Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/58

46 ously quarrelsome atmosphere. People scold and insult one another for the most trivial things, for passing too close, for taking the wrong side, for tying up or floating loose. Most of these notice boards on the bank show a thoroughly nasty spirit. People on the banks jeer at anyone in the boats. You hear people quarrelling in boats, in the hotels, as they walk along the towing path. There is remarkably little happy laughter here. The rage, you see, is hostile to this place, the rage breaks through.... The people who drift from one pub to another, drinking, the people who fuddle in the riverside hotels, are the last fugitives of pleasure, trying to forget the rage....”

“Isn’t it that there is some greater desire at the back of the human mind?” the doctor suggested. “Which refuses to be content with pleasure as an end?”

“What greater desire?” asked Sir Richmond, disconcertingly.

“Oh! ...” The doctor cast about.

“There is no such greater desire,” said Sir Richmond. “You cannot name it. It is just blind drive. I admit its discontent with pleasure as an end—but has it any end of its own? At the most you can say that the rage in life is seeking its desire and hasn’t found it.”

“Let us help in the search,” said the doctor, with an afternoon smile under his green umbrella. “Go on.”