Later that night, when the other people in the house had gone upstairs to bed, and as he was in the quiet library, making a final, longing, hungrily regretful survey of the treasure-hoard of noble books that walled the great room in their rich and mellow hues from floor to ceiling, Joel came in.
“Look,” he whispered, in his abrupt and casual way, “I’m going to bed now: stay up as long as you please and sleep as late as you like tomorrow morning. . . . And look,” he whispered casually — and quickly again —“what are you going to do? Do you think you have to go back to the city tomorrow?”
“Yes, Joel: I think I’ll have to — I have an early class the first thing Monday morning, and if I’m going to meet it, I ought to be back by tomorrow night: I think that will be best.”
“It’s been nice having you,” Joel whispered. “It was swell that you could come. And if you really like the place,” he said simply, “I’m glad. . . . I think it’s a grand place, too. . . . And look!” he whispered quickly, casually, looking away “— I meant what I said yesterday — about that house, the gatekeeper’s lodge, I mean — If you like the place, and think you’d care to live there, or come up whenever you feel like it, I wish you’d take it,” he whispered. “I really do — It’s no use to anyone the way it stands, and we’d all be delighted if you’d come and live in it. . . . Just let me know when you are coming, just say the word, and I’ll have everything ready for you — And we WISH you would,” he whispered earnestly, with his radiant smile, as if asking the other youth to do him a favour — “it would be swell.”
“It’s — it’s pretty fine of you, Joel, too —”
“All right, sir,” Joel whispered quickly, hastily, with a smile, avoiding skilfully the embarrassment of thanks: “And look, Eugene — of course I’ll see you Tuesday when I get back to town — I’ll be right there at the hotel the rest of the summer — except for week-ends when I come up here — but I wanted to ask you if you had made up your mind yet about going to Europe?”
“Yes, I have, Joel. At least, that’s what I want to do — what I’d like to do. If I can manage it, I intend to set sail —” the two words had a glorious magic sound to him, and his pulse beat hot and hard with joy and hope as he spoke them —“to set sail in September when my work at the university is over!”
“Gosh! That’s swell!” Joel whispered enthusiastically, his face lighting with radiant eagerness as if the news had given him some great and unexpected happiness —“And Frank Starwick will be glad go hear it, too. You know, he’s going over at the end of August; I had a letter from him just the other day.”
“Yes, I know: he wrote me too.”
“And he’ll want to see you when he comes to town: we must all try to get together before he goes. . . . And look,” he said quickly, abruptly, casually again —“if you go, how long will you be gone? How long do you intend to stay away?”
“I don’t know, Joel. I’d like to go for a whole year, but I don’t know if I can manage it. They’ve offered me an appointment for another year at the university. They want me to come back for the new term that begins in February, and maybe that’s what I’ll have to do. But I’d like to stay away a year!”
“I hope you can,” Joel whispered. “You ought to spend a whole year over there! It would be a swell thing if you could.”
“Yes; I think so, too. But I don’t know how I’m going to manage it: at the present time I don’t quite see how I can. . . . You see, all I’ve got to live on at the present time is what I earn as an instructor at the university — they pay me eighteen hundred dollars a year —”
“Gosh!” Joel whispered, arching his eyebrows in polite astonishment — “That’s a lot, isn’t it?”
“It’s not much, Joel: it amounts to $150 a month; you can get along on that, but you’re not going to paint New York red on it, the way things are today, especially if you’ve got a healthy appetite and love to eat, the way I do.”
“Yes,” Joel whispered, laughing his beautiful, radiant, and almost soundless laugh. “I can see that — that belly of yours is going to cost you a lot of money before you get through with it. A man who loves food the way you do ought to be a millionaire. But you see, don’t you,” he said, with a flash of his rare and gentle malice — “that’s what you get for not being a vegetarian like Bernard Shaw and me. . . . Eugene,” he cried softly, laughing, after a moment’s brief reflection, “— you’ll love France — the food is wonderful — but Lord!” and he laughed again his radiant soundless laugh “— how you’re going to hate England!”
“Why? Is the food bad?”
“It’s unspeakable!” Joel whispered —“that is for anyone who loves food the way you do: they go through the tortures of the damned . . . of course, for me it doesn’t matter. I can eat anything — anything, that is, so long as it’s vegetables — it all tastes alike to me — but YOU’LL hate it . . . of course,” he whispered earnestly, “you really won’t: you’ll love the country and you’ll like the English. They’re swell.”
“Have you been there much, Joel?”
“Only once,” he whispered. “When Mums and Rosalind were there. We had a house out in the country and we stayed there for fifteen months. And it was grand! You’ll love it. . . . Gosh! I hope you can stay over there a whole year!” he went on eagerly. “Don’t you think you can?”
“I don’t think so: you see, as I was telling you, I have only $150 a month; when I finish up in September I’ll have about five pay-cheques coming to me: that’s only $750. So I figure I can get over there on that and live for several months, but unless I can get money from my mother — I think perhaps she’ll help me — I don’t see how I can get along for a whole year.”
“Then look,” said Joel, speaking swiftly, and casually, and looking away as if he were making the most matter-of-fact proposal in the world —“Why don’t you let me help you? . . . I mean,” he went on hastily, and showing his embarrassment only by two spots of colour in his gaunt face —“I’d love to do it if you’d let me — it’d be no trouble at all — and you could pay it back whenever you like — just as soon as your play goes on: you’ll have plenty of money then, so I wish you’d take it now when you need it. . . . You see,” he whispered quickly, with a smile, “I have loads of money — more than I can ever POSSIBLY use — I have no need for it — I was twenty-one this spring, you know — and now I’m AWFULLY rich,” he whispered humorously, and then concluded in a quickly apologetic whisper — “not REALLY, of course — not compared to most people — but rich, for ME,” he whispered, smiling. “— I’ve got MUCH more than I need — so I really wish you’d let me help you if you need it — Frank said he’d let me know if he needed anything and I wish you’d do the same. . . . I think you ought to go for a whole year since you’re going — it’s your first trip, and GOSH!” he whispered enthusiastically, “how I envy you! How I wish I were going for the first time! It’s going to be a swell thing for you, you’re going to have a grand time — and you’ve simply GOT to stay for a whole year — so I wish you’d let me help you if I can.”
He had made this astoundingly generous proposal with a quick, hurried matter-of-factness that seemed to be eagerly begging for a favour, instead of magnificently and nobly giving it. And for a moment the other could not answer, and when he did he did not know the reason for his reply, for his refusal. It was as generous, as selfless, and spontaneous an act of liberal and noble friendship as he had ever known or experienced, and for a moment, as he thought of his longed-for trip, his dire need of money, it all seemed so magically easy, good, and wonderfully right to him that there seemed nothing to do except instantly, gratefully and jubilantly to accept. Yet, when he opened his mouth to speak, he found himself, to his surprise, refusing this miraculous and generous good fortune. And he never knew exactly the reason why: there was, perhaps, the growing sense of something alien and irreconcilable in the design and purpose of their separate lives, a growing feeling of regret, a conviction enhanced by his conversation with Joel in the studio that morning that their lives would be lived out in separate worlds, wrought to separate purposes, and shaped by separate beliefs, and with that knowledge a feeling — a feeling of loneliness and finality and farewell — as if a great door had swung for ever closed between them, as if there was something secret, buried, and essential in the soul of each which now could never be revealed. And, to his surprise, he heard himself saying:
“Thanks, Joel — it’s mighty fine of you — about as fine as anything I ever heard — but I don’t need help now. If I need it later —”
“If you do,” said Joel very quickly, “I wish you’d let me know — I’d like it if you would. . . . And gosh! it’s great to know that you are going,” he whispered again with radiant enthusiasm. “I envy you!”
“Then I wish to God you’d come along! . . . Joel,” the other burst out excitedly, with a sudden surge of eager warm conviction. “Why can’t you? We’d have a great time of it — go everywhere — see everything! It would be a wonderful thing — a great experience — for you and me both. You’ve never seen Europe that way before, have you? — the way that you and I could see it? — you’ve always been with your family, your mother, haven’t you? — Come on!” he cried, seizing his friend by the arm, as if they were ready to go that instant. “Let’s go! We’ll have the grandest trip you ever heard about!”
But Joel, laughing his radiant soundless laugh, and shaking his head with gentle but inflexible denial, said:
“No, Eugene! . . . Not for me! . . . I can’t do it! I’m going to stay right here and keep on with the work I’m doing . . . Besides,” he added gravely, “Mums needs me. No one knows what’s going to happen here in the family,” he said quietly —“I mean — that thing tonight — you saw — about Mums and Pups”— he said with painful difficulty. The other nodded, and Joel concluded simply: “I’ve got to stay.” For a moment he was silent, and suddenly the other youth noticed something starved and lonely, and almost desperately forsaken and resigned, that he had never observed in the boy’s gaunt face and eyes before, and when Joel spoke again, although there was a faint smile on his face, there was something old and sad and weary in his voice that the other youth had never heard before. He said quietly:
“Perhaps you’re right. . . . Perhaps you and I do belong in different worlds . . . must go different ways. . . . If that is true,” Joel turned and looked directly at his friend and in his eyes there was an infinite quiet depth of regret and acceptance “— if that is true, I’m sorry. . . . At any rate, it was good to have known you. . . . And now, good-bye, Eugene — Good night, I mean,” he hastily concluded, in his former whispered, quick and casual tones, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
With these words he turned quickly and left him.
He stayed there long into the night in that rich room, while the great house sank to sleep and silence all around him. And at first he moved there quietly like a man living in an enchanted dream, almost afraid to draw a breath lest he dispel the glory and the magic of enchantment, and all the time the voices of the living books around him seemed to speak to him, to say to him: “Now it is night and silence and the sleep-time of the earth, the all-exultant time of youth and loneliness, and of your spirit’s proud accession. Now take us, plunder us, and take us, for you are alone and living in the world tonight while all the sleepers sleep, immortal knowledge will be yours tonight, the secrets of an everlasting and triumphal wisdom; the huge compacted treasure of the earth speaks to you from these storeyed shelves, and it is yours, you are the richest man in all the earth if you will take us, only take us, we have waited for you long, dear friend, tonight the world is yours, and will be yours for ever, if you will only take us, take us, take us.”
And like a man drunk with joy, half through the night he plundered the living treasure of those shelves. They were all there — the great chroniclers and recorders, the marvellous and enchanted lies of old Herodotus, and Sir Thomas Malory, and the voyages of Hakluyt and of Purchas, the histories of Mandeville and Hume. There was Burton’s marvellous Anatomy, his staggering erudition never smelling of the dust or of the lamp, his lusty, pungent ever-rushing-onward style, and the annihilating irony of Gibbon’s latinized sonority, and the savage, burning, somehow magic plainness of Swift’s style. There was the dark tremendous music of Sir Thomas Browne, and Hooker’s sounding and tremendous passion made great by genius and made true by faith, and there was the giant dance, the vast storm-rounding cadence, now demented and now strong as light, of great Carlyle; and beside the haunting cadences of this tremendous piece, there was the pungent worldliness of life-loving men; the keen diaries of John Evelyn, the lusty tang and calculation and sensual rumination of old Pepys, the writing bright as noon, natural as morning, and the plain and middle-magic of the eighteenth century, the flawless grace and faultless clearness of Addison and Steele, and then all the pageantry of living character, the pages crowded with the immortal flesh of Sterne, Defoe, and Smollett, the huge comic universe of Fielding, the little one of Austen, and the immortal and extravagant one of Charles Dickens, the magnificent proliferation of Sir Walter Scott’s tremendous gallery — and Thackeray’s sentimental gallantry and magic, and all the single magics of Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Meredith, and Melville, of Landor, Peacock, Lamb, and of De Quincey, of Hazlitt, and of Poe.
There were, as well, the works of all the poets, the Kelmscott Chaucers, the Dove editions, the doe-skin bindings, white and soft and velvet to the touch, the splendid bodies in all their royal pageantry of blue and gold and dense rich green — the Greek anthologies, and all the poets of antiquity, and the singing voices of the great Elizabethans — of Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, and of Spenser, Webster, Ford and Massinger, of Kyd and Greene and Marlowe, of Beaumont, Lyly, Nash and Dekker, of Jonson, Shakespeare, Herrick, Herbert, Donne.
They were all there, from thundering ?schylus to the sweet small voice of perfect-singing Herrick, from grand plain Homer to poignant Catullus, from acid and tart-humoured Horace, from the lusty, vulgar and sweet-singing voice of Geoffrey Chaucer, the great bronze ring and clangorous sonority of John Dryden, to the massy gold, the choked-in richness, the haunting fall and faery, of John Keats.
They were all there — each stored there in his little niche upon the living shelves, and at first he looted them, he plundered through their golden leaves as a man who first discovers a buried and inestimable treasure, and at first is dumb with joy at his discovery, and can only plunge his hands in it with drunken joy, scoop handfuls up and pour it over him and let the massy gold leak out again in golden ruin through his spread hands; or as a man who discovers some enchanted spring of ageless youth, of ever-long immortality, and drinks of it, and can never drink enough, and drinks and feels with every drink the huge summation of earth’s glory in his own enrichment, the ageless fires of its magic youth.
Then, as the night wore on, another feeling crept across his heart, the living voices of the books spoke to him with another tone. From those great tongues of life and power and soaring immortality there had now departed all the sonorous conviction of their overwhelming, all-triumphant chant. The grand and ringing tongue and joy now spoke the language of a quiet and illimitable despair, confided the legend of an inevitable defeat, an inexorable fatality.
From those high-storeyed shelves of dense rich bindings the great voices of eternity, the tongues of mighty poets dead and gone, now seemed to speak to him out of the living and animate silence of the room. But in that living silence, in the vast and quiet spirit of sleep which filled the great house, out of the grand and overwhelming stillness of that proud power of wealth and the impregnable security of its position, even the voices of those mighty poets dead and gone now seemed somehow lonely, small, lost, and pitiful. Each in his little niche of shelf securely stored — all of the genius, richness, and whole compacted treasure of a poet’s life within a foot of space, within the limits of six small dense richly-garnished volumes — all of the great poets of the earth were there, unread, unopened, and forgotten, and were somehow, terribly, the mute small symbols of a rich man’s power, of the power of wealth to own everything, to take everything, to triumph over everything — even over the power and genius of the mightiest poet — to keep him there upon his little foot of shelf, unopened and forgotten, but possessed.
Thus, for the first time in his life, even the voices of the mighty poets seemed lost and small and pitifully defeated. Their great voices, which had given to the heart of youth the added fire of their triumphant magic, had borne his spirit high upon the wings of the soaring and invincible belief that no might on earth was equal to the might of poetry, no immortality could equal the immortality of a poet’s life and fame, no glory touch his glory, or no strength his strength — now seemed to speak to him the mute and small and lonely judgment of defeat.
“Child, child,” they said to him, “look at us and reflect: what shall it profit you to feed upon the roots of all-engulfing night, desiring glory? Do not the rats of death and age and dark oblivion feed so for ever at the roots of sleep, and can you tell us where a man lies buried now, whose substance they have not devoured? Oh, child, for ever in the dark old house of life to go alone, to prowl the barren avenues of night, and listen while doors swing and creak in the old house of life, and ponder on the lids of night, and ruminate the vast heart of sleep and silence and the dark, and so consume yourself — desiring what? Poor child, you son of an unlettered race, you nameless atom of the nameless wilderness, how have you let us dupe you with our fictive glories? What power is there on earth, in sea or heaven, what power have you in yourself, you son of your unuttered fathers, to find a tongue for your unuttered brothers, and to make a frame, a shape, a magic and eternal form out of the jungle of the great unuttered wilderness from which you came, of which you are a nameless and unuttered atom? What can you hope to do, poor nameless child, and would-be chronicler of the huge unhistoried morass of the dark wilderness of America, when we, who were the children of a hundred gold-recorded centuries and the heirs of all the rich accumulations of tradition, have really done so little — and have come to this? What profit do you hope to gain — what reward could you achieve that would repay you for all the anguish, hunger, and the desperate effort of your life? At its rare infrequent best, out of your blind and famished gropings in the jungle-depths, you may pluck out a shining word — achieve a moment’s flash of grace and intuition — a half-heard whisper of the vast unuttered language that you seek — perhaps a moment’s taste of fame, a brief hour’s flash of the imagined glory that you thirst for. For just a moment, you, like other men, will play the lion, will feed upon the older lion’s blood, will triumph for a moment through his defeat, will taste joy for a moment through the blood of his despair — and then, like him, you too will be thrown to the mercy of the coming lion, the wilderness will rise again to engulf you, your little hour of glory for which your soul thirsts and your life is panting will be over before it has well begun, and the myriad horde of all your thousand mongrel races will rise with snarl and jeer and curse and lie and mocking to do your life to death, with all the hatred of their mongrel rancour and their own self-loathing, to kill the lion they have crowned for just a day, to hurl you back into a nameless and dishonourable oblivion, drowned down beneath the huge mock and jibe of the old scornmaker’s pride. Therefore, short-lived, your life will soon be ended; your youth, but just begun, will shortly be consumed, and all the labour of your anguish and your hunger will be mocked to scorn by the same mongrel fools who praised it, and forgotten by the very knaves who gave it fame. Such is the infrequent good, the flash of brief fame, to which you may aspire, the huge oblivion of failure, misery and dishonour which will follow. But if, by miraculous good chance, you should escape from this — be not devoured and slain and drowned out and forgotten in the brutal swarming shades of jungle time — what greater glory is there that you can achieve? Some such as ours, perhaps — then look at us, and see the state to which we’ve come. To lie forgotten on the rich shelves of a rich man’s library — to be a portion of his idle wealth — the evidence of his arrogant possession — to rise, as all the earth must rise — these dreaming hills and haunted woods, the mighty river and this great moon-haunted hill where stands this house — shout the tributes of a rich man’s glory — to bow before him — to lie bought, owned, forgotten and possessed — the greatest poets that ever walked the earth or built, like you, great dreams of glory — to be obsequious tributes to a rich man’s fame. Yes, you, even you — poor naked child — may come to this — to reach this state, to be entombed here, bought and idle among the forgotten huge encumbrance of a rich man’s arrogant possession — and to know at last that all the glory, genius, and magic of a poet’s life may lie condensed in six rich bindings, forgotten, purchased and unread — and finally defeated by the only thing in life that lusts and will triumph for ever — the all-causing tyranny of wealth that makes a slave of its great poets — that makes us the barren prostitutes of fame, the pimps of wealth — unused and empty on a rich man’s shelf.”
So did that great treasure of unread, purchased, and forgotten books speak to him in the silent watches of the night, as they stood there, lonely, small and bought, on a rich man’s shelf.
Towards morning, as he sat there with a great book propped upon his knees, his mind filled with the thought of those dead, forgotten, and still-living voices and of his rich young friend and the strange and bitter enigma of the fatal severance which had seemed that day to close a great door between their lives for ever, he turned the pages of the book idly, and suddenly the blurred characters on the page before him swam legibly to view. And what those words upon the page before him said was this:
“The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
“But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.”