It is, I suppose, a common experience that our self-valuations are not
fixed but fluctuating. Sometimes the estimate is extravagantly high;
sometimes, but less frequently, it is too low. There are people, no
doubt, whose vanity is so vast that no drafts upon it make any
appreciable difference to the fund. It is as inexhaustible as the horn
of Skrymir. And there are others whose humility is so established that
no emotion of vain-glory ever visits them. But the generality of us go
up and down according to the weather, our health, our fortune and a
hundred trifles good or bad. We are like corks on the wave, sometimes
borne buoyantly on the crest of the heaving sea of circumstance, then
sinking into the trough of the billows. At this moment I am in the
trough. I have been passing through one of those chastening
experiences which reveal to us how unimportant we are to the world.
When we are in health we bustle about and talk and trade and write and
push and thrust and haggle and bargain and feel that we are tremendous
fellows. However would the world get on without us? we say. What
would become of the office? Who could put those schemes through that I
have in hand? What on earth would that dear fellow Robinson do without
my judgment to lean on? What would become of Jones if he no longer met
me after lunch at the club for a quiet and confidential talk? How
would _The Star_ survive without...
And so we inflate ourselves with a comfortable conceit, and feel that
we are really the hub of things, and that if anything goes wrong with
us there will be a mournful vacuum in society. Then some day the
bubble of our vanity is pricked. We are gently laid aside, deflated
and humble, the world forgetting, by the world forgot. Our empire has
shrunk to the dimensions of a sick-room, and there fever plays its wild
dramas, turning the innocent patterns of the wall-paper into fantastic
shapes, and fearsome conflicts, filling our unquiet slumbers with
dreadful phantoms that, waking, we try to seize, only to fall back
defeated and helpless. And then follow the days--those peaceful
days--of sheer collapse, when you just lie back on the pillow and look
hour by hour at the ceiling, desiring nothing and thinking of nothing,
and when the doctor, feeling your stagnant pulse, says, "Yes, you have
had a bad shaking."
These are the days of illumination. Outside the buses rumble by, and
you know they are crowded with people going down to or returning from
the great whirlpool. And you realise that the mighty world is
thundering on in the old way as though it had never heard of you.
Fleet Street roars by night and day in happy unconcern of you; your
absence from "the Gallery" in the afternoon is unnoted by a soul;
Robinson gives one thought to you, and then turns to his work as though
nothing had happened; Jones misses you after lunch, but is just as
happy with Brown; and _The Star_--well, _The Star_ ... yes, the painful
fact has to be faced.... _The Star_ goes on its radiant path as though
you had only been a fly on its wheel.
It is a humbling experience. This, then, was all your high-blown pride
amounted to. You were just a bubble on the surface, a snowflake on the
river--a moment there, then gone for ever. This is the foretaste of
death. When that comes the waters will just close over your head as
they have closed now--a comment here and there, perhaps friendly,
perhaps critical, a few tears it may be, and--oblivion. It is an old
story--old as humanity. You remember those verses of Dean Swift on the
news of his own death, with what airy jests and indifference it was
received in this and that haunt where he had played so great a part.
It comes to a card party who affect to receive it in "doleful dumps."
"The Dean is dead (pray what is trumps?)"
Then "Lord have mercy on his soul!
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six deans, they say, must bear the pall,
(I wish I knew what king to call).
Madam, your husband will attend
The funeral of so good a friend?"
"No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight;
And he's engaged to-morrow night;
My Lady Club will take it ill
If he should fail her at quadrille.
He loved the Dean (I lead a heart);
But dearest friends, they say, must part.
That is the way of it. Your friend is dead: you heave a sigh and lead
a heart.
Listen to that thrush outside. How he is going it! He, too, on this
bright March morning sings of the world's indifference--the
indifference of the joyous, living world to those who have crept to
their holes. I hear in his voice the news of the coming of spring, and
know that down at "the cottage" the crocuses are out in the garden and
the dark beech woods are turning to brown, and the lark is springing up
into the blue like a flame of song. How I have loved this pageantry of
nature, these days of revelation and promise. I used to think that I
was a part of them, but now I know that the pageant goes forward in
sublime unconsciousness that I am no longer in the audience.
And so I lie and look at the ceiling and feel humble and disillusioned.
I have discovered that the world goes on very well without me, and I am
not sure that it is not worth spending a week or two in bed to learn
that salutary lesson. When I return to the world I fancy I shall have
lost some of my ancient swagger. I shall feel like a modest intruder
upon a society that has shown it has no need for me. I may recover my
feeling of importance in time, but in my secret heart I shall know that
I am not the hub but only a fly on the mighty wheel of things. I can
skip off and no one is any the wiser.