enough to come to the happy climax--if the climax _is_ to be a happy
one; of course it doesn't follow that it is to be anything of the sort.
I've been brought up in the bosom of too many families to believe in the
lasting quality of love. Yet they are happy, you say, those two gentle
people perpetuating spring on canvas and cambric. See, there is a small
cloud of butterflies hovering about them--one of them is panting in
fairy-like ecstasy on the poppy that decorates your Mama's hat!"
Paul rolled a cigarette and offered it to Miss. Juno, in a mild spirit
of bravado. To his delight she accepted it, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world for a girl to do. He rolled another and they
sat down together in the arbor full of contentment.
"Have you never been in love?" asked Paul suddenly.
"Yes, I suppose so. I was engaged once; you know girls instinctively
engage themselves to some one whom they fancy; they imagine themselves
in love, and it is a pleasant fallacy. My engagement might have gone on
forever, if he had contented himself with a mere engagement. He was a
young army officer stationed miles and miles away. We wrote volumes of
letters to each other--and they were clever letters; it was rather like
a seaside novelette, our love affair. He was lonely, or restless, or
something, and pressed his case. Then Mama and Gene--those ideal
lovers--put their feet down and would none of it."
"And you?"
"Of course I felt perfectly wretched for a whole week, and imagined
myself cruelly abused. You see he was a foreigner, without money; he was
heir to a title, but that would have brought him no advantages in the
household."
"You recovered. What became of him?"
"I never learned. He seemed to fade away into thin air. I fear I was not
very much in love."
"I wonder if all girls are like you--if they forget so easily?"
"You have yourself declared that the majority have neither form nor
feature; perhaps they have no feeling. How do men feel about a broken
engagement?"
"I can only speak for myself. There was a time when I felt that marriage
was the inevitable fate of all respectable people. Some one wanted me to
marry a certain some one else. I didn't seem to care much about it; but
my friend was one of those natural-born match-makers; she talked the
young lady up to me in such a shape that I almost fancied myself in love
and actually began to feel that I'd be doing her an injustice if I
permitted her to go on loving and longing for the rest of her days. So
one day I wrote her a proposal; it was the kind of proposal one might
decline without injuring a fellow's feelings in the least--and she did
it!" After a thoughtful pause he continued:
"By Jove! But wasn't I immensely relieved when her letter came; such a
nice, dear, good letter it was, too, in which she assured me there had
evidently been a mistake somewhere, and nothing had been further from
her thoughts than the hope of marrying me. So she let me down most
beautifully----"
"And offered to be a sister to you?"
"Perhaps; I don't remember now; I always felt embarrassed after that
when her name was mentioned. I couldn't help thinking what an infernal
ass I'd made of myself."
"It was all the fault of your friend."
"Of course it was; I'd never have dreamed of proposing to her if I
hadn't been put up to it by the match-maker. Oh, what a lot of miserable
marriages are brought on in just this way! You see when I like a girl
ever so much, I seem to like her too well to marry her. I think it
would be mean of me to marry her."
"Why?"
"Because--because I'd get tired after a while; everybody does, sooner or
later,--everybody save your Mama and Eugene,--and then I'd say something
or do something I ought not to say or do, and I'd hate myself for it; or
she'd say something or do something that would make me hate her. We
might, of course, get over it and be very nice to one another; but we
could never be quite the same again. Wounds leave scars, and you can't
forget a scar--can you?"
"You may scar too easily!"
"I suppose I do, and that is the very best reason why I should avoid the
occasion of one."
"So you have resolved never to marry?"
"Oh, I've resolved it a thousand times, and yet, somehow, I'm forever
meeting some one a little out of the common; some one who takes me by
storm, as it were; some one who seems to me a kind of revelation, and
then I feel as if I must marry her whether or no; sometimes I fear I
shall wake up and find myself married in spite of myself--wouldn't that
be frightful?"
"Frightful indeed--and then you'd have to get used to it, just as most
married people get used to it in the course of time. You know it's a
very matter-of-fact world we live in, and it takes very matter-of-fact
people to keep it in good running order."
"Yes. But for these drudges, these hewers of wood and drawers of water,
that ideal pair yonder could not go on painting and embroidering things
of beauty with nothing but the butterflies to bother them."
"Butterflies don't bother; they open new vistas of beauty, and they set
examples that it would do the world good to follow; the butterfly says,
'my mission is to be brilliant and jolly and to take no thought of the
morrow.'"
"It's the thought of the morrow, Miss. Juno, that spoils today for
me,--that morrow--who is going to pay the rent of it? Who is going to
keep it in food and clothes?"
"Paul, you have already lived and loved, where there is no rent to pay
and where the clothing worn is not worth mentioning; as for the food and
the drink in that delectable land, nature provides them both. I don't
see why you need to take thought of the morrow; all you have to do is to
take passage for some South Sea Island, and let the world go by."
"But the price of the ticket, my friend; where is that to come from? To
be sure I'm only a bachelor, and have none but myself to consider. What
would I do if I had a wife and family to provide for?"
"You'd do as most other fellows in the same predicament do; you'd
provide for them as well as you could; and if that wasn't sufficient,
you'd desert them, or blow your brains out and leave them to provide for
themselves."
"An old bachelor is a rather comfortable old party. I'm satisfied with
my manifest destiny; but I'm rather sorry for old maids--aren't you?"
"That depends; of course everything in life depends; some of the most
beautiful, the most blessed, the most bountifully happy women I have
ever known were old maids; I propose to be one myself--if I live long
enough!"
After an interlude, during which the bees boomed among the
honey-blossoms, the birds caroled on the boughs, and the two artists
laughed softly as they chatted at their delightful work, Paul resumed:
"Do you know, Miss. Juno, this anti-climax strikes me as being
exceedingly funny? When I met you the other day, I felt as if I'd met my
fate. I know well enough that I'd felt that way often before, and
promptly recovered from the attack. I certainly never felt it in the
same degree until I came face to face with you. I was never quite so
fairly and squarely face to face with any one before. I came here
because I could not help myself. I simply had to come, and to come at
once. I was resolved to propose to you and to marry you without a cent,
if you'd let me. I didn't expect that you'd let me, but I felt it my
duty to find out. I'm dead sure that I was very much in love with
you--and I am now; but somehow it isn't that spoony sort of love that
makes a man unwholesome and sometimes drives him to drink or to suicide.
I suppose I love you too well to want to marry you; but God knows how
glad I am that we have met, and I hope that we shall never really part
again."
"Paul!"--Miss. Juno's rather too pallid cheeks were slightly tinged with
rose; she seemed more than ever to belong to that fair garden, to have
become a part of it, in fact;--"Paul," said she, earnestly enough,
"you're an awfully good fellow, and I like you so much; I shall always
like you; but if you had been fool enough to propose to me I should have
despised you. Shake!" And she extended a most shapely hand that clasped
his warmly and firmly. While he still held it without restraint, he
added:
"Why I like you so much is because you are unlike other girls; that is
to say, you're perfectly natural."
"Most people who think me unlike other girls, think me unnatural for
that reason. It is hard to be natural, isn't it?"
"Why, no, I think it is the easiest thing in the world to be natural.
I'm as natural as I can be, or as anybody can be."
"And yet I've heard you pronounced a bundle of affectations."
"I know that--it's been said in my hearing, but I don't care in the
least; it is natural for the perfectly natural person _not_ to care in
the least."
"I think, perhaps, it is easier for boys to be natural, than for girls,"
said Miss. Juno.
"Yes, boys are naturally more natural," replied Paul with much
confidence.
Miss. Juno smiled an amused smile.
Paul resumed--"I hardly ever knew a girl who didn't wish herself a boy.
Did you ever see a boy who wanted to be a girl?"
"I've seen some who ought to have been girls--and who would have made
very droll girls. I know an old gentleman who used to bewail the
degeneracy of the age and exclaim in despair, 'Boys will be girls!'"
laughed Miss. Juno.
"Horrible thought! But why is it that girlish boys are so unpleasant
while tom-boys are delightful?"
"I don't know," replied she, "unless the girlish boy has lost the charm
of his sex, that is manliness; and the tom-boy has lost the defect of
hers--a kind of selfish dependence."
"I'm sure the girls like you, don't they?'' he added.
"Not always; and there are lots of girls I can't endure!"
"I've noticed that women who are most admired by women are seldom
popular with men; and that the women the men go wild over are little
appreciated by their own sex," said Paul.
"Yes, I've noticed that; as for myself my best friends are masculine;
but when I was away at boarding-school my chum, who was immensely
popular, used to call me Jack!"
"How awfully jolly; may I call you 'Jack' and will you be my chum?"
"Of course I will; but what idiots the world would think us."
"Who cares?" cried he defiantly. "There are millions of fellows this
very moment who would give their all for such a pal as you are--Jack!"
There was a fluttering among the butterflies; the artists had risen and
were standing waist-deep in the garden of gracious things; they were
coming to Paul and Miss. Juno, and in amusing pantomime announcing that
pangs of hunger were compelling their return to the cottage; the truth
is, it was long past the lunch hour--and a large music-box which had
been set in motion when the light repast was laid had failed to catch
the ear with its tinkling aria.
All four of the occupants of the garden turned leisurely toward the
cottage. Miss. Juno had rested her hand on Paul's shoulder and said in a
delightfully confidential way: "Let it be a secret that we are chums,
dear boy--the world is such an idiot."
"All right, Jack," whispered Paul, trying to hug himself in delight,
'Little secrets are cozy.'"
And in the scent of the roses it was duly embalmed.
III
Happy is the man who is without encumbrances--that that is if he knows
how to be happy. Whenever Paul Clitheroe found the burden of the day
becoming oppressive he cast it off, and sought solace in a change of
scene. He could always, or almost always, do this at a moment's notice.
It chanced, upon a certain occasion, when a little community of artists
were celebrating the sale of a great picture--the masterpiece of one of
their number--that word was sent to Paul to join their feast. He found
the large studio where several of them worked intermittently, highly
decorated; a table was spread in a manner to have awakened an appetite
even upon the palate of the surfeited; there were music and dancing, and
bacchanalian revels that went on and on from night to day and on to
night again. It was a veritable feast of lanterns, and not until the
last one had burned to the socket and the wine-vats were empty and the
studio strewn with unrecognizable debris and permeated with odors stale,
flat and unprofitable, did the revels cease. Paul came to dine; he
remained three days; he had not yet worn out his welcome, but he had
resolved, as was his wont at intervals, to withdraw from the world, and
so he returned to the Eyrie,--which was ever his initial step toward the
accomplishment of the longed-for end.
Not very many days later Paul received the breeziest of letters; it was
one of a series of racy rhapsodies that came to him bearing the Santa
Rosa postmark. They were such letters as a fellow might write to a
college chum, but with no line that could have brought a blush to the
cheek of modesty--not that the college chum is necessarily given to the
inditing of such epistles. These letters were signed "Jack."
"Jack" wrote to say how the world was all in bloom and the rose-garden
one bewildering maze of blossoms; how Mama was still embroidering from
nature in the midst thereof, crowned with a wreath of butterflies and
with one uncommonly large one perched upon her Psyche shoulder and
fanning her cheek with its brilliantly dyed wing; how Eugene was
reveling in his art, painting lovely pictures of the old Spanish
Missions with shadowy outlines of the ghostly fathers, long since
departed, haunting the dismantled cloisters; how the air was like the
breath of heaven, and the twilight unspeakably pathetic, and they were
all three constantly reminded of Italy and forever talking of Rome and
the Campagna, and Venice, and imagining themselves at home again and
Paul with them, for they had resolved that he was quite out of his
element in California; they had sworn he must be rescued; he must return
with them to Italy and that right early. He must wind up his affairs and
set his house in order at once and forever; he should never go back to
it again, but live a new life and a gentler life in that oldest and most
gentle of lands; they simply _must_ take him with them and seat him by
the shore of the Venetian Sea, where he could enjoy his melancholy, if
he must be melancholy, and find himself for the first time provided with
a suitable background. This letter came to him inlaid with rose petals;
they showered upon him in all their fragrance as he read the inspiring
pages and, since "Jack" with quite a martial air had issued a mandate
which ran as follows, "Order No. 19--Paul Clitheroe will, upon receipt
of this, report immediately at headquarters at Santa Rosa," he placed
the key of his outer door in his pocket and straightway departed without
more ado.
* * * * *
They swung in individual hammocks, Paul and "Jack," within the
rose-screened veranda. The conjugal affinities, Violet and Eugene, were
lost to the world in the depths of the rose-garden beyond sight and
hearing.
Said Jack, resuming a rambling conversation which had been interrupted
by the noisy passage of a bee, "That particular bee reminds me of some
people who fret over their work, and who make others who are seeking
rest, extremely uncomfortable."
Paul was thoughtful for a few moments and then remarked: "And yet it is
a pleasant work he is engaged in, and his days are passed in the fairest
fields; he evidently enjoys his trade even if he does seem to bustle
about it. I can excuse the buzz and the hum in him, when I can't always
in the human tribes."
"If you knew what he was saying just now, perhaps you'd find him as
disagreeable as the man who is condemned to earn his bread in the sweat
of his brow, and makes more or less of a row about it."
"Very likely, Jack, but these bees are born with business instincts, and
they can't enjoy loafing; they don't know how to be idle. Being as busy
as a busy bee must be being very busy!"
"There is the hum of the hive in that phrase, old boy! I'm sure you've
been working up to it all along. Come now, confess, you've had that in
hand for some little time."
"Well, what if I have? That is what writers do, and they have to do it.
How else can they make their dialogue in the least attractive? Did you
ever write a story, Jack?"
"No, of course not; how perfectly absurd!"
"Not in the least absurd. You've been reading novels ever since you were
born. You've the knack of the thing, the telling of a story, the
developing of a plot, the final wind-up of the whole concern, right at
your tongue's end."
"Paul, you're an idiot."
"Idiot, Jack? I'm nothing of the sort and I can prove what I've just
been saying to you about yourself. Now, listen and don't interrupt me
until I've said my say."
Paul caught hold of a branch of vine close at hand and set his hammock
swinging slowly. Miss. Juno settled herself more comfortably in hers,
and seemed much interested and amused.
"Now," said Paul, with a comical air of importance--"now, any one who
has anything at his tongue's end, has it, or _can_, just as well as not,
have it at his finger's end. If you can tell a story well, and you can,
Jack, you know you can, you can write it just as well. You have only to
tell it with your pen instead of with your lips; and if you will only
write it exactly as you speak it, so long as your verbal version is a
good one, your pen version is bound to be equally as good; moreover, it
seems to me that in this way one is likely to adopt the most natural
style, which is, of course, the best of all styles. Now what do you say
to that?"
"Oh, nothing," after a little pause--"however I doubt that any one, male
or female, can take up pen for the first time and tell a tale like a
practised writer."
"Of course not. The practised writer has a style of his own, a
conventional narrative style which may be very far from nature. People
in books very seldom talk as they do in real life. When people in books
begin to talk like human beings the reader thinks the dialogue either
commonplace or mildly realistic, and votes it a bore."
"Then why try to write as one talks? Why not cultivate the conventional
style of the practised writer?"
"Why talk commonplaces?" cried Paul a little tartly. "Of course most
people must do so if they talk at all, and they are usually the people
who talk all the time. But I have known people whose ordinary
conversation was extraordinary, and worth putting down in a book--every
word of it."
"In my experience," said Miss. Juno, "people who talk like books are a
burden."
"They needn't talk like the conventional book, I tell you. Let them have
something to say and say it cleverly--that is the kind of conversation
to make books of."
"What if all that we've been saying here, under the rose, as it were,
were printed just as we've said it?"
"What if it were? It would at least be natural, and we've been saying
something of interest to each other; why should it not interest a third
party?"
Miss. Juno smiled and rejoined, "I am not a confirmed eavesdropper, but
I often find myself so situated that I cannot avoid overhearing what
other people are saying to one another; it is seldom that, under such
circumstances, I hear anything that interests me."
"Yes, but if you knew the true story of those very people, all that they
may be saying in your hearing would no doubt possess an interest,
inasmuch as it would serve to develop their history."
"Our conversation is growing a little thin, Paul, don't you think so? We
couldn't put all this into a book."
"If it helped to give a clue to our character and our motives, we could.
The thing is to be interesting: if we are interesting, in ourselves, by
reason of our original charm or our unconventionality, almost anything
we might say or do ought to interest others. Conventional people are
never interesting."
"Yet the majority of mankind is conventional to a degree; the
conventionals help to fill up; their habitual love of conventionality,
or their fear of the unconventional, is what keeps them in their place.
This is very fortunate. On the other hand, a world full of people too
clever to be kept in their proper spheres, would be simply intolerable.
But there is no danger of this!"
"Yes, you are right," said Paul after a moment's pause;--"you are
interesting, and that is why I like you so well."
"You mean that I am unconventional?"
"Exactly. And, as I said before, that is why I'm so awfully fond of you.
By Jove, I'm so glad I'm not in love with you, Jack."
"So am I, old boy; I couldn't put up with that at all; you'd have to go
by the next train, you know; you would, really. And yet, if we are to
write a novel apiece we shall be obliged to put love into it; love with
a very large L."
"No we wouldn't; I'm sure we wouldn't."
Miss. Juno shook her golden locks in doubt--Paul went on
persistently:--"I'm dead sure we wouldn't; and to prove it, some day
I'll write a story without its pair of lovers; everybody shall be more
or less spoony--but nobody shall be really in love."
"It wouldn't be a story, Paul."
"It would be a history, or a fragment of a history, a glimpse of a life
at any rate, and that is as much as we ever get of the lives of those
around us. Why can't I tell you the story of one fellow--of myself for
example; how one day I met this person, and the next day I met that
person, and next week some one else comes on to the stage, and struts
his little hour and departs. I'm not trying to give my audience, my
readers, any knowledge of that other fellow. My reader must see for
himself how each of those fellows in his own way has influenced me. The
story is my story, a study of myself, nothing more or less. If the
reader don't like me he may lay me down in my cloth or paper cover, and
have nothing more to do with me. If I'm not a hero, perhaps it's not so
much my fault as my misfortune. That people are interested in me, and
show it in a thousand different ways, assures me that _my_ story, not
the story of those with whom I'm thrown in contact, is what interests
them. It's a narrow-gauge, single-track story, but it runs through a
delightful bit of country, and if my reader wants to look out of my
windows and see things as I see them and find out how they influence me
he is welcome; if he doesn't, he may get off at the very next station
and change cars for Elsewhere."
"I shall have love in my story," said Miss. Juno, with an amusing touch
of sentiment that on her lips sounded like polite comedy.
"You may have all the love you like, and appeal to the same old
novel-reader who has been reading the same sort of love story for the
last hundred years, and when you've finished your work and your reader
has stood by you to the sweet or bitter end, no one will be any the
wiser or better. You've taught nothing, you've untaught nothing----and
there you are!"
"Oh! A young man with a mission! Do you propose to revolutionize?"
"No; revolutions only roil the water. You might as well try to make
water flow up-hill as to really revolutionize anything. I'd beautify the
banks of the stream, and round the sharp turns in it, and weed it out,
and sow water-lilies, and set the white swan with her snow-flecked
breast afloat. That's what I'd do!"
"That's the art of the landscape gardener; I don't clearly see how it is
of benefit to the novelist, Paul! Now, honestly, is it?"
"You don't catch my meaning, Jack; girls are deuced dull, you know,--I
mean obtuse." Miss. Juno flushed. "I wasn't referring to the novel; I
was saying that instead of writing my all in a vain effort to
revolutionize anything in particular, I'd try to get all the good I
could out of the existing evil, and make the best of it. But let's not
talk in this vein any longer; I hate argument. Argument is nothing but a
logical or illogical set-to; begin it as politely as you please, it is
not long before both parties throw aside their gloves and go in with
naked and bloody fists; one of the two gets knocked out, but he hasn't
been convinced of anything in particular; he was not in condition, that
is all; better luck next time."
"Have you the tobacco, Paul?" asked Miss Juno, extending her hand. The
tobacco was silently passed from one hammock to the other; each rolled a
cigarette, and lit it. Paul blew a great smoke ring into the air; his
companion blew a lesser one that shot rapidly after the larger halo, and
the two were speedily blended in a pretty vapor wraith.