Part 39 (2/2)
”That sort of happiness will do very well for a while--living in your imagination and all that. But what is it going to lead to?”
”Lead to? It is enough in itself.”
”You can't live on moons.h.i.+ne for ever. I told you before that I understood your particular form of idealism; but although I believe that man will certainly be happier when he lives more within that structure of infinite variety, himself, less and less dependent upon the aggregations Life has devised for amusing and tormenting him, still we must reach that condition by very slow degrees; if we take it with a leap the result will be an ugly and disastrous selfishness. If you can prove to the world that you have found happiness in the cultivation of the higher faculties, you will serve a purpose in life, for you will encourage a certain cla.s.s of women born with such serious lacks, in the health or the affections, or even in the power to endure the mere monotonies of married life, that they are better off alone; but who often feel themselves a failure and drop into morbidity and decay. That means contact for your highness, however. If you sit down by your marsh for the rest of your life and dream, you miss the whole point. And when time forced you to realize the uncompromising selfishness of such a life--where would your happiness be then?”
”Now you are talking by the book. Why are we so sure that it is a part of our duty to make others happy? That may be but one more superst.i.tion to rout. If we manage to be happy ourselves, and through the exercise of the higher faculties alone, we may be serving an end decreed from the beginning; by some subtle process, as incomprehensible as even the commonplaces of life, add to the sum of happiness, and so serve life far better than by scattering ourselves all over the surface. But I told you something of this before and have not forgotten the result.”
”Neither have I, but one can get accustomed to any idea. What I want to know is--do you leave youth entirely out of your calculations?”
”Oh--youth! Well--it is possible I might not if I had not lived through its tragedy already--for which I am thankful.”
”You have had romance and tragedy, and you are a very experienced young woman, but you have not had happiness,” said Gwynne, shrewdly. ”That, too, is a birthright, and sooner or later you will demand it. Social conquests have palled in seven days. In time chickens also will cease to satisfy, and books, and dreams, and sunsets, and liberty. The peculiar conditions and events of your first quarter-century demanded an interval before beginning again; and filled with all you have deliberately chosen--all, that is, but chickens, which are a work not of G.o.d but of supererogation. But intervals come to an end like other things. When this finishes you will suddenly demand happiness--the real thing.”
”You mean that I will fall in love again, I suppose.”
”I mean that you will love.”
”Now you are hair-splitting. Are you qualifying to contribute fictionized essays to the American magazines?”
”I am stating facts and don't care a hang about sarcasm. Just now you have spasms when some aspect of nature exalts you. I have watched you with considerable amus.e.m.e.nt. But it is natural enough--merely a sort of forerunner of what will happen when nature establishes her currents with your own interior landscapes. Then there will be earthquakes and hurricanes--your cultivated realism and inherent romanticism will become hopelessly mixed, and you will be really happy.”
”More likely, such moments are the forerunners of a state which shall be an eternal exaltation. Personal immortality is only to be desired if it insures the lifting of our faculties to their highest power of expression. Anything else would mean a boundless ennui. As for my present inertia, is it not the duty of some few to pa.s.s their lives in appreciation of the past? Heaven knows there are enough looking out for the present. And I am sick of the superst.i.tion that love is all. I told you before that the happiness of women, at least, depended upon relegating it to its proper place. Once I regretted that Prestage did not die while I still believed in him, so that I could have lived my life with his memory, as Concha Arguello did with Rezanov's. But even that would have been a species of slavery, and I should have chafed at the bond; never had this divine sense of freedom.”
”I pa.s.s over the majority of your arguments--I must sleep on them. But when have I maintained that love was all? If that were my doctrine should I be reading my head off, investing in Cla.s.s A buildings, talking politics to farmers, and revolving plans for the conquest of California?
I should be making love to you. That is what I should like to do, however, and what I propose to do when I am ready.”
”Are you in love with me?”
”I hardly know, but I suspect that I shall be. If I deliberately choose you now as my life partner, you cannot complain that I am the mere slave of pa.s.sion. I don't fancy I look it at this moment. I have had those fevers, and am willing to admit their brevity. No doubt if I had not been so occupied of late I should have had another. As it is, I am blessedly permitted to foresee it; and to keep my brain clear enough meanwhile to think for both of us.”
”Very cousinly, but I can think for myself.”
She had risen, but he stood with his back against the door for a moment.
”Another thing--” he said. ”You need a buffer. You have remarkable powers, and you might realize some of your dreams if the prospect of initiatives did not alarm your secretly feminine soul. The two of us together could conquer the world. Now go ahead and dream until dreams pall and I have more time.”
x.x.xVIII
”Ibsen will live, not as a dramaturgist, but as the greatest professor of dramaturgy the world has ever known.” ”Only one way left to be original--never write about Italy.” ”When we say that a man is a high type what we really mean is that he is the great exception to the type.”
”That progressive type of bore--the man with a grievance.” ”San Francisco is the cradle and the grave of more genius than ever was packed into any city, ancient or modern. It is like our money, 'easy come, easy go.'” ”And more h.e.l.l.” ”An epigram is only to be forgiven when a memorable thought is packed into a phrase that sticks.”
As Isabel and Gwynne escaped from the little Italian restaurant into the blare and glare of the street, their heads were ringing with much brilliant if somewhat affected talk. They had sat with their hosts at the ”newspaper table.” It was the fas.h.i.+on at the moment to express life in paradoxes, and with a nice adjustment of commas and colons. There had been no talk of politics in this Bohemia, nor of society; nor yet of other subjects that commanded its attention when the long day gave place to the shorter night: the women present were respectable, many of them wives, and not a few went into society when they chose. There was much talk of the fads with which the world was ridden, never a reference to the literature or art of the past; and there was something almost pathetic in the prostration of these brilliant young men, who had never crossed the boundaries of their State, to European groups, some of whose members were already pa.s.se, but still loomed gigantic from the far edge of the Pacific. Few American writers are popular in California, however they may be read; and the reason, no doubt, lies in the mixed blood to which all Europe has contributed, and which is full of affinities little experienced by the rest of the country. Even the famous cooking is un-American. The French, Italian, and Spanish restaurants are exactly what they claim to be; their very atmosphere might have been imported.
The many that prefer restaurant life even to the excellent cooking to be found in the average home, give their highest preference to the legacy of the Spaniard; they eat hot sauces and Chile peppers with every dish; and _tamales_ are sold on the street corners. This is enough to make the San Franciscan an exotic, and it contributes in a great measure to his fatal content. These young men had no real knowledge of the world, but they had their own world, and were by no means provincial in the accepted sense. But the majority were satisfied to coruscate to an ever applauding audience--for a few years; with money easily got and delightfully spent; to regard Life as a game, not as a business.
Afterwards the rut, the friendly pocket--nowhere so open as in San Francisco--a job now and then, more than one way of forgetting that in times gone by a fellow was one of those ”coming men” the wanton heedless city turns out with the same profusion that gorges her markets and flaunts her sun for eight months of the year.
To Gwynne they seemed like some primitive race flouris.h.i.+ng before its time. He no longer argued with them, for he had the disadvantage of being a scholar, and it interfered with his tolerance of fads on the rampage; but they saddened him, made him feel almost elderly--and abominably healthy. To-night, although some of the complexions of these young men were green, and others red, they had been brilliant without undue hilarity. They intended to get very drunk later on--if only as a compliment to the New Year--but they were far too accomplished for precipitancy. Stone, alone, refilled his gla.s.s so often that Gwynne announced abruptly that they were missing the fun in the street, and Paula promptly took possession of his arm. Stone followed, rumbling disapproval, with Isabel. This arrangement was not to Gwynne's taste, but he had developed subtlety in such matters and bided his time.
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