of culture,
had once left the door open to the suspicion: Is it possible that
there is a class of people besides my own, or am I dreaming? Happy the
millions, poor or rich, not yet condemned to watch the wistful visiting
or hear the husky mutter of that ghost, happy in their homes, blessed by
a less disquieting god.
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