Part 12

Milt's eye roved over the books on a dozen shelves. "Ah! Here are your gods. Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Maurice Barrès--how I loathe that metaphysical dandy!--Nietzsche, unfortunate madman, Ibsen, Max Stirner, William Blake, another lunatic--a nice gang of mind-poisoners. With exception of Huysmans they are corrupters of youth. Listen to this----" and he opened on the last page of "À Rebours" 'Take pity, O Lord, on the Christian who doubts, on the sceptic who seeks to believe, on the convict of life, who embarks alone, in the night, beneath a sky no longer lit by the consoling beacons of ancient faith.' For me, that is the saddest sentence in all the music of your prose-men. Great artists? Yes. But guides to damnation. Moral anarchs, their teaching will lead to the anarchy of physical violence. Mark my words. All Europe will suffer sometime from their doctrines. As for your Barrès, while he is no longer the anarch of his Enemy of the Laws and is going in for nationalism nowadays, nevertheless his is a dilettante preciosity whose gift of assimilation is his prime quality. Also to be labelled 'dangerous', though only for the intellectual. He possesses a barren imagination. I grant you he writes supple, harmonious prose, though he is a mere neophyte compared with those charming princes of corruption, Ernest Renan and Anatole France. All your modern heroes, whom you resemble, Ulick, I am sorry to say, derive from that abominable Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Red and Black. The admirable antidote to that criminal, free-man, individualist, is Robert Greslou in Paul Bourget's Disciple. Therein you may see where unbridled indulgence, whether in thought or act, will lead a young man. What are you writing just now, Ulick?" Milt took up some sheets from the desk.

"Oh, this a very bad. What next? 'Ideas and Images of Evil.' That's simply a Baudelairian title, and while that wonderful poet--yes, I won't deny that I have read him with more interest than the atheist Victor Hugo--recognized the existence of evil, of a personal devil, Satan or Lucifer, he didn't fall down and worship him." "How about the Litany of Satan"? interrupted Ulick. "It is to be read in a Manichean sense. It is objective" "And how about Carducci's Hymn to Satan? ('Inno a Satana')

"Salute, O Satana O ribellione O forza vindice Della ragione."

"Simply Italianate Baudelaire," cried Milt, and in a rage he exclaimed: "You actually memorize such vile blasphemers. But I'm very sure you can't repeat the Lord's Prayer, the Confiteor, or recite the Litany of our Blessed Virgin." Ulick stood in the middle of the room, his hands clasped, his eyes closed, and recited the prayer, the Confiteor and the Litany, adding in a low voice, "A pure heart pierceth heaven and hell." Milt was overjoyed. He shook Ulick's hand, crying: "You know Thomas à Kempis, too? Come, there is hope for your immortal soul. Oh, Ulick! Why don't you forswear your evil ways of living! Give over your inveterate concupiscence." Ulick answered by quoting: "Tandem ergo discubuimus pueris Alexandrinis...." "Stop, Ulick! How dare you quote that vilest of pagans, Petronius Arbiter, almost in the same breath with the divine à Kempis?" For answer Ulick drew from his pocket a tiny book entitled "The Christian's Pattern, by Thomas à Kempis, edited by John Wesley A. M." bearing the date 1832 and published in New York, by Charles Wells. "My mother's copy," he curtly said. Milt saw a feminine signature in the battered little copy. He was much touched by the image of Ulick's filial piety prompting him to carry about him his mother's favorite prayers--for what else are those meditations of the practically unknown mediaeval monk but sighs of suffering wafted on high by a burning soul! Ulick added: "I read Petronius every day." Milt sketched a gesture of despair. He could make no answer to a man who blew hot and cold in the same breath. À Kempis and Petronius. Ormuzd and Ahriman! Apollo and Marsyas. Lucifer, when he was Prince of the Morning, and Satan Mekatrig. Milt switched the conversation.

"Among the subjects discussed the other night at the Arena you spoke of something your friend Remy de Gourmont told you. You remember? It was to this effect: that mankind, all organic life, is the slave of its reproductive organs; that those ancient cults were justified in worshipping the phallus, and the female sex-principle. Do you know, Ulick, that the teaching of our Church doesn't widely differ from that horrible idea. Sexuality is our master--if we let it rule; from that to the worship of those organs, in a word, devil worship, is only a step. I wonder you haven't noticed the grimly brief distance between the highest type of intellect, if not guided by faith, and the beasts of the field. The most depraved of degenerates sometimes have been men of lofty genius and in their fall they grovelled in filth. Gods become gorillas. De Maupassant on all fours eating his excrements, as did Voltaire; poor Nietzsche, a victim of drugs and like Stendhal slain by syphilis; Baudelaire wallowing in nastiness at his end; Heine, a victim to sexual over-indulgence, dying from tabes dorsalis; Huysmans, punished for his early blasphemies and his self-confessed degeneracies, dies of cancer in the throat; Ibsen gone mad, and the religious degenerate, Tolstoy, too; Oscar Wilde----"

"What a preacher you will make, Milt," enthusiastically exclaimed Ulick. "But while you are dragging in those awful examples, why not adduce the names of abnormally normal genius: Plato, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Montaigne, Napoleon, Beethoven, Thackeray and their specific maladies mental and moral...." Milt shook his head. "I'm only thinking of you, Ulick." "Thanks for the compliment. Nice company you put me in. No wonder you recommend a course of conjugal calisthenics...." He laughed aloud. "No joke, my boy. You don't drink or smoke. Good. But you are living in a bog of slimy voluptuousness. As Odo of Cluny has written of man's connection with woman: 'Quomodo ipsum stercoris saccum amplecti desideramus,' and for this 'sack of dung'--don't wince, those monks had the unpleasant habit of calling things by their right names--for this vain, skin-deep beauty, harboring all manners of impurities, you are risking your hopes of heaven"! "How unfair you fanatics are! Why throw muck at the very source of life! We are conceived in corruption, in sin, according to the Church. But how could the Church get souls were it not for this same fornication, despised and berated? Don't speak of sanctification by the sacraments. Fornication is fornication, and were it not for the 'sin' we wouldn't be sitting here. That's what I can't understand; the divorce of theory and practice. Don't start in Milt, let me finish first. Havelock Ellis writes: 'When we find it assumed that there are things good to do and not good to justify we may strongly suspect that we have come across a mental muddle.' And that's gospel truth. Hypocrisy rules the world. In fact, life without hypocrisy is unthinkable. They are inseparable. My friend Jules de Gaultier's philosophy is sound. Bovarysme, or the desire of man to appear other than he is. The eternal illusion. The divine humbuggery." "Hypocrisy is, as you say, necessary to screen certain unpleasant realities, Ulick. It is a pia fraus; painted veils! painted lies. People who will persist in crudely naming unmentionable matters usually end in jail or in the lunatic asylum. Back to 'our mutton'. Why don't you marry? Believe me, the humdrum life of a bourgeois will give you the proper atmosphere for your studies. Think of your Flaubert and his labourious life, with its colourless background. He urged the young writer to be ascetic in his life, that he could be all the more violent in his art. Vance Thompson's advice is sound: Artists should marry women with the feather-bed temperament. Why are you looking like that at me, Ulick?" Ulick only smiled, but there was a covert sneer in the smile that caused Milt to blush.

"Honestly, entre-nous, Milt, you know more than a specialist in psychopathy. Now tell me, I'll keep it secret, how do you contrive to stay clear of the petticoats? It's a personal question, but I dare put it because you are so frank with me as to my own soul-hygiene. You are such an old soul-sniffer!" Milt didn't hesitate. "I pray. Prayer, naught else. Lead us not into temptation. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. All the talk of psychologists about transposing the nervous fluid to the brain would be mere wind, were it not for prayer. Faith moves mountains. Volition is born of humility and prayer. That's my secret, and it's the secret of every priest. But just to show you, Ulick, that we do not necessarily violate the laws of nature, let me quote two phrases which I copied in my note book concerning sex. In his 'L'Egoisme, base de toute Société' Felix Le Dantec makes rather astonishing statements, and what's more, proves their validity. The first is this: 'lacte sexual n'est pas un phénomène vital,' in a word, this act so often sung of by the poets, this act which assures the continuity of life, is a drama in which the living are not the chief actors; the spermatazoa and the ova are. The second proposition is: 'Les éléments sexuels sont morts.' Neither one can live by itself. Nature, prompted by the divine design brings them together in the inexpressible act, an act that even the lowest of humans always seeks the darkness to consummate. Which is a salutary hypocrisy." Ulick calmly took a book down and remarked: "Here is Le Dantec himself. But you don't quote what he says of the 'gamète' the unfecundated sexual cells, poisoning a man swifter than does absinthe. In a word, Milt, the sexes separated are unnatural, and joined, whether in wedlock or concubinage--bedlock is the ultimate outcome--they are natural, healthy. Waldstein, Ekler and other biologists have proved that the sperma of the male actually enters into the veinal circulation of the woman. 'Bone of my bone'! You, because you lead a so-called pure life, are continually haunted by impure images."

Milt demurred, then said rather maliciously: "Ulick, who is this Dora that you and Paul Godard share so happily? Modern polyandry"? "Who told you about her"? rudely demanded Ulick, visibly annoyed. "Little birds fly up the state even to our college. Alfred, if it will relieve you to know, was my informant." "I thought so," muttered Ulick. "Another busybody. I don't mind telling you that the psychology of Dora is as simple as a single-cell structure. She is of the genus prostitute, a superior prostitute. As false as your Hell, and as pretty as a June rose. Wouldn't you like to meet her, Milt?" "Don't talk rot, lad. Now there is another person I should like to speak of--Miss Brandès. What about her? Are you still smitten?" Ulick shook his head. "Where did you get that notion? Alfred, I suppose. Guess again. Isn't the old Adam stirring in you, Milt? Easter is a very seductive girl." This time Ulick scored a bull's eye. His bolt made a palpable hit. From crimson Milt turned ghastly white. Irritably he took up his hat, strode to the door, but halted, controlled himself, and returned to Ulick. Putting a hand on his shoulder and peering into the young's man's eyes, he said, and in affectionate tones:

"Don't worry about my condition, Ulick. God, I pray, will give me strength to fight carnal temptation. Those subtle sophists, your daily intellectual pabulum, deny the potency of prayer, yet it is one of the certitudes of our otherwise miserable existence. Once you cast on the vast current of prayer your harassed soul you are at peace with man and God. No adversity can pierce the cuirass of your soul. But Ulick--my dear Ulick Invern, I can't leave you without speaking to you of something that is very dear and near to me...." (He knows all, thought Ulick, tightly holding the back of a chair) "and that is my sister Mona. Are you behaving honourably towards her, Ulick? If not, if you are indulging in one of your numerous masculine caprices, for God's sake remember that she is my sister, the only daughter of her mother and father, who adore the girl. She is read in the 'modernity' you admire, too deeply for her spiritual repose. She is a sceptic. I am a convert. My parents are easy-going, though my mother is naturally pious. But their religion is invertebrate. Without dogma a religion is like a body without skeleton. It can't stand. It won't endure. So Mona leads too free a life. Now, Ulick, I conjure you by your friendship, don't poison that girl's mind, don't tempt her young heart." Milt's manner was cordial, even tender. He loved his friend, but he loved his sister more than a thousand friends. Ulick was moved. "I swear Milt. I am afraid I already care too much. I'd better go back to Paris, after all." Milt took his hand. "If you love Mona, why not tell her so? She has a beautiful soul. Don't torture her any longer. She is very unhappy just now. Write her frankly, confessing your faults. She knows. She will forgive, I'm sure."

"She knows," too, cried Ulick. "Who told her? Alfred again? I think Master Alfred is riding for a fall, as far as I'm concerned ... he is due for a good hiding." "Now, don't judge too hastily, Ulick. Remember that Alfred has been a close friend of my family for years. Naturally he is interested in Mona, and doesn't wish harm to come to her." "That's why Mona went away without telling me, without saying good-bye, without writing," pondered Ulick. "That's why," answered the brother, guessing the reason of his embarrassment. "Write Mona, Ulick. Play fairly with her. I can't speak plainer. Give up your loose living. You are intended for better things. You are gifted, independent, young, above all, young. I don't advise marriage--not immediately. But don't let happiness slip through your fingers. It may offer itself but once, and you are very careless. A woman's heart contains treasures of affection. Don't waste them; cynicism is worse than corrosive-sublimate. It poisons, kills your higher brain-centres. Pardon my brotherly solicitude, Ulick. I'm a bore, but right is sometimes on the side of the stupid, and victory doesn't always perch on the banners of the intellectually elect. Write Mona, Ulick, and may God bless you." He was gone, his kind face happy with the idea of having accomplished good, before Ulick could gather his wits. The ending of this afternoon seance had been a great shock to the young man. Nor had his not particularly sensitive conscience escaped troubling. He was a Roman Catholic. He was what the world has agreed to call a gentleman; the inward monitor, out of those multiple egos, reproved him for his manner of living, for his behaviour to that sweet, if not precisely, innocent, young woman. A virgin? Yes. How long would she remain one in his corrupting company? This question he quickly buried. What a lot of psychologic palaver over a girl, he mused. Perhaps Milt wished to marry his sister to a good parti. Dismissing this mean suggestion, he posed the naked question: "Shall or shan't I write to Mona? And if I do write, where shall I send the letter? And what shall I say to her? Go to confession, get down on my marrow-bones and say 'mea culpa'? No, decided Ulick, as he sat down to his desk, I'll send her a fairy-tale instead of a history of my wicked life." Ulick took up his pen and began to write.

IV

From her attic of dreams, from her Tower of Ebony and spleen, Mona Milton in one of her rare morose moments, saw unrolled beneath her a double line of light. Tall poles, bearing twy-electric lamps, either side of the nocturnal Avenue, and casting patches of metalic blue upon the glistening pave--veritable-fragments of shivering luminosity; saw the interminable stretch of humid asphalt, stippled by notes of dull crimson, the exigent lanterns of citizen-contractors. Occasional trolley-cars, projecting vivid shafts of canary color into the mist, traversed with vertiginous speed and hollow thunder the dreary roadway. It was midnight. On both sides of the street were buttresses of granite; at unrhythmic intervals gloomy apartment houses reared to the clouds their oblong ugliness magnetically attracting the vagrom winds which tease, agitate and buffet unfortunate people afoot in this melancholy canyon of marble, steel and speed. A belated bug-like motor-car, its antennæ vibrating with fire tremulously slipped through the casual pools of shadowed cross-lights; swam and hummed so softly that it might have been taken for a timorous amphibian, a monster neither boat nor machine. To the faded nerves of Mona, aloft in her cage, this undulating blur of blue and grey and frosty white, these ebon silhouettes of hushed brassy palaces, and the shimmering wet night, did but evoke the exasperating tableau of a petrified Venice. A Venice overtaken by a drought eternal. Venice ærial, with cliff-dwellers in lieu of harmonious gondolas; a Venice of tarnished twilights, in which canals were transposed to the key of stone; across which trailed and dripped superficial rain from dusk and implacable skies; rain, upright and scowling. And the soul of the poetic Mona posed ironically its acid pessimism in the presence of this salty, chill and cruel city; a Venice of receded seas, a spun-steel Venice, sans hope, sans faith, sans vision.

Mona held in her hand a book of musical sketches by an author unknown to her. It was entitled Melomaniacs. It had been given to her by Ulick Invern. But her attention had strayed from its pages to the spectacle of the night. She was not happy. Nor was she unhappy. A sense of emptiness oppressed her, the futility of matters mundane, love included, oppressed her consciousness. If she could but pin her faith to something tangible, concrete, make a definite act of affirmation before the veil of life, behind which was hidden the accomplices of her destiny. Know thyself! is wisdom, but if you are sick unto death with yourself and its petty, insistent claims upon your volitions, then forget thyself! might be a sounder motto. Mona had not the temperament dynamic; nor yet was she lymphatic. In the company of Ulick she had let herself go, as will some women in the more masterful grip of the male, without relinquishing the captaincy of her inner citadel. And now she had mentally dismissed her lover, realizing in a sudden illumination that his instability, as unstable as an anchor that drags, would be a bar to their happiness. She had tartly contradicted Alfred when he laboriously hauled out, as if from a secret place, the chief defects in Ulick's character. Yet, she recognized the justice of the impeachment. Ulick was too fond of his pleasures, and girls were no doubt the stencil of his cardinal sin. Impotent to change his volatile nature--volatile, at least, where women were concerned--she had resolved on hearing of the Dora episode to break their friendship. She felt the wrench, especially this evening. She had returned from the seashore promising herself that she would be strong. Instead, she felt uneasy, full of barren desire, giddiness in her head and a sort of green-sickness in her stomach. She recognized the symptoms, as would any full-blooded girl of normal instincts; she also recognized the necessity of suppressing certain emotions. So she resumed reading The Rim of Finer Issues. She didn't like it as far as she had gone. The writer, evidently unformed, floundered between Henry James and the new French symbolists; psychological analysis was intermingled with symbolical prose, the admixture proving rather confusing to her tormented spirit. She longed for clarity. Still she continued to read in a cursory manner.... Then her attention was caught by a subtitle: Frustrate. No doubt the prose-poem threatened by the heroine with the iron-colored eyes, or was it rust-colored hair? She read on and with increasing interest this rhapsody of the sex-cells.

"O the misty plaint of the Unconceived! O crystal incuriousness of the monad! The faint swarming toward the light and the rending of the sphere of hope, frustrate, inutile. I am the seed called Life. I am he, I am she. We walk, swim, totter and blend. Throughout the ages I dwelt in the vast basin of time. I am called by Fate into the Now. On pulsing terraces, under a noon blood-red, I dreamed of the mighty confluence. About me were my kinsfolk. Full of dumb pain we pleasured our centuries with anticipation; we watched as we gamed away the hours. From Asiatic plateaux we swept to Nilotic slime. We roamed primeval forests, arboreally sublime, or sported with the Behemoth as we listened to the serpents' sinuous irony. We chattered with the sacred apes or mouthed at the moon; and in the Long Ago wore the carapace and danced forthright figures on coprolitic sands; sands stretching into the bosom of earth, sands woven of windy reaches, hemming the sun.... We lay in Egyptian granaries with the grains of corn, and saw them fructify under the smile of the sphinx; we buzzed in the ambient atmosphere, gaudy dragon-flies, or as whirling motes in full cry chased by humming-birds. Then from some cold crag we launched with wings of firebreathing pestilence and fell fathoms under sea to war with lizard-fish and narwhal, for us the supreme surrender, the joy of the expected.... With cynical glance we saw the Buddha give way to Christ. Protoplasmically we noted the birth of planets and the confusion of creation. We saw hornéd monsters become gentle ruminants and heard from the tree-tops the scream of the pterodactyl dwindle to child's laughter. We heard, we saw, we felt, we knew. Yet we hoped on. Every monad has its day.... One by one the inchoate billions disintegrated as they floated into formal life. And we watched and waited. Our evolution had been the latest, until heartsick with longing many of my brethren wished for annihilation.... Save one I was at last alone. The time of my fruition was not far. O for the moment when I should realize my dreams!... I saw my companion swept away, swept down to the vistas of life, the thunderous surge of passion singing in her ears. O that my time would come! After vague alarms I was summoned.... My hour had struck. Eternity was behind me, eternity loomed ahead, implacable, furrowed by the scars of Time. I heard the voice of my foreordained mate in the Cosmos. I tarried not as I ran the race. Moments were priceless; a second meant aeons; and then leaping into the light--Alas! I was too late.... Of what use now my travail, my countless preparations? O Chance! O Fate! I am become one of the silent multitude of the Frustrate...."