On a warm August morning it is not altogether unpleasant to recline on a
long lounge chair in the deep soft shadow of full-foliaged trees and
resign one’s self to meditation which may or may not be profitable. The
Philosopher was in this condition of _dolce far niente_, and though he
did not present an altogether elegant appearance in the recumbent
attitude he was for the moment more concerned with inward comfort than
exterior effect. He was in a thinking mood. He was taking himself
seriously to task and considering whether he should marry. He was not
really a marrying man, but it occurred to him now and then that he was
no longer young, and that it might be necessary to have some one to take
care of him. No one was so well adapted to “take care” of an ageing,
gouty, grumpy man with a touch of intellectuality about him as a wife. A
wife with a sufficiency of good looks to be agreeable to the eye,--a
wife with a sufficiency of money in her own right to save her husband
all extra exertion in the business of living. Now the Philosopher had
just by chance found out that his little friend and hostess, the
Sentimentalist, had or would have money. He thought, with pleasing
placidity, of a college friend of his own, who had married a woman with
money, and who had gleefully rejoiced in his position, with refreshing
candour, saying,--“A Plum I tell you! A regular Plum! Ripe and
ready!--fell into my mouth with a bang!”
The Philosopher was by no means certain that the Sentimentalist was a
Plum. She was very kind to him,--she had pretty, docile, winsome ways,
and seemed disposed to “play” with him as a kitten plays with a ball of
wool,--she was evidently amused when he held her hand, or patted her
shoulder,--but he felt more than positive that she would not “fall into
his mouth with a bang!” Her father had confided to him that he meant to
leave her a considerable fortune,--“and,” mused the Philosopher,
dreamily,--“the old gentleman is getting very shaky. Memory going
too,--sense of proportion quite lost.” He yawned, and drove off a
bouncing bumble-bee that just then presumed to come too near his rather
prominent nose,--then, stretching himself lazily half rose from his
reclining attitude as he perceived a little white figure approaching him
from the further garden, with a newspaper in its hand. He waited, a
trifle impatiently.
“Dear me, what a time she is!” he complained _sotto voce_. “She doesn’t
read newspapers as a rule. What’s in the wind now?”
For she had looked up suddenly, and seeing him, began to run. For a mere
Sentimentalist she ran well,--gracefully and swiftly.
“Such news!” she cried, as she approached him. “Such terrible news!
England has declared war with Germany!”
“Fiddlesticks!” said the Philosopher, emphatically. “I don’t believe a
word of it!”
A little breathless with her run she swept some straying curls of gold
from her eyes, and handed him the paper. There was the announcement sure
enough--the brief, curt statement that was to drench Europe with blood.
But the Philosopher was obstinate.
“All twaddle!” he declared. “Newspaper lies and twaddle!”
Her blue eyes rested upon him with something of wonder and sadness.
“You think so? I hope you may be right!” she said, earnestly. “Oh, I do
hope you may be right!”
“Of course, I’m right,” he declared. “I’ve got some common sense. I know
how these things are worked up I tell you! What’s it all about?” Here he
scanned the newspaper again. “Belgium? What on earth have we got to do
with Belgium! Nice muddle we make of everything! Belgium wants to
protect France from invasion?--well, let her! There’s no need for _us_
to put our fingers into the pie! Let them all settle their own affairs!”
“But--honour?--” she suggested.
“Honour? It depends on what’s called honour. A hundred years ago we were
fighting the French at Waterloo--now we want to defend them. Why? We
didn’t help them in the Franco-German war. We let them fight it out. So
we should now. Twaddle, I tell you!--all twaddle!”
She smiled and sighed.
“Well, it seems to me very serious news,” she said. “It has quite spoilt
the day for me.”
“Why should it spoil the day?” he demanded. “What have _you_ got to do
with it? Here you are in a nice garden,--lovely weather--and I believe
you’ve got a new hat on. What else can any woman want?”
She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders, which implied that he was not
worth the trouble of answering. He continued, pleased with his own
remarks:
“Women know nothing about war or politics,” he said. “They are not
expected to know. They have their homes and their home duties--”
“And their men,” she interposed. “Their husbands and brothers and
lovers,--in war these have to go and fight--”
“Of course they have,” agreed the Philosopher. “Most of them are only
fit for cannon-fodder.”
She flushed angrily.
“Oh! Do you _mean_ that?” she exclaimed.
“Of course I mean it! Ordinary men are exceedingly stupid--they have
just two predominating ideas, food and money. The world loses nothing
when this sort of eating, spending microbes are cleared out by a big
war--on the contrary things go on better without them after they are
killed off.”
“And the women who loved them?” she asked, indignantly.
He smiled.
“You are a dear little goose!” he said, quite kindly. “You are always
thinking about people who ‘love’ each other. How many of them do you
suppose there are?”
She made no reply.
“Love,” went on the Philosopher, “is a rare thing. In fact it is so rare
that it may be said not to exist,--except in romantic novels and
poetry,--two very unreliable forms of literature. What is called ‘love’
is merely the attraction of opposite sexes--the ordinary procedure of
the world of nature.” He paused. He was much inclined to discourse on
the propagation of species, but somehow he found it difficult. The
graceful little figure beside him hardly suited his ideas of intended
comparison with the rest of the animal world. Strictly speaking, she was
of course an animal of the female gender, as he was an animal of the
male,--but he could not fit in his discourse on natural selection with a
bunch of white frippery, fair hair and a winsome smile. “Love,” he
concluded, lamely, “is a poet’s dream.”
“I wonder you admit it is as much as that!” she said,--and her eyes
flashed. “I agree with you to some extent--but to me it is God’s dream
of the world!”
He gazed at her, amused.
“Very far-fetched!” he said. “Did you get that out of a book? Of course
you did! Well, all I can say is that if there is a God dreaming anything
about the world, the dream is something of a nightmare. You’re a woman
and you don’t think. Have you ever seen a London slum? No. Well, men and
women herd there together like brutes, wives striking husbands and
husbands kicking wives, while little sentimentalists like you live in
the country among roses and talk about ‘love.’ Love! Fiddlesticks! Very
young people--girls and boys,--imagine they ‘love’ like Romeo and
Juliet,--but have you ever thought how Romeo and Juliet would have got
on as Mr. and Mrs. Montagu?”
She laughed--she could not help laughing.
“No, indeed!” she answered. “I’ve never gone so far as that!”
“Gone so far!” echoed the Philosopher, ironically. “That’s not going
far! That’s simply the plain commonplace line of conduct. To live
together as Mr. and Mrs. Montagu would have entailed far more heroism
than to swallow poison or stab one’s self with a dagger after a romantic
soliloquy. Mrs. Montagu would have had to order the dinner and Mr.
Montagu in his turn would have had to pay the bills. All the nonsense
they talked out of window to each other would have been clean forgotten.
He would have shown himself in slippers and she in a dressing gown. The
silks and velvets they wore as two precocious young humbugs at old
Capulet’s ball--or rather the silks and velvets the actors wear who
impersonate them nowadays, would have had very little place in their
wardrobe. They would have settled down to the plain routine of
life,--perfect commonplace, without any sentiment.”
She stood, looking at him earnestly.
“I _am_ sorry for you!” she said. “Your outlook is so very dreary! It’s
like opening a window on a back-yard!”
He was not displeased.
“Back-yards are useful and necessary,” he observed, complacently. “So
are dust-holes. Sentiment and silliness are _not_ necessary.”
Suddenly she laughed merrily.
“I really think you ought to get married!” she said. “You are such an
admirer of the commonplace that you ought to try matrimony!”
He smiled, a superior smile.
“Possibly I _may_ try it,” he answered, “if circumstances are
favourable! But I would never play a Romeo.”
Her laughter rang out again.
“I should think not!” she exclaimed. “You couldn’t! Oh, dear, no! Fancy
_you_ under a balcony ‘sighing like a furnace’ and saying:
“‘Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!’
or--
“‘She speaks,--
Oh, speak again, bright angel for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white, upturned, wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air!’”
She spoke the exquisite lines with a delicious intonation of feeling,
and the Philosopher nodded his head to and fro with the rhythm of the
blank verse like a Chinese mandarin.
“Very good!” he said. “I notice you are fond of declamation. You should
study for the stage.”
A flush swept over her features,--she was indignant, but refrained from
any outward expression of her thoughts.
“Thank you!” she said, curtly.
The Philosopher felt that he had somehow stumbled into a mistake. His
remark was evidently not of a kind that was pleasing to the
Sentimentalist. But, like all self-centred, self-opiniated men, he went
a little further into the quagmire.
“My remark was meant as a compliment,” he explained, laboriously.
“Actresses are the only really successful women nowadays. They are
petted and praised and their touched-up glorified portraits are in all
the weekly journals--”
“Do you call _that_ success?” she interrupted him, in coolly
contemptuous tones. “Or even simple womanliness?”
He laughed quite pleasantly.
“You really are a very quaint child!” he said. “Simple womanliness! All
that sort of thing went out with the second half of the reign of
Victoria. I was going to say it is as extinct as the Dodo,--but that has
been said before--to give it a smack of originality, let me assure you
it is as extinct as Benson’s Dodo.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, still coldly. “You are too
clever for me.”
He took her hand and patted it condescendingly.
“Let us leave it at that!” he said. “We’ll go and look at the roses! And
the bees! ‘How doth the little busy bee’! You know the verse? And do you
also know it is a much more familiar ‘poem’ to the public than the
‘Paradise Lost’? You _do_ know that? Good! Then you are a sensible girl!
And we can wait for the newspapers to fall into cackles of contradictory
rumour before we believe in the war,--and for Mr. and Mrs. Montagu to
come forward as a married couple before we believe in love!”
He smiled,--for a Philosopher he had quite an attractive smile,--and now
and then he had a curious passing tenderness of manner that never failed
to make an impression on the hearts of credulous and sympathetic women.
The Sentimentalist began to think she had judged him rather hastily and
hardly,--he read her thoughts in the wistful expression of her upturned
blue eyes, and straightway responded by adopting for himself a quietly
resigned and patient air. She grew more and more self-reproachful,--he
more and more bland and condescending, and by the time they had reached
the rose-walk she was in the position of a charming penitent, though she
had committed no fault; and he had assumed the kindly manner of a father
confessor who had just granted absolution. He pulled his black and
corroded pipe from his pocket.
“I may smoke?” he queried, half coaxingly.
She nodded,--and yet she could not help wondering why he wanted to smoke
just as they reached the lovely trellis work of roses that clambered and
twined, and hung down their graceful heads laden with delicious perfume.
The moment the fumes of tobacco were puffed into the air, all the
sweetness of the exquisite blossoms would be spoilt; but she made no
protest, and stood silently watching him at his old trick of prodding
the “Navy-cut” into the bowl of his briar with the usual yellow finger.
And she did not conceal from herself that it was an ugly performance. In
due time and after some fidgeting, the pipe was lit, and the natural
sweet incense of the roses was smothered by the smoke which the
Philosopher emitted like a human chimney. He had the habit of opening
his mouth in a studied round O, in order to make “rings” of smoke in the
air as he puffed away,--it was not a habit that became him, but he was
fortunately not aware of the satyr-like aspect he presented while
engaged in what he considered artistry in smoking.
“Now,” he said, comfortably, after having successfully accomplished
several “rings,”--“let’s talk! What does your father say of this
morning’s news?”
“Dad! Oh, he isn’t at all surprised. He says it is what we all ought to
have seen coming years ago, and that the country should have been
prepared.”
“Oh, most sagacious Dad! Why isn’t he Prime Minister! Of course we
knew!--of course every body knew!” And the Philosopher gave a short,
grunting laugh. “Especially a good old gentleman living in the country
and passing his time between dictionaries and cucumber-frames! If he
_didn’t_ know, who should? ‘Who dies if England lives!’ By the way what
a piece of utter nonsense _that_ is! The world would get on very well
without England!”
She gave a little cry.
“Oh, how can you say so! And you an Englishman!”
“Dear child, my nationality is a mere accident of birth. I might just as
well have been a kangaroo! Chance gave me English parents--and I’m not
ungrateful to chance. But simply because I’m an Englishman, born in
England, I’m not such a fool as to suppose my country the only
respectable one in the world.”
“It’s the greatest, the noblest, the most glorious!” she said, her
breast heaving and her eyes flashing. “I would die for it to-morrow if I
were a man!”
He smiled.
“What’s the good of dying for it?” he queried. “Much better to live for
it, and do useful work for it! Surely you agree? Suppose you--or I--or
any one--dies for it--you or I or that ‘any one’ must become absolutely
useless,--a mere lump of dead matter, burnt or buried and forgotten in a
week! What does England gain by that? Dear child, do be reasonable!
England is a charming country, and if any of us who are alive to-day can
assist in adding to its charm by either our talents or our
personalities, so much the better. But to die for it!--just think, by
way of example, how much grace your presence gives to this garden!--a
presence which, if removed, it would be difficult to replace!”
His eyes twinkled humorously,--and she hardly knew whether to be
flattered or annoyed.
“If the news of the coming war be true,” she said, “many presences will
be removed, never to be replaced.”
“True!” he replied. “Unquestionably true! But the removal of a
considerable majority of useless persons is not so much a loss as a gain
to the world. I speak from the logical and philosophic standpoint. I do
not suppose the world at large is very much the worse for the
destruction of Pompeii, for example. It does not appear that any one of
particular note or service in the city had enough of high or singular
reputation to make his loss a lasting memorial of fame. See here!” and
taking her gently by the arm he stopped at an ant-hill raised in the
grass path along which they strolled. “There’s a busy world! Look at the
little brown citizens scampering here and there on the chief business of
life, eating and breeding! Now for an eruption of Vesuvius!”--and he
struck a fusee from a small box he carried, and flung it alight on the
ant-hill. “What a scrimmage! What heroic deaths! Look well!--” and, as
she stooped, watching the insect tragedy with keen interest and
pity,--“You occupy for the moment the position of a fair goddess
uplifted above the tortures of a race of beings with whom you have no
concern. You can see three or four brave warriors endeavouring to drag
the fusee out of the vortex in which it burns,--Horatius keeping the
bridge was never more heroic than they! They go to certain death--those
that perish are instantly replaced by others equally brave. Well!” and
he smiled as she raised her beautiful, blue, limpid eyes to his in
questioning wonder--“You look as though you asked for a meaning--it is
simply that my fusee was as an eruption of Vesuvius to this particular
ant-Pompeii,--and if, as the newspapers say, there is going to be a war
with Germany you may take it that God, or Fate, or whatever you choose
to call Natural Law, is merely flinging a fusee into an ant-hill.”
“Then you think human beings no more valuable than ants?” she demanded,
half angrily.
“Less valuable sometimes,” he responded placidly. “When they are greasy
multi-millionaires I give the preference to respectable ants. Every one
has different tastes of course--but personally, speaking for myself
alone, I would rather be an ant than a millionaire grocer.”
She laughed,--she found him thoroughly amusing,--and--yes!--he was
certainly cleverer and more entertaining than Jack! He watched her,
admiring with an artist’s eye the flecks of gold hair against the
whiteness of her neck. He took one or two puffs at his pipe.
“I like to hear you laugh!” he said. “You do it prettily!”
She gave him a quaint little curtsey.
“Thanks!”
“It’s not a compliment,” he went on, “so thanks are superfluous. You are
at your best in a pleasant humour. You have a charming smile and a
fascinating manner--when you are good! But when you are put out, you
look quite different--and you lose your charm.”
“That is the case with everybody,” she said.
“Not always. Some women look their best in a passion. Flashing eyes,
dishevelled hair, and general tantrums, make them diabolically
beautiful. But you, with your dove-like glance and soft bright hair are
of the elfin type--and I believe--if fairy tales are true!--that elves
are never angry.”
She looked at him and smiled. He was in his kindliest, most attractive
mood, and when he allowed himself the relaxation of perfect good temper,
he could be almost lovable.
“Elves,” he repeated, “are never angry. They are full of pranks and
wiles, but they are never unkind to their friends--”
“I am not unkind!” she interrupted quickly.
“Dear child, I never said you were! But your incorrigible sentiment
makes you hasty in judgment--quick to condemn. I’m quite sure you think
me a sort of masked traitor because I fail to see any virtue in dying
for England, and prefer to live for her. I’m equally positive you have
your doubts as to my sense of common humanity because I say and because
I mean that a very large number of people would be better out of the
world than in it. And so you misunderstand me. Your Jack now--”
“He’s not ‘my’ Jack,” she interposed, swiftly.
“Well, he’d like to be,” retorted the Philosopher. “And of course he’d
‘die’ for England--no!--for ‘America and the Old Glory!’--Delightful
bunkum! He’s all nobleness, patriotism, enthusiasm and heart! A nice
boy--_quite_ a nice boy,--but insufferably dull!”
She was silent.
“Dulness,” pursued the Philosopher, “is the only unforgivable sin. Now
you cannot say _I_ am dull!”
She peeped at him from under the brim of her hat,--an answer was on her
lips, but she would not utter it.
“I amuse you,” he went on. “I make you laugh! That is a great thing!
Isn’t it?”
She nodded, smilingly.
“I have,” went on the Philosopher, complacently, “an original turn of
mind. I say things in an original manner. People quote my remarks as
being new and funny. It’s a great help in social life to have a man
among your friends who may be relied upon to speak in a way which no one
else can imitate. It ‘lifts’ conversation. Don’t you agree with me?”
Her eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Well, I’m not sure!” she said. “There are some clever men who can be
duller than very stupid ones,--though of course they always think
themselves amusing. They tell the same stories over and over again--the
same old jokes and witticisms,--and it is very difficult to listen to,
them patiently and smile as if you were pleased, when really you’re
bored!”
He nodded his head.
“True!--very true! I have met many such men. I always avoid them when I
can. But the _moral_ of the whole thing is that one should know as few
people as possible and never keep up with those few longer than a month
or six weeks.”
She gave him an astonished look.
“Why, then we should have no friends!” she exclaimed.
He smiled indulgently.
“Have we any friends anyhow?” he asked. “What _are_ ‘friends’? Are they
not dear sweet people who abuse you behind your back and take an inward
deep pleasure in hearing of your faults and misfortunes? The friends of
your youth for example? I’m not speaking personally of _you_, for you
are still young--but if you have any so-called ‘friends’ now, and they
and you live a few years longer, you’ll have these dear creatures coming
along and saying, ‘Really, is it you? I shouldn’t have known you! Why
it’s years and years since I saw you!--ages!’--despite the fact that it
may be only five summers since you last met. But the expression ‘years
and years’ and ‘ages’ is used to let you feel how old you have grown
since then; _I_ know the kind of thing I tell you! And I have always
made it my business to forget schoolfellows and college
companions,--drop them altogether. I don’t want their ‘reminiscences’
and I’m sure they don’t want mine. The secret of happiness in this world
is to forget as you go along. Forget the past, live in the present, and
don’t worry about the future.”
She was silent. And she kept silence so long that he had time to finish
his pipe, knock out its ashes against a tree, and put it in his pocket.
Then he looked sideways at her, and saw that the winsome face was sad.
Without ceremony he took her arm, and walked on past all the roses to a
smooth stretch of greensward beyond.
“You see,” he resumed gently, “we are only on this interesting planet
for a short time, and it seems common sense--to me at least--that we
should endeavour to make that time as pleasant as possible. If we hold
on to friends who knew us as children we find them as changed as we
ourselves are changed, and that _isn’t_ pleasant. Therefore, why expose
ourselves to the shock? No greater mistake was ever made by the human
being--than to keep up his so-called ‘friends.’ It costs money and
wastes time--”
She lifted her head quickly.
“Then if you think love a mistake and friendship a bore, can you tell
what life is worth?” she asked.
“Dear elfin lady, I can! Life is worth living on account of the various
agreeable sensations it provides. It is all ‘sensation’--_not_
sentiment! Love is a ‘sensation’--a violent one--an attraction between
two persons of opposite sex which is quite exhilarating and
inspiring--for a short time. During that short time it has been known to
move poets to their best efforts--though as a rule these individuals
write their rhymes to the ‘sensation’--not to the person they imagine
they adore. Friendship is also a ‘sensation,’--the feeling that one had
found one’s ‘sympathy’--one’s _alter ego_--a most misleading idea as a
rule. But any ‘sensation’ is for the moment agreeable, provided it is
not physically painful--and these varying sensations are the _sum bonum_
of life.”
She sighed.
“I do not like your outlook,” she said. “It makes everything seem so
contemptible and worthless.”
He gave an airy gesture with his disengaged hand.
“What would you! Everything is contemptible and worthless, considered
from the strictly philosophical standpoint. Civilisations, like men, are
only born to die and be forgotten,--we trouble ourselves uselessly in
efforts to keep them alive after their appointed span. Certain races
attain to a high state of education and then begin to degenerate and
hark back to the old roots of savagery--”
“And what do you argue from all this?” she demanded.
“Why, that we should enjoy the present hour as I am doing,” he replied,
smiling agreeably. “And repel the symptoms of degeneracy in ourselves
and others as forcibly as we can!”
She sighed again, and pausing, withdrew her arm from his.
“Poor, pretty, elfin lady!” he said kindly. “You do not like my way of
looking at the world!”
“No! Most certainly not!” she answered, quickly. “If one _thought_ the
things you _say_, one would commit suicide!”
“Oh, no, one wouldn’t!” and he smiled. “Not as long as”--here he looked
about him--“not as long as a butterfly exists!”--and he pointed to one
just settling on a spray of clematis--“or a pretty woman!”
She moved on without a word, and he felt for his pipe in his pocket. She
looked back over her shoulder.
“I am going indoors,” she called. “Do you want anything before I go?”
He took a couple of leisurely strides and came up again beside her.
“No--I have my ‘notes’ and a pencil--simple things, but they suffice!
And you can leave me the newspaper--its news is false, its English
detestable and its self-advertisement appalling--like all the rest of
its class--but a printed Ananias always amuses me--I only regret it does
not fall dead like its mythical prototype!”
She had been holding the newspaper in one hand--she now gave it him with
a little wistful upward glance that somehow hurt him and made him feel
uncomfortable. He realised that his ‘philosophy’ had cast a yellow fog
on the sunny brightness of her day. He took her hand, looked at its
dimpled whiteness critically and then gravely kissed it.
“Cheer up!” he said. “It’s a nice little world--and--you’ve got a pretty
little hand! It makes life worth living--or it ought to!--for you. And
also for me.”
She laughed softly.
“Oh, how absurd you are!” she said. “I don’t think you mean half you
say!”
“Probably not!” he answered, mildly. “It is a very abstruse problem for
a man to find out exactly what he means. I doubt if any man has ever
done it--not even old Socrates. And I’m not Socrates--”
“No, indeed!” she interrupted him. “You are--you are--”
“Diogenes?” he suggested.
She laughed again, nodded and ran off.