LITTLE DINNERS
WITH THE SPHINX
AND
OTHER PROSE FANCIES
LITTLE DINNERS
WITH THE SPHINX
AND
OTHER PROSE FANCIES
By
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
New York
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY,
NEW YORK.
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1907.
TO EVA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Little Dinners with the Sphinx
1. On the Edge of the Starlight 3
2. The Mysticism of Gastronomy 9
3. On the Wearing of Opals 19
4. New Loves for Old 29
II. The Death of the Poet 41
III. The Butterfly of Dreams 79
IV. My Castle in Spain 105
V. Once-upon-a-time 121
VI. The Little Joys of Margaret 151
VII. What’s in a Name 175
VIII. Revisiting the Glimpses of the Moon 195
IX. Eva, the Woodland and I 231
X. The Dream Documents 253
Little Dinners With the Sphinx
I
ON THE EDGE OF THE STARLIGHT
The Sphinx and I had not met for quite a long time. We hadn’t dined
together for--O I should think--four years; and it was strange to both
of us to be sitting opposite to each other once more in the friendly
glitter of a little dinner table--that glitter which is made up of
skillfully mitigated electric light falling on various delicate objects
of pleasure: the slim, fluted crystal of the wineglasses, the lustral
linen, the tinkling ice in its silver jug, the moon-white roses, and the
opals on the Sphinx’s long fingers.
We were both a trifle conscious, and we looked at each other half
inquiringly across the table.
“Are we the same people?” presently asked the Sphinx.
“Of course, you are, my dear Sphinx; but I hope, for your sake, that I
am not.”
“For my sake?”
“I mean that it is a poor compliment to a woman one adores always to
bring the same man to dinner.”
“I see--you have haven’t changed a bit.... Yes, you have,” she added,
after a pause. “Why, you’re growing grey. How have you managed that at
your age?”
“‘Sorrows like mine would blanch an angel’s hair,’” I answered, with
pathos, quoting from a noble sonnet of our own time.
“Sorrows! If you said pleasures, you would be nearer the mark. It is
pleasure, not sorrow, that makes the butterfly’s wings turn grey.”
“One’s sorrows are one’s pleasures--are they not?” I retorted.
“Yes!” said the Sphinx, wistfully, “you are right. ‘Of our tears she
hath made us pearls, and of our sobbing she hath made unto us a
song’--who said that? Was it you?”
“Very likely,” said I.
“Yes! you are right,” she continued. “Our pleasures we could spare--but
not our sorrows--our beautiful sorrows.”
“Sorrows,” I ventured, “are the opals of the soul.”
Then the Sphinx stretched her opalled hand across the table and patted
mine and said, “You dear,” just as in the old days.
The tears came to my eyes.
“Mark your influence!” I said. “That is the first good thing I have said
for four years.”
“What appalling faithfulness!” laughed the Sphinx. “But I would rather a
man were faithful to me with his brain than with his heart. It means
more. Faithful hearts are comparatively common--but when a man is
faithful with his brain....”
“His hair turns grey,” I got in.
“Yes! Now tell me about your grey hair. I am sure you have some
beautiful explanation to offer, some picturesque excuse, some
vindicatory fancy.”
“Suppose I were to say that I grew it grey to please a girl who thought
she would like it so?”
“I should believe you--for I never knew a man who would do so much for a
woman as you!” answered the Sphinx, laughing. “And did--or rather
does--she like it?”
“No,” I answered sadly, “she thought she would, but she doesn’t. She
wants it brown again, but it is too late.”
“It will always be brown for me,” said the Sphinx.
Sentiment threatened us a moment, but the April cloud passed without
falling.
“Tell me another reason,” asked the Sphinx, “you have plenty more I am
sure.”
“To tell the truth there are several explanations,” I continued gravely.
“I hardly know which to choose. The scientific one is probably this:
Nature is beginning to retrench. She cannot afford any longer to keep up
so expensive a house of life. Her bank account of vitality is no longer
what it was. Time was when she poured her blood through one’s veins like
a spendthrift, and kept up ever so fine and flashing a style. One’s
members lived like princes in their pride, and there was colour and dash
for all and to spare. But now nature feels that she can no longer afford
this prodigality--she feels, as I said, the need of retrenchment. So,
looking about the house of life, she says to herself: ‘Here I can spare
a little,’ and ‘We can dispense with this,’ and ‘We can no longer afford
that.’ Then, coming to the hair, she says sorrowfully: ‘This brown
colour is very expensive, I can no longer afford it. We must be content
with grey.’ Soon she will find the eyes too expensive to keep up in
their present brightness, and the ears will have to be content with a
reduced supply of sound....”
“For Heaven’s sake, stop,” said the Sphinx. “You give one the creeps.
You are as bad as ‘Everyman,’ or ‘Holbein’s Dance of Death.’”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you the real reason,” I rejoined. “Two winters
ago I played snowball with a little child I love. She managed to hit me
here on my temple, and it hasn’t melted yet.”
“Just one more reason!”
“Well, the true reason is,” I said, really solemnly this time, “that I
am passing out of the sunlight into the starlight.... Will you come with
me?”
“I will,” said the Sphinx, after a pause, taking my hand.
II
THE MYSTICISM OF GASTRONOMY
“Even our digestion is governed by angels!” said William Blake--one of
those picturesque phrases with which he was wont to flash on us the
mystery that abides eternally just under the surface of the familiar. I
have often recalled the phrase as I sat at dinner with the Sphinx; and
not, of course, in any trivial, punning spirit, but seriously in regard
to that sensitive mood of harmony, and of keen exhilarating intimacy,
which seems to come over us when we thus sit at dinner together as it
never comes at any other time.
“Why is it,” I asked her recently, after our old friendly waiter had
welcomed us with the smile that we really believe he keeps just for us,
and had seen us comfortably settled in our own quiet corner, “why is it
that I always feel happier with you at dinner than at any other time?”
“You have the dinner as well,” answered the Sphinx, laughing, “on other
occasions you have only--me.”
“Admitting the profundity of your explanation,” I rejoined, “I think
there must be a still deeper one--but what it is I cannot say. For
instance, we are happy together when we take a walk through the woods,
or sit through the afternoon in the old garden, or read a book together.
How happy we have been on the sea together, with no one but we two under
the blue sky. Yet I have never felt so near to you, never so at harmony
with you, as when we have sat at this table and looked into each other’s
eyes over our wineglasses. Why is it?”
“Just what I say! Very evidently, by your own showing--it is dinner that
makes the difference. Not in the woods you say, not in the garden, not
with books, not on the sea--not anywhere but at dinner. _Ergo_, the
only possible explanation is--dinner.”
“I am inclined to think you are right,” said I, “if only you will give
the term dinner an inclusive significance, and not ascribe the whole
miracle to the cooking.”
“The cooking has much to do with it, I am convinced,” persisted the
Sphinx, looking more radiantly spiritual than I ever saw her look
before. “It is so good that its part in the process passes to some
extent unnoticed--though I trust the excellence of these mushrooms is
not lost upon you. Were the _chef_ to be changed for the worse, I’m not
so sure you would find that harmony you speak of.”
“Then I have owed more to the _chef_ than I have ever realised,” said I,
raising my glass to her, and making that salute to her eyes which,
however gay our mood, has always a curiously grave, almost sacramental,
quality. “Still,” I continued presently, “I am not entirely convinced.
Your argument has a negative force, I admit. Bad cooking, like any
other extraneous annoyance, might, of course, distract us a little, and
so superficially interrupt our harmony; but it is one thing to admit
that, and another to say that it follows because bad cooking might
destroy our harmony, good cooking therefore makes it. No, I am convinced
that the miracle comes of a conflux of pleasant influences, good food
and wine being amongst them, which never entirely meet together except
at the dinner-table. First of all, the day is over. Its work is behind
us. Its anxiety is locked up for the day. We meet the good hour in an
attitude of gayety, and we meet it in an atmosphere of other gay people
who have come to meet it in the same spirit. Then we meet it refreshed
by the lustration of the evening toilet, and arrayed with regard to the
pleasure of the eyes we specially aim to please....”
“Are they pleased to-night?” interrupted the Sphinx.
“Are they?” I rejoined. Then I continued my grave discourse: “As I said,
we are all free and gay and beautiful and our faces set on pleasure.
Then there is the music, the scarce-noted scents and the delicate shapes
and colours of flowers, the prismatic glitter of glass, and the
exhilarating snowiness of the table-linen....”
“Dave’s beaming smile,” added the Sphinx, referring to our waiter.
“Yes, calling up immediately all the happy dinners we have had at his
table. If we were to meet him elsewhere in years to come, how his face
would flash these evenings back to us! I believe I could count up the
times we have been here by the wrinkles of kindness on his face.”
“I wonder if he really cares about us,” said the Sphinx, wistfully
watching Dave as he expertly dismembered a roast duck at a side table.
Presently the excellence of the duck turned her thoughts back again to
our argument.
“Say what you will, with your conflux of pleasant influences,” she
resumed, “roast duck is the real explanation.”
“Who would take you for such a materialist,” said I, “to look at you
there, so radiantly delicate, so shiningly spirituelle?--”
“Roast duck,” laughed the Sphinx, “my spirituelle expression comes
entirely of roast duck, believe me.”
I could almost believe her in that moment.
“Materialist yourself!” she retorted presently. “You will force me to
turn metaphysician and expound to you the mysticism of gastronomy.”
“The metaphysics of duck!” I interjected.
“Precisely.”
“Proceed, then,” said I, and was silent.
“Well,” she began, “I am perfectly serious. It is you that are the
materialist, not I, for the reason that the familiarity of the process
of eating blinds you to its essentially mysterious nature; that process
of transmutation of gastronomic alchemy, by which food is changed into
genius and beauty, and the kitchen seen to be the power-house of the
soul. After all, my gastronomic theory of the soul is merely one side of
the same mystery which we see illustrated every day on another side by
the doctor and the chemist. When we take a dose of medicine to tonic our
nerves, we don’t laugh sceptically, or even give a thought to the wonder
of its operation. Yet surely it is mystery itself that distillations
from plants, and tinctures drawn from stones, should hold for us the
keys of life and death, and exalt or depress our immortal spirits. Have
you ever thought on the marvel that an almost infinitesimal quantity of
certain juices distilled from some innocent-faced meadow-flower, a mere
dewdrop of harmless-looking liquid, can shatter our life out of us like
a charge of dynamite?...”
“A little more duck, m’m?” intervened Dave.
“The dynamics of duck,” I whispered gently. “Go on.”
“Well,” continued the Sphinx, laughing bravely, “the operation of food
is exactly the same in its nature as the operation of medicines and
poisons. For some unexplained reason, medicines and poisons influence
us in certain ways. We don’t know how or why, we only know that they do.
The influence of wine again is a part of the same mysterious process.
Why should this Rudesheimer affect us differently from this water? Any
one unfamiliar with the difference between wine and water would say it
was absurd. But it is true for all that--and if you admit the influence
of wine, and the influence of various other foreign substances, animal,
vegetable and mineral, on the human organism, in the form of medicines,
stimulants, poisons and such like, you cannot logically deny the
possible influence, say, of duck. Therefore, I contend once more that
the harmony between us of which you spoke is a music first composed in
the kitchen, transferred to notation on the menu, and finally performed
by us in a skillful duet of digestion....”
“Again,” added the Sphinx hastily, as I was preparing to make some
comment;
“Again, you know that the intimate connection between supper and dreams
is a scientific fact. If supper produces night-dreams, why shouldn’t
lunch and dinner produce daydreams!”
“I surrender unconditionally to that,” I laughed, “you have won. We owe
it all to the _chef_. We are but notes in his music--‘helpless pieces of
the game he plays!’”
“A little more duck, sir?” intervened Dave, once more.
“Yes, Dave, I will,” said I, with emphasis.
III
ON THE WEARING OF OPALS
“How sad your eyes are to-night!” I said to the Sphinx a few evenings
ago.
“Are they?” she smiled. “But then you know we are never so sad as our
eyes.”
“Are you quite sure there is nothing wrong?” I asked.
“Perfectly.... I expect I have been looking too long at my opals.”
After a moment she added:
“I so often think of what you said about sorrows being the opals of the
soul.”
“Fancy your remembering that!” said I, with mock modesty.
“It is strange,” the Sphinx went on, “how sorrow continues to be
associated with the opal.”
“I have often marvelled at your courage in wearing so many. They gleam
on your fingers like a whole armory of sorrow.”
“Is there any danger a woman wouldn’t dare for beauty’s sake? And in
spite of the superstition, they are more fashionable than ever. Yet I
don’t think there is a woman who wears them who does not feel in her
heart that she is living under the rainbow of some beautiful doom, some
romantic menace. Some day the genius of the stone will touch her heart,
with its wand of sorrow, and her face will suddenly become like one of
her rings, mysteriously lit with pathos.”
“I believe,” said I, “that it is on that very account that women wear
them. It is the legend of the stone that attracts them almost more than
its beauty. It has for them something of the attraction of sorcery, and
suggests a commerce with those occult influences which in spite of
ourselves we involuntarily think of as ruling the romantic side of our
lives. There is just a spice of magic about all precious stones, and, as
in the old fairy tales, a certain ring was supposed to give control
over unseen powers, so even yet we unconsciously, or consciously,
continue to attach superstitious significance to the wearing of a ring.”
“That is true,” said the Sphinx, “and any woman who wears rings with
art, and not merely for indiscriminate display, sets a new ring on her
finger with a certain thoughtfulness, if not hesitation. If it does not
already mean something to her, it is going to mean something--and what
will that meaning be! A ring that means nothing to one, however
beautiful, hardly seems to belong to us. A ring is a personal possession
or nothing ... except diamonds,” the Sphinx added, laughing, some
particularly fine diamonds glittering at her throat; “diamonds are like
one’s carriage--a part of one’s _entourage_.”
“They are the Three-per-Cents of Romance,” said I.
“Yes; one wears diamonds as one wears shoes. They mean nothing to one
individually. They are social stones, even democratic. They are
impervious to association. They are like the sun--every one loves
sunlight, but no one has ever thought of sentimentally annexing the sun.
The sun is not romantic. It is a wholesome, prosperous presence in our
lives, but it is impossible to think of it as personally related to
ourselves--whereas the moon, on the other hand, means just ‘us’ and no
one else in the world to every romantic eye that looks up to it. The
diamond is the sun of precious stones, the opal is the moon.”
“But what of the pearl?”
“The pearl is the Evening Star.”
“Tell me,” I said, “if I may ask, do your opals stand for sorrows gone
by or for sorrows to come?”
“You mustn’t be so literal,” she answered, “one can hardly label one’s
sorrows like that. Sorrow is temperamental, not accidental; it is
attitude rather than history; it comes even more from within than from
without. Some natures attract it--as the moon draws the sea. When I
speak of my sorrows I do not mean my personal history--did you think my
opals stood for so many disappointments?”
She laughed disdainfully.
“No,” she continued, “few of us, alas! are real enough to achieve the
distinction of a great sorrow. A great sorrow is as rare as a great work
of art. To know a really beautiful sorrow of our own, one needs to have
a tragic simplicity of nature which belongs only to a few chosen
temperaments; and if, indeed, a beautiful sorrow should come into our
lives, who knows but that we should miss its beauty in its pain! Just as
we have musicians to make our music for us, we have to rely on others
for our sorrows.”
“It is strange how much more distinguished sorrow is than joy,” said I.
“Yes; and yet I suppose it is a part of what, resist it as we may, seems
to be the natural law of renunciation. The weak nature may be crushed
and lowered by renunciation, but the strong nature seems to be
mysteriously refined. Perhaps, indeed, it is scarcely correct to speak
of a weak nature renouncing. Things are taken from it rather than
renounced. Renunciation implies will, and the exercise of strength. And
thus to be able to do without implies an individual greatness and
sufficiency from the beginning. We probably never renounce anything that
we really need. Whatever the reason, however, there is no doubt that, as
you say, the world is conscious of a certain distinction, and even
romantic beauty attaching to sorrow which it does not associate with
joy. Sorrow seems to imply a certain initiation into the arcana of human
experience, a certain direct relation with the regent powers of our
destiny, august and hidden, and only revealing their supernatural faces
to this and that mortal here and there, henceforth stricken, and, so to
say, ‘enchanted’, as one touched by the sacred lightning and yet alive
among men.”
“I suspect,” said I, “that that is what, in a dim and trivial way,
people mean when they speak of So-and-So looking ‘interesting’--because
they look sad or even only ill.”
“No doubt. And, curious as it may sound, I don’t think we are ever quite
satisfied with happiness--not, at all events, till we have known sorrow.
Till then, in our happiest hours, we seem to be unconsciously waiting
for sorrow. Perhaps that is because we instinctively feel that the
rarest forms of joy can only be ours on the conditions of sorrow.
Intense, complete joy is only possible to the sorrowful temperament ...
to the nature sensitive to the sorrow that lives in all beautiful
things....”
“To the opal temperament,” said I. The Sphinx smiled and continued:
“There again is another mystery. Why does sadness seem to lie at the
heart of all beauty? Truth and Beauty seem indeed to be one in sadness.
All the rarest types of beauty have something sad about them, some
tragic look, or enigmatic wistfulness of expression, at the least a
touch of loneliness. The gayest music can never be quite happy. Indeed,
one might almost say that two qualities only are necessary to the
highest beauty--strangeness and sadness: perhaps we might say only one
and call it world-strangeness; a look of another world than ours, a look
of spiritual exile. Perhaps there is the secret of beauty--sadness.
Beauty is an exile in this world, a fallen spirit, and, whatever her
embodiment, be it a face, a flower, or a gem, it carries with it always
its look of exile.”
“Thus, again,” said I, smiling, “we see why opals are more beautiful
than diamonds. The diamond is the stone of this world. It has the
prosperous, contented look of that brilliant, unmysterious happiness
which comes of good health and a bank account. There is no sadness at
the cold heart of the diamond--just as there is no sadness in this glass
of champagne, and therefore no appeal to the imagination, as with the
sad distinguished wines. I doubt if people who wear opals should drink
champagne.”
“Ah! but you see I wear diamonds, too,” laughed the Sphinx.
“Yes, there you are. Always the best of both worlds....”
“True,” said the Sphinx sadly, “but the best is only in one of them....”
“Truth fully now,” I asked, “are you quite sure in which?”
The Sphinx refused to commit herself, but “My opals know,” she answered,
musingly turning them to the light.
IV
NEW LOVES FOR OLD
“How is it,” said the Sphinx one evening, “that you never bring a poem
with you to dinner nowadays? Have you quite given up writing them?”
“Almost,” I answered.
“But you shouldn’t. It is lazy of you.”
“I suppose,” said I, “it is a kind of laziness--but I hardly think it is
voluntary, or much under my control. In many ways I grow more active and
industrious as I grow older. I do more work and I work more regularly.
The laziness is certainly neither mental nor physical. It is rather
emotional--yes! a laziness of the emotional faculties.”
“You cannot mean that you have stopped falling in love?”
“I’m inclined to think I have,” I laughed; “but that, like the poetry,
is only one expression of the laziness I mean. Generally, while, as I
say, I am less lazy in doing than of old, and while, as doctors would
say, my mental faculties are active and unimpaired, I grow more and more
lazy in feeling.”
“Tell me some more....”
“Well, I mean that, while my brain grows year by year more catholic in
its sympathies, and sees more clearly all the time opportunities of
feeling old and new, my heart and senses seem less and less inclined to
second it with any energy of enthusiasm or excitement. The beauty of the
world, for example, never seemed more beautiful to me than it does now.
I can see far more beauty in it than I could when I was a boy,
appreciate far more its infinite variety; nor has it lost in wonder, or
mystery or holiness. All this I see, and thankfully accept--but it is
seldom that I am set in a fine glow, or that I fall into a dream about
it. My appreciation of it is no longer rapture. Yes, I have lost
rapture.”
“Poor old thing!” laughed the Sphinx derisively, “but go on.”
“Laugh,” said I, “but it’s all too true. Take another illustration: Some
noble cause, some ghastly wrong, some agonising disaster. Never has my
imagination been more alive to such appeals; never have they stirred me
to greater aspiration, indignation or pity--mentally. But while my
perceptive, imaginative side is thus more active than ever, it seems
unable to set going the motive forces of feeling, as it used to do. It
were as if I should say ‘Oh yes! indeed, I see it all--but I’ll feel
about it to-morrow.’ Something underneath seems to say: ‘What is the use
of being excited about it--of taking fire. It’s noble, it’s monstrous,
it’s pitiful--but what’s the use!--feeling won’t help.’ To think how
inspired, how savage, how wrought I should have been once--use or no
use! But now....”
“Tell me about falling in love,” interrupted the Sphinx, quizzically.
“How does this sad state of things affect that?”
“In just the same way. I see a beautiful face, or come in contact with
some romantic personality. I say to myself: ‘How wonderful she is! I
could spend my life looking into those strange eyes, and I am old enough
to know that I should never want to look into any others.’ I say to
myself: ‘I think I have but to set my heart on it, and that woman and I
might make life a fairy tale for each other!’ But I raise no hand. I am
content to see the possibility, content to admire the opportunity,
content to see it pass. I am too lazy even for romance.”
“And so you write no more poems?”
“Yes--or very staid ones. As it happens I have brought you one to-night,
which you will see is very evidently inspired by the muse of middle-age.
It has an unexceptionable moral, and is entitled ‘New Loves for Old.’
Shall I read it?”
“Go on,” said the Sphinx, and I proceeded to read the following:
“‘New Loves for Old!’ I heard a pedler cry,
‘New Loves for Old!’ as down the street he passed,
And from each door I noted with a sigh
How all the people ran at once to buy--
Bringing in hand the dimmed old loves that last.
“‘New Loves for Old!’ O wondrous fair and bright
Seem the new loves against the loves grown old,
So flower-fresh and dewy with delight,
And burning as with supernatural light--
Ah yes! the rest were tinsel--this is gold!
“‘New Loves for Old!’ the pedler went his way--
Night fell, then in my window the bright spark
Of my old love gave out its constant ray,
‘How burn the new loves that they bought to-day?’
But all the other windows remained dark.”
“Do you mean it? Is it true?” asked the Sphinx when I had finished.
“Those are nice questions for a philosopher to ask!” I laughed. “Of
course, it is true for some people, true of some lives, and for those I
mean it.”
“But what is your own personal feeling in the matter?”
“I hardly know if I have any personal feeling about it.”
“But you wrote the poem. Why did you write it then?”
“One doesn’t write poems for oneself. One writes them for others. Poetry
is addressed, like certain legal proclamations, to all whom it concerns.
Do you remember those lines of Straton’s in the Greek Anthology:
“‘Love-songs I write for him and her,
Now this, now that, as Love dictates;
One birthday gift alone the Fates
Gave me, to be Love’s Scrivener.’
“Of course, this is not the whole truth about the artist, but it is a
good deal of it. In a sense the artist is the most unselfish of human
beings, for his whole life is living for, and feeling for, others. The
more lives and the more various he can live, the greater the number and
the diversity of his feelings, the greater his art. This many-mooded
nature leads those who misunderstand his function frequently to cry out
that he is insincere; the fact being that he is so sincere in so many
different ways that to hasty observers his imaginative sympathy has the
look of inconsistency.”
“But come now, you needn’t pretend to be so superior to our common human
nature as all that! If you yourself had to choose between one of your
dimmed old loves that last, and one of the peddler’s brilliant
novelties, which would you choose?”
“It would depend who I was at the moment.”
“Oh, nonsense--be serious.”
“But I am. It would depend, at all events, on what kind of love I felt
most in need of at the moment--one’s needs are so different from day to
day. Old loves give us certain satisfactions, and new loves give us
certain other satisfactions.”
“Well, tell me what those different satisfactions are.”
“Old Love brings you the sense of security, of shelter, of peace; it has
the warm-home charm of kindly long-known things, the beauty of beautiful
habit, the nimbus and the authority of religion. In fact, it has all
that belongs to the word ‘old’ used in the laudatory sense. Its value is
the value of the known--whereas the value of new love is largely the
value of the unknown.”
“You mean that the value of new love lies largely in its newness.”
“Certainly. Mere novelty, as the world admits on every hand, has real
value; the value of refreshment, at least. In fact, novelty is the
truest friend of old feeling, as it makes us feel the old feelings over
again--which might hardly happen without its assistance. Besides, love
is even more an imaginative than an emotional need, and the new love
speaks to the imagination. Love needs wonder to live on quite as much as
secure affection. The new love appeals to one’s sense of strangeness,
one’s spirit of adventure. As we stand silent upon that peak in
Darien--who knows, we say to our hushed expectant hearts, who knows but
that this is Eldorado at last....”
“We only say that when the old was not Eldorado,” put in the Sphinx.
“O of course!” I admitted hastily.
THE DEATH OF THE POET
The poet lay dying. He was not a good grey poet. Indeed, some of those
who pass judgments upon complex lives, with the spontaneity of simple
ignorance, would no doubt have called him the bad grey poet. Though he
was hardly forty, there were already snowdrifts here and there among his
thick locks.
For a long while he had known that he was soon to die. Dreams had told
him, and he had seen it written on the faces that looked at him in the
street. The foreknowledge did not in the least trouble him. Indeed,
while he was far from being a lachrymose sentimentalist, and life had
for him even more zest than when he was a boy, yet he had for some time
been weary of the long battle, and the news was less the threat of death
than the promise of rest.
And now the rest was coming. There was only one consideration that made
him cling to life, or, rather, suddenly rouse himself to wrest a short
reprieve. It was the last sentiment his numerous detractors would have
believed of him. Like all really great poets, he was much in debt. Debt,
indeed, had hovered like a raven, or rather a cloud of ravens, croaking
over the whole course of his life. In his secret heart, and even in
occasional outspoken utterance, he held that the world owed him far more
than he owed it; yet it should not be said of him that he died in debt!
Therefore he had girded himself up to one last tremendous orgie of
creation, so that his creditors should be paid to the uttermost
farthing. His friends, who knew nothing of the summons that had come to
him, for he looked like living for years, marvelled at the sudden
outburst of his energy. Sometimes, in a mood of fantastic irony, he
would say to them, “Do you know what keeps me alive?” And he would
answer, “My creditors”--to their shouts of derisive laughter. Imagine
Pagan Wasteneys giving a thought to his creditors!
But it was true for all that, as Wasteneys’s familiar doctor could
attest: for on one occasion Wasteneys, being taken with a sudden attack
of the heart and apparently near death, had burst into tears--not at the
thought of his wife, not at the thought of his two little girls, but at
the thought of his creditors. After all, he was to die in debt! That
thought alone obsessed him, leaving room for no other--tenderness.
However, oxygen granted him still another reprieve, and once more he
worked like a madman till at last he had written enough.
Then, laying down his pen upon the desk for the last time, he said, “I
am ready to die.”
Thereon his valet undressed him, taking away the clothes he had worn for
the last time, and the poet luxuriously stretched himself in the white
bed, from which no duty would ever call him to rise again.
For a long while he lay back dreamily enjoying the thought--of his
readiness to die. At last he had been able to wring from life the
privilege to die.
The faces of his creditors came back to him with a positive beauty,
haloed, so to speak, with this last shining achievement. Honest,
true-hearted men, he felt that he should care a little to look in their
faces once more and shake their hands. Indeed, he almost regretted that
he had to die when he thought of their honest faces. What a beautiful
world--when to the eyes of a dying poet his creditors even seem
beautiful!
Presently he sent for his lawyer--who had helped him through many a
difficult pass--and when the lawyer had come, he stretched out his hands
to him.
“Old friend,” he cried, “congratulate me. At last the bankrupt has his
discharge. The court allows me to die....”
“Rubbish!” answered the lawyer; “none of your death’s-head humour. But
you really mean that you have finished your book? I do indeed
congratulate you....”
“Yes! My last book. Unless I should be expected to write for my living
in some other world, I have written my last word, dipped my pen in ink
for the last time....”
The lawyer gently bantered him. “If only it were true,” he said, “what
good news for your readers!...”
“Laugh as much as you like ... but you will see. A very few days will
show.”
“You fantastic fellow ... what do you mean? You know there is nothing
whatever the matter with you. You cannot die without some disease, or by
some accident--unless you intend to be so commonplace as to commit
suicide....”
“No! none of those,” answered Wasteneys, with his odd smile; “I am going
to die--out of sheer weariness; and, by the way, I want you to insist
upon this epitaph being engraved upon my urn: ‘Pagan Wasteneys. Born
1866; bored to death--1905.’”
“Of course I will promise no such thing,” answered the lawyer.
“Well, then I must instruct some mortuary engraver myself.... But tell
me--you have brought with you the schedule of my debts? How much exactly
do they amount to?”
The lawyer drew a bulky paper from his pocket.
“Here is the schedule,” he said, and then glancing at the total of many
pages of figures, he answered, “They are close on ten thousand
pounds....”
“‘Tis a good round sum,” said the poet, “but in two years I have earned
it, every penny, and more besides.”
“It is marvellous,” said the lawyer.
“It sounds like a dream,” said the poet, “but it is true. Think what fun
one might have with ten thousand pounds--if one were not going to
die....”
“Or pay one’s debts at last,” laughed the lawyer.
“That reminds me that I have a fancy for the manner of paying them, in
which I hope you will humour me. I wish to pay each creditor in person,
and I wish to pay him in solid gold. I would, therefore, ask you to send
out a notice inviting them here at noon to-day week; that is, Wednesday
week--I shall not die till Friday.”
Though he was quite serious, the poet could not help laughing at this
final touch, and the lawyer joined in. “You humbug!” he exclaimed; but,
for all that, the poet was able to convince him of his seriousness after
a while.
“I would have them pass before me one by one, as I lie propped up on
pillows on my death-bed, and I shall expect each one first to bend down
and kiss my hand. Then a clerk will call out his name in a loud voice,
and the amount of the debt, and another clerk shall weigh out to him the
amount in gold.... I intend it to be a kind of triumphal lying in state.
But we can discuss the exact details later. I feel a little tired. The
shadows are already weighing down my eyelids....” and the poet laughed
again his sad sinister laugh; though, indeed, it was true enough, as
the lawyer, looking at him, could not fail to note.
“Good-night, old friend,” said the poet; “come and see me again
tomorrow;” and, when the lawyer had gone, he once more stretched himself
out in the bed, luxuriously murmuring the lines he had murmured nightly
for so many years:
“If rest be sweet at close of day
For tired hands and tired feet,
How good at last to rest for aye--
If rest be sweet.”
The lying in state, as the poet grimly called it, was conducted exactly
as he had conceived it. At first the lawyer had protested that to expect
your honest English tradesman to bow the knee and kiss the hand of one
of his debtors was out of the question.
“Take my word, friend,” said the poet, “when a tradesman is going to be
paid a debt he had given up for lost, he will not be particular as to
the manner in which he receives it. Indeed, he will be so thankful for
it that it will be a natural impulse to fall upon his knees.... And if
they demur,” he added, laughing his half-boyish, half-wicked, and quite
creepy laugh, “tell them that it is the fancy of a dying man.”
When the noon of Wednesday came, the poet lay in his great bed awaiting
his creditors. There had only been a week since his talk with his
lawyer, but even that good-natured sceptic had come to admit the truth
of his client’s prediction. No one could look on that weary form
stretched so straight and slim under the clothes, or upon that worn
ivory face, so worn and yet so strangely smiling, without reading the
unmistakable signs.
“Do you believe it now?” said the poet to his lawyer. “It is only a
jest--you must not take it too seriously. It is only death. Don’t be
unhappy, old friend. I wish I could make you know how good it feels--to
be dying.”
Then a little soft-voiced clock chimed twelve times.
“Now for the fun....” said the poet, looking up to his friend, with his
eyes filled with laughter.
It had been his whim to have his room draped in purple, and over his bed
hung a great wreath of laurel still in flower. At one side of the large
room was a table also covered in purple, on which were arranged twelve
great pyramids of gold pieces, and on two other tables close by were two
large bags of orange-coloured leather overflowing with silver.
As the clock chimed twelve, two footmen clad in a livery of dull-gold
silk, with sprigs of laurel worked upon the collars of their coats,
threw open the folding doors of the spacious room, and a crowd of awed
and almost sepulchral English tradesmen entered in a hushed and timorous
fashion. They were dressed appropriately, as for a funeral, and a few of
them wore crape round their hats. They trod softly, like butlers, and
were evidently a good deal overawed and indeed frightened.
And in truth it was a scene calculated to astonish. For as they entered,
there facing them in the middle of the room lay Wasteneys, with his
eyes closed and his hands crossed, and the great laurel wreath over his
head; and to his right, at one side of the room, stood the table heaped
with gold, which glittered still more brightly beneath the beams of
twelve immense candlesticks. If anything could gleam brighter, it was
the eyes of the creditors, whose expression was a mixture of gaping
astonishment at the piled-up gold and hushed wonder at the white
distinguished figure in the bed.
When they were seated on the gilded Empire chairs provided for them, a
secretary clad in black rose from a seat by the dying man’s side and
read a brief salutation, in which Pagan Wasteneys, a poet of the realm
of England, desired upon his death-bed to thank in person those
honourable mercers and general purveyors who had for so many years shown
him so great a consideration in respect of certain moneys which he owed
them, in exchange for certain necessities of existence--among which
necessities luxuries, of course, were included. Mr. Wasteneys desired
to add that his delay to satisfy these obligations had come of no
wilful neglect on his part, but had been occasioned by the many
sorrows--not to speak of the many expenses--incident to the profession
of a poet. He had invited them to meet him for the last time in this way
that he might personally express his gratitude to them--at the same
moment that he satisfied his indebtedness, with compound interest at
five per cent.
As the secretary concluded with this eloquent peroration, Wasteneys
opened his eyes for the first time, and raised his head from the pillow,
with a weary attempt at a bow, and motioned with his hand toward the
company--his hand thereafter lying white and fragile on the side of the
bed. For a moment a smile flickered over his lips, but only his lawyer
observed it, and, next moment, he was gravely prepared for the
conclusion of the ceremony.
Presently a clerk dressed in a prim costume of the finest broadcloth
rose and called out the name of Peter Allardyce, vintner--the names of
the creditors being called out in alphabetical order--at the same time
naming the sum of £763.19.7 as due to him, inclusive of interest at five
per cent. At the summons, a shy, ruddy man of country build rose from
his chair, and being led by one of the footmen to the dying man’s side,
bent down and kissed the frail hand on the coverlet. Wasteneys
acknowledged the courtesy with a tired smile, and Mr. Allardyce was then
conducted by the footman to the table piled with gold, where another
clerk, also dressed in broadcloth, like his fellow, weighed out to him
the amount of his debt, pouring the bright gold into a great bag of
purple leather.
“William Dimmock,” once more cried out the first clerk, “livery-stable
keeper, for carriage-hire, the sum of £378.10.3, inclusive of interest
at five per cent.”
A lean, horsy little man thereon rose from his chair and went through
the same ceremony as his predecessor, retiring also with a great bag of
purple leather bursting with gold pieces.
And so the odd ceremony proceeded. It would be tedious to follow it
through its details; though one may observe that of all the creditors
that followed, the heaviest were Peter Markham, florist, and Jasper
Dyce, jeweller, for flowers and gems lavished by the dying man on
forgotten women.
When it was all over, and Wasteneys was left alone with his lawyer and
his physician, he buried his face in the pillows, and laughed as if his
heart would break--laughed indeed so violently that his physician had to
warn him that such mirth was dangerous in his present state--unless,
indeed, he wished to die of laughter.
“No, indeed,” said Wasteneys; “I have other farewells to make. But, O
wasn’t it delicious! And think of it--like the village blacksmith, I owe
not any man! What honest, kind fellows they were! I am so glad to have
seen them before I die.”
“You must see no one else to-day,” said his physician, presently, “if
you wish to make those other farewells.”
“I have still to-morrow and most of Friday. I shall go out, like
Falstaff, ‘even at the turning of the tide,’” he said, laughing softly
at himself, as he had done all his life, and repeating to himself the
phrase that had romantically touched his fancy--“even at the turning of
the tide!... even at the turning of the tide!”
“What am I dying of, doctor?” he said, presently.
“I can see no reason why you should be dying at all,” answered the
physician, “unless it is pure whim.”
“Perhaps it is partly that,” said the poet, “but I think it is chiefly
because--I have lived. To live longer would be mere repetition. I have
just enjoyed the last new experience life had to give me--and I almost
think it was the most wonderful of all. It was the last touch of romance
needed to complete a romantic life--to have paid my debts! You are
right. That was indeed enough excitement for one day. I will sleep
now--the happiest man in the world.”
He had hardly finished speaking before he had fallen into one of those
sudden deep sleeps that come and go fitfully with the dying. He lay on
his back, his hands crossed, and a smile of infinite serenity and
thankfulness on his face. Over his head hung the great laurel wreath,
still in flower....
Still in flower!
“It is strange that he should choose so deliberately to die--for he has
still a great future in store for him,” said the physician to himself as
he went out, giving on his way certain instructions to the
nurse-in-waiting.
The physician, like the majority of human beings, confounded the length
of a man’s life with the success of it--as was, perhaps, peculiarly
natural in a man whose business was the lengthening of human existence.
To die before sixty was to him a form of failure, and he himself,
already sixty-three, was still, with childish eagerness, pursuing
certain prizes, professional and social, at which Wasteneys would indeed
have smiled. He dreamed, for instance, of a knighthood. Now one of
Wasteneys’s great fears had been that he should not be in a position to
die before he was knighted. That had in some degree accounted for the
fury of his production during the last two years. He would not indeed
have disdained to have been made a lord, but that necessitated living so
much longer, and writing so many more words--and really it was not worth
it. He regarded his life as completed--at least to his own satisfaction.
To take it up again would be to begin an entirely new career. Already,
as rich men are said to go through two or three fortunes, Wasteneys had
run through three careers. Three seemed enough. He had won all the
prizes he cared for. The rest could only be humorous. So, “Good-bye,
proud world; I’m going home!”
Next morning, when his toilet had been made for him by the beautiful
nurse-in-waiting and his faithful man servant, Wasteneys received his
physician and his lawyer; and then, as the little clock chimed the hour
of noon, he said:
“It is time for me to begin my farewells.”
He made it evident that he wished to be alone, except for his own friend
the lawyer. So, when the two were left together in the room, he turned
to the lawyer and said:
“Dear friend, bring me the Beautiful Face ...” adding, “the key is here
under my pillow.”
Taking the key, the lawyer unlocked an old cabinet in a shadowy corner
of the room, and presently returned to the bedside, carrying in his
hands a small urn of exquisite workmanship. Placing it on a low table
near to the poet’s hand, the lawyer, who had been the confidant of the
poet’s tragedy, made a sign of understanding, and left the room.
On the wall facing the end of the poet’s bed had hung for seven years
the picture of a marvellously beautiful girl. She was so exceptional in
her beauty that to attempt description of her would be futile. Suffice
it that her face--framed in night-black hair, and tragically lit by
enormous black eyes--was chiefly remarkable for the nobility of its
expression and for its sense of elemental power. It was a face full of
silence--a dark flower of a face, so to say, rooted deep down in the
mysterious strengths of nature. If one may use such an expression of a
thing so delicate, she seemed like a rock of beauty, against which a
whole world of men might dash their tribute hearts in vain. Other faces
might seem more attractive, more formally beautiful, but to few faces
had it been given to concentrate the cold imperialism of beauty as it
was concentrated in this exquisite face.
This face was the real meaning of the poet’s life. The rest was mere
badinage, screening a sad heart. This face was the real meaning of the
poet’s gladness at his approaching death. This life held no more
expectations for him--but the next? Who knows?--perhaps to-morrow night
he would be with her in Paradise.
Looking long at the picture of the Beautiful Face, he turned--to the
Beautiful Face itself; for it had now been silver dust for four years.
Drawing the urn to him, he read once more the name upon the little gold
plate let into the bronze:
Meriel Wasteneys: Died March 16, 1900.
And underneath the name he read some lines inscribed in gold:
“O Beauty, art thou also dust?
These silver ashes--can it be
That you, thus silting through my hand,
Once made a madman out of me!”
“And a madman still,” he added, laughing sadly to himself.
Then raising the lid of the urn, he looked in. The white ash filled but
half the little urn. Gently thrusting in his hand, he let the ashes sift
through his long fingers over and over again, and as he did so he gazed
at the Beautiful Face upon the wall....
After a while he replaced the lid upon the urn, and lay back with closed
eyes--thinking of it all.
Presently the lawyer returned softly into the room, and fancying him
asleep, was about to leave again, but Wasteneys had heard him.
“Is that you?” he said. “Come to me. I have said good-bye. You know
where my ashes are to lie.”
The lawyer assented, locking the urn once more in the cabinet, and
bringing the key back again to Wasteneys. The little urn, as I have
said, was as yet only half filled.
The two friends sat silent together for a long time, saying nothing, for
there was nothing to say. Both knew all.
After a while the poet turned to his friend. “Will you ask Isabel, my
wife, to come to me?” he said. And presently there entered the room a
woman so fragilely beautiful that she seemed to be made of moonbeams.
She was indeed, compared to the Beautiful Face on the wall, as the moon
to the sun. That, alas! had been her place in the poet’s life. She had
been the moon to the Beautiful Face. And yet, in his strange way, the
poet had always loved her, deep down----
“Very deep down!” she used to say sometimes, with a sad smile.