CHAPTER LXXV
Wherein our Hero goes out into the Night
Nollslept till late into the afternoon, awoke heavy, and loafed aimlessly about his room, hoping to do some work before the dusk fell; but ideas were shy of him, and, as the afternoon wore on, he grew ever more restless. Flinging into an armchair, he opened the book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer which tells of the Refuge from the brutalities of Life in Works of Art—in the contemplation of the Beautiful. And he steeped himself in the pessimistic writings until the light failed. At the coming of the darkness he roused, made himself some coffee, lit the lamp, and getting back to his easy-chair he pored over the gospel of Art for Art’s sake until midnight.
At midnight he stretched, yawned, and, putting on his cloak and hat, turned out the light, and drifted to the streets again and so to the tavern ofThe Golden Sun.
Hélène was there, at a table, watching the door for his coming. A pretty flush warmed her pale cheeks as she saw him enter and scan the place for sign of her. She beckoned him to the empty chair beside her—and he went.
The handsome young Englishman, virile, frank, gentle in his strength, fascinated her. His attitude towards her interested her, a little piqued her, flattered her, baffled her. All the shafts of her country’s wit against the amourousless habits of his people tickled her to the smiling point; yet she suspected that behind the self-confident eyes strong passions lurked.... She herself thrilled at his touch, would have flung herself upon him, clung to him—would gladly have yielded body or soul to him—yet she saw that he was in no mood for her surrender. She was burnt, fevered, with the eagerness of reckless passion. Yet his frank liking for her, his friendliness, his charming desire to hear always her criticism of life and of art and of things, his pretty homage and deference to her intellectual point of view, won her to him in a pleasant comradeship that gave new life to her. She had heard of these friendships with men—but Paris had never before offered her such sweets. She would watch him with curious eyes that were lit with a smile when he turned to look upon her.
So it came that Noll drifted away from the boisterous community of the students and their nightly riot, and took to haunting the tavern ofThe Golden Sun—drifted from his blithe companions in all their irresponsible rollicking gaiety of youth and fell into the drab habits of these shiftless folk who put artistry and the beautiful before life.
By day he slept; and when he did not sleep he pored over this Schopenhauer’s scheme of evading all thought of the misery of living in the contemplation of the Beautiful—at night he lived it.
Time passed.
The first freshness wore off.
Youth became restless.
The contemplation of the beautiful, in works of art, was no deliverance from the striving of the desire to live. Even in enjoying the beauty of craftsmanship the struggle for life and the cruel facts of life could only be put out of one’s thoughts but for a very little while; nay, art even pointed to life; nay, more, this very art is in its essence the emotional statement of nature and of life!... Fool! Life that was beautiful to contemplate in its parts could not be wholly ugly in the living.
Youth rubbed awakening eyes.
Art as a refuge from life was a failure.
He looked round at these faded wits about him.
This devotion to beauty of craftsmanship, to mere letters, to paint, to music, to technical achievement—it could only bring passing consolation of delight. It did not, it could not bring perfect rest—absolute contentment. Sordid hours had still to be lived—and, God! what sordid hours!
Even whilst they spoke the half-truth that Craft must and should always be beautiful, must aim at perfection of statement, be pleasant, give delight—poor souls—their wan eyes could not wholly put from them that Craft is but the tool of Art; and Art is the expression of all the emotions and sensations—ranges the whole gamut of life, good and bad, ugly and beautiful, tragedy and comedy. Art therefore inspires or it debases; and thus and so stimulates life to fulfil itself—or not to fulfil. Art is good or it is bad—is as powerful for bad as for good—good when it enlarges life; bad when it narrows life. The emotions discover for us far more vasty continents than the eyes of voyagers shall ever behold.
Youth awoke.
These people about him were Failures—the pallid ghosts of men and women.
They were taken up with the shadow.
Could this delight in the mere craftsmanship of art be enough? Was this sufficient end? Was it for this the world had been evolved, to this that was set the vast music of the spheres? To this end—to be set down beautifully in man’s handwriting—that the thunders brought the lightnings to the riven oak, that the wondrous mystic seasons took their courses, that the waters leaped hissing to the tornado’s smite, that the angry majesty of the resounding heavens gave place to exultant sunshine and serenestpeace! Were these things so, but to be set down in man’s scrap-albums?
Was delight in craftsmanship enough to live for?
Tush! this was absolute, if subtle, suicide—self-killing of the body and intellect and conscience and will and energy. This sipping at the mere pleasantnesses of life—it was emaciating them in mind, body, will, senses.
Their very loves were a dandified make-believe. The kiss of a woman’s mouth was become but a passing pleasure. All these shabby little adulteries were without desire for the child beyond—the child when it came was an unlooked-for inconsequence, a burden, a thing of shame. The sweetest thing in life an affair of accident—to be feared—flinched from!
Life might be a tragedy. These were making of it a melancholy and a ghastly farce.
Noll got up from his place and slipped from the smoke-befogged room amidst the clamorous din of applause that greeted the recital of an Ode in Envy of One who had died Young.
He went out into the night.
And as he stepped out into the darkness the bitter cold gripped him by the throat and cut into his lungs. He drew his collar about his neck, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and tramped down dingy streets that echoed his footfall along their haunted ways—he thought with a pang of the threadbare coats of these pallid revellers in the beautiful. It was the black hour that goes before the coming of the daybreak; and blacker than the blackness of the night loomed the great bulk of the cathedral of Notre Dame, its towers lost in the reek of the bleak heavens above—there were lights that showed low down and beyond—the lights of the Morgue were not yet burnt out.
The youth stood on the bridge and peered at the sighing sound that told of the river below; but his brows were knit upon the destiny of these kindly gentle people he had left behind him.
Where was this sorry tragedy of art for art’s sake hurrying these sinking wits?
Those dark shadows that slept under the bridges, were they the husks of such human things? Was that the end? To share the dank shelter with the rats that made their litter there! Or perhaps in the black waters icy oblivion would solve their sorry problem of evading the tragedy of living! The Morgue.
Nay, how they clung to this despised life, for all its sordidness, for all its misery—even the Failures!