Part 4 (2/2)
”Shades of behaviour?” Nick inquired with an interest which surprised his sister, Mr. Nash's discourse striking her mainly as the twaddle of the under-world.
”Shades of impression, of appreciation,” said the young man with his explanatory smile. ”All my behaviour consists of my feelings.”
”Well, don't you show your feelings? You used to!”
”Wasn't it mainly those of disgust?” Nash asked. ”Those operate no longer. I've closed that window.”
”Do you mean you like everything?”
”Dear me, no! But I look only at what I do like.”
”Do you mean that you've lost the n.o.ble faculty of disgust?”
”I haven't the least idea. I never try it. My dear fellow,” said Gabriel Nash, ”we've only one life that we know anything about: fancy taking it up with disagreeable impressions! When then shall we go in for the agreeable?”
”What do you mean by the agreeable?” Nick demanded.
”Oh the happy moments of our consciousness--the multiplication of those moments. We must save as many as possible from the dark gulf.”
Nick had excited surprise on the part of his sister, but it was now Biddy's turn to make him open his eyes a little. She raised her sweet voice in appeal to the stranger.
”Don't you think there are any wrongs in the world--any abuses and sufferings?”
”Oh so many, so many! That's why one must choose.”
”Choose to stop them, to reform them--isn't that the choice?” Biddy asked. ”That's Nick's,” she added, blus.h.i.+ng and looking at this personage.
”Ah our divergence--yes!” Mr. Nash sighed. ”There are all kinds of machinery for that--very complicated and ingenious. Your formulas, my dear Dormer, your formulas!”
”Hang 'em, I haven't got any!” Nick now bravely declared.
”To me personally the simplest ways are those that appeal most,” Mr.
Nash went on. ”We pay too much attention to the ugly; we notice it, we magnify it. The great thing is to leave it alone and encourage the beautiful.”
”You must be very sure you get hold of the beautiful,” said Nick.
”Ah precisely, and that's just the importance of the faculty of appreciation. We must train our special sense. It's capable of extraordinary extension. Life's none too long for that.”
”But what's the good of the extraordinary extension if there is no affirmation of it, if it all goes to the negative, as you say? Where are the fine consequences?” Dormer asked.
”In one's own spirit. One is one's self a fine consequence. That's the most important one we have to do with. _I_ am a fine consequence,” said Gabriel Nash.
Biddy rose from the bench at this and stepped away a little as to look at a piece of statuary. But she had not gone far before, pausing and turning, she bent her eyes on the speaker with a heightened colour, an air of desperation and the question, after a moment: ”Are you then an aesthete?”
”Ah there's one of the formulas! That's walking in one's hat! I've _no_ profession, my dear young lady. I've no _etat civil_. These things are a part of the complicated ingenious machinery. As I say, I keep to the simplest way. I find that gives one enough to do. Merely to be is such a _metier_; to live such an art; to feel such a career!”
Bridget Dormer turned her back and examined her statue, and her brother said to his old friend: ”And to write?”
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