The Beautiful and Damned
political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting
day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life
staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate,
definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to
take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make
for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit
to paper or canvas? Struggling in a laboratory through weary years for
one iota of relative truth in a mass of wheels or a test tube--"
"Have you?"
Maury paused, and in his answer, when it came, there was a measure of
weariness, a bitter overnote that lingered for a moment in those three
minds before it floated up and off like a bubble bound for the moon.
"Not I," he said softly. "I was born tired--but with the quality of
mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria--to that, for all my talking
and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems
to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have
added not one jot."
In the distance a deep sound that had been audible for some moments
identified itself by a plaintive mooing like that of a gigantic cow and
by the pearly spot of a headlight apparent half a mile away. It was a
steam-driven train this time, rumbling and groaning, and as it tumbled
by with a monstrous complaint it sent a shower of sparks and cinders
over the platform.
"Not one jot!" Again Maury's voice dropped down to them as from a great
height. "What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its
waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats!
Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who
say that intelligence must have built the universe--why, intelligence
never built a steam engine! Circumstances built a steam engine.
Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure
the infinite achievements of Circumstances.
"I could quote you the philosophy of the hour--but, for all we know,
fifty years may see a complete reversal of this abnegation that's
absorbing the intellectuals to-day, the triumph of Christ over Anatole
France--" He hesitated, and then added: "But all I know--the tremendous
importance of myself to me, and the necessity of acknowledging that
importance to myself--these things the wise and lovely Gloria was born
knowing these things and the painful futility of trying to know
anything else.
"Well, I started to tell you of my education, didn't I? But I learned
nothing, you see, very little even about myself. And if I had I should
die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen--as the wisest
men have done since--oh, since the failure of a certain matter--a
strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they
were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way
of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.
"Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of
one belief--that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think
that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and
prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never
meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:
"'Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever to
mock the credulity of man. Let's persuade our more erotic poets to write
about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust
journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We'll include all
the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the
keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities
worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of
them, and yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter
the world over--and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities
and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion,
so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no
more nonsense in the world.
"'Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of
style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound
scepticism and our universal irony.'
"So the men did, and they died.
"But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so
astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and
genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after
they were dead it became known as the Bible."
When he concluded there was no comment. Some damp languor sleeping on
the air of night seemed to have bewitched them all.
"As I said, I started on the story of my education. But my high-balls
are dead and the night's almost over, and soon there'll be an awful
jabbering going on everywhere, in the trees and the houses, and the two
little stores over there behind the station, and there'll be a great
running up and down upon the earth for a few hours--Well," he concluded
with a laugh, "thank God we four can all pass to our eternal rest
knowing we've left the world a little better for having lived in it."
A breeze sprang up, blowing with it faint wisps of life which flattened
against the sky.
"Your remarks grow rambling and inconclusive," said Anthony sleepily.
"You expected one of those miracles of illumination by which you say
your most brilliant and pregnant things in exactly the setting that
should provoke the ideal symposium. Meanwhile Gloria has shown her
far-sighted detachment by falling asleep--I can tell that by the fact
that she has managed to concentrate her entire weight upon my
broken body."
"Have I bored you?" inquired Maury, looking down with some concern.
"No, you have disappointed us. You've shot a lot of arrows but did you
shoot any birds?"
"I leave the birds to Dick," said Maury hurriedly. "I speak erratically,
in disassociated fragments."
"You can get no rise from me," muttered Dick. "My mind is full of any
number of material things. I want a warm bath too much to worry about
the importance of my work or what proportion of us are pathetic figures."
Dawn made itself felt in a gathering whiteness eastward over the river
and an intermittent cheeping in the near-by trees.
"Quarter to five," sighed Dick; "almost another hour to wait. Look! Two
gone." He was pointing to Anthony, whose lids had sagged over his eyes.
"Sleep of the Patch family--"
But in another five minutes, despite the amplifying cheeps and chirrups,
his own head had fallen forward, nodded down twice, thrice....
Only Maury Noble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes
wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of
morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading
radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping
avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no
one now--on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there
would be a girl of another class whose whole life he was; these were the
things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it
seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind
he had ever tried to think.
There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was
life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm--the dark
pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell
ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously
up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether
he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone
and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform
while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck,
carolling hoarsely at the summer morning.
CHAPTER III
THE BROKEN LUTE
_It is seven-thirty of an August evening. The windows in the living room
of the gray house are wide open, patiently exchanging the tainted inner
atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot
dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile,
as to hint already of a summer laid away in time. But August is still
proclaimed relentlessly by a thousand crickets around the side-porch,
and by one who has broken into the house and concealed himself
confidently behind a bookcase, from time to time shrieking of his
cleverness and his indomitable will._
_The room itself is in messy disorder. On the table is a dish of fruit,
which is real but appears artificial. Around it are grouped an ominous
assortment of decanters, glasses, and heaped ash-trays, the latter still
raising wavy smoke-ladders into the stale air, the effect on the whole
needing but a skull to resemble that venerable chromo, once a fixture in
every "den," which presents the appendages to the life of pleasure with
delightful and awe-inspiring sentiment._
_After a while the sprightly solo of the supercricket is interrupted
rather than joined by a new sound--the melancholy wail of an erratically
fingered flute. It is obvious that the musician is practising rather
than performing, for from time to time the gnarled strain breaks off
and, after an interval of indistinct mutterings, recommences._
_Just prior to the seventh false start a third sound contributes to the
subdued discord. It is a taxi outside. A minute's silence, then the taxi
again, its boisterous retreat almost obliterating the scrape of
footsteps on the cinder walk. The door-bell shrieks alarmingly through
the house._
_From the kitchen enters a small, fatigued Japanese, hastily buttoning a
servant's coat of white duck. He opens the front screen-door and admits
a handsome young man of thirty, clad in the sort of well-intentioned
clothes peculiar to those who serve mankind. To his whole personality
clings a well-intentioned air: his glance about the room is compounded
of curiosity and a determined optimism; when he looks at Tana the entire
burden of uplifting the godless Oriental is in his eyes. His name is_
FREDERICK E. PARAMORE. _He was at Harvard with_ ANTHONY, _where because
of the initials of their surnames they were constantly placed next to
each other in classes. A fragmentary acquaintance developed--but since
that time they have never met._
_Nevertheless,_ PARAMORE _enters the room with a certain air of arriving
for the evening._
_Tana is answering a question._
TANA: (_Grinning with ingratiation_) Gone to Inn for dinnah. Be back
half-hour. Gone since ha' past six.
PARAMORE: (_Regarding the glasses on the table_) Have they company?
TANA: Yes. Company. Mistah Caramel, Mistah and Missays Barnes, Miss
Kane, all stay here.
PARAMORE: I see. (_Kindly_) They've been having a spree, I see.
TANA: I no un'stan'.
PARAMORE: They've been having a fling.
TANA: Yes, they have drink. Oh, many, many, many drink.
PARAMORE: (_Receding delicately from the subject_) "Didn't I hear the
sounds of music as I approached the house"?
TANA:(_With a spasmodic giggle_)Yes, I play.
PARAMORE: One of the Japanese instruments.
(_He is quite obviously a subscriber to the "National Geographic
Magazine_.")
TANA: I play flu-u-ute, Japanese flu-u-ute.
PARAMORE: What song were you playing? One of your Japanese melodies?
TANA:(_His brow undergoing preposterous contraction_) I play train song.
How you call?--railroad song. So call in my countree. Like train. It go
so-o-o; that mean whistle; train start. Then go so-o-o; that mean train
go. Go like that. Vera nice song in my countree. Children song.
PARAMORE: It sounded very nice. (_It is apparent at this point that only