South Wind Part 21

Nothing was happening. For the first time since many years, the Nepenthe season threatened to be a failure. It was the dullest spring on record. And yet there was a quality in that heavy atmosphere which seemed to threaten mischief. Everybody agreed that it had never been quite so bad as this. Meanwhile, people yawned. They were bored stiff.

As a source of gossip, those two burglaries were a negligible quant.i.ty.

So was the little accident which had just happened to Mr. Keith, who ruefully declared he had done it on purpose, in order to liven things up. No one was likely to be taken in by this kind of talk, because the accident was of an inglorious and even ludicrous kind.

Being very short-sighted he had managed to stumble backwards, somehow or other, into a large receptacle of lime which was being slaked for patching up a wall. Lime, in that condition, is boiling hot. Mr.

Keith's trousers were rather badly scalded. He was sensitive on that point. He suffered a good deal. People came to express their sympathy.

The pain made him more tedious, long-winded and exhortatory than usual.

At that particular moment Denis was being victimized. He had thoughtlessly called to express his sympathy, to see those celebrated cannas, and because he could not bear to be alone with his thoughts just then.

"Suffering!" exclaimed Mr. Keith. "That is what you young poets want.

At present you are too unperplexed and glib. Suffering! It would enlarge your repertoire; it would make you more human, individual, and truthful. What is the unforgivable sin in poetry? Lack of candour. How shall there be candour if the poet lacks worldly experience? Suffering!

That is what you people want. It would make men of you."

Mr. Keith was considerably denser than Count Caloveglia. But even he, during this oration, could not help noticing that it jarred on his listener's nerves; there was something wrong, he concluded.

Denis had not a word to say in reply. As if anyone could be more suffering than himself! He was full of a dumb ache. He marvelled at Keith's obtuseness.

"Come and see my cannas," said the other with a kind of brutal tactfulness. "There is a curious story attached to them. I must tell it to you one of these days. It sounds like a fairy tale. You like fairy tales?"

"I do," replied Denis.

"Then we have one point in common. I could listen to them for hours.

There is something eternal about them. If you ever want to get anything out of me, Denis, tell me a fairy tale."

"I must remember that," replied Denis with a wan smile. "There is one thing I should very much like to get out of you; the secret of your zest in life. You have so many interests. How do you manage it?"

"Heredity, I suppose. It has given me a kind of violent driving power.

I take things by the throat. Have you ever heard of Thomas Keith, a soldier in a Highland regiment, who became governor of the Holy City of Medina? No, I suppose you have not. And yet he must have been a remarkable man, to obtain this unique position in the world. No interest in Arabian history? Why not? Well, Thomas Keith--that is my stock. Pirates and adventurers. Of course I live sensibly. Shall I give you my recipe for happiness? I find everything useful and nothing indispensable. I find everything wonderful and nothing miraculous. I reverence the body. I avoid first causes like the plague. You will find that a pretty good recipe, Denis."

The young man wondered whether the prescription would be of any avail for his particular complaint.

Then they went into the garden, Mr. Keith hobbling painfully with two sticks and indulging in very bad language. They paused awhile under some trellis work covered with a profusion of j.a.panese convolvuluses, pale blue, slate colour, rose-tinted, purple, deep red, with white and coloured bands, a marvellous display of fragile beauty.

"I have never seen anything like it!" declared Denis.

"They die away in winter. I get fresh seeds every year from j.a.pan, the latest varieties. How they cling for support to the wooden framework!

How delicate and fair! One hardly dares to touch them. Are you always going to be a convolvulus, Denis?"

"Me? Oh, I see what you mean. Were you never a convolvulus, Mr. Keith?"

His friend laughed.

"It must have been a good while ago. You don't like advice, do you?

Have you ever heard of that Sparker affair?"

"You don't mean to say--"

"Yes. That was me. That was my little contribution to the gaiety of University life. So you see I am in the position to give advice to people like yourself. I think you should cultivate the function of the real, and try to remain in contact with phenomena. Noumena are bad for a youngster. But perhaps you are not interested in psychology?"

"Not exactly, I'm afraid," replied Denis, who was more anxious to see those cannas.

"So I perceive. Wouldn't you get more fun out of life if you were? I am nearly done with psychology now," he added. "It was the Greek philosophers before then. When I take up a subject this is what I do. I don't ask what are Aristotle's teachings or relations to his age or to humanity. That would lead me too far. I ask myself: what has this fellow got to say to me? To me, you understand. To me."

"That must simplify matters."

"It does," replied Keith, quite unaware of the faint tinge of College irony in the other's words. "Direct experience comes only from life.

But you can get a kind of subst.i.tute out of books. Perhaps you are afraid of them? Take the fellows by the throat! See what they have to say. Make them disgorge. Get at their facts. Pull them to pieces. I tell you what, Denis. You must go through a course of Samuel Butler.

You are moving in the same direction; perhaps he may be a warning to you. I took him up, I remember, during my biological period. He was exactly like yourself--bewildered by phenomena."

Denis, meekly resigned, enquired:

"Was he?"

"I spent nearly a week over Butler. I found him interesting not for what he writes, but for what he is. A landmark. Think of when he wrote.

It was an age of giants--Darwin and the rest of them. Their facts were too much for him; they impinged on some obscure old prejudices of his.

They drove him into a clever perversity of humour. They account for his cat-like touches, his contrariness, his fondness for scoring off everybody from the Deity downwards, his premeditated irresponsibilities, his--"

"Did he not prove that the Odyssey was written by a woman?"

"He did. Anything to escape from realities--that was his maxim. He puzzled his contemporaries. But we can now locate him with absolute certainty. He personifies the Revolt from Reason. SURTOUT, MON AMI, POINT DE ZELE. He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity--a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation. He was always wavering between the two in an att.i.tude of suburban defiance, reconciling what is irreconcilable by extracting funny a.n.a.logies all round for the edification of "nice people" like himself. Oh, very English! He did not lack candour or intelligence. Nor do you. He understood the teachings of the giants. So do you. But they irked him. To revenge himself he laid penny crackers under their pedestals. His whole intellectual fortune was spent in buying penny crackers. There was something cheeky and pre-adolescent about him--a kind of virginal ferocity. That iridescent charm of s.e.xlessness which somebody, one of these days, must be good enough to a.n.a.lyse for us! He lacked the male attributes of humility, reverence and sense of proportion."

Mr. Keith paused, but it was only to take breath.

"Did he?" enquired Denis. "The sense of proportion--"

"The tail of a cow was just as important to him as the tail of a comet; more important, if it could be turned into a joke. Look at the back of his mind and you will always see the same thing: horror of a fact. That is what lies before you, Denis, if, in a world of facts, you refuse to a.s.similate them. They will disagree with you, as they disagreed with Butler. They will drive you where they drove him--into abstractions.

Others went the same way. The painter Watts, for instance. He also suffered under the reign of giants. He also took refuge in abstractions. Faith leading Hope towards Despair. Why don't you write a book about these things, Denis?"

"I am going to be an artist."

"An Artist? That is better than a poet. Verse-making is a little out of date, is it not? It corresponds to juvenile stages of human development. Poets are a case of genepistasis. If they would at least get a new stock of ideas! Their demonology is so hopelessly threadbare.

But why an artist? I think you were made for a bank manager, Denis.

Don't look so surprised. Everybody grows up, you know. Sh.e.l.ley, if he had lived long enough, would have become a pa.s.sable gentleman farmer.

You can take my word for that."

"I suppose I shall have to," replied the young man.

"Don't take Mr. Keith's word for anything!" said a voice behind his shoulder.

It was Don Francesco, who had come upon them unawares. He now removed his hat and began to mop his forehead and various double chins with a many-tinted handkerchief as large as a tablecloth.

"My dear Don Francesco!" said Keith. "You always interrupt me in the middle of my sermons. What shall we do with you?"

"Give me something to drink," replied the priest. "Else I shall evaporate, leaving nothing but a grease stain on this beautiful garden path."

"To evaporate," said Keith, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. "What an ideal resolution!"

"I'll get some wine out of the house," suggested Denis politely. "But first of all tell me this. Mr. Keith has been giving me his recipe for happiness. What is yours?"

"Happiness is a question of age. The bachelor of forty--he is the happy man."