The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online Page B

window above, Joanna, fitting in an elocution lesson with Miss Harper, the cook, in the half-hour before the Sunday joint was ready to go in the oven, said, "Listen:"
     
              _Ah! Sun-flower! weary of time,__
              _Who countest the steps of the Sun;__
              _Seeking after that sweet golden clime,__
              _Where the traveller's journey is done;__
     
        "Now try it," said Joanna. "Very slowly on the third line. Think of a sweet golden clime as you say it."
     
              _Ah! Sun-flower! . . .__
     
        The dormitory girls who had spilled out of the drawing room on to the terrace chattered like a parliament of fowls. The little notes of the scales followed one another obediently. "Listen," said Rudi:
     
            Everyone should be persuaded to remember how
        far, and with what a pathetic thump, the world
        has fallen from grace, that it needs must appoint poli-
        ticians for its keepers, that its emotions, whether
        of consolation at breakfast-time or fear in the eve-
        ning . . .
     
        Rudi said, "You notice his words, that he says the world has fallen from grace? This is the reason that he is no anarchist, by the way. They chuck him out when he talks like a son of the Pope. This man is a mess that he calls himself an anarchist; the anarchists do not make all that talk of original sin, so forth; they permit only anti-social tendencies, unethical conduct, so forth. Nick Farringdon is a diversionist, by the way."
        "Do you call him Nick?" Jane said.
        "Sometimes in the pubs, the _Wheatsheaf__ and the _Gargoyle__, so on, he was Nick in those days. Except there was a barrow-boy called him Mr. Farringdon. Nicholas said to him, ‘Look, I wasn't christened Mister,' but was no good; the barrow-boy was his friend, by the way."
        "Once more," said Joanna's voice.
     
              _Ah! Sun-flower! weary of time__,
     
        "Listen," said Rudi:
     
        Nevertheless, let our moment or opportunity be stated. We do not need a government. We do not need a House of Commons. Parliament should dissolve forever. We could manage very well in our movement towards a complete anarchist society, with our great but powerless institutions: we could manage with the monarchy as an example of the dignity inherent in the free giving and receiving of precedence and favour without power; the churches for the spiritual needs of the people; the House of Lords for purposes of debate and recommendation; and the universities for consultation. We do not need institutions with power. The practical affairs of society could be dealt with locally by the Town, Borough and Village Councils. International affairs could be conducted by variable representatives in a non-professional capacity. We do not need professional politicians with an eye to power. The grocer, the doctor, the cook, should serve their country for a term as men serve on a jury. We can be ruled by the corporate will of men's hearts alone. It is Power that is defunct, not as we are taught, the powerless institutions.
     
        "I ask you a question," Rudi said. "It is a simple question. He wants monarchy, he wants anarchism. What does he want? These two are enemies in all of history. Simple answer is, he is a mess."
        "How old was the barrow-boy?" Jane said.
        "And _again__," said Joanna's voice from the upper window.
        Dorothy Markham had joined the girls on the sunny terrace. She was telling a hunting story. ". . . the only one time I've been thrown, it shook me to the core. What a brute!"
        "Where did you land?"
        "Where do you think?"
        The girl at the piano stopped and folded her scale-sheet with seemly concentration.
        "I go," said Rudi, looking at his watch. "I have an appointment to meet a contact for a drink." He rose and once more, before he handed over the book, flicked