Part 38 (1/2)
”Glad you've looked in, Linn.”
”Well, you don't seem to be busy, old chap; who ever saw you before without a book or a pipe?”
”I've been musing, and dreaming dreams, and wis.h.i.+ng I was a poet,” said this tall, thin, languid-looking man, whose abnormally keen gray eyes were now grown a little absent. ”It's only a fancy, you know--perhaps something could be made of it by a fellow who could rhyme--”
”But what is it?” Lionel interposed.
”Well,” said the other, still idly staring into the fire before him, ”I think I would call it 'The Cry of the Violets'--the violets that are sold in bunches at the head of the Haymarket at midnight. Don't you fancy there might be something in it--if you think of where they come from--the woods and copses, children playing, and all that--and of what they've come to--the gas-glare and drunken laughter and jeers. I would make them tell their own story--I would make them cry to Heaven for swift death and oblivion before the last degradation of being pinned on to the flaunting dress.” And then again he said: ”No, I don't suppose there's any thing in it; but I'll tell you what made me think of it.
This morning, as we were coming back from Winstead church--you know how extraordinarily mild it has been of late, and the lane going down to the church is very well sheltered--I found a couple of violets in at the roots of the hedge--within a few inches of each other, indeed--and I gave them to Miss Francie, and she put them in her prayer-book and carried them home. I thought the violets would not object to that, if they only knew.”
”So you went down to Winstead this morning?”
”Yes.”
”And how are the old people?”
”Oh, very well.”
”And Francie?”
”Very busy--and very happy, I think. If she doesn't deserve to be, who does?” he continued, rousing himself somewhat from his absent manner. ”I suppose, now, there is no absolutely faultless woman; and yet I sometimes think it would puzzle the most fastidious critic of human nature to point out any one particular in which Miss Francie could be finer than she is; I think it would. It is not my business to find fault; I don't want to find fault; but I have often thought over Miss Francie--her occupations, her theories, her personal disposition, even her dress--and I've wondered where the improvement was to be suggested.
You see, she might be a very good woman, and yet have no sense of humor; she might be very charitable, and also a little vainglorious about it; she might have very exalted ideas of duty, and be a trifle hard on those who did not come up to her standards; but in Miss Francie's case these qualifications haven't to be put in at all. She always seems to me to be doing the right thing, and just in the right way--with a kind of fine touch that has no namby-pambiness about it. Oh, she can be firm, too; she can scold them well enough, those children--when she doesn't laugh and pat them on the shoulder the minute after.”
”This is, indeed, something, as coming from you, Maurice!” Lionel exclaimed. ”Has it been left for you to discover an absolutely perfect human being?”
”It isn't for you to find fault with her, anyway,” the other said, rather sharply. ”She's fond enough of you.”
”Who said I was finding fault with her?--not likely I am going to find fault with Francie!” Lionel replied, with sufficient good-humor. ”Well, now that you have discovered an absolutely faultless creature, you might come to the help of another who is only too conscious that he has plenty of faults, and who is so dissatisfied with himself and his surroundings that he is about sick of life altogether.”
Notwithstanding the light tone in which he introduced the subject, Mangan looked up quickly, and regarded the younger man with those penetrating gray eyes.
”Where have you been to-day, Linn?”
”Brighton.”
”Among the dukes and d.u.c.h.esses again? Ah, you needn't be angry--I respect as much as anybody those whom G.o.d has placed over us--I haven't forgotten my catechism--I can order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters. But tell me what the matter is. You sick of life?--I wonder what the gay world of London would think of that!”
And therewithal Lionel, in a somewhat rambling and incoherent fas.h.i.+on, told his friend of a good many things that had happened to him of late--of his vague aspirations and dissatisfactions--of Miss Cunyngham's visit to the theatre, and his disgust over the music-hall clowning--of his going down to Brighton that day, and his wish to stand on some other footing with those friends of his--winding up by asking, to Mangan's surprise, how long it would take to study for the bar and get called, and whether his training--the confidence acquired on the stage--might not help in addressing a jury.
”So the idol has got tired of being wors.h.i.+pped,” Mangan said, at last.
”It is an odd thing. I wonder how many thousands of people there are in London--not merely shop-girls--who consider you the most fortunate person alive--in whose imagination you loom larger than any saint or soldier, any priest or statesman, of our own time. And I wonder what they would say if they knew you were thinking of voluntarily abdicating so proud and enviable a position. Well, well!--and the reason for this sacrifice? Of course, you know it is a not uncommon thing for women to give up their carriages and luxuries and fine living, and go into a retreat, where they have to sweep out cells, and even keep strict silence for a week at a time, which, I suppose, is a more difficult business. The reason in their case is clear enough; they are driven to all that by their spiritual needs; they want to have their souls washed clean by penance and self-denial. But you,” he continued, in no unfriendly mood, but with his usual uncompromising sincerity, ”whence comes your renunciation? It is simply that a woman has turned your head.
You want to find yourself on the same plane with her; you want to be socially her equal; and to do that you think you should throw off those theatrical trappings. You see, my dear Linn, if I have remembered my catechism, you have not; you have forgotten that you must learn and labor truly to get your own living, and do your duty in that state of life unto which it has pleased G.o.d to call you. You want to change your state of life; you want to become a barrister. What would happen? The chances are entirely against your being able to earn your own living--at least for years; but what is far more certain is that your fas.h.i.+onable friends--whose positions and occupations you admire--would care nothing more about you. You are interesting to them now because you are a favorite of the public, because you play the chief part at the New Theatre. What would you be as a briefless barrister? Who would provide you with salmon-fis.h.i.+ng and deer-stalking then? If you aspired to marry one of those dames of high degree, what would be your claims and qualifications? You say you would almost rather be a gillie in charge of dogs and ponies. A gillie in charge of dogs and ponies doesn't enjoy many conversations with his young mistress; and if he made bold to demand any closer alliance Pauline would pretty soon have that Claude kicked off the premises--and serve him right. If you had come to me and said, 'I am too well off; I am being spoiled and petted to death; the simplicity and dignity of life is being wholly lost in all this fas.h.i.+onable flattery, this public notoriety and applause; and to recover myself a little--as a kind of purification--I am going to put aside my trappings; I will go and work as a hod-carrier for three months or six months; I will live on the plainest fare; I will bear patiently the cursing the master of the gang will undoubtedly hurl at me; I will sleep on a straw mattress'--then I could have understood that. But what is it you renounce?--and why? You think you would recommend yourself better to your swell friends if you dropped the theatre altogether--”
”Don't you want to hire a hall?” said Lionel, gloomily.
”Oh, n.o.body likes being preached at less than I do myself,” Mangan said, with perfect equanimity, ”but you see I think I ought to tell you, when you ask me, how I regard the situation. And, mind you, there is something very heroic--very impracticably heroic, but magnanimous all the same--in your idea that you might abandon all the popularity and position you have won as a mere matter of sentiment. Of course you won't do it. You couldn't bring yourself to become a mere n.o.body--as would happen if you went into chambers and began reading up law-books. And you wouldn't be any nearer to salmon-fis.h.i.+ng and deer-forests that way, or to the people who possess these by birth and inheritance. The trouble with you, Linn, my boy, as with most of us, is that you weren't born in the purple. It is quite true that if you were called to the bar you could properly claim the t.i.tle of esquire, and you would find yourself not further down than the hundred and fiftieth or hundred and sixtieth section in the tables of precedence; but if you went with this qualification to those fine friends of yours, they would admit its validity, and let you know at the same time you were no longer interesting to them. Harry Thornhill, of the New Theatre, has a free pa.s.sport everywhere; Mr. Lionel Moore, of the Middle Temple, wouldn't be wanted anywhere.”