Part 29 (1/2)

”He calls it 'The Unattainable.'”

”And what is its meaning?”

”Ambition, perfection, complete happiness--anything striven for with one's whole soul.”

Florence was studying her companion now as steadily as he had been studying her a moment before. ”To your--friend it meant--”

”Happiness.”

The girl's hands were clasped in her lap in a way she had when her thoughts were concentrated. ”And he never found it?” she asked.

Unconsciously one of Sidwell's hands made a downward motion of deprecation. ”He did not. We made the circuit of the earth together in pursuit of it--but all was useless. It seemed as though the more he searched the more he was baffled in his quest.”

For a moment the girl made no reply, but in her lap her hands clasped tighter and tighter. A thought that made her finger-tips tingle was taking form in her mind. A dim comprehension of the nature of this man had first suggested it; the fact that the canvas was unsigned had helped give it form. The speaker's last words, his even tone of voice, had not pa.s.sed unnoticed. She turned to the canvas, searched the skilfully concealed outlines of the tattered figure with the upturned eyes. The clasped hands grew white with the tension.

”I didn't know before you were an artist as well as a writer,” she said evenly.

Sidwell turned quickly. The girl could feel his look. ”I fear,” he said, ”I fail to grasp your meaning. You think--”

Florence met the speaker's look steadily. ”I don't think,” she said, ”I know. You painted the picture, Mr. Sidwell. That man there on the mountain-side is you!”

Her companion hesitated. His face darkened; his lips opened to speak and closed again.

The girl continued watching him with steady look. ”I can hardly believe it,” she said absently. ”It seems impossible.”

Sidwell forced a smile. ”Impossible? What? That I should paint a daub like that?”

The girl's tense hands relaxed wearily.

”No, not that you paint, but that the man there--the one finding happiness unattainable--should be you.”

The lids dropped just a shade over Sidwell's black eyes. ”And why, if you please, should it be more remarkable that I am unhappy than another?”

This time Florence took him up quickly. ”Because,” she answered, ”you seem to have everything one can think of that is needed to make a human being happy--wealth, position, health, ability--all the prizes other people work their lives out for or die for.” Again the voice dropped. ”I can't understand it.” She was silent a moment. ”I can't understand it,”

she repeated.

From the girl's face the man's eyes pa.s.sed to the canvas, and rested there. ”Yes,” he said slowly, ”I suppose it is difficult, almost impossible, for you to realize why I am--as I am. You have never had the personal experience--and we only understand what we have felt. The trouble with me is that I have experienced too much, felt too much. I've ceased to take things on trust. Like the youth and the key flower I've forgotten the best.” The voice paused, but the eyes still kept to the canvas.

”That picture,” he went on, ”typifies it all. I painted it, not because I'm an artist, but because in a fas.h.i.+on it expresses something I couldn't put into words, or express in any other way. When I began to climb, the object above me was not happiness but ambition. Wealth and social place, as you say, I already had. They meant nothing to me. What I wanted was to make a name in another way--as a literary man.” The dark eyes s.h.i.+fted back to the listener's face, the voice spoke more rapidly.

”I went after the thing that I wanted with all the power and tenacity that was in me. I worked with the one object in view; worked without resting, feverishly. I had successes and failures, failures and successes--a long line of both. At last, as the world puts it, I _arrived_. I got to a position where everything I wrote sold, and sold well; but in the meantime the thing above me, which had been ambition, gradually took on another shape. Perfection it was I longed for now, perfection in my art. It was not enough that the public had accepted me as I was; I was not satisfied with my work. Try as I might, nothing that I wrote ever reached my own standard in its execution. I worked harder than ever; but it was useless. I was confronting the blank wall--the wall of my natural limitations.”

The voice paused, and for a moment lowered. ”I won't say what I did then; I was--mad almost--the finger-marks of it are on the rock.”

The girl could not look longer into the speaker's eyes. She felt as if she were gazing upon a naked human soul, and turned away.

”At last,” he went on in his confession, ”I came to myself, and was forced to see things as they were. I saw that as well as I thought I had understood life I had not even grasped its meaning. I had fancied the attainment of my object the supreme end, and by every human standard I had succeeded in my purpose; but the thing I had gained was trash.

Wealth, power, notoriety--what were they? Bubbles, nothing more; bubbles that broke in the hand of him who clasped them. The real meaning and object of existence lay deeper, and had nothing whatever to do with the estimate of a person by his fellows. It was a frame of mind of the individual himself.”