Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/82

“I used to think my husband was inspired about Ireland,” said Kate doubtfully.

“And now?”

“Yes! Perhaps he put his wine in old, rotten bottles that wouldn’t hold it. No!—Liberty is a rotten old wine-skin. It won’t hold one’s wine of inspiration or passion any more,” she said.

“And Mexico!” he said. “Mexico is another Ireland. Ah no, no man can be his own master. If I must serve, I will not serve an idea, which cracks and leaks like an old wine-skin. I will serve the God that gives me my manhood. There is no liberty for a man, apart from the God of his manhood. Free Mexico is a bully, and the old, colonial, ecclesiastical Mexico was another sort of bully. When man has nothing but his will to assert—even his good-will—it is always bullying. Bolshevism is one sort of bullying, capitalism another: and liberty is a change of chains.”

“Then what’s to be done?” said Kate. Just nothing?”

And with her own will, she wanted nothing to be done. Let the skies fall!

“One is driven, at last, back to the far distance, to look for God,” said Ramón uneasily.

“I rather hate this search-for-God business, and religiosity,” said Kate.

“I know!” he said, with a laugh. “I’ve suffered from would-be-cocksure religion myself.”

“And you can’t really ‘find God’!” she said. “It’s a . sort of sentimentalism, and creeping back into old, hollow shells.”

“No!” he said slowly. “I can’t find God, in the old sense. I know it’s a sentimentalism if I pretend to. But I am nauseated with humanity and the human will: even with my own will. I have realised that my will, no matter how intelligent I am, is only another nuisance on the face of the earth, once I start exerting it. And other people’s wills are even worse.”

“Oh! isn’t human life horrible!” she cried. “Every human being exerting his will all the time—over other people, and over himself, and nearly always self-righteous!”

Ramón made a grimace of repulsion.

“To me,” he said, “that is just the weariness of life!