Part 10 (2/2)
”Because he has reproduced a h.e.l.l. But do you think that follows? Can the man who wallows with force and originality soar with force and originality too?”
”I believe he could learn to. The main thing is to possess genius in any form, the genius to imagine, to construct, to present things that seize upon the minds of men. But to possess genius is only a beginning.
We have to train it, to lead it, to coax it even, until it learns to be obedient.”
”Genius and obedience. Don't the two terms quarrel?”
”They should not. Obedience is a very magnificent thing, Cresswell, just as to have to struggle, to be obliged to fight, is a very magnificent thing.”
”Yes,” Valentine answered, thoughtfully. ”I believe you are right. But, if you are right, I have missed a great deal.”
”How do you deduce that?”
”In this way. I have never had to be obedient. I have never had to struggle.”
”Surely the latter,” the little doctor said, fixing his clear, kind eyes on Valentine's face. ”I don't think, in all my experience, that I have ever met a man who lived a fine, pure life without fixing the bayonet and using the sword at moments. There must be an occasional _melee_.”
”Indeed not; that is to say,” Valentine rather hastily added, ”as regards the pure life. For I cannot lay claim to anything fine. But I a.s.sure you that my life has been pure without a struggle.”
”Without one? Think!”
”Without one. Perhaps that is what wearies me at moments, doctor, the completeness of my coldness. Perhaps it is this lack of necessity to struggle that has at last begun to render me dissatisfied.”
”I thought you were free from that evil humour of dissatisfaction, that evil humour which crowds my consulting-rooms and wastes away the very tissues of the body.”
”I have been, until quite lately. I have been neither pessimist nor optimist--just myself, and I believe happy.”
”And what is this change? and what has it led to?”
”It was to tell you that I asked you here to-night.”
They had finished dinner, and rose from the table. Pa.s.sing through the hall of the club, they went into a huge high room, papered with books.
Valentine led the way to a secluded corner, and gave the doctor a cigar.
When he had lit it and settled himself comfortably, his rather small feet, in their marvellously polished boots, lightly crossed, his head reposing serenely on the back of his chair, Valentine continued, answering his attentive silence.
”It has led to what I suppose you would call an absurdity. But first, the change itself. A sort of dissatisfaction has been creeping over me, perhaps for a long while, I being unconscious of it. At length I became conscious. I found that I was weary of being so free from the impulse to sin--to sin, I mean, in definite, active ways, as young men sin. It seemed to me that I was missing a great deal, missing the delight sin is said to give to natures, or at least missing the invigorating necessity you have just mentioned, the necessity to fight, to wage war against impulses.”
”I understand.”
”And one night I expressed this feeling to Julian.”
”To Addison?” the doctor said, an expression of keen interest sliding into his face. ”I should much like to know how he received it.”
”He said, of course, that such a dissatisfaction was rather monstrous.”
”Was that all?”
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