Part 54 (2/2)

”I know it's what happened to me,” said Neale. ”I believe it happens to lots more folks than have any idea of it. They blame it on the climate, so to speak. But the climate's all right for some one else. It's not _their_ climate, that's all. Let's start out on a hunt for our climate, will you?”

”I'm afraid it's very hard to make a guess at it,” said Marise soberly but making no comment on the ”our.”

”It surely is. It's terribly hard. The point is that n.o.body but the person himself can make any sort of a guess at it. And it's awfully hard for _him_. Wouldn't you think, when it is so hard under the best of circ.u.mstances, that folks would try to teach every youngster to make the best sort of guess possible as to where he really belongs? But they never give you any hint of that, in any of the 'education' you get in school or out of it. They seem to be in mortal terror for fear you will find it out yourself. They jam your beak down on the chalk-line and hope to goodness you'll never look up long enough to see that only your own foolishness keeps you there. Or they keep you there till you've tied yourself up with responsibilities, so you _can't_ get out. Whatever is the fas.h.i.+on of your country and of your century, that's the thing for you to do, whether or not.

”I believe that's what Europe has done for me, made me realize that our present fas.h.i.+on isn't foreordained, nor the only one natural to men.

Think of all the centuries after the Roman bridges went down, when people got along without bridges, because no provision was made to keep alive the minds that happened to be born with latent constructive powers. No, no, there must be no fooling around with G.o.dless abstract mathematical ideas, nor fiddling with compa.s.ses. A crucifix or a sword must be in every man's hand. Every man must be a fighter or a saint, if he was to be allowed by public opinion to have his necessary share of esteem and self-respect. And there are so many kinds of folks besides fighters and saints! Century after century they died without having lived, and we're walking around over their dust this minute. And yet even the fighters and the saints needed bridges! And here we are in the twentieth century, jumping the life out of anybody who isn't interested in building bridges, and hooting at him if he feels the impulse to try to be a saint. It's enough to make you tear your hair out by handfuls, isn't it?”

Another day Marise launched him off on the same theme by asking him skeptically, ”Well, suppose you could have your own way about things, what would you do to help people find their own right group and work and climate and surroundings? I don't see how there is the faintest possibility of helping them.”

”I'd start in,” said Neale, ”by suggesting to them, all through their youth, in every way possible, the idea that folks could and should move freely from the life they're born to, to another one that suits their natures. They have to do it while they're young and foot-free, don't they? I wouldn't start in by hammering them over the head with the idea that there are only one or two cla.s.ses that anybody wants to belong to.

I'd jump with all my weight on that idiotic notion that one cla.s.s is better than another, as if any cla.s.s was any good at all for you, if it's not the one you belong to naturally! I'd grease the ways to get from one to another, instead of building fences, especially if the change would mean making less money. Just think of all the natural-born carpenters and mechanics that fall by chance into professors' families, or millionaires' homes. They never get any chance in life. Just look at the hullaballo that was made about poor old Tolstoi's wanting the simplicity of a working-man's life. Just look at the fiendishly ingenious obstacles that are put in the way of any working-man's son who wants the culture and fineness and harmonious living that got so on Tolstoi's nerves. And look, even Tolstoi was just as bad as the rest.

Because _he_ happened to want simplicity and a hardy open life, didn't he start on the warpath to drive everybody else to it. Good Lord, why try to hold up one ideal as the only one for millions of men, who have a million various capacities and ideals and tastes? They'd enrich the world like a garden, with their lives, if public opinion only allowed them to be lived.”

”Do you know Rabelais,” asked Marise, ”and his motto, '_Fay ce que vouldras_?' Everybody in his day thought it fearfully immoral.”

”Oh, I suppose that every wise man since the beginning of the world has found it out in his way before now. But they're not allowed to tell the rest of us plain folks so we understand. Or maybe you don't understand anything till you find it out for yourself. I don't believe I do. Do you?”

”I'm sure,” said Marise with a quiet bitterness in her tone that burned like a drop of acid in Neale's mind, ”I'm sure that I personally haven't found out anything, nor do I understand anything whatever. Nor, till this minute did anybody ever suggest to me that there was really something worth while to find out. n.o.body--n.o.body but you--ever dreamed of asking me to go on a quest to understand. That's why I--go on, go on with it. Why do you stop?”

But that day Neale had been too much startled by the glimpse of a somber discontent under her keen bright intelligence, and too much moved by her speaking of his bringing something different into her life to ”go on.”

He tried desperately to think of some way to ask her about it, to offer to help her, to implore her to open her heart as he was opening his.

But he was stricken with shyness, with a fear lest he had misunderstood, lest he say the wrong thing. He could only look at her hopelessly. What a clumsy, heavy-handed china-smasher he was, anyhow!

But such glimpses of what lay beneath the surface did not come often, though he thought about them a great deal. He wondered if there was any connection between them and her evident habit of not talking seriously, of bantering keenly about superficial things, rather than giving any idea of what she was really thinking. Perhaps she did not trust people enough to give them any idea of what she was really thinking. Perhaps she fell into that grim mood when she thought seriously. Why should she?

And yet she was always making him talk seriously, about ideas he really cared about.

Once he said to her clumsily, ”I must bore you to death, with all these half-baked ideas of mine, when you're used to such brilliant talkers.”

She startled him with the energy and vivacity of her answer, ”Oh, I _hate_ what you call brilliant talkers. I'm so sick of them! You can't imagine what it is to me, like a long drink of clear water, to hear somebody trying to say what he really thinks.”

He asked, sincerely and navely at a loss, ”Why, why does anybody talk at all, if not to say what he thinks?”

She answered, with a certain smile of hers which always made him uneasy, a dry, ugly smile, ”Don't you realize that the real purpose of talk is to pull the wool over the eyes of the person you are talking to, to make him think you are more clever than you are, and to get something out of him for yourself that he would not let you have if he knew you were taking it?”

Then with one of her lightning changes to that melting look and smile before which he always succ.u.mbed wholly, she went on, ”The truth is that I hope all the time that in your thinking over and over there may be a hint for me, who was never taught to do the least bit of thinking for myself. So go on, let me see it all, just as it comes. Let me pick out for myself what will be of use to me.”

Well, if she wanted that, she should have it--or anything else he could give her. It was part of the reeling, glamorous intoxication into which she cast him, to hear himself going on like a stump-speaker. And she was adroit at hitting on subjects that made him talk. One day as they were amusing each other by describing their school-life, his as different from hers as if they had been brought up on different planets, football was mentioned. In no time she had him helplessly loquacious, explaining football to her. Think of having to explain football to anybody! He explained how you played it, and some of the rules, and how terribly you cared about it. And suddenly found that he had explained it to himself, that he really understood it for the first time.

”It's a kind of education that America has worked out for herself unconsciously, I believe, the American college idea of sports. No American undergraduate dreams of playing to amuse himself. He'd scorn to. _He plays to win._ That's the American idea. And it's a splendid one. To give every ounce in you to do what you set out to do--no lackadaisical dilettantism--your whole heart in it--and _go to it_!

That's the way for men to live.”

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