VIII.
ON SOLITUDE: WITH A THIRD ANECDOTE FROM THE
“ENTERTAINMENTS” OF KAPNIDES.
IF I have gone some distance to seek solitude, it is not because I am sulky. But I never feel quite certain at this time of the year that there may not be penny steamers plying between Silver Street Bridge and Chesterton, or a Lockhart’s tea and cocoa palace erected in King’s. And I should hardly like to see it. Of course I did not find absolute solitude even here. The other day an apple fell on my head while I was like a child picking up pebbles on the shores of the ocean of life. I saw that there was no help for it; so I just followed precedent and discovered a natural law—that I never get anything I want. I am quite contented, consequently, that I did not find any solitude at first, and am pleasantly surprised that a large picnic party, who came and sniffed all round me suspiciously, as if they wondered why I was not muzzled, have finally decided to defile some other part of the river scenery with their happy laughter and packets of lukewarm comestibles.
I like a crowd immensely. Ditton Corner is good for the soul. So is the Strand at noon or midnight. But every one who really likes a crowd, really likes solitude.
It is pleasant enough to lie here in the hot sun, to have a pipe that does its work properly, and to wonder what the time is, but not to be enough distressed about it to take the trouble to consult one’s watch. I am finishing the “Entertainments” of Kapnides now, and I am not quite clear about the last story but one in his book. I give it, in case you have not read it.
It was a most beautiful cloud. Two highly respectable Athenians looked at it for a long time, and they understood beauty in Athens.
“Now, if any one were to paint that,” said the first, “every one would say that it was not natural.” He felt there was depth in the remark.
“I am not so sure of that,” said the second, intending to be thought judicious but not disagreeable.
If the cloud had been painted, its chiefest beauty would have been omitted. For in the centre of the cloud sat the unborn soul of a girl-child. To all mortals it had no visible appearance. But the stars, as they crept slowly up for a night’s work, saw with smiling eyes a graceful figure seated in the vapour, leaning a little backward, white against the crimson pillows of mist, with slender hands clasped behind a shapely head, and long dark hair and closed eyes. For it lived, but did not think, after the manner of unborn souls, which have ways distinctly of their own.
And as the sun poised over the cool, lighted sea that sang to welcome it, a noise of little tinkling silver bells was heard all down the sky; and there was some hurry and confusion amid Powers which were usually calm with the unjust, irritating, excessive calmness of a natural law.
When it was all over, no one exactly knew whose fault it was. But the Manager was summoned before the great Zeus, and reprimanded severely. “It’s carelessness,” said Zeus, “and that’s what I can’t stand. You ought to have been ready, and there are no two ways about it. You sit there in the office, wondering how long it will be before you can sneak out to your beastly lunch, and you forget that you’re paid to be managing my business for me all that time.”
Whether it was the Manager’s fault or not, the fact remained. Down in the world, in the beautiful country just outside Athens, a boy-child had been born, and he had been born with the soul of a girl-child inside him.
“Such a piece of bungling!” grumbled Zeus, and went off to play at making orphans.
To play this game you have to be a god, and possess thunderbolts; every time you kill a father or mother you score one; if you miss, it counts nothing; if you kill anything else by mistake, you lose one.
Before the boy was grown Zeus had forgotten all about it. Perhaps this was as well for the boy, for Zeus had intended only to give him five years’ life; and perhaps it was not as well.
At the age of twelve he was tall and straight. But his face was too delicate, and his eyes were the eyes that had slumbered a dreamless slumber under the closed lids of the unborn soul of a girl. And about his ways there was some sweet shyness and tenderness, or softness—names do not matter—although in courage and spirit and endurance he had no equal among his comrades. And with all his comrades he was gentle, and they loved him; but he, having no care for them nor for the parents who bore him, and angry with himself because he could feel no such care, went long, wandering walks alone, and heard strange stories told him by flowers and birds and winds.
And the years passed, and there was no change until the boy was sixteen, and then no one knew why he was so unhappy and quiet; he himself hardly knew. But now his wanderings would take him away for days at a time. A spirit of longing possessed him, for which he had no name, and the fulfilment of it was as a dim, dancing light before him, baffling and dazzling him, and leaving him no peace. And of this neither winds, nor birds, nor flowers told him anything. And the longing drove him to climb where no others had dared to climb, or to swim far out into the cool waters of the bay, that he might come back tired and sleep through the warm fragrant night in the long grass. And ever in sleep there came one dream and told him all; and ever when he awoke, the dream was gone from his memory. So he never knew, but always knew that he had known.
Comely maidens, with an intimate knowledge of their own best points, met him sometimes in his wanderings. And for them he cared nothing at all, and wondered why one or two of their number looked shyly at him as he passed them. They said nothing, for maidens are secretive animals; but one with shapely arms took to herself a new bracelet; and one with pretty pearly teeth got up a new sigh which just parted the lips without being ungraceful, and sounded extremely interesting. However, they might have painted themselves blue, and have had no effect whatever on the sorrowful youth. But they were not thus minded; and, seeing that this sad youth neither loved nor hated them, they looked out for those who understood love and hatred, and were married.
The boy’s father thought it necessary to consult a physician about this strange melancholy. Besides, the youth was growing paler every day, and was listless, and cared for nothing but to lie asleep, or almost asleep, with the feathery grass rustling in a gentle whisper over him.
So the physician came, and asked several impertinent questions. Then he delivered himself upon this wise:
“It is well known that much exercise and weariness consume the spirits and substance, refrigerate the body; and such humours which nature would have otherwise concocted and expelled, it stirs up and makes them rage; which, being so enraged, diversely affect and trouble the body and mind.”
“Those are comforting words,” said the boy’s father, who couldn’t understand them.
“Keep it vague,” murmured the boy softly.
“It is to the immoderate use of gymnastics,” said the physician, “that I ascribe your son’s melancholy. Wherefore, let him drink of a syrup of black hellebore, confected with the boiled seeds of anise, endive, mallow, fermitory, diacatholicon, hierologodium——”
“Half-time——change ends,” said the boy under his breath.
“Cassia and sweet almonds,” continued the physician. “And in the meantime he may drink of a broth of an exenterated chicken.”
He had heard the youth’s last remark. “And,” he added severely, “let him beware of intempestive laughter.”
So the physician went away.
“What did he say?” asked the mother of the youth.
“Well,” said the father, “he said that the boy had been growing too fast, at least he implied that, and he prescribed hierolo——French for chicken broth, you know.”
But while the doctor’s prescription was being prepared, the boy went off to the cliffs; and he stretched himself at full length on the thyme, and went to sleep, and dreamed the old sweet dream, and the sun drew near to its setting, and in his pleasant sleep the boy died.
Never had there been a happier and more desirable death.
And under the burning sun a cloud was stretched like a cloth of gold.
And the two highly respectable Athenians came out to look at it. “If I were to paint that exactly as it is,” said the first, “every one would say that my picture was intensely unnatural.”
“Great Zeus!” ejaculated the second, for the first had made the remark nearly every night for rather more than sixteen years, and still thought there was a certain insight about it.
In the golden heart of the cloud were together the soul of a youth and the soul of a young girl, two souls that had done their work and were resting. He sat in careless happiness looking down at her: for she was stretched at his feet, making a daisy-chain with the souls of the daisies that were to bloom next year. And ever she would look up from her work into his eyes; and the eyes of the two were strangely alike, and soft and bright.
Into the cloud came the Manager. He was in a terrible hurry; for there had been great doings in Sicily, and an army had been cut to pieces, and consequently there was a press of business.
“I’ve called to take your numbers,” he said.
They both gave the same number.
He seemed a little startled, then recovered himself, and jotted it down in his note-book. “I remember now,” he said, half apologetically. “It was not entirely my fault. I had slipped out to get a glass of beer, and I told the boy to send for me if anything happened. But he thought he could manage it himself, and he blundered, and I was blamed. So you both were born in the same body. I hope you were not crowded. Zeus had intended you to be born in different bodies, and fall in love with one another down below. But you can do it up here, you know. It’s not the same thing, but some people think it’s better: it’s much more spiritual. You will have this cloud all to yourselves for as long as you like. At any rate it was not so hard on you as it was on the girl’s body, which had to be born without any soul at all—but I am told that she made money out of it. Well, I must be off; good evening.”
So the Manager departed, and they were alone, and they floated away into the night when the night came. And the sea sang beneath them, and the wind was warm and perfumed with flowers.
“I love you for ever and ever,” he said.
The same remark had just occurred to her—not strikingly original, perhaps, but both were satisfied with it.