South Wind Part 11

It was rather convenient for the Count to be able to pa.s.s, just then, for a dreamer.

As a matter of fact, he was an extremely practical old gentleman.

CHAPTER VIII

"Sanidin?" queried Denis almost flippantly, as he held up a fragment of rock.

He was not particularly eager to hear Marten's answer. He had thought, only a few days ago, that he would like to be a geologist; Marten had inspired him with a fancy for that science. The fit was already pa.s.sing.

How quickly this geological mood had evaporated. How quickly everything evaporated, nowadays.

All was not well with Denis. Early that morning he had tried his hand at poetry once more, after a long interval. Four words--that was all the inspiration which had come to him.

"Or vine-wreathed Tuscany...."

A pretty turn, in the earlier manner of Keats. It looked well on the snowy paper. "Or vine-wreathed Tuscany." He was content with that phrase, so far as it went. But where was the rest of the stanza?

How easily, a year or two ago, could he have fashioned the whole verse.

How easily everything was accomplished in those days. To be a poet: that was a fixed point on his horizon. Any number of joyous lyrics, as well as three plays not intended for the stage, had already dropped from his pen. He was an extraordinary success among his college friends; everybody liked him; he could say and do what he pleased. Was he not the idol of a select group who admired not only one another but also the satanism of Baudelaire, the hieratic obscenities of Beardsley, the mustiest Persian sage, the modernest American ballad-monger? He was full of gay irresponsibility. Ever since, on returning to his rooms after some tedious lecture, he announced to his friends that he had lost an umbrella but preserved, thank G.o.d, his honour, they augured a brilliant future for him. So, for other but no less cogent reasons, did his doting, misguided mother.

Both were disappointed. Those sprightly sallies became rarer; epigrams died, still-born, on his lips. He lost his sense of humour; grew mirthless, fretful, self-conscious. He suddenly realized the existence of a world beyond his college walls; it made him feel like a hot-house flower exposed to the bl.u.s.tering winds of March. Life was no longer a hurdle in a steeple-chase to be taken at a gallop; it was a tangle of beastly facts that stared you in the face and refused to get out of the way. With growing years, during vacation, he came in contact with a new set of people; men who smiled indulgently at mention of all he held most sacred--art, cla.s.sics, literature; men who were plainly not insane and yet took up incomprehensible professions of one kind or another--took them up with open eyes and unfeigned zest, and actually prospered at them in a crude worldly fashion.

He shrank at first from their society, consoling himself with the reflection that, being bounders, it did not matter whether they succeeded or not. But this explanation did not hold good for long. They were not bounders--not all of them. People not only dined with them: they asked them to dinner. Quite decent fellows, in fact. Nothing was wrong with them, save that they held a point of view which was at variance with his own.

It was a rude awakening. Every moment he was up against something new.

There were quite a lot of things, he discovered, which a fellow ought to know, and doesn't. Too many of them to a.s.similate with comfort. They crowded in upon him and unsettled his mind. He kept up a brave exterior, but his inner core was suffering; he was no longer certain of himself. He became easily swayed and changeful in his moods. That sure touch in lyrics, as in daily life, was deserting him. His dreams were not coming true. He was not going to set the Thames on fire with poetry or anything else. He would probably be a failure. Aware of this weakness, he looked up to what was strong. Everything was different from himself, everything forceful, emphatic and clear-cut, exercised a fascination upon him. He tried in an honest, groping fashion, to learn what it was all about. That was why he had taken to Edgar Marten, the ant.i.thesis of himself, bright but dogmatic, a slovenly little plebeian but a man who after all had a determined, definite point of view.

Denis repeated:

"Sanidin?"

"Let's have a look at it then," said Marten condescendingly, "though I can't say I'm in a geological temper this morning. The south wind seems to rot one's intelligence somehow. Hand it here. Sanidin be blowed!

It's specular iron. Now I wonder why you should hit upon sanidin? Why?"

He, too, did not pause for a reply. He turned his glance once more down the steep hill-side which they had climbed with a view to exploring some instructive exposure of the rock. Marten intended to utilize the site as a text for a lay sermon. Arrived on the spot they had sat down.

As if by common consent, geology was forgotten. To outward appearances they were absorbed in the beauties of nature. Sirocco mists rose upwards, cl.u.s.tering thickly overhead and rolling in billowy formations among the dales. Sometimes a breath of wind would convulse their ranks, causing them to trail in long silvery pennants across the sky and, opening a rift in their gossamer texture, would reveal, far down below, a glimmer of olives shining in the sunlight or a patch of blue sea, framed in an aureole of peac.o.c.k hues. Stones and gra.s.s were clammy with warm moisture.

"It's a funny thing," said Marten, after a long pause. "I've often noticed it. When I'm not actually at work, I'm always thinking about girls. I wish I could talk better Latin, or Italian. Not that I should be running after them all day long. I've got other fish to fry. I've got to catalogue my minerals, and I'm only half-way through. For the matter of that, I haven't come across half as many nice ones here as I thought I would."

"Minerals?"

"Girls. I don't seem to take to these foreigners. But there's one--"

"Go on."

"You're a queer fellow, Phipps. Don't you ever look at women? I believe you have the making of a saint in you. Fight against it. A fellow can't live without vices. Here you are, with lots of money, stewing in a back bedroom of a second-cla.s.s hotel and getting up every morning at five o'clock because you like lying in bed late. Is that your way of mortifying the flesh? Got a soul, eh? Get rid of it. The soul! That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began. You're just like a man I used to know at Newcastle. You can't think what an a.s.s he was. A sort of eugenical crank, who talked about the City Beautiful where everybody would lead regenerated lives like a flock of prize sheep. Everything sanitary and soulful; nothing but pure men and pure women. An addle-headed theorist, he was, till a woman got hold of him--one of the other kind, you know--and gave him something practical to think about. That's what will happen to you, Phipps. I can see it coming."

"I've been a.n.a.lysing myself lately. I find I have too much romance in my composition, as it is."

"What do you call romance?"

Denis thought awhile. Then he said:

"When a man invests ordinary people or objects or occurrences with an extraordinary interest. When he reads attributes into them which they don't possess, or exaggerates those which they do possess. When he looks at a person and can't help thinking that there is n.o.body on earth quite like her."

"Too celestial for me, on the whole. But I'm glad you said that last part. Glad for your sake, I mean. It shows that you've perhaps got something better than a soul, after all."

"What is that?"

"A body. Look here, Phipps. I also have my romantic moments, though you wouldn't believe it. I can be as romantic as ever you please. But not when I'm alone."

"I should like to see you in that condition. And talking Latin, no doubt?" he added with a laugh.

"I daresay you would," replied the scientist. "Given the circ.u.mstances under which I become romantic, you'll find it a little difficult. But there's no knowing. Funny things happen sometimes!"

Denis had picked up another stone. He scrutinized it with close attention, and then began to turn it round and round in his hand in an absent-minded fashion. At last he remarked:

"We are not doing much mineralogy, are we? What do you think of chast.i.ty, Marten?"

"Chast.i.ty be blowed. It's an unclean state of affairs, and dangerous to the community. You can't call yourself a good citizen till you have learnt to despise it from the bottom of your heart. It's an insult to the Creator and an abomination to man and beast."

"Perhaps you never gave it a fair trial," suggested Denis.

"Perhaps I'm not quite such a d.a.m.ned fool as all that. A man needn't handle everything dirty in order to be doubly sure about it. If you tell me that a dead donkey smells bad, I'm quite prepared to believe you without poking my nose into it. Chast.i.ty is a dead donkey. No beating will bring it to life again. Who killed it? The experience of every sane man and woman on earth. It's decayed; it ought to be buried.

You ask me to give it a trial. Perhaps I will, when I'm in the same mellow condition myself. Everything in its proper season. Don't let us reverse the natural order of things. When we cease to practise, then is the time to preach. A fellow of your size! And with your good looks, too. Who knows how many golden opportunities you've missed. Try to make up for lost time, Phipps. Get rid of conventional notions, if you value your health."

"I will, when I find them wrong. What do you think of women--generally speaking, I mean?"

Marten replied, without a moment's hesitation:

"Thank G.o.d I'm a Jew. You must take that into consideration. I think the Mormons have made a good shot at solving the woman question, if the question exists at all. Mormonism is a protest against monogamy. And please observe that it's a protest not on the part of man alone. It's a protest on the part of woman. Never forget that. In fact, I don't believe any woman would ever bind herself to one fool of a man if she had her own way. She wouldn't marry at all. She needn't, nowadays. She won't, very soon. A man who marries--well, there may be some excuse for him, though a love-match is generally a failure and a money-match always a mistake. The heroes, the saints and sages--they are those who face the world alone. A married man is half a man."

"Ahem!"

Marten was silent.

"I did not ask you to stop," said Denis. "You've got it very pat!"

"Plain sailing, my boy. It's the social reformers and novelists who create these artificial conundrums; they want to sell their rotten literature; they want to make us forget that the only interesting and important part of the business is what n.o.body talks or writes about.

What does it all amount to? Man creates intellectually and physically.