It was utterly ignoble. I had a vision of all humanity, living,
for the most part, merely for food and sex, letting art and poetry and
beauty and adventure pass by, content if they only achieved the bare
opportunity of daily wallowing in their mire.
I was bad and mean enough, but the conception of a single poem in my
brain, till it found birth on paper, was, I swore, bigger and finer
than all this world-mess at its best. Also there was in me somewhat the
thwarted, sinister hatred of the celibate....
* * * * *
"You mustn't bother your father now," little Mrs. Jenkins interposed, as
I started in, "you must let him rest for awhile, and not wake him."
Through the door, half open, I caught a glimpse of a hollow, wax-white
face ... he looked as if all the blood had been let out of his body,
little by little. The little, pretty, dark woman looked like a crafty
animal ... there was a beady shine of triumph, which she could not
conceal, in her eyes, as she opposed my entering. I smelt the pungent
smell of her physical womanhood. There was a plumpness about her body, a
ruddiness to her lips, that gave me the phantasy that, perhaps, the
moment before, she had drunk of my father's blood, and that she was
preventing me from going in to where he lay till a certain tiny, red
puncture over his jugular vein had closed.
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