Leader
It is unfortunately not true to say that the only friend to the
Christian is a Christian. Everyone, with the exception of a
few free spirits like Gibbon or Nietzsche, has befriended the
Christian by virtue of his own inertia; by virtue of his own
intellectual dishonesty; and by virtue of his fear of public disapproval.
Like the spark of electricity whose inertia carries it
over the gap when a circuit is broken (we see it every day above
the trolley cars!), the Christian belief has lingered on, a century
beyond its time. It is the electrical spark which fills the gap
between Popery and the New Thought. It is no longer a current,
but a fireworks.
An unfortunate state of affairs, which for the sake of our
racial mental integrity should be altered! But why does it exist?
What are the causes of this inertia—this posthumous belief?
The causes can be readily wrapped and bundled into one cause—human
nature. It is human nature to want to believe in a
God. It is human nature to accept a system of belief handed
down from generation to generation. It is human nature to
overcome the inconsistencies and the logical difficulties of such a
belief as peremptorily as possible. What is the result? We look
toward the scriptures, and find God: satisfaction of condition
number one; but there is the objection that the teachings of the
scriptures are obscure, contradictory, and ill-suited to modern
business. Condition number two, however, overcomes this difficulty.
We are told at home, in the church, and at the school
that the Bible must be interpreted “liberally”. It is “symbolical”.
One does not literally offer the other cheek; one does not literally
love one’s neighbor as oneself, etc. Condition number two is
satisfied by a shifting of our original positions. We are no longer
literal Christians; we are liberal Christians. In other words, we
are not Christians at all; we have nailed Christ to our cross, not
to His own. We have distorted His doctrine in order to fit our
modern twentieth century. Oh well, what does it matter? Condition
number three can satisfy this discrepancy. The case is not
one for argument; it is a question of faith. We have faith in
Christ’s arguments. We believe that in spirit we are still Christians,
although in the letter of the law we are pharisees. We
assign to ourselves the pompous right of interpretation and
revision (annihilation?) of the original doctrine: and this in spite
of our vaunted humility! Christ, we say, meant well. We mean
well. Therefore we are Christians. The argument is dismissed,
and condition number three is satisfied.
What is a Christian?
Here is a question which ought to urge us to pause in calm
deliberation. Do we mean that “all good men” are Christians?
Or do we designate, by this word, only those whose lives conform
to the original doctrines of faith, charity, love, and humility? If
the former, then the question is merely one of definition. If the
latter, it is one of revolution.
The Christians, with the supreme perspicacity of their kind (one
must have the insight of a Jew to be a Christian!)—the Christians
have sensed the danger to which their doctrine has been recently
subjected by modern science, and seeing that there is no hope in
the open battle-field, have had recourse to an ingenious subterfuge.
They say that all good men are Christians: that is, they do not
say it brazenly, but they imply it. I have several times heard the
most extreme atheist of my acquaintance surnamed “Christian”
by one of these canny believers. And in this manner the believer
successfully covered up the difficulty; smothered what would
otherwise prove to be a revolution; prolonged the spark that jumps
the gap between Popery and the New Thought. It is a clever
ruse—very clever. But it does not fool the free spirits. They
believe that a reference to the original doctrines of the Bible, and
a strict interpretation, not necessarily of what they say, but at least
of what they mean (in other words, an honest interpretation), is
the only possible means of telling what is Christian and what is
not. Socrates, for instance, was a good man. But obviously he
cannot be called a “Christian”, since he reached the earth, and
left it, long before that deluge began. The free spirits, therefore,
prefer intellectual honesty to dissimulation and rationalization,
and, in the words of Christ—who was honest, in spite of His
followers—seek to “render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar’s”.
The free spirits wish to call a spade a spade. A Christian is
a Christian if he believes in the immaculate conception and the
resurrection. Otherwise he is a pagan, or at the most an amorphous
Christian. In either case he may or may not be “a good
man”. The free spirits think that, from the point of view of
physiology at least, the immaculate conception is no less than a
great distortion of nature, to be classed with miscarriages, abortions,
and infanticides. But, you say, we are not physiologists:
we are idealists. O shades of the Greek idealism—O classicism—where
has the Deluge washed thee! O Truth, where is thy
sting? There was an element of sanity in Socrates’ hatred of the
poets and of the national legends, was there not, my friends?
Homer’s imagination taught all the other poets how to lie about
the gods and the national heroes. Might it not go similarly with
the apostles? And unfortunately, in this case, there are twelve
of them to deal with instead of one? But no Socrates!
In other words, the free spirits do not care to compromise their
position. They take pride in their own intellectual integrity. They
agree with Christ in some respects. But they look upon the
Christian pill as altogether too large for a sane man to swallow.
In fact, to be free with you, they think that Christ was a little
bit too much inspired by Himself—by His own divinity—and that
He allowed emotion to cloud what might have been a superior
intellect.
But the free spirits go one step further. They believe that to
find fault with human nature for not responding to Christianity
(in the strict sense of the word) is but to blame the patient for
not being cured by the medicine. For instance, this love of your
neighbor—that fictitious personage who haunts the domicile of the
imagination, dressed in a black suit and a derby—this love of
neighbor, is nothing but one of those abstractions which the later
day Christians—the amorphous Christians—have made in order
to satisfy the dictates of strict Christianity. The free spirits say:
“There is nothing we would rather do than love our neighbor,
if you mean by that, one, or even several, individuals. Such a
love makes life worth while. But we refuse, quite frankly, to
love our Neighbor, meaning thereby a whole city, or a nation, or
a continent. Such love only gives rise to international jealousies,
and is a cause of wars.” In other words, the free spirits think
that only fools and fanatics can be in love with grand, sweeping,
meaningless abstractions. We can love individuals. But to love
an abstraction (such as Humanity, the Poor, the Nation, Evolution),
is to marry oneself to nihilism, mechanism and metaphysics:
it is to immerse one’s personality in an ocean of imagination.
What is Humanity, anyway? Who has ever seen it? For the
past hundred years the Christians have been romantically chanting
about the salvation of it. But it is time now that the world wake
up to the fact that Humanity is not an inclusive term meaning all
individuals: it is, rather, a generalization meaning non-individuality.
So we take our stand, not only against that distortion of the
Christian doctrine which permits of calling “all good men” Christians;
not only against the strict Christian doctrine which stands
for the effete virtues of Faith, Charity, Love, and Humility; but
also against a more pernicious mixture of the two which is tending,
by means of Dry Laws and Common Freshman Years, to undermine
the integrity of the individual. You say, we are not idealists.
Ah, but we are idealists. But we believe that ideals are only vital
in so far as they are individualized (i.e., belong to an individual).
And Christianity makes hash out of the individual.
What! We are no longer to deal in subtleties? Of course we
are to deal in subtleties—(away with your blunt, hard-headed
American who talks by statistical tables!). But although subtle
and delicate, we are yet to be honest. That is the point: we are
to be truthful. But Truth is essentially a pagan virtue. When
men are truthful, Christianity becomes superfluous.
RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT.
Lothario in Livorno
George Ardrath had the misfortune to enter his
adolescent stage at the same time that he became initiated
into the sacred mysteries of poetry-love. As a matter of fact,
George was far ahead of most eighteen-year-old prep-school
youths in regard to mental development—that is, he had passed
the period during which most boys of his age delight in telling of
minor moral peccadilloes. He no longer thought that the summum
bonum was to be seen in a rather doubtful Manhattan cabaret, or
to be able to talk intelligently about the exorbitant price of gin.
George’s appreciation of the finer arts, in its early period of
incubation, was limited by the extent of his readings. There were
certain intellectual hazards such as Keats’s Ode to a Grecian Urn
which George read to find out why they were considered so
exquisite; and without being convinced in his own mind as to the
merits of those sine qua nons he accepted the judgment of his
superiors, and injected an attraction into them by main force.
When he was swamped by their intricacies, he memorized them,
so as not to be caught napping on any popular masterpiece. George
was the kind of fellow who you could be morally certain would
remark: “Ah! ‘Rosemary—that’s for remembrance’,” when
brought face to face with that poetic flower in the garden in back
of Shakespeare’s birthplace. Behind all this aesthetic posing,
however, there was a real seeking after beautiful things in George’s
heart, trite as that statement may seem, and if the path to a subtle
poetic appreciation led through a rather plebeian state of mind,
there was no help for it, and in this case the end certainly justified
the means.
There was one typically adolescent trait discernible in the
adolescent Ardrath, and that was his ambition to be a heart-breaker—a
youthful Don Juan, or Romeo, or even perhaps a more mature
Paolo. George could be classified in the number of those who
smugly exhibit the farewell salutation of a girl’s letter, discreetly
shading the immediately preceding part—the whole process being
attended by a certain atmosphere of delightful mystification. So
George could hardly be called abnormal—his Relations With
Women (awe-full term!) redeemed him to the ranks of gum-chewing,
suppressed-book-reading Much Younger Generation.
It so happened that George went abroad with his family, the
summer before he planned to enter college. Being a creative as
well as appreciative dilettante, he felt it his duty to be inspired
by the Atlantic, and composed some rather frightful sea-poems.
In this respect George was somewhat of an opportunist; there
were certain great occasions, tremendous poetical crises, at which
George intended to produce intellectual gems—“Upon Seeing
Stratford-on-Avon”, “Lines Written at Montmartre”, “At Westminster
Abbey”, and so on. Thus it is evident at once that young
Ardrath was destined to experience a profound literary Renaissance
in Italy. That, however, comes a little later in the story.
George had the further misfortune (in our own critical judgment,
though certainly not in his) of meeting on the eight-day
boat a girl who really took him seriously—almost as seriously as
he took himself. She was older than he, but not much more
sophisticated. Irma had studied in a small seminary in California,
and had consequently escaped the superworldliness of students in
the large Eastern colleges. She saw that George was not an
ordinary type of boy, and in his individualistic traits she made out
the factors which distinguished him as a future virtuoso, perhaps
even a coming genius. Youth often stumbles, through infatuation,
upon real truths of significance, and the glamor of a romantic
attachment may indeed be but a superficial coating above a genuine
appreciation of latent talent. However that may be, Irma liked
George immensely, and George imagined that the feeling was
mutual.
The enamored pair pursued their literary and amatory inclinations
to the full on board ship. They would slip off between
dances on the deck by moonlight, and read Swinburne or Dowson
to each other, really enjoying themselves. There was a certain
zest in believing themselves superior to the common run of couples
who merely embraced each other amorously in covert nooks; it
seems elevated to kiss to the music of Swinburne’s Atalanta—to
shut the book with a half-gasp of utter emotional exhaustion,
and seek each other’s lips. Romeo and Juliet could not have acted
out the passion more realistically, with all the stage-craft available.
When George and Irma parted at Cherbourg, bound for different
destinations, it was with almost genuine affection, though
much of it had been puffed up artificially to merit the setting.
They promised to write each other faithfully—George had a visual
image of himself sitting down at a desk in the Hotel Palermo in
Florence and penning something akin to this:
“Dearest Irma:
“As I sit here, with the Arno flowing mellifluently
far below my lattice window, I cannot help thinking of
you in Versailles, that beauty-spot of this prosaic world,
walking lightly through the magnificent gardens and
estates of the great Louis Quatorze....”
The effects of a catholic taste in literature, and four years of
French, are only too evident in this prospective outburst.
It was with intense surprise that George, one bright morning,
bumped literally into Irma and her mother on one of the principal
streets of Leghorn, on the west coast of Italy. (George preferred
the more “mellifluent” name Livorno—Leghorn always reminded
him in his subconscious mind of a kind of chicken, and he had
an irresistible impulse to laugh, which would have been fatal to
all true sentiment). After the conventional references to the
small size of the world, after all, George inquired:
“What are you doing here, of all places? You never told me
you expected to take in Italy.”
“We really didn’t think at first we would, George, but I wanted
to see it so badly that mother finally gave in, and here we are!
You don’t look overjoyed to see me, George, or are you overcome
by the shock?”
“Nonsense, Irma; you surprised me, that’s all. I was in the
clouds just now, reciting Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’ to myself, to
the intense annoyances of all the Livornian traffic-policemen (I
presume that’s what they call the creatures). Where are you
staying, Mrs. Bench?”
“We’re at the Continental, George; do come up and see us
some time. We don’t know a soul, and it’s terribly lonely.”
“Then I shall play the rôle of the Friend From Home to you
and Irma, and show you with great and unabating gusto all my
snapshots. How about that for a dull evening’s entertainment?”
“Splendid!” said Irma without much enthusiasm. George was
always trying to be so infernally clever!
“I’ll come up to-night,” said George in a moment of inspiration,
“with appropriate guide-books and illustrated slides.”
And he walked off down the street—but in the confusion he
seemed to have forgotten the last few lines of Shelley’s lyric.
That evening, after Mrs. Bench had been tactfully dismissed
for the night, the young blood Ardrath and his serious-minded
companion took a long walk along the bay of Leghorn. “It was
on this bay that Shelley lost his life while sailing,” recited George
with the air of a very efficient but somehow uninspiring courier.
“In his pocket was a book of his friend Keats’s poems, doubled
back at the one called ‘St. Agnes’s Eve’. You know—‘St. Agnes’s
Eve, ah, bitter chill it was!’”
“How romantic!” offered Irma. “I suppose you’d like to be
drowned here too, and be cremated like Sam McGee (blasphemous
thought!).”
They walked on in silence for a few minutes. George was
trying to remember the next lines of “St. Agnes’s Eve”, as he
termed it. Irma was trying to decide whether she really still liked
George or not. Somehow the month’s separation which had just
ended had cooled their ardor considerably—on her part, at least.
“Shelley, in a way, must have been rather wet,” said Ardrath
after the pause. “He was unpopular at Oxford; they threw mud
at him one night when he became particularly obnoxious to the
conservative students, and insisted upon advocating atheism to
his comrades.”
“Oh, but we’re all wet one way or the other, George, don’t
you think? Shelley may not have been the man you are, but he
wrote better poetry.” This last with a tinge of irony that did
its work.
“You’re making fun of me, Irma. You don’t think I’m a bit
sincere in anything I say.”
“Not at all. There were a lot of things you said to me on the
boat which I believed were sincere.”
“Don’t you still think so?”
“Not entirely. I have an idea that you were more or less posing
when you said them—that you let yourself think they were true,
just for the sake of being romantically clever.”
George pondered. After all, there was a certain virtue in being
frank.
“As a matter of fact, you’re right—”
“What!”
Evidently he had blundered. George tried another tack.
“I mean, perhaps I said some things that a sensible person
wouldn’t have.”
“Then you can’t be called sensible?”
“No. Sometimes I act like a darn fool.”
“And I was a darn fool on the boat to think you meant anything
you said. Well, it’s lucky I’ve gotten over it now.”
“Irma, what do you mean?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. There’s no use of
our pretending we care for each other any longer.”
George waved his hands in a great gesture.
“But you don’t understand, dear. I care for you in a different
way now; I’ve gotten over all my sentimental romanticism.”
Somehow this did not sound sincere or convincing to either
Irma or himself. The girl straightened.
“How do I know that this is true, if you were just fooling on
the boat?”
They were walking on a ledge that overhung the bay now, and
the blue water of the Mediterranean gleamed in the moonlight
thirty feet below. Irma looked at it, and a devilish glint came
into her eye.
“George, if I jump into the sea, will you come after me?”
Assuredly this was carrying things too far, thought Ardrath.
Irma had again taken him too seriously. But he maintained his
poise.
“Of course; but don’t be a fool.”
“I hate sensible people,” she replied. “They always do the
obvious thing. For a long while I’ve wanted to do something
unusual, something quite unorthodox. George, I am going to
dive in.”
It was impossible to stop her. Bent like the curve of a bow,
her slender body arched as it plunged into the water.
There was a big splash as another body hurtled down and struck
the waves.
It was unfortunate that George had never learnt how to swim.
After he had gurgled around for two breathless submersions, Irma
took compassion on him and dragged him out. They have excellent
aquatic sports in Pasadena.
“I’m sorry, George, really,” said Irma tenderly. “I never
thought for a minute that you couldn’t swim. Will you forgive
me?”
“No,” replied George. “Good-night.”
He walked off without further remark. His soggy clothes
clung about him; his shoes squirted water from all openings; and
he felt damp. Irma followed at a respectful distance. She felt
strangely in the wrong.
It was about twelve o’clock when the dripping pair reached the
Continental Hotel. To their intense relief there were few people
on the streets to see them. In the lobby Irma forced George to
take her hand and say good-night in a pleasant tone of voice.
“It was really splendid of you to jump in like that when you
might have drowned. I don’t know how I can ever forgive myself,
much less expect you to do it. But I hope you will. I was
certainly an awful fool to-night.”
George made a fierce effort and regained his poise.
“‘There’s little comfort in the wise’,” he remarked. “Good-night,
Irma.”
When Mrs. Bench caught sight of her bedraggled and rather
miserable daughter sloshing into the room, she was naturally surprised
and quite wrought up.
“What on earth happened to you?” she demanded.
“I fell off a ledge into the bay,” lied Irma glibly, “and George
dove in and pulled me out.”
NORMAN R. JAFFRAY.
Brushwood Rabnon
The bright spring sun made it a different France than we had
tramped two weeks before. Then it had been dark; cold
rain had made our cassocks cling like gowns of soft lead, half-frozen
roads had cut and blistered our feet. But now, the sky
was blue everywhere, and the light sparkled from wet leaves and
the little pools that lay along the road. I felt reborn into the full
flush of youth: I loved the countryside, the Order which had
sent me there, the man with whom I was travelling. I loved the
ooze of cool mud that squirted between my toes and splashed
about ankles tired from walking. Eleven miles that morning had
been a pleasure such as we rarely enjoyed. Our spirits were
coming out of their hibernation, with all nature.
I turned at last, as we came over the crest of a hill, and broke
the friendly silence that had been between us for some time.
“Look, Rabnon, there is the town. I had not expected it to be
so beautiful.”
We stopped to gaze out down the road, for it was beautiful
indeed, and we were always willing to stand resting awhile. Below
us a shallow valley ran from side to side, its furrow lined by the
twistings of a small stream which joined at right angles with the
sharper twistings of our present thoroughfare. Where these two
met, the village spread itself in an irregular T shape, the larger
buildings in the center outlining their tops against the sky, while
their lesser, peripheral neighbors snuggled unostentatiously into
the flattened background of hill and river. Upstream, on higher
and less cultivated ground stood the modest fortress of the Lord
of Camereau, its round brown walls unremarkable save by a
drawbridge which was half up and half down, so that it rested in
relief against a light spot in the woods with a curious air of suspense,
and a white pennon which waved in the blue its allegiance
to the King of France. Like the pools and foliage at the roadside,
roofs and rocks as far as we could see glistened with moisture
from the night’s rain and the steaming earth. The stream was a
ribbon of alternating coruscance and tree-shaded brown water.
The sharp sound of a hammer on planks came distinctly across the
intervening mile and told us that some one was repairing his home
from the ravages of water. Altogether, everything looked as if
in the process of being fixed up and made ready for an event;
the valley was as rejuvenated as myself.
“Neither had I,” said Rabnon gruffly, and it was impossible to
tell whether or not he felt that immanent something as I did.
It had not occurred to me to look closely at him before this
morning, and I turned now as he stood gazing down the road to
make sure it was the same Rabnon of a fortnight ago. As you
know, this strange director of my dreams appears in surprising
forms, and, while matters in dreams are usually matters of course,
yet I never began a night’s escapade with him without a little
misgiving lest he take some such terrible shape as the pirate who
guided my pen in that devastating evening a year back. However,
the benign countenance of my fellow-friar could hide no malice
to-day, I thought. His grey hood was thrown back over sturdy
shoulders, discovering an impressive head of white hair; the face
was seamed, and set in a kindly, immobile expression. His eyes
alone did not betray his age, for their deep-set glitter was as eager
and querulous as I supposed must have come from mine.
We walked on down toward the town, and I began a conversation
on a subject which seemed to have been a long time on my
mind.
“Rabnon,” I said, “I don’t for a minute doubt the good work
our Order is doing, and I feel as whole-heartedly pledged to its
cause as in the first days of enthusiasm, but sometimes I grow a
little squirmish under its restrictions. I am no longer a boy, but
I am still a young man, and it is spring. There is something in
my blood that is not as celibate as my body.”
“My boy,” said Rabnon, “love of God and love of woman are
as opposite as Heaven and Hell. You cannot serve God and
Mammon, and, to speak in pagan terms, you cannot serve Zeus
and Aphrodite.”
“But Aphrodite was both daughter and servant to Zeus,” I
replied, perhaps a little anxious to show my learning followed his.
He only laughed. “Oh, come! We are neither scholars, nor
scholists to argue angels off the needle’s point. I mean that if
either of us allowed ourselves a woman’s love, there would be
moments when God’s purpose would be farthest from our minds.
St. Francis knew it as well as anyone, wherefore it is something
you must suffer. My blood was hot enough in my day; I used
to consider the dissatisfaction of it a part of my martyrdom.”
He laughed again, and so disputing we came at length into the
street of the town, and to the inn.
Those who do not know Rabnon and me from before must be
told of a feminine face I have never been able to remember for
description, there in my dreams without the sanction of my most
unconscious sense I am sure, delightfully haunting, agonizingly
beyond my control. Imagine, then, my surprise in the light of
our travel’s talk when I saw a young cavalier in the courtyard
helping dismount a lady with such a face and a familiar figure.
Imagine, too, the furtive glances of a rebellious celibate, following
them through the gate into the high-raftered room where mine
host greeted us all from among his many tables. A significant
sleeve-plucking from my friend was necessary to make me leave
staring after the pair and join him in a corner, where we ordered
an ale. And I did not talk more easily with him because the
cavalier and his companion were seated at the head of a long
table before us, so that I was to be observing them for the duration
of our stay.
While we waited for the ale, I looked at that elusive face, and
took up the discussion with Rabnon, at the same time. “Now
the pretty waitress,” I pointed to the girl who had taken our
order—she was then engaged in repartee with my flashy nobleman—“she
has probably had more than one lover, and neither she
nor they have taken more than the moment’s concentration from
their more serious occupations. Yet the youth and the man in
them have been satisfied, and—”
“Hold on,” Rabnon interrupted. “Now you are bringing up a
different question.”
“Am I?” said I, disinterestedly. The girl’s expression, I
thought, was strangely sad, her eyes remarkably wide and frightened,
for one in such gay attire and with such dashing company.
She should be laughing with her companion, and draining her
wine with vigor to mine host, but I saw her fingers tremble as
the glass went to her lips, and she sits, quite out of the merriment,
her thoughts apparently somewhere beyond the leaded windows.
“You are,” said Rabnon. “The question of passion without
love. And it doesn’t work, old man. I can tell you that. It’s
a sure way to get into trouble, and more distraction from our
work than—”
I cut him short. “Rabnon, you are talking of love, and I am
writing of it. Does either of us know anything about it? I have
heard that the God of the mystics is perhaps only the effect of
psychological actions. Something comes welling up in a man:
it is the love of God, whom he sees, as the days go on, more and
more clearly through the mists of his own consciousness. Suddenly
the idea—is it really God from outside? we wonder—takes
the predominant position in his mind; he is in love with God, and
he cannot help this. Men have been in love also with other ideas
than God. Is it not thus that love of woman comes? Doesn’t
it explain ‘love at first sight’? If you had been obsessed by an
idea, and it had been forming and churning in your mind for days
and days, and suddenly—presto!—there it is in the flesh—” I
waved my hand, and turned back to my scrutiny of my lady.
“Some day, I am going to remember and write that face,” I
finished.
While we were talking, the escort of the lady had risen and
advanced to the waitress, who stood before the fire. Everyone
in the room could conjecture his intent, and everyone could see
that she was frightened; he was big and burly, fitter for battle
than for love. Rabnon put his hand on my arm to call my attention
to the movement, and we watched silently, with the rest of
the room, this sudden dramatic turn of events. It was evident
that the man was drunk.
The two by the fire had stood whispering a moment, when the
girl, who was strong and buxom, hit her assailant resoundingly
across the face. He replied by taking her in his arms, and a
struggle ensued for his punitive kiss. The waiting audience
roared and clapped, with a great pounding of pottery and dishes.
For myself, I was disgusted thoroughly, and I saw Rabnon’s great
fist close tightly where it lay upon the table. “I don’t like this
atmosphere,” he said presently. “Let’s get out upon our way
again.”
But as we got up, the sad lady who had been with the attacker
of waitresses rose too, and we stood by our benches, interested
in this new complication. She had been watching, I had noticed,
with more active distaste than ourselves, her escort’s proceedings.
Now she ran lightly to the struggling pair, and laid her hand on
the man’s shoulder. “Come Camereau,” she said, “you are
attracting a great deal too much attention, and we are late. I did
not agree to accompany you on any such doings as these. Let
us get on, or I shall go without you.”
I am not fully conscious to what passed during the next few
moments. I know that the brute struck her, with an oath, and
that she fell back, supporting herself against the table. Rabnon
told me later that the maid screamed. I did not hear it; I found
myself across the room, with the gallant by the throat. “Were
you not so drunk,” I was saying, “I should wad you up the
chimney flue with the rest of the waste.”
The man shook himself free, and we stood glaring a moment,
while he poured out torrents of abusive threats to me of a more
eternal sort of flame. Then he seemed to recollect himself and
drew up, straightening the prettiness of his attire. “You should
think twice, friend friar,” he said, “before interfering in other
people’s affairs. Do you know who I am?”
I stood facing him, my hands on my hips. “I ought to,” I
replied. “But you do not know me, Sir Guy.”
“You ought. I am the Guy of Camereau, and my soldiers are
everywhere in the village. And why, then, should I be interested
in your identity?”
“It seems always necessary,” I said, “to reiterate that I am the
author of all these adventures, and that I am the Creator of you
all, for am I not dreaming and writing you even as we speak?
Great gingoes, man! I notice now that I have forgotten to give
you a face, and you prate to me of soldiers and sovereignty!
Come now, I shall need to put a physiognomy on you so as to have
the pleasure of marring it.”
His hair was black and oily, and hung down about his shoulders
in round artificial curls. Black, heavy-browed eyes looked out
surlily from above fat bags of dissipation upon his cheeks. His
nose was heavy, and seemed turned under at the end, so that he
was always smelling his thick mustaches which were curled at
either extremity. His lower lip hung down exactly like a grizzled
old bulldog’s mouth, and it was there that I hit him while he
mumbled more grotesqueries. They were picking him up, unconscious,
when I turned about and his lady fell fainting into my
arms.
With the feel of that soft arm in silks under my hand, forgotten
was Rabnon, and the inn, and the crowd. I picked her
lightness up; people were about me, but I shouted, “Make way,”
and we two were soon alone by the spring in the courtyard. I
was bathing her face with her own small handkerchief, and sobbing.
“At last! I have touched you at last, you whom I have seen in
so many guises, and who have escaped my grasp as often as you
have eluded my pen. Oh, perfection! It cannot be that you are
a part of my dreams, for there is nothing within me as perfect
as you. Oh, my dear, my dear; I cannot imagine you, I cannot
move you, and now, I cannot help you, when, in these hours, it
would be my power to awaken anyone else!” And I went on
mumbling and mixing my tears with the water I poured on her
dainty wrists.
Presently she opened her eyes, and looked at me. “You!” she
said. “Why have you always vanished from my dreams just as
I was becoming interested in you? I have always suspected you
of being not one of my creatures, for I had no control over you
whatsoever, and when you were about, my own dream-people did
amazing things. You are not at all like anyone of my imaginings,
yet I like you far better than the lot of them.”
I would have taken her pretty lips to mine, she was so natural
and so weak now, but I remembered my cloth and kept myself
kissing her hands. Then I burst out laughing: “The Brushwood
Boy!” She smiled. “Were you thinking that too? I’m
so glad you have read it. But they had no trouble meeting in
their dreams. Look, we must talk this matter out, now, for
combined, we can make our evenings bring us together as much
as we desire—” And she put her lovely arm about my neck and
pulled my head down. “I think I should like to be together with
you—in my dreams—forever—”
I had known she would say something of the kind and had
steeled myself against it. Women always speak first. “To-night,”
I said, “which is todreamday,—I should like to start a
long series of dream-days together. And it is true that whatever
one wants badly enough may be materialized in a dream; it is
thus that we have at last gotten together.
“But to-night I am a friar, and sworn to the observance of
celibacy; to-night I have duties elsewhere, so I must see you safely
cared for and fare onward into the dusky places of the dream.”
She rose, sorrowfully, and supporting her on my arm, I continued,
“We can only hope for another meeting at another time. Neither
of us can be untrue now to the artistry we have begun. You too
must have your destiny to-night?”
“Your Camereau had spoiled it,” she said, as we turned again
to the gate. “I was looking, it seemed, for a lover to-night, but
he met me on the road.”
I could not help interjecting a smile. “A Freudian pickup!”
I laughed. But she would have no levity. “My evening is over,”
she said. “I shall stop writing, and awake. Let me precede you
into the inn.” And with a vague little glance she turned and
went in; I did not see her again.
Shortly, Rabnon came out, and we went on our way again, but
my blood was no longer boiling with the spring, and I had no
carnal arguments, for I was thinking neither of philosophy nor of
Franciscan tenets. After we had walked a mile or so I turned
to Rabnon and said, “You are right. A woman will drive our
God out of the heart of a man. For a woman is God to a man
who is in love.” Rabnon very seriously and apparently irrelevantly,
answered as he looked into my face, “We must travel far
to-day, my friend.”
And because I was a maudlin artist I could not help writing a
soft breeze into the trees that stood by the wayside so that they
sighed and shivered as we went down a hill and left Camereau
behind us.
I look up and see that dawn is coming in at the window; dawn
is here, and a moment ago I was dreading the sunset. For we
must travel far, Rabnon and I, to escape from love and laughter,
and to do God’s work....
Yet, I am waiting for another dream on another day, where
love only is God.
D. G. CARTER.
Book Reviews — The Boy Grew Older. By Heywood Broun . (Putnam’s.) — Command. By William McFee . (Doubleday, Page & Co.) — Where the Blue Begins. By Christopher Morley . (Doubleday, Page & Co.) — Pre-Raphaelite and Other Poets. By Lafcadio Hearn . (Dodd, Mead & Company. Net, $2.50.)
“The Boy Grew Older” is a tale of paternity told in the terms
of a sporting-writer. As a story of paternity it is rather
appealing; one cannot help but feel a warm sympathy for this
bewildered, clumsy, kind-hearted reporter who takes it upon himself
to rear his infant son, after his dancer wife has deserted them.
The very theme plays (not too delicately!) on the chords of
human compassion. But as a story told in the terms of a sporting-writer,
it is not so successful. The style shows lack of careful
writing. It often verges on sloppiness. Mr. Broun imposes upon
a public which has raised him to popularity, in writing in so slipshod
a fashion. Besides, the story in itself deserves a finer
exposition.
Peter Neale is the writer of a sporting column in a New York
newspaper. He falls in love with Maria Algarez, a dancer, and
chiefly by virtue of the fact that he praises her as much as she
demands, persuades her to marry him. When their baby is born,
she runs away to Europe to have her career, unfettered by the
cares of maternity. Peter unselfishly devotes himself to the care
of the boy. It is his ambition that he shall grow up to be a
Harvard athlete, and finally inherit his father’s column. The war
comes, and after it there is a meeting with the mother again—with
the final decision of the boy’s career.
In an incidental way, Mr. Broun’s often-exercised delight in
making Harvard appear superior to Yale comes into the story.
Father and son help vanquish Yale. We mustn’t mind that, if it
pleases him! Besides, occasionally Mr. Broun achieves an amusing
paragraph by his obsession—as when the father, unable to
recall the words of a lullaby, sings the baby to sleep with Harvard’s
song ending:
The song had to be cut short; the baby must not learn Harvard
men’s words of profanity at such an early age!
Whatever faults the assiduous critic may find, “The Boy Grew
Older” is an amusing story—and that’s the greatest reason for
buying new novels, anyway!
C. G. P.
In writing a review of a sea story it is customary to hail in the
names of several other sea-writers—either for laudatory, or
for defamatory, purposes; or for no purpose whatever—but to
hail them in, nevertheless. The process usually proves little more
than the truth of the ancient observation that comparisons are
odious—and odiousness is associated with reviewing quite enough
as it is.
The name of William McFee is great enough to stand alone, in
the world of books. He writes of the sea with a sureness born
of first-hand knowledge, for he was a sailor before he was an
author.
“Command” is a story of the life aboard a ship in wartime.
Spokesley, the hero, a British second officer, is called to duty in
the Aegean immediately after becoming engaged to a girl in
England. There was little love wasted in the betrothal, and
therefore Mr. Spokesley has few qualms when he becomes really,
passionately enamoured of a girl of the South. This is the barest
hint of the thread of the plot. “Command” offers a great deal
more—pictures of the torpedoing of a ship in mine-strewn waters,
of a collision with a warship at night, of the surging life in sea-ports
along the Mediterranean—so many that the story is in
danger of growing tedious with too long sustained excitement.
The characters are memorable. Not so much by their descriptions
as by their actions are they impressed. Mr. McFee has
taken so much pains, by inserting a preface to the effect, to assure
his readers that the story is purely fiction, that one is tempted to
wonder which of the characters are drawn from life.
“Command” is, to be dogmatic, Mr. McFee’s best book; though
various people will at once proceed to deny that, they will certainly
agree that his work has been so uniformly good as to place it very
near the top.
C. G. P.
To say anything critical about Mr. Morley’s book is like saying
anything critical about “Jurgen”—it is impossible—and
“Where the Blue Begins” hasn’t even the depths of salacious
possibilities which permitted the columnists to fill their columns
in the days of Cabell’s first prominence. In fact, it is nowhere
so deep as “Jurgen”, yet it is another of those books out of which
you may get as much as you bring to it, though you are acutely
doubtful throughout whether the author intended half the thoughts
he has created within you. But “Where the Blue Begins” is a
delightful fantasy for anybody. The whimsical adventures of
Gissing are just the disorganized evening-hour adventures in
which anyone with a mind is apt to indulge.
“Where the Blue Begins” is an evening-hour book, or rather,
a book for several evening-hours. When the fatigued upper-classman
has his to-morrow’s Freshman calculus laid aside as a
bad job, and has lit his pipe in complete acquiescence to the fact
that his brain is in a fog, let him prop his feet against the new
University fire-screen and seek happiness with Christopher
Morley. But leave a call with the janitor for chapel time next
day. You will never know when Morley stopped and your own
dreams began.
D. G. C.
The unusual imaginative mind of Hearn, through Irish and
Greek parentage, and exposure to Japanese culture, combined
weird romanticism and realism with a strange mysticism. To
this variegated composite, he added a background of concepts
formulated in England, the United States, and St. Pierre. These
impressions, visual and mental, produced spontaneously literary
projections ranging from “Stray Leaves from Strange Literature”
in 1884 to “Japan, an Interpretation” in 1904.
Professor Erskine of Columbia University compiled this volume
from Hearn’s lectures delivered at the University of Tokyo in
1896-1902. The major division includes analyses and studies of
Rossetti, Swinburne, Browning, Morris, and Meredith. Corollary
to this, are notes upon Rossetti’s prose, and Meredith’s “The
Shaving of Shagpat”. A consideration of the harsh Scotch conservatist,
Robert Buchanan, and the contemporary poet of quiet
effects, Robert Bridges, conclude the volume.
Hearn discerns Rossetti’s thoughtful melancholy, sensuous
touches, and mystic feeling. The pictorial quality and medievalistic
setting of the poet and the painter’s verse are traced artistically
throughout the shorter narrative poems, “Rose Mary” and
“The Bride’s Prelude”. The technical construction that underlies
the poet’s exotic color and temperament, is emphasized by Hearn
as a proof of Rossetti’s energetic intellect.
Swinburne is classified as the greatest English verse writer,
scholar, critic, and living dramatist. He is a pessimistic evolutionist
preaching almost an immoral law, contrasting vividly with
George Meredith. As a further contrast the problem of evil is
approached by Swinburne much in the same way as the German
philosopher Nietzsche. The music of this poet’s verse, the brilliance
of his language, the value and beauty of his diction are
revealed logically and enthusiastically by Hearn.
Our critic finds an optimistic pantheism and an intense individualism
in Browning and paraphrases excellently some of his
poems, but there is, unfortunately, no consideration of Browning’s
paradoxical interpretation of Love. William Morris’s “refuge
from life” in art and artistry in Norse subjects are translated into
expressive prose. “No man ever worked harder for romantic
literature and romantic art, and few men have made so deep an
impression into the aesthetic sentiments of the English public.”
His interpolation of minute textual explanations diverts the
reader’s attention and destroys the general poetic illusion. In
addition, there is a failure to note nuances of character and a
desire to substitute phantasy for somberness. His book is overcast
with an occasional lack of logic and frequent overwriting, but
his simple yet analytical paraphrasing, keen and emotionally
appreciative imagination, and unbiased, reasoned opinions make
the volume first-class criticism in technique, style, classification,
and general achievement.
T. A. Z.
Editor’s Table
As they sat about the Editor’s table, shivering, their coats buttoned high
about their throats, Richard Cory, Bukis, Ahaseurus, and Mr. Benson
resembled those Russian students we hear of, with their thin red hands and
noses, their visible frosty breaths clouding the printed page, their chattering
teeth interrupting speech.
But Russian students can usually read their own language. This was
more than Richard Cory, Bukis, Ahaseurus, and Mr. Benson could do. There
was evidently more of a turn than usual in the University towards an
individual modern style.
Trying to read it had evidently affected the conversation somewhat. Mr.
Benson, remembering Boswell in a vague way, had been for some moments
attempting to imitate the bark of a sea-lion, expecting applause.
“Have you ever heard sea-lions at feeding time?” he asked Ahaseurus.
“What time?” said Ahaseurus. He simply did not understand.
Then Richard Cory’s contribution was an outburst of lyric profanity
which proved that our language can at least compete with the Russian in
that respect. He really should have watched his language.
Ahaseurus, steeped as usual in Einstein Theories, awoke from a trance to
remark sadly, with watery eye, that his feet were too large to allow him
to join in all this levity. This was a rum go!
But Bukis said: “This is a hell of a night! Let’s go to the Royal!”
This was agreed upon, although Bukis was severely rebuked by the poor
old goat upon whom the task of compiling a last-minute Editor’s Table is
becoming too habitually thrust:—to wit,
Mr. Benson.
