Free The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes Page B

well, never mind ... I’m really on to something this time—the flight from freedom ...” If he had read the signs of the times aright this was only too true ...
    Mary began to tap the floor rhythmically with her foot. Jeremy’s oratory quite drowned the impatient little noise, but she too was scarcely listening any more. Once on a time she had thought Jeremy absolutely brilliant: she still did in a way, but somehow nowadays she seemed to be losing the power of listening when he talked. One goes on growing up (she realized suddenly) even long after one is grown-up.
    Jeremy had the tiresome knack of making even sound sense appear fantastic nonsense, and moreover didn’t seem himself to know which was when: yet any moment he might reveal some real fragment of new truth, in a sudden phrase like a flashlight going off—something the plodders wouldn’t have got to in a month-of-Sundays. Tonight, though, that “flight from freedom” idea was surely going too far. True, some people don’t like pursuing freedom as fast as others but it’s only a question of relative speed: surely men never turn their backs on their own freedom, it’s tyrants who wrest it from them ... Liberalism and democracy after all isn’t just a fashion, it’s the permanent trend, it’s human nature ... progress.
    How profoundly Gilbert distrusted brilliance of this sort: Jeremy—Douglas Moss—all that Oxford kidney! “They’re hounds who can find a scent but not follow it,” he had said: “They’re babblers, they run riot ...” Gilbert didn’t really share her passion for hunting (or he could never have tolerated a Trivett in his stables) but he liked its language: he used it in the House, to tease the Tories.
    Augustine seemed to prize independence and solitude above everything. But surely (thought Mary) the pattern of man’s relationships with man is the one thing specifically human in humanity? And so, to the humanist, disbelieving in God, that pattern is the supremely sacred thing? You can’t just contract out of ... out of Mankind , as Augustine seemed to think.
    Then Mary found herself wondering what it could be that Mrs. Winter was so anxious to see her about. She must go in a minute—the very first time Jeremy paused for breath.—Where had he got to?
    â€œYou anarchists ...” she heard him saying to Augustine.
    But (thought Mary) to do away with all government like anarchists you’d have to cut the Imperative mood right out of human grammar; for “government” isn’t just something tucked away on a high shelf labelled POLITICS—governing goes on in every human relationship, every moment of the day. One’s always governing and being governed. The Imperative mood is the very warp on which that sacred pattern of humanity is woven: tamper with those strong Imperative threads and the whole web must ravel ...
    â€œNo!” cried Augustine giving the table such a thump the glasses rang ( Heavens! How much of all this nonsense could she have been saying out loud? ) “Your web can’t ravel, because ... Emperor’s New Clothes! There IS NO web! There’s no thread, even, joining man to man—nothing!”
    â€œI see,” broke in Jeremy, delighted. “You mean, train-bearers and train-wearers alike human society is but a procession of separate, naked men pretending? ‘Whom God hath put asunder, let no man ...’”
    One of the wine glasses was still singing and Mary hushed its tiny voice with her finger. “I really must go now,” she said: “I told Mrs. Winter ‘Nine.’ If Gilbert and his friends arrive ...”
    â€œDon’t go!” said Augustine. “You never know with these Parliament boys: maybe they won’t turn up at all!”
    â€œBut how are they getting here?” asked Jeremy, “Is dear Trivett meeting their train at