A vein of luck which they struck in Rouen and Dieppe emboldened them to turn eastward, with comfortably full pockets, and try the Dauphiné and High Savoy. At Grenoble they had a frost and a heavy loss, but at the sleepy Baths of Uriage they made a week of good harvest with afternoonrecitals. Chambréy did well for them, and Annécy even better, so that, in spite of the indifference of Aix, they reached Geneva in funds. Then they played their way around the Lake of Geneva, and up into the Rhone Valley, and so over to the Italian lakes with the autumn.
Here, at Pallanza, in a garden overhanging the Lago Maggiore where the Borromean Isles sleep in their swan-like beauty on the blue-green waves, they faced the question of turning homeward or going on to the south for a winter tour. As they sat around the little iron table, which held a savoury Spanish omelette and a corpulent straw-covered flask of Chianti, their spirit was cheerful and their courage high.
"Why not?" asked the valiant Camembert. "Is it that the Italians are more difficult to conquer than the French? Napoleon did it—my faith, yes. Forward to the conquest of Italy!"
Richard was immensely amused. He did not really care which way they went, as long as they went somewhere. His heart was full of a vague hunger for home,—deep, wild, sheltering woods,friendly hills, companionable and never-failing little rivers,—he longed to be there. But he knew that was impossible. So why not Italy? It would certainly be an adventure.
And so it was. But the conquest was largely a matter of imagination. They saw the flowing green streets of Venice, the ruddy towers of Bologna, the grey walls and dark dome of Florence. They saw the fountains flash in Rome and the red fire run down the long slope of Vesuvius at Naples. They crossed over to Sicily and saw ivory Palermo in her golden shell and Taormina sitting high upon the benches of her amphitheatre. In that sense they conquered and possessed Italy, as any one who has eyes and a heart may do.
But Italy did not pay much tribute to their music. They had to travel third-class and sleep in the poorest inns, cultivating a taste for macaroni and dark bread with pallid butter. Still, they were merry enough until they reached Genoa, and perceived that there was no reasonable prospect of their being able to make anything at all in the over-civilised and over-entertained towns of the Rivièra.
"We must retreat, my children," said the Cheese, crinkling his face over the sour wine in a mustytrattoria, "but let us retreat in good order and while we have the means to do so. How much money in bank?"
They counted their resources and found them hardly enough to pay the railway fare to Bordeaux. Richard insisted upon putting the remnant of his private fortune into the common fund, but the others would not have it.
"No," they said, "you shall not give us money. But you may settle all the restaurant bills between here and Bordeaux."
"But I am not going to Bordeaux," said he; "I am going to Paris."
At this there was voluble protest and discussion. Richard had no arguments, but his determination was as fixed as it was unreasonable. Finally he forced them to take fifty francs as a loan. At Lyons the quintette dissolved with emotional embraces, the four going westward, and he northward in the night train.
When he walked out into the stony desert infront of theGare de Lyonin the grey chill of a March morning, he had just two hundred and twenty francs in his pocket, and he felt that he was really adrift in the world. There was nothing for him to hold fast to, no one who had need of him.
He found a garret room in theRue Cherche Midi, and looked up two friends of his who were studying at theBeaux Arts. They introduced him to a newspaper correspondent who threw a bit of work in his way—a fortnightly letter to an Arkansas paper on French fashions and society, at five dollarsperletter. This did not go very far, but it retarded the melting away of his estate while he finished two articles,—one on "The Cradle of the French Revolution," the Chateau of Vezille, which he had visited during his week at the Baths of Uriage,—the other on "An Eruption of Vesuvius," which had opportunely occurred while he was in Naples. For the first time in his life he wrote directly, simply, and naturally, describing what he had really seen, and expressing what he had really felt and imagined. He sent the articles to two American magazines and relapsed into a state of doubt and despair.
He took what Paris has to give a young man in the way of cheap diversion, but he found it as dusty as New York. The long rambles through the older parts of the city, the solitary excursions into the forests of the environs, really satisfied and refreshed him more. Meantime the feeling that he was adrift grew upon him and his reserve of capital disappeared. The wolf scratched at the door of his garret and short rations were necessary. In the second week of May a remittance arrived from the Arkansas paper for his last two letters, with the statement that they were not "snappy" enough to suit the taste of the community, and that the correspondence had better be discontinued.
So it was that he strode through the Rue de Grenelle in the May twilight, with fifty francs in his pocket, resolved to spend it all that night—and then? Well, it was not very clear in his mind, but certainly he was not going back to his miserable lodging,—and surely there must be some way of making an end of it all for a man who felt that he was adrift and very tired,—there was no one to care much if he dropped out, and he could see no attractive reason for going on.
It was then that he heard the notes of thehumoreskecoming down into the deserted street and stood still to listen. The memories of the perfect summer floated around him again. Something in the music seemed to call to him, to plead with him, to try to console and cheer him with a wonderful, playful tenderness like the pure wordless sympathy of a child.
"If she had only known how to play it like that," he said to himself; "if she had only cared enough—she would have called me back. But here is a woman who does know—and perhaps even for me—well, I will fight a little longer."
So he turned back to his lonely lodging, guided and impelled by something that he could not quite understand, and did not even try to explain. Surely it would be absurd to think that the chance hearing of a bit of music could have an influence on a man's life.
That turn in the Rue de Grenelle seemed like the turn in the tide of his fortunes. The morning mail brought an order for five hundred francs,with a letter from the editor of theEpoch Magazine, saying that he liked the article on "The Cradle of the Revolution" very much, and that he wished the author would do three papers for him on the "Old Prisons of Paris," A week later came a letter from the editor ofThe World's Wonders, saying that if the author of the excellent article on Vesuvius would procure photographic illustrations of it at their expense, they would be glad to pay a hundred dollars for it, and asking if he felt like doing two or three articles on "The Little Chateaux of France" during the summer.
Richard felt, not so much that he was "himself again," but that he was a new man. The touch of praise for his work refreshed him more than wine. His friends, theBeaux Artsmen and the newspaper correspondent, noticed the change in him, and accused him of being in love.
"Not much," he laughed, "but I am at work—two articles accepted and commissions for five more."
They joyfully gave him all the hints and helps they could, and told him where to find the booksthat he needed. He settled down to his reading bravely and made copious notes for his articles. On Sundays he went with his three friends to spend the day at some resort in the suburbs. He played the violin only on these country excursions and at night in his room when his eyes were tired. The rest of the time he toiled terribly. His boyish dream that the world lay at his feet was ended, but instead he felt that he had the power to do something fairly good, if he worked hard enough. And then, perhaps some day he might have the good luck to meet that girl whose music he had heard the evening when the tide turned.
He wondered what she looked like. He had passed the house often, hoping that he might see her or hear her play again. But nothing of that kind happened. The windows on the second floor were always closed. A discreet inquiry at the glass door of theconciergedrew out only the information that Madame Farr, the American lady, had gone away with her two nieces for their vacation. The name conveyed nothing to him. It would have been absurd to try to follow such a cobweb clue,and give up his work to chase after an unknown American lady and her invisible nieces.
Yet more and more the remembrance of that strain of music lingered with him, strangely penetrating and significant. He played it often on the violin. It came to be the symbol of that summer, not as it had ended in disappointment and deception, but as it had flowed for so many perfect weeks in pure joy and gaiety of heart. He thought of the unseen player very kindly. He tried unconsciously to make a picture of her in his mind—the colour of her hair, her eyes, the shape of her face. He saw her running through the woods, or sitting between the knees of the old hemlock beside the river. And always her hair was blond and soft and loosely curling, her eyes of a brown so bright and clear that it seemed to glow with hidden gold, and her face a full oval, tinted like the petal of a great magnolia blossom.
"I am a poor fool," he would say to himself after these reveries; "why should she have been in the least like Carola? More probably she had freckles and red hair—but she was a girl who understood."
When August came, Richard's friends went off for a holiday, but he stuck to his work. The heat of Paris was faint and smothering. On the first Sunday he went out to St. Germain, loveliest of all the Parisian suburbs, and wandered all day in the green and mossy forest. He was lonely and depressed. Not even the cool verdure of the woods, nor the splendour of the view from the terrace looking out over the curves of the Seine, and the green rolling hills, and the lines of light that led to the city beginning to glow with a pale yellow radiance in the dusk, could console him. The merry, companionable stir of life around him made him feel more solitary. He turned away from the gay verandah of thePavillion Henry IV, which was full of dining-parties, and went back into the town to seek the quieter garden of thePavillion Louis XIV. There was a big linden-tree there and a certain table at one side of it where he had dined before. He would go there now for his solitary repast.
But the garden also was well-patronized that night. The white-aproned waiters were running toand fro; the stout landlady in black silk and a lace cap was moving among her guests with beaming face; a soft babble of talk and laughter rose from every walk and corner. When Richard came to his chosen table he found it occupied by three ladies. Disappointed, he was turning to look for another place, when the voice of Carola Brune called him.
When a thing like that happens, a man does not know exactly where he is, or how he feels. The largeness and the smallness of the world amaze him; the mystery of life bewilders him; he is confused in the presence of the unknown quantity. How he behaves, what he says or does, depends entirely upon instincts beyond his control.
Richard would have been puzzled to give an account of his introduction to Mrs. Farr, and of his recognition of the little sister, now grown to young womanhood. The conversation at the table where he dined with the family party was very vague in his mind. He knew that he was telling them about his adventures, as if they were scenes in a comedy, and that he said a little about the turn of good luckthat had come to him just in time. He knew that Carola was talking of her music-lessons, and of her dear master and of his sudden promise that she should have a concert in the early winter. It was all very jolly and friendly, but it did not seem quite real to him until he asked her a question.
"Where did you live in Paris last May?"
"In the Rue de Grenelle," she answered; "of course you know that old street."
He nodded and fell into silence, letting his cigarette go out, as he sipped his coffee.
"Well," he said, "this has been delightful—it was great luck to meet you. But I suppose I should be going. The best of friends must part."
"But no," said Carola, flushing faintly, "what reason is there for that stupid proverb now? My aunt and sister always take a little walk on the terrace after dinner to see the lights. But you must let me show you what pretty rooms we have found here for our vacation. I have to be near the master and to keep up my practising, you know. I have a heavenly piano. Don't you want to hear whether I have improved in my playing?"
"I do," he answered, "indeed that is just what I want."
When they came into the little sitting-room above the garden, the windows were wide and the room was cool and dim and fragrant. Carola moved about in the shadow, lighting the candles on the mantle-piece and the tall lamp beside the piano.
"Now," she said, "let us talk a little."
He hesitated a moment, and answered: "I would rather hear you play."
"You are as decided and dictatorial as ever," she laughed; "but this time you shall have your way. What will you have—a bit of Chopin or Grieg? Here is plenty of music to choose from."
"No," he said, "something that you know by heart. The piece that you played in the Rue de Grenelle in the twilight on May the seventh."
She looked at him with startled, wondering eyes, as if about to ask the explanation of such a curious request. Then her eyes dropped, and her colour rose, and she sat down at the piano.
Thehumoreskecame from her lightly movinghands as it had come on that spring evening,—quaint, tender, consoling, caressing,—but now with a new accent of joy in it, a quicker, almost exulting movement in the dancing passages. Richard listened, standing close behind her, watching the play of her firm, rounded fingers, breathing the fragrance that rose from her hair and her white neck.
When she turned on the stool he was kneeling beside her, and his hands were stretched out to take hers.
"Let me tell you," he exclaimed, "let me tell you what a fool I have been."
So she sat very still while he told her of his failure at college, and how he had gone wild afterward, and how bitter he had been, and how lonely. The adventure with the travelling musicians had led to nothing, and his assurance of winning fame with his violin or with his pen had come to nothing. He was at the edge of the big darkness on that May evening, when she had brought the turn of the tide without knowing it. And even now things were not much better, but still he had a fighting chance to make himself amount to something.He could write, and he would work at it as a man must work at his calling. He could play the violin, and he would make it his avocation and refreshment. She was going on, he knew, to win a great success. He would rejoice in it—he loved her with all his heart—she must know that—but he had nothing to offer her. He was too poor to ask her for anything now.
Her hands trembled as he bent to kiss them. In her shining eyes there was a strange, sweet, deep smile. She leaned over him, and he felt the warmth of her breath on his forehead as she whispered: "Richard, couldn't you even ask me for thehumoreske?"
Three men were taking a walk together, as they said, just to while away the time.
The first man intended to go Somewhere, to look at a piece of property which he was considering. The second man was ready to go Anywhere, since he expected to be happy by the way. The third man thought he was going Nowhere, because he was a philosopher and held that time and space are only mental forms.
Therefore the third man walked in silence, reflecting upon the vanity of whiling away an hour which did not exist, and upon the futility of going when staying was the same thing. But the other men,being more simple, were playing the oldest game in the world and giving names to the things that they saw as they travelled.
"Mutton," said the Somewhere Man, as he looked over a stone wall.
"A flock of sheep," said the Anywhere Man, gazing upon the pasture, where the fleecy ewes were nipping grass between the rocks and the eager lambs nuzzled their mothers.
But the Nowhere Man meditated on the foolish habit of eating, and said nothing.
"An ant-hill," said the Anywhere Man, looking at a mound beside the path; "see how busy the citizens are!"
"Pismires," said the Somewhere Man, kicking the mound; "they sting like the devil."
But the Nowhere Man, being certain that the devil is a myth, said nothing.
"Briars," said the Somewhere Man, as they passed through a coppice.
"Blackberries," said the Anywhere Man; "they will blossom next month and ripen in August."
But the Nowhere Man, to whom they referredthe settlement of the first round of the game, decided that both had lost because they spoke only of accidental phenomena.
With the next round they came into a little forest on a sandy hill. The oak-trees were still bare, and the fir-trees were rusty green, and the maple-trees were in rosy bud. On these things the travellers were agreed.
But among the withered foliage on the ground a vine trailed far and wide with verdant leaves, thick and heavy, and under the leaves were clusters of rosy stars, breathing a wonderful sweetness, so that the travellers could not but smell it.
"Rough-leaf," said the Somewhere Man; "gravel-weed we call it in our country, because it marks the poorest soil."
"Trailing arbutus," said the Anywhere Man; "May-flowers we call them in our country."
"But why?" asked the Nowhere Man. "May has not yet come."
"She is coming," answered the other; "she will be here before these are gone."
On the other side of the wood they entered ameadow where a little bird was bubbling over with music in the air.
"Skunk-blackbird," said the Somewhere Man; "colours the same as a skunk."
"Bobolink," said the Anywhere Man; "spills his song while he flies."
"It is a silly name," said the Nowhere Man. "Where did you find it?"
"I don't know," answered the other; "it just sounds to me like the bird."
By this time it was clear that the two men did not play the game by the same rules, but they went on playing, just as other people do.
They saw a little thatched house beside the brook. "Beastly hovel," said the first man. "Pretty cottage," said the second.
A woman was tossing and fondling her child, with kiss-words. "Sickly sentiment," said the first man. "Mother love," said the second.
They passed a youth sleeping on the grass under a tree. "Lazy hound!" said the first man. "Happy dog!" said the second.
Now the third man, remembering that he was aphilosopher, concluded that he was wasting his imaginary time in hearing this endless old game.
"I must bid you good-day, gentlemen," said he, "for it seems to me that you are disputing only about appearances, and are not likely to arrive Somewhere or Anywhere. But I am seekingdas Ding an sich."
So he left them, and went on his way Nowhere. And I know not which of the others won the game, but I think the second man had more pleasure in playing it.
There was once a man who was also a writer of books.
The merit of his books lies beyond the horizon of this tale. No doubt some of them were good, and some of them were bad, and some were merely popular. But he was all the time trying to make them better, for he was quite an honest man, and thankful that the world should give him a living for his writing. Moreover, he found great delight in the doing of it, which was something that did not enter into the world's account—a kind of daily Christmas present in addition to his wages.
But the interesting thing about the man was that he had a clan or train of little sprites attending him—small, delicate, aerial creatures, who came and went around him at their pleasure, and showed him wonderful things, and sang to him, and kept him from being discouraged, and often helped him with his work.
If you ask me what they were and where they came from, I must frankly tell you that I do not know. Neither did the man know. Neither does anybody else know.
But the man had sense enough to understand that they were real—just as real as any of the other mysterious things, like microbes, and polonium, and chemical affinities, and the northern lights, by which we are surrounded. Sometimes it seemed as if the sprites were the children of the flowers that die in blooming; and sometimes as if they came in a flock with the birds from the south; and sometimes as if they rose one by one from the roots of the trees in the deep forest, or from the waves of the sea when the moon lay upon them; and sometimes as if they appeared suddenly in the streets ofthe city after the people had passed by and the houses had gone to sleep. They were as light as thistle-down, as unsubstantial as mists upon the mountain, as wayward and flickering as will-o'-the-wisps. But there was something immortal about them, and the man knew that the world would be nothing to him without their presence and comradeship.
Most of these attendant sprites were gentle and docile; but there was one who had a strain of wildness in him. In his hand he carried a bow, and at his shoulder a quiver of arrows, and he looked as if, some day or other, he might be up to mischief.
Now this man was much befriended by a certain lady, to whom he used to bring his stories in order that she might tell him whether they were good, or bad, or merely popular. But whatever she might think of the stories, always she liked the man, and of the airy fluttering sprites she grew so fond that it almost seemed as if they were her own children. This was not unnatural, for they were devoted to her; they turned the pages of her book when sheread; they made her walks through the forest pleasant and friendly; they lit lanterns for her in the dark; they brought flowers to her and sang to her, as well as to the man. Of this he was glad, because of his great friendship for the lady and his desire to see her happy.
But one day she complained to him of the sprite who carried the bow. "He is behaving badly," said she; "he teases me."
"That surprises me," said the man, "and I am distressed to hear it; for at heart he is rather good, and to you he is deeply attached. But how does he tease you, dear lady? What does he do?"
"Oh, nothing," she answered, "and that is what annoys me. The others are all busy with your affairs or mine. But this idle one follows me like my shadow, and looks at me all the time. It is not at all polite. I fear he has a vacant mind and has not been well brought up."
"That may easily be," said the man, "for he came to me very suddenly one day, and I have never inquired about his education."
"But you ought to do so," said she; "it is yourduty to have him taught to know his place, and not to tease, and other useful lessons."
"You are always right," said the man, "and it shall be just as you say."
On the way home he talked seriously to the sprite, and told him how impolite he had been, and arranged a plan for his schooling in botany, diplomacy, music, psychology, deportment, and other useful studies.
The rest of the sprites came in to the school-room every day, to get some of the profitable lessons. They sat around quiet and orderly, so that it was quite like a kindergarten. But the principal pupil was restless and troublesome.
"You are never still," said the man; "you have an idle mind and wandering thoughts."
"No!" said the sprite, shaking his head. "It is true, my mind is not on my lessons. But my thoughts do not wander at all. They always follow yours."
Then the man stopped talking, and the other sprites laughed behind their hands. But the one who had been reproved went on drawing pictures in the back of his botany book. The face in thepictures was always the same, but none of them seemed to satisfy him, for he always rubbed them out and began over again.
After several weeks of hard work the master thought his pupil must have learned something, so he gave him a holiday, and asked him what he would like to do.
"Go with you," he answered, "when you take her your new stories."
So they went together, and the lady complimented the writer on his success as an educator.
"Your pupil does you credit," said she; "he talks very nicely about botany and deportment. But I am a little troubled to see him looking so pale. Perhaps you have been too severe with him. I must take him out in the garden with me every day to play a while."
"You have a kind heart," said the man, "and I hope he will appreciate it."
This agreeable and amicable life continued for some weeks, and everybody was glad that affairs had arranged themselves. But one day the lady brought a new complaint.
"He is a strange little creature, and he has begun to annoy me in the most extraordinary way."
"That is bad," said the man. "What does he do now?"
"Oh, nothing," she answered, "and that is just the trouble. When I want to talk about you, he refuses, and says he does not like you as much as he used to. When I propose to play a game, he says he is tired and would rather sit under a tree and hear stories. When I tell them he says they do not suit him, they all end happily, and that is stupid. He is very perverse. But he clings to me like a bur. He is always teasing me to tell him the name of every flower in my garden and give him one of every kind."
"Is he rude about it?"
"Not exactly rude, but he is all the more annoying because he is so polite, and I always feel that he wants something different."
"He must not do that," said the man. "He must learn to want what you wish."
"But how can he learn what I wish? I do not always know that myself."
"It may be difficult," said the man, "but all the same he must learn it for your sake. I will deal with him."
So he took the unruly sprite out into the desert and gave him a sound beating with thorn branches. The blood ran down the poor little creature's arms and legs, and the tears down the man's cheeks. But the only words that he said were: "You must learn to want what she wishes—do you hear?—you must want what she wishes." At last the sprite whimpered and said: "Yes, I hear; I will wish what she wants." Then the man stopped beating him, and went back to his house, and wrote a little story that was really good.
But the sprite lay on his face in the desert for a long time, sobbing as if his heart would break. Then he fell asleep and laughed in his dreams. When he awoke it was night and the moon was shining silver. He rubbed his eyes and whispered to himself: "Now I must find out what she wants." With that he leaped up, and the moonbeams washed him white as he passed through them to the lady's house.
The next afternoon, when the man came to read her the really good story, she would not listen.
"No," she said, "I am very angry with you."
"Why?"
"You know well enough."
"Upon my honour, I do not."
"What?" cried the lady. "You profess ignorance, when he distinctly said——"
"Pardon," said the man; "butwhosaid?"
"Your unruly sprite," she answered, indignant. "He came last night outside my window, which was wide open for the moon, and shot an arrow into my breast—a little baby arrow, but it hurt. And when I cried out for the pain, he climbed up to me and kissed the place, saying that would make it well. And he swore that you made him promise to come. If that is true, I will never speak to you again."
"Then of course," said the man, "it is not true. And now what do you want me to do with this unruly sprite?"
"Get rid of him," said she firmly.
"I will," replied the man, and he bowed over her hand and went away.
He stayed for a long time—nearly a week—andwhen he came back he brought several sad verses with him to read. "They are very dull," said the lady; "what is the matter with you?" He confessed that he did not know, and began to talk learnedly about the Greek and Persian poets, until the lady was consumed with a fever of dullness.
"You are simply impossible!" she cried. "I wonder at myself for having chosen such a friend!"
"I am sorry indeed," said the man.
"For what?"
"For having disappointed you as a friend, and also for having lost my dear unruly sprite who kept me from being dull."
"Lost him!" exclaimed the lady. "How?"
"By now," said the man, "he must be quite dead, for I tied him to a tree in the forest five days ago and left him to starve."
"You are a brute," said the lady, "and a very stupid man. Come, take me to the tree. At least we can bury the poor sprite, and then we shall part forever."
So he took her by the hand and guided her through the woods, and they talked much of the sadness of parting forever.
The Unruly Sprite.The Unruly Sprite.
When they came to the tree, there was the little sprite, with his wrists and ankles bound, lying upon the moss. His eyes were closed, and his body was white as a snowdrop. They knelt down, one on each side of him, and untied the cord. To their surprise his hands felt warm. "I believe he is not quite dead," said the lady. "Shall we try to bring him to life?" asked the man. And with that they fell to chafing his wrists and his palms. Presently he gave each of them a slight pressure of the fingers.
"Did you feel that?" cried she.
"Indeed I did," the man answered. "It shook me to the core. Would you like to take him on your lap so that I can chafe his feet?"
The lady nodded and took the soft little body on her knees and held it close to her, while the man kneeled before her rubbing the small, milk-white feet with strong and tender touches. Presently, as they were thus engaged, they heard the sprite faintly whispering, while one of his eyelids flickered:
"I think—if each of you—would kiss me—on opposite cheeks—at the same moment—those kind of movements would revive me."
The two friends looked at each other, and the man spoke first.
"He talks ungrammatically, and I think he is an incorrigible little savage, but I love him. Shall we try his idea?"
"If you love him," said the lady, "I am willing to try, provided you shut your eyes."
So they both shut their eyes and tried.
But just at that moment the unruly sprite slipped down, and put his hands behind their heads, and the two mouths that sought his cheeks met lip to lip in a kiss so warm, so long, so sweet that everything else was forgotten.
Now you can easily see that as the persons who had this strange experience were the ones who told me the tale, their forgetfulness at this point leaves it of necessity half-told. But I know from other sources that the man who was also a writer went on making books, and the lady always told him truly whether they were good, or bad, or merely popular. But what the unruly sprite is doing now nobody knows.
There were three neighbours who lived side by side in a certain village. They were bound together by the contiguousness of their back yards and front porches, and by a community of interest in taxes and water-rates and the high cost of living. They were separated by their religious opinions; for one of them was a Mystic, and the second was a Sceptic, and the other was a suppressed Dyspeptic who called himself an Asthmatic.
These differences were very dear to them, and laid the foundations of a lasting friendship in a nervous habit of interminable argument on all possible subjects. Their wives did not share in these disputations because they were resolved to be neighbourly, and they could not conceive a difference of opinion without a personal application. So they called one another Clara and Caroline and Katharine, and kissed audibly whenever they met, but they were careful to confine their conversation to topics upon which they had only one mind, such as the ingratitude of domestic servants.
The husbands, however, as often as they could get together without the mollifying influence of the feminine presence, continued their debates with delightful ferocity, finding matter in each event of life, though clear, and especially in those which had not yet occurred. So they had a very happy time, and their friendship deepened from day to day.
"I can see your point of view," one of them would say, after an apparently harmless proposition had been advanced. "Perhaps so," the other would reply, clinging desperately to the advantage of the first service in definitions, "but you certainly do not understand it."
Whereupon the third had the pleasure of showing that neither of the others knew what he was talking about. This invariably resulted in their combining against him, and usually to his gain, because he was able to profit by the inconsistencies of their double play.
But of all earthly pleasures, as Sancho Panza said, there cometh in the end satiety. The neighbours, after several years of refreshing colloquial combat, felt an alarming decline of virility and the approach of an anæmic peace. Their arguments grew monotonous, remote, repetitious, amounting to little more than a bald statement of position: "Here I stand"—"There you stand"—"There he stands,"—"What is the use of talking about it?" The salt and pepper had vanished from their table of conversation, and as each man silently chewed his own favourite cereal, they all felt as if the banqueting-days were ended and each must say to the others:
"Grow old apart from me,The worst is yet to be."
"Grow old apart from me,The worst is yet to be."
One night as they were about to separate, long before midnight, without a single spirited controversy, they looked at one another sadly, as men who felt the approach of a common misfortune.
"The trouble is," said the Mystic, who disliked nothing so much as solitude, "we do not meditate enough, and so the springs of our inspiration from the Oversoul are running dry."
"The trouble is," said the Sceptic, whose doubts were more dogmatic than dogmas, "that our fixed ideas are choking the feed-pipes of our minds."
"The trouble is," wheezed the Asthmatic, whose suppressed dyspepsia gave him an enormous appetite, "modern life is demoralised, especially in domestic service. In the last month my wife has had five cooks, and she whom she now has is not a cook. Hygiene is the basis of sound thinking."
This sudden and unexpected renewal of the joy of disputation cheered them greatly, and they discussed it for several hours, arriving, as usual, at the same practical conclusions from the most diverse premises.
They all agreed that the troublewas.
To cure it nothing could be better than a change of air. So they resolved to make a little journey together.
They went first to New York, and the size of it impressed them immensely. The Sceptic was delighted with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, because, as he said, it was so unmistakably human. The Mystic was delighted with the theatres, because, as he said, most of the plays seemed so super-human. The Asthmatic was delighted with the subway, because, as he said, the ventilation was so satisfactory. It was like eating bread-pudding on a steam-boat; you knew exactly what you were getting; all the microbes were blended, and they neutralised each other.
Their next point of visitation was Chicago, where they had heard that a new Literary School was arising with a noise like thunder out of the lake. They attended many club-meetings, and revolved rapidly in the highest literary circles, coming around invariably to the point from which they had started.
"This is tiresome," said the Mystic; "the Oversoul is not in it."
"It is narrowing," said the Sceptic; "these people are the most bigoted unbelievers I ever saw."
"It is unwholesome," said the Asthmatic, "but Ithink I could digest the stuff if I could only breathe more easily. This wind is too strong for me."
So they agreed to go to Philadelphia for a rest. The clerk in the colonial hotel to which they repaired assured them that the house was crowded—he had only one room, a parlour, which he could fit up with three beds if they would accept it.
The room was large and old-fashioned. A tall bookcase with glass doors stood against the wall. The three beds were arranged, side by side, in the middle of the room. "This is like home," cried the neighbours, and they lay until midnight in a sweet ferocity of dispute over the moral character of Benjamin Franklin.
A couple of hours later the Asthmatic was awakened from a sound sleep by a terrible attack of short breathing.
"Open the window," he gasped; "I am choking to death."
The Mystic sprang from bed and groped along the wall for the electric-light button, but could not find it. Then he groped for the window and his hand touched the glass.
"It is fastened," he cried; "I can't find the catch. It will not move up or down."
"I shall die," groaned the Asthmatic, "unless I have air. Break the window-pane!"
So the Mystic felt for the footstool, over which he had just stubbed his toes, and used the corner of it to smash the glass.
"Ah," said the Asthmatic, with a long sigh of relief, "I am better. There is nothing like fresh air."
Then they all went to sleep again.
The morning roused them slowly, and they lay on their backs looking around the room. The windows were closed and the shades drawn.
But the glass door of the bookcase had a great hole in it!
"You see!" said the Mystic. "It was the faith cure. The Oversoul cured you."
"Not at all," said the Sceptic. "It was the doubt cure. The way to get rid of a thing is to doubt it."
"I think," said the Asthmatic, "that it was the nightmare, and that miscellaneous cooking is the cause of human misery. We have travelled enough,and yet we have found no better air than we left at home."
So they went back to the certain village and continued their disputations very happily for the rest of their lives.