Part 29 (2/2)
Florence's face turned farther away, but Sidwell did not notice. ”Then, for the last time,” he hurried on, ”the unattainable changed form for me, and became what it seems now--happiness. For a little time I think I was happy--happy in merely having made the discovery. Then came the reaction. I was as I was, as I am now--a product of my past life, of a civilization essentially artificial. In striving for a false ideal I had unfitted myself for the real when at last I discovered it.”
Unconsciously the man had come closer, and his eyes glowed. At last his apathy was shaken off, and his words came in a torrent. ”What I was then I am to-day. Mentally, I am like an inebriate, who no longer finds satisfaction in plain food and drink, but craves stimulants. I demand activity, excitement, change. In every hour of my life I realize the narrowness and artificiality of it all; but without it I am unhappy. I sometimes think Mother Nature herself has disowned me; when I try to get near her she draws away--I fancy with a shudder. Solitude of desert, of forest, or of prairie is no longer solitude to me. It is filled with voices--accusing voices; and I rush back to the crowd and the unrest of the city. Even my former pleasures seem to have deserted me. You have spoke often of accomplis.h.i.+ng big things, doing something better than anyone else can do it, as an example of pleasure supreme. If you realized what you were saying you would know its irony. You cannot do a thing better than anyone else. People, like water, strike a dead level.
No matter how you strive, dozens of others can do the thing you are doing. Were you to die, your place would be filled to-morrow, and the world would wag on just the same. There is always someone just beneath you watchfully waiting, ready to seize your place if you relax your effort for a moment. The term 'big things' is relative. To speak it is merely to refer to something you do not personally understand. Nothing seems really big to the one who does it. Nothing is difficult when you understand it. The growing of potatoes in a backyard is just as wonderful a performance as the painting of one of these pictures; it would be more so were it not so common and so necessary. The construction of a steam-engine or an electric dynamo is incomparably more remarkable than the merging of separate thousands of capital into millions of combination, yet mult.i.tudes of men everywhere can do either of the former things and are unnoticed. We wors.h.i.+p what we do not understand, and call it big; but the man in the secret realizes the mockery and smiles.”
Closer came the dark face. The black eyes, intense and flas.h.i.+ng, held the listener in their gaze.
”I said that even my pleasures seem to have deserted me. It is true. I used to like to wander about the city, to see it at its busiest, to loiter amid the hum and the roar and the ceaseless activity. I saw in it then only friendly rivalry, like a hurdle race or a football game--something pleasing and stimulating. Now it all affects me in just the reverse way. I look beneath the surface, and my heart sinks to find not friendly compet.i.tion, but a battle, where men and women fight for daily bread, where the weak are crowded and trampled upon by the strong.
In ordinary battle the maimed and the crippled are spared, but here they still fight on. Mercy or quarter is unknown. Oh, it is ghastly! I used to take pleasure in books, in the work of others; but even this satisfaction has been taken from me--except such grim satisfaction as a physician may feel at a _post mortem_. The very labor that made me a success in literature caused me to be a dissector of things around me.
To learn how others attained their ends I must needs tear their work apart and study the fragments. This habit has become a part of me. I overlook the beauty of the product in the working of the machinery that produced it. I watch the mixing of literary confections, served to the reader so that upon laying down the book he may have a good taste in his mouth. People themselves, those I meet from day to day, inevitably go through the same metamorphosis. I see them as characters in a book.
Their foibles and peculiarities are grist for my mill. Everything, everyone, when I appear, slips into the narrow confines of a printed page. I can't even spare myself. Fragments of me can be had for a price at any of the book-stalls. I've become public property--and with no one to blame but myself.”
The flow of speech halted. The speaker's face was so near now that the girl could not avoid looking at it.
”Do you wonder,” he concluded, ”that I am not happy?”
The girl looked up. The two pairs of brown eyes met. Outwardly, she who answered was calm; but in her lap the small hands were clasping each other tightly, so that the blood had left the fingers.
”No, I do not wonder now,” she answered simply.
”And you understand?”
”Yes, I--no, there's so much--Oh, take me home, please!” The sentence ended abruptly in a plea. The slender body was trembling as with cold.
”Take me home, please. I want to--to think.”
”Florence!” The word was a caress. ”Florence!”
But the girl was already on her feet. ”Don't say any more to-day! I can't stand it. Take me home!”
Sidwell looked at her closely for a moment; then the mask of conventionality, which for a time had lifted from his face, dropped once more, and he also arose. In silence, side by side, the two made their way down the long hall to the exit. Out of doors, the afternoon sun, serene and smiling, gave them a friendly greeting.
CHAPTER XIX
A VISITOR FROM THE PLAINS
”Papa,” said Florence, next morning, as they two sat alone at breakfast, her mother having reported a headache and failed to appear, ”let's go somewhere, away from folks, for a week or so.”
”Why this sudden change of front?” her father queried. ”Not being of the enemy I'm ent.i.tled to the plan of campaign, you know.”
Florence observed him steadily, and the father could not but notice how much more mature she seemed than the prairie girl of a few months ago.
”There is no change of front or plan of campaign as far as I know,” she replied. ”I simply want to get away a bit, that's all.” She returned to her neglected breakfast. ”There's such a thing as mental dyspepsia, you know, and I feel a twinge of it now and then. I think this new life is being fed to me in doses too large for my digestion.”
Mr. Baker eventually acquiesced, as anyone who knew him could have foretold he would do. His wife, also, when the plan was broached to her, hesitatingly agreed, but at the last moment balked and declined to go; so they left without her.
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