Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/438

Rh "That's the devil of it!" said Chatteris after a pause.

"If I don't believe in the game I'm playing, if I'm left high and dry on this shoal, with the tide of belief gone past me, it isn't my planning, anyhow. I know the decent thing I ought to do. I mean to do it; in the end I mean to do it; I'm talking in this way to relieve my mind. I've started the game and I must see it out; I've put my hand to the plough and I mustn't go back. That's why I came to London—to get it over with myself. It was running up against you set me off. You caught me at the crisis."

"Ah!" said Melville.

"But for all that, the thing as I said—none of these things interest me really. It won't alter the fact that I am committed to fight a phantom election about nothing in particular, for a party that's been dead ten years. And if the ghosts win, go into Parliament as a constituent spectre There it is—as a mental phenomenon!"

He reiterated his cardinal article. "The interest is dead," he said, "the will has no soul."

He became more critical. He bent a little closer to Melville's ear. "It isn't really that I don't believe. When I say I don't believe in these things I go too far. I do. I know the electioneering, the intriguing is a means to an end. There is work to be done, sound work and important work. Only"

Melville turned an eye on him over his cigarette end.

Chatteris met it, seemed for a moment to cling