Part 5 (1/2)
”To write? Oh I shall never do it again!”
”You've done it almost well enough to be inconsistent. That book of yours is anything but negative; it's complicated and ingenious.”
”My dear fellow, I'm extremely ashamed of that book,” said Gabriel Nash.
”Ah call yourself a bloated Buddhist and have done with it!” his companion exclaimed.
”Have done with it? I haven't the least desire to have done with it. And why should one call one's self anything? One only deprives other people of their dearest occupation. Let me add that you don't _begin_ to have an insight into the art of life till it ceases to be of the smallest consequence to you what you may be called. That's rudimentary.”
”But if you go in for shades you must also go in for names. You must distinguish,” Nick objected. ”The observer's nothing without his categories, his types and varieties.”
”Ah trust him to distinguis.h.!.+” said Gabriel Nash sweetly. ”That's for his own convenience; he has, privately, a terminology to meet it. That's one's style. But from the moment it's for the convenience of others the signs have to be grosser, the shades begin to go. That's a deplorable hour! Literature, you see, is for the convenience of others. It requires the most abject concessions. It plays such mischief with one's style that really I've had to give it up.”
”And politics?” Nick asked.
”Well, what about them?” was Mr. Nash's reply with a special cadence as he watched his friend's sister, who was still examining her statue.
Biddy was divided between irritation and curiosity. She had interposed s.p.a.ce, but she had not gone beyond ear-shot. Nick's question made her curiosity throb as a rejoinder to his friend's words.
”That, no doubt you'll say, is still far more for the convenience of others--is still worse for one's style.”
Biddy turned round in time to hear Mr. Nash answer: ”It has simply nothing in life to do with shades! I can't say worse for it than that.”
Biddy stepped nearer at this and drew still further on her courage.
”Won't mamma be waiting? Oughtn't we to go to luncheon?”
Both the young men looked up at her and Mr. Nash broke out: ”You ought to protest! You ought to save him!”
”To save him?” Biddy echoed.
”He had a style, upon my word he had! But I've seen it go. I've read his speeches.”
”You were capable of that?” Nick laughed.
”For you, yes. But it was like listening to a nightingale in a bra.s.s band.”
”I think they were beautiful,” Biddy declared.
Her brother got up at this tribute, and Mr. Nash, rising too, said with his bright colloquial air: ”But, Miss Dormer, he had eyes. He was made to see--to see all over, to see everything. There are so few like that.”
”I think he still sees,” Biddy returned, wondering a little why Nick didn't defend himself.
”He sees his 'side,' his dreadful 'side,' dear young lady. Poor man, fancy your having a 'side'--you, you--and spending your days and your nights looking at it! I'd as soon pa.s.s my life looking at an advertis.e.m.e.nt on a h.o.a.rding.”
”You don't see me some day a great statesman?” said Nick.
”My dear fellow, it's exactly what I've a terror of.”
”Mercy! don't you admire them?” Biddy cried.