forehead rested upon it, and her thoughts went stealing away through
the passages and rooms of the quiet old house. In the room next to hers
slept stolid respectability. She loved him and her, as the accident of
parentage makes love. But she must leave them. How she hated to hurt
those two, those kind, misunderstanding parents, with their old ideas,
and their love for her ever fresh! No, she could not leave them, she
could not leave them. “You will leave them at dawn,” said the thing
that was stronger than herself.
And her thoughts stood mutely listening outside the door of the room
where Claud lay. “Are you asleep?” she whispered. Or was he lying awake
and thinking, as she thought, of the night before? It all came back
to her so easily,--the wistful refrain that lingered softly on the
strings, the brilliant lights and the brilliant crowd, and suddenly the
dim garden outside the ball-room. She could see him standing there; she
could hear him speaking. No, she could never, never leave him. “You
will leave him at dawn,” said the thing that was stronger than herself.
And the dawn had come now.
She drew up the blind, and opened the window softly. The sky was one
dull grey but for the beauty in the east. A fresh, cool wind had
awakened; and she could hear the chirrup, chirrup of waking birds. And
she looked down the valley and saw the hurrying, winding river, with
the grey mists hovering upon it. “River,” she said in a whisper, “take
me to the sea. Take me to a sea that has no shores, that will flow for
ever, bearing me farther and farther away from this.”
She crept down the stairs, bare-footed, and into the drawing-room. She
drew back the heavy curtains from the windows that opened down to the
ground. Outside was the terraced garden that sloped down to the edge of
the river. Her hand was on the bolt of the window.
Suddenly she heard quick footsteps coming down the passage. In a
moment she had hidden herself behind the screen that stood against the
door. She knew those footsteps. Involuntarily her hands linked tightly
together, and her breath came quickly.
He was not so careful as she had been; he came boldly into the room,
opened the window noisily, and went out into the garden. As he went out
she caught one glimpse of his face, and she knew what he would do. She
sprang from behind the screen. “Claud, Claud!” she called. He stopped
with a sudden start, and came towards her. “What are you doing here?”
he asked, in a voice that was not like his voice.
“I,” she panted--“I came to save you, Claud. Oh, go back again!”
He would have taken her hands, but she shrank away from him. They only
stayed there for a few minutes. She talked to him and pleaded with him.
There was little need for such pleading, for he had yielded to her from
the first. He gave her the only promise that she would let him make,
and then he went back to his room.
She quietly closed the windows, and drew the curtains again. She seemed
to herself both sad and happy now, and very tired.
And Fate had an approving smile upon her bitter face. “They are two
obedient children,” she said. “They were going to take matters into
their own hands, and they resisted the temptation. Very well, they
shall be rewarded.”
So Fate sent the girl a present of a beautiful brain-fever with
pictures in it. And when it was over she fell asleep, and dreamed that
she was floating on a sea that had no shores and flowed for ever,
bearing her farther and farther away from this. And she woke no more.
And Fate thought that she should then do something for Claud. So she
killed another woman, and killed her with thirty other people in a
railway accident, thereby escaping any charge of impartial justice.
They both had loved him, and they were both dead, and he got much
happier. In the unprepared passages of this life a glimpse at the
context would be useful.
* * * * *
Poor stuff--isn’t it?
VI.
ON LOAFING; TOGETHER WITH A SECOND ANECDOTE FROM THE ENTERTAINMENTS OF
KAPNIDES.
I took my canoe the other day up that part of the river where only
Masters of Arts are allowed to drown themselves without a certificate.
None of them were doing it on the day I was there, and it was rather
dull, and the boat went to sleep with its cold nose resting on the soft
grass that edged the river.
So I just stopped there and lazed, and watched other boats go past.
There is a prevalent notion apparently that nothing which is said in
one boat can possibly be heard in another. As each boat went past,
its occupants made humorous and uncomplimentary remarks upon me. The
waiters in some of the inferior London restaurants have a similar
notion that nobody understands French. Without these little delusions
we should not be as happy as we are. In my case there seemed to be an
idea that I had got stuck in the bank and couldn’t get out again. The
impression was wrong. My boat was a little tired, and went to sleep. It
had come a long way, and I was not brute enough to wake it up again.
I watched the other boats go past. There were very fine and noble
people in some of them, but I did not see one proper loafer, and
hardly any one who had elementary notions of the right way to loaf.
There is no subject which is less understood. The spirit of asceticism,
the spirit of extravagance for its own sake, and the spirit of
utilitarianism are fast spoiling us.
The popular idea that loafing is in some way connected with laziness
should be removed. Loafing is the science of living without trouble.
There may be a time when it is easier to work than to laze. A man,
when suffering badly from Tripos, may find it less trouble to read
Thucydides than to stifle his conscience. The condition of mind is
unhealthy and morbid; but, where it exists, it would certainly be
better loafing to work than to laze. And no one objects more than the
well-trained loafer to enforced laziness. When he is in London he will
have his hat ironed at the barber’s rather than at the maker’s. In the
first case he will have to pay for it, but he will be shaved while it
is being done; in the second case no charge is made, but more than
sixpennyworth of vitality is consumed in the irritation of having to
wait. It is not the waiting which the loafer minds: it is the _having_
to wait.
There are many who would loaf, but fail from want of a little thought.
They do not take enough trouble to avoid trouble. They arrive at some
result, and half a loaf is better than no bread; but nevertheless they
do not get the perfect life.
Here is a problem in loafing.
There were four men--A, B, C, D--who rose one morning, and all found
they wanted shaving.
A was too lazy, left his chin as it was, was miserable all that day,
and simply _had_ to shave next day.
B half-way through the morning got shaved at a barber’s.
C conquered his inclinations and shaved himself at once.
D, knowing that it was impossible to grow a beard at Cambridge, and
being too lazy to shave or be shaved, had his things packed up, and
“went down.”
The vanity of the man, the strength of the beard, and the distance from
a barber are the same in each case; and it is supposed that the price
of a shave is so small that it may be disregarded: which was the best
loafer of the four?
There was not a perfect loafer among them, but the best was undoubtedly
C, and the next best was D. This will seem strange to any one who has
not studied the effect of anticipation on happiness and the reverse.
Nothing is real to us except our imagination of it. What would the
perfect loafer have done? I know; and you, my sympathetic reader, know.
But I do not think any of the others do. And it would be of no use to
tell them, because they would not believe it. The answer is too long
and elaborate to be given in any case.
It should be remembered that loafing is not the science of living for
pleasure, which is foolishness, but the science of living without
trouble. We may believe, as it is said in “The New Republic,” that
one of the two most lasting pleasures is the pleasure of saying
a neat thing neatly; yet the perfect loafer will never become a
conversationalist.
But it is of little use to preach. After all I have said about the
quantity of cushions necessary for comfort in a Canadian canoe, I
constantly see men going out with far too few. I am always hearing
complaints that we are not taught engineering or some other horribly
useful thing. But why are we not taught the art of perfect living,
which is loafing?
* * * * *
Only a few out of my many books do I ever bring on the water. Some of
the best would seem quite out of place. To-day I’ve got that curious
old translation of the “Entertainments of Kapnides” with me. I was
reminded of it by seeing those children going along in the meadow,
picking flowers. Of course you know the story well enough, but I cannot
be bothered to be original in every chapter. It is the story of the
Child Siren.
Ligeia never cared about the child from the first. It interfered with
business. It absolutely refused to play her accompaniments, and said
it could not bear to see the sailors tempted to their death. On this
particular day it had interrupted Ligeia just as she reached the most
tender, pathetic, touching part of her song. The sob of the child broke
into the sloppy waltz refrain, and spoiled the spell. And the helmsman
had turned the ship’s prow out again from the coast, and there was
another crew gone.
“You sinful little beast,” said Ligeia. “Get out of my sight.”
The child was not sorry to go. She climbed up the cliff, and then
wandered on away from the sea, where the long grass came up to her
waist. And as she wandered, the sun shone brightly, and the cool wind
blew into her hair, and the birds sang above her, and only a little
distance away sounded the drowsy murmurs of the waves.
And then for the first time in her life the passion for song came into
her. She felt that she _must_ sing. Always before she had shuddered at
the thought of song, for the song of Ligeia and others had ever brought
death with it. But now she felt that she _must_ sing, and she knew not
why; for a study of hereditary tendencies was not included in the Board
School education of that period. She had reached an open space now. The
ground was sandy, with here and there a stunted clump of grass, and in
one place a beautiful golden poppy.
“No one will hear me,” she thought, “and if I do not sing my heart will
break.” So she sang, standing there white and naked, with the sunlight
upon her, holding a lyre in her little hands.
And the music came out of her soul, but she knew not whence the words
came.
She sang that it was not sweet for the golden poppy to bloom there
alone, though the sun made it warm, and the wind was fragrant about it.
It was sweeter that she should pluck it in her little hands, which were
warm with a better life than the life of the sun, and more fragrant
than the west wind with its burden of the breath of the flowers. She
paused, and her fingers rested lightly on the lyre. Her eyes were
strained in looking up to the east, and she did not see that the poppy
had bowed its golden head and withered away.
“And it is not sweet,” she sang again, “for you, white bird, to fly on
and on, and never to rest. It is better to lie here, and let me touch
you, and fondle you, and love you.”
And out from the eastern sky flew the white bird, and it nestled for
one moment at the child’s breast, and then fell dead on the sand.
And the child saw what she had done, and she flung herself down beside
the dead bird and the withered flower, and sobbed in the foolishest way.
So the afternoon wore on, and the sea still murmured, and she still lay
there. And when it was evening a new wind sprang up from the south, and
it whispered to her,--
“A girl’s voice for a bird’s life.”
She stood up, erect, with eyes that flashed brightly, though the tears
still stood in them. She held the white bird in her little hands. “I’ll
give you my voice,” she said, as she kissed it. And the bird flew far
away from her, and the girl was dumb.
For a little while she stood there, and the old passion of song came
back to her, and tore at her heart; but she could not sing, for she was
dumb.
“And I have nothing else left,” she thought, “with which I may give
back the life to the golden poppy.”
“Crimson for golden,” the south wind called softly in her ear.
So she lay down once more, and put her pretty mouth to the dead
bloom of the poppy, and she could not speak, but she thought the
words--“Drink my blood! Drink my life, and live!”
And the dead flower drained out her life, and she grew white and
whiter, and when the moonlight fell upon her, not a tint of colour was
in her cheeks.
Out of the forest the south wind crept, and he seemed a little excited
as he saw the dead girl lying there.
“I’ll never do it again,” he swore; “if they want such things done,
they must do them themselves. Curse them!” Then he howled, for his
masters had overheard him and chastised him.
He went back to the forest, and brooded all day over what had happened.
And that night he went mad, and came forth to do one or two things on
his own account. There was the tall poppy growing by the head of the
dead girl, and it had become crimson.
The south wind gave one puff, and blew it out of the ground into the
sea.
And over the child’s body it blew the finest white sand that it could
find, until a heavy drift lay over it.
And it went away to a lonely place where a solitary tree was standing,
and in the tree sat the white bird in her nest. And he blew down the
tree, and broke the nest, and chased the bird for days and days over
the water, till at last the bird sank.
And still the wind was not satisfied. He had a faint idea that he had
not been doing much good. He ought, by rights, to have killed his
masters. He knew that, but his masters could not be killed. How they
smiled as they sat up in cloudland, and watched their angry servant
snarling over a child, a bird, and a flower! “He’s not satisfied,”
said the first. “Very few people are,” grunted a second. “You’re right
there,” snorted a third. Their conversation rarely rose above the
intellectual level of a market ordinary; but they had the power, and
could afford to be a little dull at times.
VII.
ON CAUSES; WITH AN EXCURSION ON LUCK.
I have just been lunching with a man. He is either a Socialist or a
Vegetarian--I forget which. On second thoughts, he cannot have been a
Vegetarian, because he ate cutlets. He may have been a Philatelist;
but I doubt it, and I do not fancy that it really matters. He was
something--one of those things that make a man want to lead a higher
life, and collar most of the conversation. He told me a good deal about
it, and I know that at the time I thought it was a fine thing and an
interesting thing; and I wondered why more of us did not do it; and yet
I’ve forgotten what it was. The main point, however, is not what he
was, but the fact that he was something. He had a Cause, an Enthusiasm;
something that lifted him above the common ruck, something he could
brag about, something that made it necessary for him to fill up papers,
and sign declarations, and feel as if the nation had purchased him at
his own price.
The jilted are bitter on the subject of women; the fox was malicious
about the grapes that he could not reach; Tantalus was often heard to
remark that undiluted water was not worth drinking. If a man sneer at
Causes, it is because he himself has not any Cause; and the sneer is
idle, because he might have many Causes if he liked. A man may be so
poor that he has no effects; but he may still have a Cause. Some of
them require a subscription of one shilling; but with more it suffices
that a man shall bother half a crown out of his friend. So, as the
sneer is not required for the consolation of the sneerer, it must
therefore be quite pointless and unprejudiced.
Personally, I must own that I have no Cause at present. I loaf. I am
utterly selfish. But I am going to select one soon, because I feel
sure that it will elevate me. Besides, I do not see why I should be
bored to death by those of my friends who happen to be cracked--quite
cracked--about some glorious ideal, and never be able to return their
unkindness. Reciprocity is the rule of life. You brag to me about your
picture gallery for the starving poor, and I feel at once that I must
lie to you about thought-transference. It is partly because I am just
about to ruin a Cause by my support that I feel so angry with those
selfish, flippant, trivial people who sneer at Causes. The worst point
in the sneer is its impartiality. We do not want cold, hard, uncoloured
criticism with its shameful want of bias. We want warm, tender,
muddle-headed enthusiasm, that does not quibble about merit or demerit,
that tinges the mere critical faculty with good feeling or bad feeling
as the case may be, that is full of humanity which is pigheadedness.
But no amount of sneers will prevent me from selecting a Cause to
which I may devote my life. The only thing which is likely to prevent
me is the difficulty of selection. There are so many Causes, and they
are all so good. Shall I be a Philanthropist? Help the poor, and you
help yourself. The Philanthropist is the mainstay of the nation. Or
shall I be a Dipsomaniac? Help yourself, and pass the bottle. The
Dipsomaniac is the mainstay of the Budget. It would be difficult to
choose even between these two. The Dipsomaniac sacrifices more than
the Philanthropist, and he is less self-conscious; but, on the other
hand, the Philanthropist is more popular and less truthful. If it be a
fine thing to help the poor, is it not an equally fine thing to help
the dear Budget? Perhaps the main distinction between the two is that
the Dipsomaniac accounts for most of the rum, and the Philanthropist is
mostly rum in his accounts. But who can possibly decide the difference
in their merits? And these are but two: there are thousands of others.
There once was a cuckoo-clock bird; and after the manner of cuckoos it
did not lay wind-eggs in its own nest. It deposited them in a mare’s
nest, and a stuffed phœnix hatched them dead on the Greek Kalends of
April. It was thought at the time that the mechanical, the impossible,
and the futile had never been so beautifully combined. Yet I have seen
a man repeat the lessons that the last pamphlet had wound him up to
say, deposit a handsome donation of his father’s money in the society
that published it, crow to all his friends and expect to see the world
regenerated. The combination was quite as beautiful, and yet people
sneer at Causes! What great general ever lived who had not this, or a
similar faculty for combination? And though the things combined may be
utterly bad in themselves, we should never forget how very much of them
we get for our money--or our father’s money, as the case may be.
But it is of little use to speak. There are few men in the world who
have a Cause. We are not serious enough. We give our minds to all
manner of trifles. With the exception of yourself, perhaps, I believe
that I am the only man left who really wants a Cause and is unable to
find one. With the rest it is sheer selfishness.
See me hit that fly on my boat’s nose. Flop. Missed it. All right, you
wait till it comes back again.
It seems to have aggravated that fly. It has left the boat’s nose and
gone for mine. I wonder if it knows that I do not like to hit my own
nose hard: instinct is a marvellous thing in insects. Or it may simply
be luck: luck is quite as marvellous.
I knew a man once who wanted to do serious good until luck spoilt him.
He was fond of whist, and he played a good--University-good--rubber;
but he felt that it was not profiting the world, and that he should
like to feel that he was working for humanity when he was playing for
sixpenny points.
And, firstly, it struck him that it would be a good thing to put a
small tax on trumps, and help the dear Budget. He wrote to his uncle
about it, because his uncle was in the House, and had once picked an
earwig off Mr. Gladstone’s coat, and had a good deal of influence. His
uncle wrote back to say that it was a good idea, and that he had given
it his earnest consideration; but that it was impracticable, because
the tax would be too difficult to collect.
And, at the same time, his aunt sent him a collecting-box for the
Servants’ Home in Tasmania, and asked him to place it in a prominent
position in his rooms and do his best for it.
So it occurred to him that here was a chance for him to impose a
voluntary tax upon himself, and make his whist do some serious good. He
made a vow, and repeated it aloud in these words:--“I vow that the next
time I have five trumps I will put half a crown in the collecting-box
for the Servants’ Home in Tasmania.” He told me afterwards that if
the experiment had turned out well he had intended to repeat it, and
do a good deal in one way or another for the Tasmanian servants. He
also called my attention to the wording of the vow, which he said was
important. That very night he sat down to a rubber, and started by
dealing himself five trumps. They were the five lowest trumps; but
my friend was surprised and pleased at the coincidence, stole softly
from his place, dropped half a crown into the collecting-box on the
mantelpiece, and returned without saying anything.
As it happened, one of his opponents had the remaining eight trumps,
and not one of my friend’s five made a trick. Ultimately he lost two
trebles and the rub. It was then that he recalled the exact wording of
his vow. Of course it is not an easy thing to break the bottom out of a
collecting-box for the Servants’ Home in Tasmania with a common brass
poker; but it had to be done, and he did it.
He lost his money by gambling, which shows how wrong and foolish
gambling is, and the other man won it, which proves---- What beautiful
weather it was on Bank Holiday, wasn’t it?
Still, it was a curious piece of luck.
A man once took out his purse in Fleet Street to buy a newspaper, and
out rolled a golden sovereign. He did not see that he had dropped it.
He only discovered his loss that night, and then he remembered the
exact spot where he had taken out his purse. Next day he was ill in
bed; but on the day after he said he should walk back to Fleet Street
and look for that sovereign. His friends laughed at him. They pointed
out that in so crowded a thoroughfare the coin must have been snapped
up in a moment. But the man was obstinate, and went back. He did not
find the whole coin, but he found twelve shillings and sixpence of it,
and an I.O.U. for the remainder.
Yes, that story’s a lie. Stories about luck generally are.
That wretched, silly little fly has just perched itself on my boat’s
nose again. Well, I shall hit it next time--the third time.
Have you ever noticed how luck is connected with the number three--one
of the religious numbers? The dream which comes true is always dreamed
three times. At the cocoanuts, too, you can have three shies for a
penny. There’s a mystery about these things.
There once was an adopted father, and the son who had adopted him died
without leaving a will, and the poor father was sonless and penniless.
He felt sure that his adoptive son would never have been thoughtless
enough to omit so important an arrangement as the making of a will.
However, no will was found, and the property of the rich son was put up
to auction. The poor father watched the sale with a gloomy face. There
was the Broadwood grand-piano, on which his son had taught him his
scales: he saw it disposed of to a stranger, and turned away to weep.
Then a copper coal-scuttle was put up to auction, and the poor father
fancied he heard a voice within him saying, “Buy the coal-scuttle! Buy
the coal-scuttle!”
He had but a few pounds left, and it was a Louis XIV. coal-scuttle; but
he bid for it, and ultimately secured it. With trembling hands he bore
it off to the little cottage, which now was all that he had to call a
home. Eagerly he opened the lid, and saw inside some small coal and a
pair of broken braces.
That shows luck just as much as the other stories; but luck is like the
moon--we see only one side of it. At any rate, it is quite as true as
the other two stories.
That fly again! This is the third time. I feel that it is fated. I
raise my paddle on high, and bring it down with one mighty whack and a
murmured “Bismillah!”
I have missed the fly, and split the paddle, and could do with
_something shorter_ than “Bismillah!”
Now I’m going home.
VIII.
ON SOLITUDE: WITH A THIRD ANECDOTE FROM THE “ENTERTAINMENTS” OF
KAPNIDES.