Mike Fletcher Part 5

"I wish you could.... The apartment I have in mind is too large for me, you might take the half of it."

Mike knew where his comforts lay, and he accepted his friend's offer.

There they founded, and there they edited, the _Pilgrim_, a weekly sixpenny paper devoted to young men, their doings, their amus.e.m.e.nts, their literature, and their art. Under their dual editors.h.i.+p this journal had prospered; it now circulated five thousand a week, and published twelve pages of advertis.e.m.e.nts. Frank, whose bent was hospitality, was therefore able to entertain his friends as it pleased him, and his rooms were daily and nightly filled with revelling lords, comic vocalists, and chorus girls. Mike often craved for other amus.e.m.e.nts and other society. Temple Gardens was but one page in the book of life, and every page in that book was equally interesting to him. He desired all amus.e.m.e.nts, to know all things, to be loved by every one; and longing for new sensations of life, he often escaped to the c.o.c.k tavern for a quiet dinner with some young barristers, and a quiet smoke afterwards with them in their rooms. It was there he had met John Norton.

The _Pilgrim_ was composed of sixteen columns of paragraphs in which society, art, and letters were dealt with--the form of expression preferred being the most exaggerated. Indeed, the formula of criticism that Mike and Frank, guided by Harding, had developed, was to consider as worthless all that the world held in estimation, and to laud as best all that world had agreed to discard. John Norton's views regarding Latin literature had been adopted, and Virgil was declared to be the great old bore of antiquity, and some three or four quite unknown names, gathered amid the Fathers, were upon occasion trailed in triumph with adjectives of praise.

What painter of Madonnas does the world agree to consider as the greatest? Raphael--Raphael was therefore decried as being scarcely superior to Sir Frederick Leighton; and one of the early Italian painters, Frances...o...b..anchi, whom Vasari exhumes in some three or four lines, was praised as possessing a subtle and mysterious talent very different indeed from the hesitating smile of La Jaconde. There is a picture of the Holy Family by him in the Louvre, and of it Harding wrote--"This canvas exhales for us the most delicious emanations, sorrowful bewitchments, insidious sacrileges, and troubled prayers."

All inst.i.tutions, especially the Royal Academy, St. Paul's Cathedral, Drury Lane Theatre, and Eton College, were held to be the symbols of man's earthiness, the bar-room and music-hall as certain proof of his divine origin; actors were scorned and prize-fighters revered; the genius of courtesans, the folly of education, and the poetry of pantomime formed the themes on which the articles which made the centre of the paper were written. Insolent letters were addressed to eminent people, and a novel by Harding, the hero of which was a butler and the heroine a cook, was in course of publication.

Mike was about to begin a series of articles in this genial journal, ent.i.tled _Lions of the Season_. His first lion was a young man who had invented a pantomime, _Pierrot murders his Wife_, which he was acting with success in fas.h.i.+onable drawing-rooms. A mute brings Pierrot back more dead than alive from the cemetery, and throws him in a chair. When Pierrot recovers he re-acts the murder before a portrait of his wife--how he tied her down and tickled her to death.

Then he begins drinking, and finally sets fire to the curtains of the bed and is burnt.

It was the day before publis.h.i.+ng day, and since breakfast the young men had been drinking, smoking, telling tales, and writing paragraphs; from time to time the page-boy brought in proofs, and the narrators made pause till he had left the room. Frank continued reading Mike's ma.n.u.script, now and then stopping to praise a felicitous epithet.

At last he said--"Harding, what do you think of this?--'The Sphynx is representative of the grave and monumental genius of Egypt, the Faun of the gracious genius of Rome, the Pierrot of the fantastic genius of the Renaissance. And, in this one creation, I am not sure that the seventeenth does not take the palm from the earlier centuries.

Pierrot!--there is music, there is poetry in the name. The soul of an epoch lives in that name, evocative as it is of shadowy trees, lawny s.p.a.ces, brocade, pointed bodices, high heels and guitars. And in expression how much more perfect is he than his ancestor, the Faun!

His animality is indicated without coa.r.s.e or awkward symbolism; without cloven hoof or hirsute ears--only a white face, a long white dress with large white b.u.t.tons, and a black skull-cap; and yet, somehow, the effect is achieved. The great white creature is not quite human--hereditary sin has not descended upon him; he is not quite responsible for his acts.'"

"I like the paragraph," said Harding; "you finish up, of course, with the apotheosis of pantomimists, and announce him as one of the lions of the season. Who are your other lions and lionesses?"

"The others will be far better," said Mike. He took a cigarette from a silver box on the table, and, speaking as he puffed at it, entered into the explanation of his ideas.

Mademoiselle D'Or, the _premiere danseuse_ who had just arrived from Vienna, was to be the lioness of next week. Mike told how he would translate into words the insidious poetry of the blossom-like skirt that the pink body pierces like a stem, the beautiful springing, the lifted arms, then the flight from the wings; the posturing, the artificial smiles; this art a survival of Oriental tradition; this art at once so carnal and so enthusiastically ideal. "A prize-fighter will follow the _danseuse_. And I shall gloat in Gautier-like cadence--if I can catch it--over each superb muscle and each splendid development. But my best article will be on Kitty Carew. Since Laura Bell and Mabel Grey our courtesans have been but a mediocre lot."

"You must not say that in the _Pilgrim_--we should offend all our friends," Harding said, and he poured himself out a brandy-and-soda.

Mike laughed, and walking up and down the room, he continued--

"That it should be so is inexplicable, that it is so is certain; we have not had since Mabel Grey died a courtesan whom a foreign prince, pa.s.sing London, would visit as a matter of course as he would visit St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey; and yet London has advanced enormously in all that const.i.tutes wealth and civilization. In Paris, as in ancient Greece, courtesans are rich, brilliant, and depraved; here in London the women are poor, stupid, and almost virtuous. Kitty is revolution. I know for a fact that she has had as much as 1000 from a foreign potentate, and she spends in one day upon her tiger-cat what would keep a poor family in affluence for a week. Nor can she say half a dozen words without being witty. What do you think of this? We were discussing the old question, if it were well for a woman to have a sweetheart. Kitty said, 'London has given me everything but that. I can always find a man who will give me five and twenty guineas, but a sweetheart I can't find.'"

Every pen stopped, and expectation was on every face. After a pause Mike continued--

"Kitty said, 'In the first place he must please me, and I am very difficult to please; then I must please him, and sufficiently for him to give up his whole time to me. And he must not be poor, for although he would not give me money, it would cost him several hundreds a year to invite me to dinner and send me flowers. And where am I to find this combination of qualities?' Can't you hear her saying it, her sweet face like a tea-rose, those innocent blue eyes all laughing with happiness? The great stockbroker, who has been with her for the last ten years, settled fifty thousand pounds when he first took her up. She was speaking to me about him the other day, and when I said, 'Why didn't you leave him when the money was settled?' she said, 'Oh no, I wouldn't do a dirty trick like that; I contented myself simply by being unfaithful to him.'"

"This is no doubt very clever, but if you put all you have told us into your article, you'll certainly have the paper turned off the book-stalls."

The conversation paused. Every one finished his brandy-and-soda, and the correction of proofs was continued in silence, interrupted only by an occasional oath or a word of remonstrance from Frank, who begged Drake, a huge-shouldered man, whose hand was never out of the cigarette-box, not to drop the lighted ends on the carpet. Mike was reading Harding's article.

"I think we shall have a good number this week," said Mike. "But we want a piece of verse. I wonder if you could get something from John Norton. What do you think of Norton, Harding?"

"He is one of the most interesting men I know. His pessimism, his Catholicism, his yearning for ritual, his very genuine hatred of women, it all fascinates me."

"What do you think of that poem he told us of the other night?"

"Intensely interesting; but he will never be able to complete it. A man may be full of talent and yet be nothing of an artist; a man may be far less clever than Norton, and with a subtler artistic sense. If a seal had really something to say, I believe it would find a way of saying it; but has John Norton really got any idea so overwhelmingly new and personal that it would force a way of utterance where none existed? The Christian creed with its tale of Mary must be of all creeds most antipathetic to his natural instincts, he nevertheless accepts it.... If you agitate a pool from different sides you must stir up mud, and this is what occurs in Norton's brain; it is agitated equally from different sides, and the result is mud."

Mike looked at Harding inquiringly, for a moment wondered if the novelist understood him as he seemed to understand Norton.

A knock was heard, and Norton entered. His popularity was visible in the pleasant smiles and words which greeted him.

"You are just the man we want," cried Frank. "We want to publish one of your poems in the paper this week."

"I have burnt my poems," he answered, with something more of sacerdotal tone and gesture than usual.

All the scribblers looked up. "You don't mean to say seriously that you have burnt your poems?"

"Yes; but I do not care to discuss my reasons. You do not feel as I do."

"You mean to say that you have burnt _The Last Struggle_--the poem you told us about the other night?"

"Yes, I felt I could not reconcile its teaching, or I should say the tendency of its teaching, to my religion. I do not regret--besides, I had to do it; I felt I was going off my head. I should have gone mad.

I have been through agonies. I could not think. Thought and pain and trouble were as one in my brain. I heard voices.... I had to do it.

And now a great calm has come. I feel much better."

"You are a curious chap."

Then at the end of a long silence John said, as if he wished to change the conversation--

"Even though I did burn my pessimistic poem, the world will not go without one. You are writing a poem on Schopenhauer's philosophy.

It is hard to a.s.sociate pessimism with you."

"Only because you take the ordinary view of the tendency of pessimistic teaching," said Mike. "If you want a young and laughing world, preach Schopenhauer at every street corner; if you want a sober utilitarian world, preach Comte."

"Doesn't much matter what the world is as long as it is not sober,"

chuckled Platt, the paragraph-writing youth at the bottom of the table.

"Hold your tongue!" cried Drake, and he lighted another cigarette preparatory to fixing his whole attention on the paradox that Mike was about to enounce.

"The optimist believes in the regeneration of the race, in its ultimate perfectibility, the synthesis of humanity, the providential idea, and the path of the future; he therefore puts on a shovel hat, cries out against l.u.s.t, and depreciates prost.i.tution."

"Oh, the brute!" chuckled the wizen youth, "without prost.i.tutes and public-houses! what a world to live in!"

"The optimist counsels manual labour for all. The pessimist believes that forgetfulness and nothingness is the whole of man. He says, 'I defy the wisest of you to tell me why I am here, and being here, what good is gained by my a.s.sisting to bring others here.' The pessimist is therefore the gay Johnny, and the optimist is the melancholy Johnny. The former drinks champagne and takes his 'tart' out to dinner, the latter says that life is not intended to be happy in--that there is plenty of time to rest when you are dead."

John laughed loudly; but a moment after, rea.s.suming his look of admonition, he asked Mike to tell him about his poem.

"The subject is astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful," said Mike; "I only speak of the subject; no one, not even Victor Hugo or Sh.e.l.ley, ever conceived a finer theme. But they had execution, I have only the idea. I suppose the world to have ended; but ended, how? Man has at last recognized that life is, in equal parts, misery and abomination, and has resolved that it shall cease. The tide of pa.s.sion has again risen, and lashed by repression to tenfold fury, the sh.o.r.es of life have again been strewn with new victims; but knowledge--calm, will-less knowledge--has gradually invaded all hearts; and the restless, s.h.i.+fting sea (which is pa.s.sion) shrinks to its furthest limits.

"There have been Messiahs, there have been persecutions, but the Word has been preached unintermittently. Crowds have gathered to listen to the wild-eyed prophets. You see them on the desert promontories, preaching that human life must cease; they call it a disgraceful episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets--you see them hunted and tortured as were their ancestors, the Christians of the reign of Diocletian. You see them entering cottage doors and making converts in humble homes. The world, grown tired of vain misery, accepts oblivion.

"The rage and the seething of the sea is the image I select to represent the struggle for life. The dawn is my image for the diffusion and triumph of sufficient reason. In a couple of hundred lines I have set my scene, and I begin. It is in the plains of Normandy; of countless millions only two friends remain. One of them is dying. As the stars recede he stretches his hand to his companion, breathes once more, looking him in the face, joyous in the attainment of final rest. A hole is sc.r.a.ped, and the last burial is achieved.

Then the man, a young beautiful man with the pallor of long vigils and spiritual combat upon his face, arises.

"The scene echoes strangely the asceticism that produced it.

Rose-garden and vineyard are gone; there are no fields, nor hedgerows, nor gables seen picturesquely on a sky, human with smoke mildly ascending. A broken wall that a great elm tears and rends, startles the silence; apple-orchards spread no flowery snow, and the familiar thrushes have deserted the moss-grown trees, in other times their trees; and the virgin forest ceases only to make bleak place for marish plains with lonely pools and stagnating streams, where perchance a heron rises on blue and heavy wings.

"All the beautiful colours the world had worn when she was man's mistress are gone, and now, as if mourning for her lover and lord, she is clad only in sombre raiment. Since her lord departed she bears but scanty fruit, and since her lover left her, she that was glad has grown morose; her joy seems to have died with his; and the feeling of gloom is heightened, when at the sound of the man's footsteps a pack of wild dogs escape from a ruin, where they have been sleeping, and wake the forest with lugubrious yelps and barks. About the dismantled porches no single rose--the survival of roses planted by some fair woman's hand--remains to tell that man was once there--worked there for his daily bread, seeking a goodness and truth in life which was not his lot to attain.