Part 3 (1/2)
”It was whilst you were there that you wrote _Studies in Character_.
Two years ago, I do not know why, you gave up your fellows.h.i.+p and came to London. You took up the editors.h.i.+p of a Review--the _Bi-Weekly_, I think--but you resigned it on a matter of principle. You have a somewhat curious reputation. The _Scrutineer_ invariably alludes to you as the Apostle of aestheticism. You are reported to have fixed views as to the conduct of life, down even to its most trifling details. That sounds unpleasant, but it probably isn't altogether true.... Don't interrupt, please! You have no intimate friends, but you go sometimes into society. You are apparently a mixture of poet, philosopher, and man of fas.h.i.+on. I have heard you spoken of more than once as a disciple of Epicurus. You also, in the course of your literary work, review novels--unfortunately for me--and six months ago you were the cause of my nearly crying my eyes out. It was perhaps silly of me to attempt, without any literary experience, to write a modern story, but my own life supplied the motive, and at least I was faithful to what I felt and knew. No one else has ever said such cruel things about my work.
”Woman-like, you see, I repay my injuries by becoming interested in you. If you had praised my book, I daresay I should never have thought of you at all. Then there is one thing more. Every day you sit in the Park close to where I stop, and--you look at me. It seems as though we had often spoken there. Shall I tell you what I have been vain enough to think sometimes?
”I have watched you from a distance, often before you have seen me.
You always sit in the same att.i.tude, your eyebrows are a little contracted, there is generally the ghost of a smile upon your lips.
You are like an outsider who has come to look upon a brilliant show. I could fancy that you have clothed yourself in the personality of that young Roman n.o.ble whose name you have made so famous, and from another age were gazing tolerantly and even kindly upon the folly and the pageantry which have survived for two thousand years. And then I have taken my little place in the procession, and I have fancied that a subtle change has stolen into your face. You have looked at me as gravely as ever, but no longer as an impersonal spectator.
”It is as though I have seemed a live person to you, and the others, mummies. Once the change came so swiftly that I smiled at you,--I could not help it,--and you looked away.”
”I remember it distinctly,” he interrupted. ”I thought the smile was for some one behind me.”
She shook her head.
”It was for you. Now I have finished. Fill in the blanks, please.”
He was content to answer her in the same strain. The effect of her complete naturalness was already upon him.
”So far as my personal history is concerned,” he told her, ”you are wonderfully correct. There is nothing more to be said about it. I gave up my fellows.h.i.+p at Oxford because I have always been convinced of the increasing narrowness and limitations of purely academic culture and scholars.h.i.+p. I was afraid of what I should become as an old man, of what I was already growing into. I wanted to have a closer grip upon human things, to be in more sympathetic relations with the great world of my fellow-men. Can you understand me, I wonder? The influences of a university town are too purely scholarly to produce literary work of wide human interest. London had always fascinated me--though as yet I have met with many disappointments. As to the _Bi-Weekly_, it was my first idea to undertake no fixed literary work, and it was only after great pressure that I took it for a time. As you know, my editors.h.i.+p was a failure.”
He paused for a moment or two, and looked steadily at her. He was anxious to watch the effect of what he was going to say.
”You have mentioned my review upon your novel in the _Bi-Weekly_. I cannot say that I am sorry I wrote it. I never attacked a book with so much pleasure. But I am very sorry indeed that you should have written it. With your gifts you could have given to the world something better than a mere psychological debauch!”
She laughed softly, but genuinely.
”I adore sincerity,” she exclaimed, ”and it is so many years since I was actually scolded. A 'psychological debauch' is delightful. But I cannot help my views, can I? My experiences were made for me! I became the creature of circ.u.mstances. No one is morally responsible for their opinions.”
”There are things,” he said, ”which find their way into our thoughts and consciousness, but of which it would be considered flagrantly bad taste to speak. And there are things in the world which exist, which have existed from time immemorial, the evil legacy of countless generations, of which it seems to me to be equally bad taste to write.
Art has a limitless choice of subjects. I would not have you sully your fine gifts by writing of anything save of the beautiful.”
”This is rank hedonism,” she laughed. ”It is a survival of your academic days.”
”Some day,” he answered, ”we will talk more fully of this. It is a little early for us to discuss a subject upon which we hold such opposite views.”
”You are afraid that we might quarrel!”
He shook his head.
”No, not that! Only as I am something of an idealist, and you, I suppose, have placed yourself amongst the ranks of the realists, we should scarcely meet upon a common basis. But will you forgive me if I say so--I am very sure that some day you will be a deserter?”
”And why?”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Friends,” she repeated, with a certain wistfulness in her tone]
”I do not know anything of your history,” he continued gently, ”nor am I asking for your confidence. Only in your story there was a personal note, which seemed to me to somehow explain the bitterness and directness with which you wrote--of certain subjects. I think that you yourself have had trouble--or perhaps a dear friend has suffered, and her grief has become yours. There was a little poison in your pen, I think. Never mind! We shall be friends, and I shall watch it pa.s.s away!”
”Friends,” she repeated with a certain wistfulness in her tone. ”But have you forgotten--what you came for?”