Part 2

“Laugh,” said I, “but it’s all too true. Take another illustration: Some noble cause, some ghastly wrong, some agonising disaster. Never has my imagination been more alive to such appeals; never have they stirred me to greater aspiration, indignation or pity--mentally. But while my perceptive, imaginative side is thus more active than ever, it seems unable to set going the motive forces of feeling, as it used to do. It were as if I should say ‘Oh yes! indeed, I see it all--but I’ll feel about it to-morrow.’ Something underneath seems to say: ‘What is the use of being excited about it--of taking fire. It’s noble, it’s monstrous, it’s pitiful--but what’s the use!--feeling won’t help.’ To think how inspired, how savage, how wrought I should have been once--use or no use! But now....”

“Tell me about falling in love,” interrupted the Sphinx, quizzically. “How does this sad state of things affect that?”

“In just the same way. I see a beautiful face, or come in contact with some romantic personality. I say to myself: ‘How wonderful she is! I could spend my life looking into those strange eyes, and I am old enough to know that I should never want to look into any others.’ I say to myself: ‘I think I have but to set my heart on it, and that woman and I might make life a fairy tale for each other!’ But I raise no hand. I am content to see the possibility, content to admire the opportunity, content to see it pass. I am too lazy even for romance.”

“And so you write no more poems?”

“Yes--or very staid ones. As it happens I have brought you one to-night, which you will see is very evidently inspired by the muse of middle-age. It has an unexceptionable moral, and is entitled ‘New Loves for Old.’ Shall I read it?”

“Go on,” said the Sphinx, and I proceeded to read the following:

“‘New Loves for Old!’ I heard a pedler cry, ‘New Loves for Old!’ as down the street he passed, And from each door I noted with a sigh How all the people ran at once to buy-- Bringing in hand the dimmed old loves that last.

“‘New Loves for Old!’ O wondrous fair and bright Seem the new loves against the loves grown old, So flower-fresh and dewy with delight, And burning as with supernatural light-- Ah yes! the rest were tinsel--this is gold!

“‘New Loves for Old!’ the pedler went his way-- Night fell, then in my window the bright spark Of my old love gave out its constant ray, ‘How burn the new loves that they bought to-day?’ But all the other windows remained dark.”

“Do you mean it? Is it true?” asked the Sphinx when I had finished.

“Those are nice questions for a philosopher to ask!” I laughed. “Of course, it is true for some people, true of some lives, and for those I mean it.”

“But what is your own personal feeling in the matter?”

“I hardly know if I have any personal feeling about it.”

“But you wrote the poem. Why did you write it then?”

“One doesn’t write poems for oneself. One writes them for others. Poetry is addressed, like certain legal proclamations, to all whom it concerns. Do you remember those lines of Straton’s in the Greek Anthology:

“‘Love-songs I write for him and her, Now this, now that, as Love dictates; One birthday gift alone the Fates Gave me, to be Love’s Scrivener.’

“Of course, this is not the whole truth about the artist, but it is a good deal of it. In a sense the artist is the most unselfish of human beings, for his whole life is living for, and feeling for, others. The more lives and the more various he can live, the greater the number and the diversity of his feelings, the greater his art. This many-mooded nature leads those who misunderstand his function frequently to cry out that he is insincere; the fact being that he is so sincere in so many different ways that to hasty observers his imaginative sympathy has the look of inconsistency.”

“But come now, you needn’t pretend to be so superior to our common human nature as all that! If you yourself had to choose between one of your dimmed old loves that last, and one of the peddler’s brilliant novelties, which would you choose?”

“It would depend who I was at the moment.”

“Oh, nonsense--be serious.”

“But I am. It would depend, at all events, on what kind of love I felt most in need of at the moment--one’s needs are so different from day to day. Old loves give us certain satisfactions, and new loves give us certain other satisfactions.”

“Well, tell me what those different satisfactions are.”

“Old Love brings you the sense of security, of shelter, of peace; it has the warm-home charm of kindly long-known things, the beauty of beautiful habit, the nimbus and the authority of religion. In fact, it has all that belongs to the word ‘old’ used in the laudatory sense. Its value is the value of the known--whereas the value of new love is largely the value of the unknown.”

“You mean that the value of new love lies largely in its newness.”

“Certainly. Mere novelty, as the world admits on every hand, has real value; the value of refreshment, at least. In fact, novelty is the truest friend of old feeling, as it makes us feel the old feelings over again--which might hardly happen without its assistance. Besides, love is even more an imaginative than an emotional need, and the new love speaks to the imagination. Love needs wonder to live on quite as much as secure affection. The new love appeals to one’s sense of strangeness, one’s spirit of adventure. As we stand silent upon that peak in Darien--who knows, we say to our hushed expectant hearts, who knows but that this is Eldorado at last....”

“We only say that when the old was not Eldorado,” put in the Sphinx.

“O of course!” I admitted hastily.

THE DEATH OF THE POET

The poet lay dying. He was not a good grey poet. Indeed, some of those who pass judgments upon complex lives, with the spontaneity of simple ignorance, would no doubt have called him the bad grey poet. Though he was hardly forty, there were already snowdrifts here and there among his thick locks.

For a long while he had known that he was soon to die. Dreams had told him, and he had seen it written on the faces that looked at him in the street. The foreknowledge did not in the least trouble him. Indeed, while he was far from being a lachrymose sentimentalist, and life had for him even more zest than when he was a boy, yet he had for some time been weary of the long battle, and the news was less the threat of death than the promise of rest.

And now the rest was coming. There was only one consideration that made him cling to life, or, rather, suddenly rouse himself to wrest a short reprieve. It was the last sentiment his numerous detractors would have believed of him. Like all really great poets, he was much in debt. Debt, indeed, had hovered like a raven, or rather a cloud of ravens, croaking over the whole course of his life. In his secret heart, and even in occasional outspoken utterance, he held that the world owed him far more than he owed it; yet it should not be said of him that he died in debt! Therefore he had girded himself up to one last tremendous orgie of creation, so that his creditors should be paid to the uttermost farthing. His friends, who knew nothing of the summons that had come to him, for he looked like living for years, marvelled at the sudden outburst of his energy. Sometimes, in a mood of fantastic irony, he would say to them, “Do you know what keeps me alive?” And he would answer, “My creditors”--to their shouts of derisive laughter. Imagine Pagan Wasteneys giving a thought to his creditors!

But it was true for all that, as Wasteneys’s familiar doctor could attest: for on one occasion Wasteneys, being taken with a sudden attack of the heart and apparently near death, had burst into tears--not at the thought of his wife, not at the thought of his two little girls, but at the thought of his creditors. After all, he was to die in debt! That thought alone obsessed him, leaving room for no other--tenderness. However, oxygen granted him still another reprieve, and once more he worked like a madman till at last he had written enough.

Then, laying down his pen upon the desk for the last time, he said, “I am ready to die.”

Thereon his valet undressed him, taking away the clothes he had worn for the last time, and the poet luxuriously stretched himself in the white bed, from which no duty would ever call him to rise again.

For a long while he lay back dreamily enjoying the thought--of his readiness to die. At last he had been able to wring from life the privilege to die.

The faces of his creditors came back to him with a positive beauty, haloed, so to speak, with this last shining achievement. Honest, true-hearted men, he felt that he should care a little to look in their faces once more and shake their hands. Indeed, he almost regretted that he had to die when he thought of their honest faces. What a beautiful world--when to the eyes of a dying poet his creditors even seem beautiful!

Presently he sent for his lawyer--who had helped him through many a difficult pass--and when the lawyer had come, he stretched out his hands to him.

“Old friend,” he cried, “congratulate me. At last the bankrupt has his discharge. The court allows me to die....”

“Rubbish!” answered the lawyer; “none of your death’s-head humour. But you really mean that you have finished your book? I do indeed congratulate you....”

“Yes! My last book. Unless I should be expected to write for my living in some other world, I have written my last word, dipped my pen in ink for the last time....”

The lawyer gently bantered him. “If only it were true,” he said, “what good news for your readers!...”

“Laugh as much as you like ... but you will see. A very few days will show.”

“You fantastic fellow ... what do you mean? You know there is nothing whatever the matter with you. You cannot die without some disease, or by some accident--unless you intend to be so commonplace as to commit suicide....”

“No! none of those,” answered Wasteneys, with his odd smile; “I am going to die--out of sheer weariness; and, by the way, I want you to insist upon this epitaph being engraved upon my urn: ‘Pagan Wasteneys. Born 1866; bored to death--1905.’”

“Of course I will promise no such thing,” answered the lawyer.

“Well, then I must instruct some mortuary engraver myself.... But tell me--you have brought with you the schedule of my debts? How much exactly do they amount to?”

The lawyer drew a bulky paper from his pocket.

“Here is the schedule,” he said, and then glancing at the total of many pages of figures, he answered, “They are close on ten thousand pounds....”

“‘Tis a good round sum,” said the poet, “but in two years I have earned it, every penny, and more besides.”

“It is marvellous,” said the lawyer.

“It sounds like a dream,” said the poet, “but it is true. Think what fun one might have with ten thousand pounds--if one were not going to die....”

“Or pay one’s debts at last,” laughed the lawyer.

“That reminds me that I have a fancy for the manner of paying them, in which I hope you will humour me. I wish to pay each creditor in person, and I wish to pay him in solid gold. I would, therefore, ask you to send out a notice inviting them here at noon to-day week; that is, Wednesday week--I shall not die till Friday.”

Though he was quite serious, the poet could not help laughing at this final touch, and the lawyer joined in. “You humbug!” he exclaimed; but, for all that, the poet was able to convince him of his seriousness after a while.

“I would have them pass before me one by one, as I lie propped up on pillows on my death-bed, and I shall expect each one first to bend down and kiss my hand. Then a clerk will call out his name in a loud voice, and the amount of the debt, and another clerk shall weigh out to him the amount in gold.... I intend it to be a kind of triumphal lying in state. But we can discuss the exact details later. I feel a little tired. The shadows are already weighing down my eyelids....” and the poet laughed again his sad sinister laugh; though, indeed, it was true enough, as the lawyer, looking at him, could not fail to note.

“Good-night, old friend,” said the poet; “come and see me again tomorrow;” and, when the lawyer had gone, he once more stretched himself out in the bed, luxuriously murmuring the lines he had murmured nightly for so many years:

“If rest be sweet at close of day For tired hands and tired feet, How good at last to rest for aye-- If rest be sweet.”

The lying in state, as the poet grimly called it, was conducted exactly as he had conceived it. At first the lawyer had protested that to expect your honest English tradesman to bow the knee and kiss the hand of one of his debtors was out of the question.

“Take my word, friend,” said the poet, “when a tradesman is going to be paid a debt he had given up for lost, he will not be particular as to the manner in which he receives it. Indeed, he will be so thankful for it that it will be a natural impulse to fall upon his knees.... And if they demur,” he added, laughing his half-boyish, half-wicked, and quite creepy laugh, “tell them that it is the fancy of a dying man.”

When the noon of Wednesday came, the poet lay in his great bed awaiting his creditors. There had only been a week since his talk with his lawyer, but even that good-natured sceptic had come to admit the truth of his client’s prediction. No one could look on that weary form stretched so straight and slim under the clothes, or upon that worn ivory face, so worn and yet so strangely smiling, without reading the unmistakable signs.

“Do you believe it now?” said the poet to his lawyer. “It is only a jest--you must not take it too seriously. It is only death. Don’t be unhappy, old friend. I wish I could make you know how good it feels--to be dying.”

Then a little soft-voiced clock chimed twelve times.

“Now for the fun....” said the poet, looking up to his friend, with his eyes filled with laughter.

It had been his whim to have his room draped in purple, and over his bed hung a great wreath of laurel still in flower. At one side of the large room was a table also covered in purple, on which were arranged twelve great pyramids of gold pieces, and on two other tables close by were two large bags of orange-coloured leather overflowing with silver.

As the clock chimed twelve, two footmen clad in a livery of dull-gold silk, with sprigs of laurel worked upon the collars of their coats, threw open the folding doors of the spacious room, and a crowd of awed and almost sepulchral English tradesmen entered in a hushed and timorous fashion. They were dressed appropriately, as for a funeral, and a few of them wore crape round their hats. They trod softly, like butlers, and were evidently a good deal overawed and indeed frightened.

And in truth it was a scene calculated to astonish. For as they entered, there facing them in the middle of the room lay Wasteneys, with his eyes closed and his hands crossed, and the great laurel wreath over his head; and to his right, at one side of the room, stood the table heaped with gold, which glittered still more brightly beneath the beams of twelve immense candlesticks. If anything could gleam brighter, it was the eyes of the creditors, whose expression was a mixture of gaping astonishment at the piled-up gold and hushed wonder at the white distinguished figure in the bed.

When they were seated on the gilded Empire chairs provided for them, a secretary clad in black rose from a seat by the dying man’s side and read a brief salutation, in which Pagan Wasteneys, a poet of the realm of England, desired upon his death-bed to thank in person those honourable mercers and general purveyors who had for so many years shown him so great a consideration in respect of certain moneys which he owed them, in exchange for certain necessities of existence--among which necessities luxuries, of course, were included. Mr. Wasteneys desired to add that his delay to satisfy these obligations had come of no wilful neglect on his part, but had been occasioned by the many sorrows--not to speak of the many expenses--incident to the profession of a poet. He had invited them to meet him for the last time in this way that he might personally express his gratitude to them--at the same moment that he satisfied his indebtedness, with compound interest at five per cent.

As the secretary concluded with this eloquent peroration, Wasteneys opened his eyes for the first time, and raised his head from the pillow, with a weary attempt at a bow, and motioned with his hand toward the company--his hand thereafter lying white and fragile on the side of the bed. For a moment a smile flickered over his lips, but only his lawyer observed it, and, next moment, he was gravely prepared for the conclusion of the ceremony.

Presently a clerk dressed in a prim costume of the finest broadcloth rose and called out the name of Peter Allardyce, vintner--the names of the creditors being called out in alphabetical order--at the same time naming the sum of £763.19.7 as due to him, inclusive of interest at five per cent. At the summons, a shy, ruddy man of country build rose from his chair, and being led by one of the footmen to the dying man’s side, bent down and kissed the frail hand on the coverlet. Wasteneys acknowledged the courtesy with a tired smile, and Mr. Allardyce was then conducted by the footman to the table piled with gold, where another clerk, also dressed in broadcloth, like his fellow, weighed out to him the amount of his debt, pouring the bright gold into a great bag of purple leather.

“William Dimmock,” once more cried out the first clerk, “livery-stable keeper, for carriage-hire, the sum of £378.10.3, inclusive of interest at five per cent.”

A lean, horsy little man thereon rose from his chair and went through the same ceremony as his predecessor, retiring also with a great bag of purple leather bursting with gold pieces.

And so the odd ceremony proceeded. It would be tedious to follow it through its details; though one may observe that of all the creditors that followed, the heaviest were Peter Markham, florist, and Jasper Dyce, jeweller, for flowers and gems lavished by the dying man on forgotten women.

When it was all over, and Wasteneys was left alone with his lawyer and his physician, he buried his face in the pillows, and laughed as if his heart would break--laughed indeed so violently that his physician had to warn him that such mirth was dangerous in his present state--unless, indeed, he wished to die of laughter.

“No, indeed,” said Wasteneys; “I have other farewells to make. But, O wasn’t it delicious! And think of it--like the village blacksmith, I owe not any man! What honest, kind fellows they were! I am so glad to have seen them before I die.”

“You must see no one else to-day,” said his physician, presently, “if you wish to make those other farewells.”

“I have still to-morrow and most of Friday. I shall go out, like Falstaff, ‘even at the turning of the tide,’” he said, laughing softly at himself, as he had done all his life, and repeating to himself the phrase that had romantically touched his fancy--“even at the turning of the tide!... even at the turning of the tide!”

“What am I dying of, doctor?” he said, presently.

“I can see no reason why you should be dying at all,” answered the physician, “unless it is pure whim.”

“Perhaps it is partly that,” said the poet, “but I think it is chiefly because--I have lived. To live longer would be mere repetition. I have just enjoyed the last new experience life had to give me--and I almost think it was the most wonderful of all. It was the last touch of romance needed to complete a romantic life--to have paid my debts! You are right. That was indeed enough excitement for one day. I will sleep now--the happiest man in the world.”

He had hardly finished speaking before he had fallen into one of those sudden deep sleeps that come and go fitfully with the dying. He lay on his back, his hands crossed, and a smile of infinite serenity and thankfulness on his face. Over his head hung the great laurel wreath, still in flower....

Still in flower!

“It is strange that he should choose so deliberately to die--for he has still a great future in store for him,” said the physician to himself as he went out, giving on his way certain instructions to the nurse-in-waiting.

The physician, like the majority of human beings, confounded the length of a man’s life with the success of it--as was, perhaps, peculiarly natural in a man whose business was the lengthening of human existence. To die before sixty was to him a form of failure, and he himself, already sixty-three, was still, with childish eagerness, pursuing certain prizes, professional and social, at which Wasteneys would indeed have smiled. He dreamed, for instance, of a knighthood. Now one of Wasteneys’s great fears had been that he should not be in a position to die before he was knighted. That had in some degree accounted for the fury of his production during the last two years. He would not indeed have disdained to have been made a lord, but that necessitated living so much longer, and writing so many more words--and really it was not worth it. He regarded his life as completed--at least to his own satisfaction. To take it up again would be to begin an entirely new career. Already, as rich men are said to go through two or three fortunes, Wasteneys had run through three careers. Three seemed enough. He had won all the prizes he cared for. The rest could only be humorous. So, “Good-bye, proud world; I’m going home!”

Next morning, when his toilet had been made for him by the beautiful nurse-in-waiting and his faithful man servant, Wasteneys received his physician and his lawyer; and then, as the little clock chimed the hour of noon, he said:

“It is time for me to begin my farewells.”

He made it evident that he wished to be alone, except for his own friend the lawyer. So, when the two were left together in the room, he turned to the lawyer and said:

“Dear friend, bring me the Beautiful Face ...” adding, “the key is here under my pillow.”

Taking the key, the lawyer unlocked an old cabinet in a shadowy corner of the room, and presently returned to the bedside, carrying in his hands a small urn of exquisite workmanship. Placing it on a low table near to the poet’s hand, the lawyer, who had been the confidant of the poet’s tragedy, made a sign of understanding, and left the room.

On the wall facing the end of the poet’s bed had hung for seven years the picture of a marvellously beautiful girl. She was so exceptional in her beauty that to attempt description of her would be futile. Suffice it that her face--framed in night-black hair, and tragically lit by enormous black eyes--was chiefly remarkable for the nobility of its expression and for its sense of elemental power. It was a face full of silence--a dark flower of a face, so to say, rooted deep down in the mysterious strengths of nature. If one may use such an expression of a thing so delicate, she seemed like a rock of beauty, against which a whole world of men might dash their tribute hearts in vain. Other faces might seem more attractive, more formally beautiful, but to few faces had it been given to concentrate the cold imperialism of beauty as it was concentrated in this exquisite face.

This face was the real meaning of the poet’s life. The rest was mere badinage, screening a sad heart. This face was the real meaning of the poet’s gladness at his approaching death. This life held no more expectations for him--but the next? Who knows?--perhaps to-morrow night he would be with her in Paradise.