The Beautiful and the Damned Part 22

"I reached maturity under the impression that I was gathering the experience to order my life for happiness. Indeed, I accomplished the not unusual feat of solving each question in my mind long before it presented itself to me in life--and of being beaten and bewildered just the same.

"But after a few tastes of this latter dish I had had enough. Here! I said, Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a pa.s.sive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against. So I wrapped myself in what I thought was my invulnerable scepticism and decided that my education was complete. But it was too late. Protect myself as I might by making no new ties with tragic and predestined humanity, I was lost with the rest. I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death."

He broke off to give emphasis to his last observation--after a moment he yawned and resumed.

"I suppose that the beginning of the second phase of my education was a ghastly dissatisfaction at being used in spite of myself for some inscrutable purpose of whose ultimate goal I was unaware--if, indeed, there was an ultimate goal. It was a difficult choice. The schoolmistress seemed to be saying, 'We're going to play football and nothing but football. If you don't want to play football you can't play at all--'

"What was I to do--the playtime was so short!

"You see, I felt that we were even denied what consolation there might have been in being a figment of a corporate man rising from his knees. Do you think that I leaped at this pessimism, grasped it as a sweetly smug superior thing, no more depressing really than, say, a gray autumn day before a fire?--I don't think I did that. I was a great deal too warm for that, and too alive.

"For it seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature--nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident had brought us to where we could fly in her face. She had invented ways to rid the race of the inferior and thus give the remainder strength to fill her higher--or, let us say, her more amusing--though still unconscious and accidental intentions. And, actuated by the highest gifts of the enlightenment, we were seeking to circ.u.mvent her. In this republic I saw the black beginning to mingle with the white--in Europe there was taking place an economic catastrophe to save three or four diseased and wretchedly governed races from the one mastery that might organize them for material prosperity.

"We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper--and presently the breed of the leper is the salt of the earth. If any one can find any lesson in that, let him stand forth."

"There's only one lesson to be learned from life, anyway," interrupted Gloria, not in contradiction but in a sort of melancholy agreement.

"What's that?" demanded Maury sharply.

"That there's no lesson to be learned from life."

After a short silence Maury said: "Young Gloria, the beautiful and merciless lady, first looked at the world with the fundamental sophistication I have struggled to attain, that Anthony never will attain, that d.i.c.k will never fully understand."

There was a disgusted groan from the apple-barrel. Anthony, grown accustomed to the dark, could see plainly the flash of Richard Caramel's yellow eye and the look of resentment on his face as he cried: "You're crazy! By your own statement I should have attained some experience by trying."

"Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas? Struggling in a laboratory through weary years for one iota of relative truth in a ma.s.s of wheels or a test tube--"

"Have you?"

Maury paused, and in his answer, when it came, there was a measure of weariness, a bitter overnote that lingered for a moment in those three minds before it floated up and off like a bubble bound for the moon.

"Not I," he said softly. "I was born tired--but with the quality of mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria--to that, for all my talking and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have added not one jot."

In the distance a deep sound that had been audible for some moments identified itself by a plaintive mooing like that of a gigantic cow and by the pearly spot of a headlight apparent half a mile away. It was a steam-driven train this time, rumbling and groaning, and as it tumbled by with a monstrous complaint it sent a shower of sparks and cinders over the platform.

"Not one jot!" Again Maury's voice dropped down to them as from a great height. "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circ.u.mstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe--why, intelligence never built a steam engine! Circ.u.mstances built a steam engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circ.u.mstances.

"I could quote you the philosophy of the hour--but, for all we know, fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole France--" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know--the tremendous importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that importance to myself--these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born knowing these things and the painful futility of trying to know anything else.

"Well, I started to tell you of my education, didn't I? But I learned nothing, you see, very little even about myself. And if I had I should die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen--as the wisest men have done since--oh, since the failure of a certain matter--a strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.

"Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief--that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another: "'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities wors.h.i.+pped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over--and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world.

"'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.'

"So the men did, and they died.

"But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible."

When he concluded there was no comment. Some damp languor sleeping on the air of night seemed to have bewitched them all.

"As I said, I started on the story of my education. But my high-b.a.l.l.s are dead and the night's almost over, and soon there'll be an awful jabbering going on everywhere, in the trees and the houses, and the two little stores over there behind the station, and there'll be a great running up and down upon the earth for a few hours--Well," he concluded with a laugh, "thank G.o.d we four can all pa.s.s to our eternal rest knowing we've left the world a little better for having lived in it."

A breeze sprang up, blowing with it faint wisps of life which flattened against the sky.

"Your remarks grow rambling and inconclusive," said Anthony sleepily. "You expected one of those miracles of illumination by which you say your most brilliant and pregnant things in exactly the setting that should provoke the ideal symposium. Meanwhile Gloria has shown her far-sighted detachment by falling asleep--I can tell that by the fact that she has managed to concentrate her entire weight upon my broken body."

"Have I bored you?" inquired Maury, looking down with some concern.

"No, you have disappointed us. You've shot a lot of arrows but did you shoot any birds?"

"I leave the birds to d.i.c.k," said Maury hurriedly. "I speak erratically, in disa.s.sociated fragments."

"You can get no rise from me," muttered d.i.c.k. "My mind is full of any number of material things. I want a warm bath too much to worry about the importance of my work or what proportion of us are pathetic figures."

Dawn made itself felt in a gathering whiteness eastward over the river and an intermittent cheeping in the near-by trees.

"Quarter to five," sighed d.i.c.k; "almost another hour to wait. Look! Two gone." He was pointing to Anthony, whose lids had sagged over his eyes. "Sleep of the Patch family--"

But in another five minutes, despite the amplifying cheeps and chirrups, his own head had fallen forward, nodded down twice, thrice....

Only Maury n.o.ble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no one now--on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there would be a girl of another cla.s.s whose whole life he was; these were the things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think.

There was the sun, letting down great glowing ma.s.ses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm--the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoa.r.s.ely at the summer morning.

CHAPTER III.

THE BROKEN LUTE.

It is seven-thirty of an August evening. The windows in the living room of the gray house are wide open, patiently exchanging the tainted inner atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile, as to hint already of a summer laid away in time. But August is still proclaimed relentlessly by a thousand crickets around the side-porch, and by one who has broken into the house and concealed himself confidently behind a bookcase, from time to time shrieking of his cleverness and his indomitable will.

The room itself is in messy disorder. On the table is a dish of fruit, which is real but appears artificial. Around it are grouped an ominous a.s.sortment of decanters, gla.s.ses, and heaped ash-trays, the latter still raising wavy smoke-ladders into the stale air, the effect on the whole needing but a skull to resemble that venerable chromo, once a fixture in every "den," which presents the appendages to the life of pleasure with delightful and awe-inspiring sentiment.

After a while the sprightly solo of the supercricket is interrupted rather than joined by a new sound--the melancholy wail of an erratically fingered flute. It is obvious that the musician is practising rather than performing, for from time to time the gnarled strain breaks off and, after an interval of indistinct mutterings, recommences.

Just prior to the seventh false start a third sound contributes to the subdued discord. It is a taxi outside. A minute's silence, then the taxi again, its boisterous retreat almost obliterating the sc.r.a.pe of footsteps on the cinder walk. The door-bell shrieks alarmingly through the house.

From the kitchen enters a small, fatigued j.a.panese, hastily b.u.t.toning a servant's coat of white duck. He opens the front screen-door and admits a handsome young man of thirty, clad in the sort of well-intentioned clothes peculiar to those who serve mankind. To his whole personality clings a well-intentioned air: his glance about the room is compounded of curiosity and a determined optimism; when he looks at Tana the entire burden of uplifting the G.o.dless Oriental is in his eyes. His name is FREDERICK E. PARAMORE. He was at Harvard with ANTHONY, where because of the initials of their surnames they were constantly placed next to each other in cla.s.ses. A fragmentary acquaintance developed--but since that time they have never met.

Nevertheless, PARAMORE enters the room with a certain air of arriving for the evening.

Tana is answering a question.

TANA: (Grinning with ingratiation) Gone to Inn for dinnah. Be back half-hour. Gone since ha' past six.

PARAMORE: (Regarding the gla.s.ses on the table) Have they company?

TANA: Yes. Company. Mistah Caramel, Mistah and Missays Barnes, Miss Kane, all stay here.

PARAMORE: I see. (Kindly) They've been having a spree, I see.

TANA: I no un'stan'.

PARAMORE: They've been having a fling.

TANA: Yes, they have drink. Oh, many, many, many drink.

PARAMORE: (Receding delicately from the subject) "Didn't I hear the sounds of music as I approached the house"?

TANA:(With a spasmodic giggle)Yes, I play.

PARAMORE: One of the j.a.panese instruments.

(He is quite obviously a subscriber to the "National Geographic Magazine.") TANA: I play flu-u-ute, j.a.panese flu-u-ute.

PARAMORE: What song were you playing? One of your j.a.panese melodies?

TANA:(His brow undergoing preposterous contraction) I play train song. How you call?--railroad song. So call in my countree. Like train. It go so-o-o; that mean whistle; train start. Then go so-o-o; that mean train go. Go like that. Vera nice song in my countree. Children song.

PARAMORE: It sounded very nice. (It is apparent at this point that only a gigantic effort at control restrains Tana from rus.h.i.+ng up-stairs for his post cards, including the six made in America.) TANA: I fix high-ball for gentleman?

PARAMORE: "No, thanks. I don't use it". (He smiles.) (TANA withdraws into the kitchen, leaving the intervening door slightly ajar. From the crevice there suddenly issues again the melody of the j.a.panese train song--this time not a practice, surely, but a performance, a l.u.s.ty, spirited performance.

The phone rings. TANA, absorbed in his harmonics, gives no heed, so PARAMORE takes up the receiver.) PARAMORE: h.e.l.lo.... Yes.... No, he's not here now, but he'll be back any moment.... b.u.t.terworth? h.e.l.lo, I didn't quite catch the name.... h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo! ... Huh!

(The phone obstinately refuses to yield up any more sound. Paramore replaces the receiver.

At this point the taxi motif re-enters, wafting with it a second young man; he carries a suitcase and opens the front door without ringing the bell.) MAURY: (In the hall) "Oh, Anthony! Yoho"! (He comes into the large room and sees PARAMORE) How do?

PARAMORE: (Gazing at him with gathering intensity) Is this--is this Maury n.o.ble?

MAURY: "That's it". (He advances, smiling, and holding out his hand) How are you, old boy? Haven't seen you for years.

(He has vaguely a.s.sociated the face with Harvard, but is not even positive about that. The name, if he ever knew it, he has long since forgotten. However, with a fine sensitiveness and an equally commendable charity PARAMORE recognizes the fact and tactfully relieves the situation.) PARAMORE: You've forgotten Fred Paramore? We were both in old Unc Robert's history cla.s.s.

MAURY: No, I haven't, Unc--I mean Fred. Fred was--I mean Unc was a great old fellow, wasn't he?

PARAMORE: (Nodding his head humorously several times) Great old character. Great old character.

MAURY: (After a short pause) Yes--he was. Where's Anthony?

PARAMORE: The j.a.panese servant told me he was at some inn. Having dinner, I suppose.

MAURY: (Looking at his watch) Gone long?

PARAMORE: I guess so. The j.a.panese told me they'd be back shortly.

MAURY: Suppose we have a drink.

PARAMORE: No, thanks. I don't use it. (He smiles.) MAURY: Mind if I do? (Yawning as he helps himself from a bottle) What have you been doing since you left college?

PARAMORE: Oh, many things. I've led a very active life. Knocked about here and there. (His tone implies anything front lion-stalking to organized crime.) MAURY: Oh, been over to Europe?

PARAMORE: No, I haven't--unfortunately.

MAURY: I guess we'll all go over before long.

PARAMORE: Do you really think so?

MAURY: Sure! Country's been fed on sensationalism for more than two years. Everybody getting restless. Want to have some fun.

PARAMORE: Then you don't believe any ideals are at stake?

MAURY: Nothing of much importance. People want excitement every so often.

PARAMORE: (Intently) It's very interesting to hear you say that. Now I was talking to a man who'd been over there---- (During the ensuing testament, left to be filled in by the reader with such phrases as "Saw with his own eyes," "Splendid spirit of France," and "Salvation of civilization," MAURY sits with lowered eyelids, dispa.s.sionately bored.) MAURY: (At the first available opportunity) By the way, do you happen to know that there's a German agent in this very house?

PARAMORE: (Smiling cautiously) Are you serious?

MAURY: Absolutely. Feel it my duty to warn you.

PARAMORE: (Convinced) A governess?

MAURY: (In a whisper, indicating the kitchen with his thumb) Tana! That's not his real name. I understand he constantly gets mail addressed to Lieutenant Emile Tannenbaum.

PARAMORE: (Laughing with hearty tolerance) You were kidding me.

MAURY: I may be accusing him falsely. But, you haven't told me what you've been doing.

PARAMORE: For one thing--writing.

MAURY: Fiction?

PARAMORE: No. Non-fiction.

MAURY: What's that? A sort of literature that's half fiction and half fact?

PARAMORE: Oh, I've confined myself to fact. I've been doing a good deal of social-service work.

MAURY: Oh!