Chapter VII

by William Somerset Maugham

　　The season was drawing to its dusty end, and everyone I knewwas arranging to go away. Mrs. Strickland was taking herfamily to the coast of Norfolk, so that the children mighthave the sea and her husband golf. We said good-bye to oneanother, and arranged to meet in the autumn. But on my lastday in town, coming out of the Stores, I met her with her sonand daughter; like myself, she had been making her finalpurchases before leaving London, and we were both hot and tired.I proposed that we should all go and eat ices in the park.I think Mrs. Strickland was glad to show me her children,and she accepted my invitation with alacrity. They were evenmore attractive than their photographs had suggested, and she wasright to be proud of them. I was young enough for them not tofeel shy, and they chattered merrily about one thing and another.They were extraordinarily nice, healthy young children.It was very agreeable under the trees.When in an hour they crowded into a cab to go home, I strolledidly to my club. I was perhaps a little lonely, and it waswith a touch of envy that I thought of the pleasant familylife of which I had had a glimpse. They seemed devoted to oneanother. They had little private jokes of their own which,unintelligible to the outsider, amused them enormously.Perhaps Charles Strickland was dull judged by a standard thatdemanded above all things verbal scintillation; but hisintelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is apassport, not only to reasonable success, but still more tohappiness. Mrs. Strickland was a charming woman, and sheloved him. I pictured their lives, troubled by no untowardadventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of those twoupstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined to carryon the normal traditions of their race and station,not without significance. They would grow old insensibly;they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason,marry in due course -- the one a pretty girl, future mother ofhealthy children; the other a handsome, manly fellow,obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in theirdignified retirement, beloved by their descendants, after a happy,not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they wouldsink into the grave.That must be the story of innumerable couples, and the patternof life it offers has a homely grace. It reminds you of aplacid rivulet, meandering smoothly through green pastures andshaded by pleasant trees, till at last it falls into the vastysea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, thatyou are troubled suddenly by a vague uneasiness. Perhaps itis only by a kink in my nature, strong in me even in those days,that I felt in such an existence, the share of the greatmajority, something amiss. I recognised its social values,I saw its ordered happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for awilder course. There seemed to me something alarming in sucheasy delights. In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously.I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals ifI could only have change -- change and the excitement ofthe unforeseen.