Part 10 (1/2)
I had never heard him talk like this before. In his excitement he rose from the table, and commenced pacing the room.
”Why don't I invest my money in the two and a half per cents?” he continued. ”At the very worst I should be safe for five thousand a year. What, in the name of common sense, does a man want with more? I am always saying to myself, I'll do it; why don't I?
”Well, why not?” I echoed.
”That's what I want you to tell me,” he returned. ”You set up for understanding human nature, it's a mystery to me. In my place, you would do as I do; you know that. If somebody left you a hundred thousand pounds to-morrow, you would start a newspaper, or build a theatre--some d.a.m.n-fool trick for getting rid of the money and giving yourself seventeen hours' anxiety a day; you know you would.”
I hung my head in shame. I felt the justice of the accusation. It has always been my dream to run a newspaper and own a theatre.
”If we worked only for what we could spend,” he went on, ”the City might put up its shutters to-morrow morning. What I want to get at the bottom of is this instinct that drives us to work apparently for work's own sake. What is this strange thing that gets upon our back and spurs us?”
A servant entered at that moment with a cablegram from the manager of one of his Austrian mines, and he had to leave me for his study. But, walking home, I fell to pondering on his words. WHY this endless work?
Why each morning do we get up and wash and dress ourselves, to undress ourselves at night and go to bed again? Why do we work merely to earn money to buy food; and eat food so as to gain strength that we may work?
Why do we live, merely in the end to say good-bye to one another? Why do we labour to bring children into the world that they may die and be buried?
Of what use our mad striving, our pa.s.sionate desire? Will it matter to the ages whether, once upon a time, the Union Jack or the Tricolour floated over the battlements of Badajoz? Yet we poured our blood into its ditches to decide the question. Will it matter, in the days when the glacial period shall have come again, to clothe the earth with silence, whose foot first trod the Pole? Yet, generation after generation, we mile its roadway with our whitening bones. So very soon the worms come to us; does it matter whether we love, or hate? Yet the hot blood rushes through our veins, we wear out heart and brain for shadowy hopes that ever fade as we press forward.
The flower struggles up from seed-pod, draws the sweet sap from the ground, folds its petals each night, and sleeps. Then love comes to it in a strange form, and it longs to mingle its pollen with the pollen of some other flower. So it puts forth its gay blossoms, and the wandering insect bears the message from seed-pod to seed-pod. And the seasons pa.s.s, bringing with them the suns.h.i.+ne and the rain, till the flower withers, never having known the real purpose for which it lived, thinking the garden was made for it, not it for the garden. The coral insect dreams in its small soul, which is possibly its small stomach, of home and food. So it works and strives deep down in the dark waters, never knowing of the continents it is fas.h.i.+oning.
But the question still remains: for what purpose is it all? Science explains it to us. By ages of strife and effort we improve the race; from ether, through the monkey, man is born. So, through the labour of the coming ages, he will free himself still further from the brute.
Through sorrow and through struggle, by the sweat of brain and brow, he will lift himself towards the angels. He will come into his kingdom.
But why the building? Why the pa.s.sing of the countless ages? Why should he not have been born the G.o.d he is to be, imbued at birth with all the capabilities his ancestors have died acquiring? Why the Pict and Hun that _I_ may be? Why _I_, that a descendant of my own, to whom I shall seem a savage, shall come after me? Why, if the universe be ordered by a Creator to whom all things are possible, the protoplasmic cell? Why not the man that is to be? Shall all the generations be so much human waste that he may live? Am I but another layer of the soil preparing for him?
Or, if our future be in other spheres, then why the need of this planet?
Are we labouring at some Work too vast for us to perceive? Are our pa.s.sions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless prison crank.
Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams of fraternity, drowned in blood by a Napoleon. What is left to us, but the hope that the work itself, not the result, is the real monument? Maybe, we are as children, asking, ”Of what use are these lessons? What good will they ever be to us?” But there comes a day when the lad understands why he learnt grammar and geography, when even dates have a meaning for him. But this is not until he has left school, and gone out into the wider world. So, perhaps, when we are a little more grown up, we too may begin to understand the reason for our living.
ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF WOMEN
I talked to a woman once on the subject of honeymoons. I said, ”Would you recommend a long honeymoon, or a Sat.u.r.day to Monday somewhere?”
A silence fell upon her. I gathered she was looking back rather than forward to her answer.
”I would advise a long honeymoon,” she replied at length, ”the old-fas.h.i.+oned month.”
”Why,” I persisted, ”I thought the tendency of the age was to cut these things shorter and shorter.”
”It is the tendency of the age,” she answered, ”to seek escape from many things it would be wiser to face. I think myself that, for good or evil, the sooner it is over--the sooner both the man and the woman know--the better.”
”The sooner what is over?” I asked.
If she had a fault, this woman, about which I am not sure, it was an inclination towards enigma.
She crossed to the window and stood there, looking out.
”Was there not a custom,” she said, still gazing down into the wet, glistening street, ”among one of the ancient peoples, I forget which, ordaining that when a man and woman, loving one another, or thinking that they loved, had been joined together, they should go down upon their wedding night to the temple? And into the dark recesses of the temple, through many winding pa.s.sages, the priest led them until they came to the great chamber where dwelt the voice of their G.o.d. There the priest left them, clanging-to the ma.s.sive door behind him, and there, alone in silence, they made their sacrifice; and in the night the Voice spoke to them, showing them their future life--whether they had chosen well; whether their love would live or die. And in the morning the priest returned and led them back into the day; and they dwelt among their fellows. But no one was permitted to question them, nor they to answer should any do so. Well, do you know, our nineteenth-century honeymoon at Brighton, Switzerland, or Ramsgate, as the choice or necessity may be, always seems to me merely another form of that night spent alone in the temple before the altar of that forgotten G.o.d. Our young men and women marry, and we kiss them and congratulate them; and, standing on the doorstep, throw rice and old slippers, and shout good wishes after them; and he waves his gloved hand to us, and she flutters her little handkerchief from the carriage window; and we watch their smiling faces and hear their laughter until the corner hides them from our view. Then we go about our own business, and a short time pa.s.ses by; and one day we meet them again, and their faces have grown older and graver; and I always wonder what the Voice has told them during that little while that they have been absent from our sight. But of course it would not do to ask them. Nor would they answer truly if we did.”
My friend laughed, and, leaving the window, took her place beside the tea-things, and other callers dropping in, we fell to talk of pictures, plays, and people.
But I felt it would be unwise to act on her sole advice, much as I have always valued her opinion.
A woman takes life too seriously. It is a serious affair to most of us, the Lord knows. That is why it is well not to take it more seriously than need be.