Hell was supposed to be very hot, very red, full of pugnacious demons.
Educated people do not believe in it any more. It is curious how
ignorant educated people have become. Hell is an actual plane, less
vivid than was formerly imagined, not hot but cold, grey rather than
red, but amply provided with demons, with the devils of self-accusation,
with the fiends of insoluble queries. Very real and very actual, it is
surprising how many educated people are there. The oddity of that is
increased by the fact that they regard it as a private establishment.
They regard their hell as unique. Perhaps the idea flatters them. Yet
sooner or later everybody enters it. Hell may seem private. It is
universal.
Headlong into it, Margaret's letter precipitated Lennox. Being a man, he
struggled up. But not out. In hell there are no signposts. It takes time
to find one's way. It takes more, it takes resignation. When both have
been acquired, the walls part of themselves. The aspect of life has
altered, but you are free.
Lennox, in struggling up, encountered the demons of enigmatic riddles.
Each word of Margaret's letter they converted into a Why? They thrust it
at him, demanding an answer. But the answer her heart alone possessed.
That heart had been his. It was his no longer. The heart that she had
given him, she had taken away. Nothing could be simpler and nothing more
mysterious. The mystification was complete, but not the suffering.
Suffering is never complete. However deep the hell, there is always a
deeper one.
From the letter he looked at the walls. They were dumb. There was no
answer for the demons there, not anywhere, perhaps, except among
werewolves, basilisks and Mrs. Austens. These monsters did not occur to
him. The monstrous letter sufficed. But Margaret was still too near, her
vows were too recent for him to credit it, and the fact that he could
not disclosed itself in those words which all have uttered, all at least
before whom the inexplicable has sprung.
"It is impossible!"
Yet there it was. Yet there too was something else. But what? At once he
was back again in the issueless circle of infernal questions.
The day before he had known that something was amiss. The attitude of
Mrs. Austen had been too assured, too venomous, too smiling, for him to
doubt it. But though he did not doubt that, not for a second did he
doubt Margaret either. Always aware of the woman's hostility, he had
been equally aware that it could not influence the girl. Not for a
moment therefore had he accepted the statement that the engagement was
broken. At the time he had thought that when next he had a word with
Margaret it would all be explained. But all what? His life was as clean
as his face. It was not that then. On the other hand he was not rich. By
the same token, Margaret's only idea of money was to help others with
it. It was not that then either. Nor was it that she had not loved him.
She had loved him. He could have sworn it and not out of vanity, for he
had none, but because never could she have promised herself to him if
she had not. None the less, she could not see him again. She had thought
it over. She was not suited to him. He was told to forget her. Why?
That Why, repeating itself, forced him deeper into the circles of which
hell is made.
But even in hell despair is brief. Unless it consume you utterly, and it
would not be hell if it did, it goads. It compels you to seek an issue.
Apart from time, which is very slow, and resignation, which is never
prompt, there is another portal.
A poet, who discovered it, scrawled on it: "Lascia la donna e studia la
matematica"--a cryptogram which subsequent pilgrims variously
deciphered. To some, it spelled Thought; to others, Action. Action is
thought put in motion.
Lennox, to whom time was too dilatory and resignation too remote,
happened on the device which he translated after his manner.
But however you construe the hierograph, the door must be demolished
before you get out. Across the door is written: Hope. It is a very hard
door to crack. When you succeed you are covered with splinters. They
cling to you and pierce you. Joiners, carpenters, pilgrims, poets and
fiends have a name for them. They call the splinters Regrets. Though you
have escaped, they accompany you. Hell encircles you still.
It was on the day following the conversation with Mrs. Austen that
Lennox received Margaret's letter. In his dark rooms it was waiting. A
moment previous he had intended to go to her. He had it all planned.
Mrs. Austen could say what she liked; the physician might interfere; he
would submit to no one. He proposed to see her, to adjust it, to swing
up and out from the circles which already were closing about him.
On leaving Mrs. Austen he had gone to dinner. He could not eat. He had
gone to bed. He could not sleep. In the morning his face was flushed.
Always fit, hard as nails, these phenomena perplexed. Yet he knew it was
not illness that produced them. What he did not know was that poison
had. The poison was anger, an unphilosophic emotion which disturbs the
circulation, the stomach and social intercourse. He could have wrung
Mrs. Austen's neck.
In that murderous mood he went to Wall Street and in that mood returned.
Already hell was gaping. Headlong into it the letter threw him. Being a
man he sought and found the door, smashed it and passed out. Not at once
however. It took him many a sleepless hour before he deciphered the
device Lascia la donna. Leave the lady? Certainly. Since she so wished,
what else in decency could he do? Go and badger her with complaints and
questions? Not he. But how do you translate: Studia la matematica? The
dictionary that is in every man, who is a man, told him. Then he knew.
Meanwhile the flush in departing left him grey.
In every affection there is the germ of hate. Margaret, confronted by
the unawaited, hated Lennox. Lennox, confronted by the inexplicable,
hated Margaret. Hatred is love turned inside out. Love is perhaps a
fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. In that case so also
is hate. Of all things mystery disturbs the imagination most. Margaret
could not understand how Lennox could have acted as he had. Lennox could
not understand how Margaret could act as she did. Dual misunderstanding,
in which the imagination fermented. Hence the hate. Yet each, in hating,
loved the other. Each felt the splinters which, as Browning somewhere
noted, kept fresh and fine. Only a touch and the splinters would have
joined.
Mrs. Austen, for all her horrible shrewdness, could not have prevented
that. But pride, that gives so many of us a fall, was more potent than
she. Margaret, insulted, could but turn away. Lennox, dismissed, could
but let her go.
Any emotion is unbecoming. Pride is merely ridiculous. It resides in the
youthful-minded, however old. In residing in these young people, it
resisted the touch that would have combined them and, through its
opposition, made one of them ill and the other grey. To be proud! How
splendid it seems and how stupid it is. Hell is paved with just such
imbecilities.
It is said of Dante that children peered at him and whispered: "That man
has been in hell."
None of the children that clubmen are, pointed at Lennox, though two of
them whispered. The others did not know, not yet at least. But Verelst
knew and Jones guessed. The guess was due to the romantic profession
that endows a novelist with the wonderful faculty of putting two and two
together.
Hitherto, that is since the engagement was announced and, for that
matter, long previously, Lennox had passed the evening in Park Avenue.
Where else would he have passed it? After the rupture he sat about and
read all the papers. When a man is down and out that is just what he
does do, though not necessarily in the Athenaeum Club.
Jones, noticing it, rapidly divined the reason which Verelst confirmed.
"Yes, her mother told me."
It was in a club window, of an afternoon. Before them was Fifth Avenue
which, in the Aprils of not so long ago, used to be a horse-show of fair
faces, ravishing hats, discreet liveries, folded arms and yards of
yodeling brass.
Verelst, eyeing the usurping motors, added: "It is because of some girl
I believe, or rather I don't believe it."
Jones sat back. Instantly the motors were replaced by the picture of a
girl whose face was noble and reserved. He had seen the face at the
Bazaar. He had seen Lennox talking to it. Afterward Lennox had told him
that the girl was Portuguese. The picture was attractive but
unconvincing. In agreement with Verelst he was about to say so. But
behind him he heard a voice that he knew and he switched and said:
"What a remarkable country Portugal is! Born dumb, she spoke twice: once
when she gave Asia to Europe, again when she presented the Lusiades to
the world. Her history is resumed in two miracles, a discovery and a
masterpiece. But when the Cape of Good Hope was succeeded by Camoens,
once more she relapsed into a silence that was broken only when she
shouted her defiance at the Huns."
Now though that voice was addressing them. Both turned and Lennox asked:
"What are you talking about--war?"
"Sit down," said Verelst, who gave him a hand.
Jones gave him another. "What else is there to talk about? It will be
talked of forever. So will that scrofulous Kaiser. Unfortunately he
knows it and that pleases him. Last year or the year before he called
for the death and destruction of all who opposed him. With singular
modesty he added: 'God who speaks through my mouth so orders!' Loti
claims that what spoke through him was a hyena. Loti is lacking in
literary sobriety. When a hyena has eaten he is at peace with the world.
But when was bestiality ever filled? It is insatiable and so is this
thug whom God, at most, may have permitted to look in the mirror without
vomiting. Meanwhile we stand by. A generation ago we fought for Cuba.
What is Hecuba to us in comparison to the Anima Mundi?"
Verelst turned on the novelist. "And what is literary sobriety? You are
hurling words in massed formation."