". . . great unconscious gravity of a girl", this sounds sinister to me. Gregory, with his flaming red hair is the bad guy, or devil of the story. It is my impression that Gregory had a mission and that mission failed. Since the novel reverts back to where Gregory and Syme are once again talking as poets, this may mean that the nightmare may begin again. Which makes sense, this type of confrontation, this soul searching if you will is circular and never ending. However, this time around, Rosamond may take the place of Gregory. My take on this last sentence is, Syme sees this girl, unconsciously sees her as innocent and pure, (image bolstered by lilac) in the springtime setting,(springtime when everything is new and starts again) but does not see the gravity of what this girl may represent during his next nightmare. (Wolf in sheeps clothing, you unconsciously see the sheep as cute and cuddly but do not understand the gravity of the danger) I do believe the last sentence is to warn the reader that this nightmare is about to happen again. Rosamond is cutting lilacs, cutting innocence, knowing the gravity of replacing Gregory with a girl in the next nightmare. A seemingly innocent girl may have more success than a wild man with a burning head.

The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured these thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party of the group, Gregory’s sister Rosamond, who had her brother’s braids of red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to the family oracle.

Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour.

“An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried. “You might transpose the words anywhere.
An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.”

“So it is,” said Mr. Syme.

“Nonsense! ” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. “Why
do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!”

“It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If what you say of clerks is true, they
can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!”

“Must you go?” inquired Gregory sarcastically.

“I tell you,” went on Syme with passion, “that every time a train comes in I feel that it has
broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say
contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word ‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it is the victory of Adam.”

Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile.
“And even then,” he said, “we poets always ask the question, ‘And what is Victoria now that
you have got there ?’ You think Victoria is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be like Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt.”

“There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical about being in revolt ? You might
as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being
rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I’m hanged if I can see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. It’s mere vomiting.”

The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was too hot to heed her.

“It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical I Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not beingsick.”

“Really,” said Gregory superciliously, “the examples you choose—”

“I beg your pardon,” said Syme grimly, “I forgot we had abolished all conventions.”

For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory’s forehead.
“You don’t expect me,” he said, “to revolutionise society on this lawn ?”

Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly.
“No, I don’t,” he said; “but I suppose that if you were serious about your anarchism, that is
exactly what you would do.”

Gregory’s big bull’s eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry lion, and one could almost
fancy that his red mane rose.
“Don’t you think, then,” he said in a dangerous voice, “that I am serious about my anarchism?”

“I beg your pardon ?” said Syme.

“Am I not serious about my anarchism ?” cried Gregory, with knotted fists.

“My dear fellow!” said Syme, and strolled away.
With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond Gregory still in his company.

“Mr. Syme,” she said, “do the people who talk like you and my brother often mean what they
say ? Do you mean what you say now?”

Syme smiled.

“Do you ?” he asked.

“What do you mean ?” asked the girl, with grave eyes.

“My dear Miss Gregory,” said Syme gently, “there are many kinds of sincerity and insincerity.
When you say ‘thank you’ for the salt, do you mean what you say ? No. When you say ‘the world is round,’ do you mean what you say ? No. It is true, but you don’t mean it. Now, sometimes a manlike your brother really finds a thing he does mean. It may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says more than he means—from sheer force of meaning it.”

She was looking at him from under level brows; her face was grave and open, and there had
fallen upon it the shadow of that unreasoning responsibility which is at the bottom of the most frivolous woman, the maternal watch which is as old as the world.

“Is he really an anarchist, then?” she asked.

“Only in that sense I speak of,” replied Syme; “or if you prefer it, in that nonsense.”
She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly—“He wouldn’t really use—bombs or that sort of thing?”

Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight and somewhat dandified
figure. “Good Lord, no!” he said, “that has to be done anonymously.”

And at that the corners of her own mouth broke into a smile, and she thought with a simultaneous pleasure of Gregory’s absurdity and of his safety.

Syme strolled with her to a seat in the corner of the garden, and continued to pour out his
opinions. For he was a sincere man, and in spite of his superficial airs and graces, at root a humble one. And it is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely. He defended respectability with violence and exaggeration. He grew passionate in his praise of tidiness and propriety. All the time there was a smell of lilac all round him. Once he heard very faintly in some distant street a barrel-organ begin to play, and it seemed to him that his heroic words were moving to a tiny tune from under or beyond the world. He stared and talked at the girl’s red hair and amused face for what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream.

When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment empty. Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the light, and also something aggressive in the attitude, proclaimed that it was the poet Gregory. He had something of the look of a masked bravo waiting sword in hand for his foe.

stahrwe wrote:Perhaps it is not Rosamond the individual whose death we are seeing. If Rosamond means 'Red World' then the open graves may foretell our own deaths- Perhaps resulting from our loss of innocence.

Ptimb wrote:The first two quotes are from chapter 1 and the third is from the last chapter. I might be reaching, but with the repetition of the word grave in the first chapter especially "grave and open" (inverted, minus "and",equals open grave) it seems he is pointing to some element of death in her character. This is where I really might be reaching, when he uses the word gravity in the last chapter, is this a way to have the reader recall the repitition of "grave" in the first chapter?

stahrwe wrote:Is it possible that Rosamond is not what she appears in the first chapter? Is it possible that she is the serious one and Gregory is her inferior?

He stared and talked at the girl's red hair and amused face for what seemed to be a few minutes; and then, feeling that the groups in such a place should mix, rose to his feet. To his astonishment, he discovered the whole garden empty. Everyone had gone long ago, and he went himself with a rather hurried apology. He left with a sense of champagne in his head, which he could not afterwards explain. In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over. And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night. For what followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream.