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XII
She sipped the water pensively as we all returned to our places. Then,placing the partly empty glass beside her jar of sweetmeats, she openedher incomparable lips.
* * * * *
It is a fine thing when a young man, born to travel the speedway ofluxury, voluntarily leaves it to hew out a pathway for himself throughlife. Brown thought so, too. And at twenty-four he resolutely graduatedfrom Harvard, stepped out into the world, and looked about him verysternly.
All was not well with the world. Brown knew it. He was there to correctwhatever was wrong. And he had chosen Good Literature as the vehicle forself expression.
Now, the nine sister goddesses are born flirts; and every one of themimmediately glanced sideways at Brown, who was a nice young man withmodesty, principles, and a deep and reverent belief in Good Literature.
The nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne seemed very attractive to himuntil the tenth and most recent addition to the Olympian familysauntered by with a flirt of her narrow skirt--the jade!
One glance into the starry blue wells of her baby eyes bowled him over.Henceforth she was to be his steady--Thalomene, a casual daughter ofZeus, and muse of all that is sacredly obvious in the literature ofmodern realism.
From early infancy Brown's had been a career of richest promise. Hismother's desk was full of his earlier impressions of life. He had, incourse of time, edited his school paper, his college paper; and, as anundergraduate, he had appeared in the contributor's columns of variousperiodicals.
His was not only a wealthy but a cultivated lineage as well. The love ofliterature was born in him.
To love literature is all right in its way; to love it too well is tomistake the appreciative for the creative genius. Reverence and devotionare no equipment for creative authorship. It is not enough to havesomething to say about what other people have said. And the inspirationwhich comes from what others have done is never the true one. But Browndidn't know these things. They were not revealed unto him at Harvard; noinward instinct made them plain to him.
He began by foregathering with authors. Many, many authors foregather,from various causes--tradition, inclination, general shiftlessness. Whenthey do that they produce a sort of serum called literary atmosphere,which is said to be delightful. And so Brown found it. However, thereare authors who seem to be too busy with their profession to foregatherand exhale atmosphere. But these are doubtless either literary hacks orthe degraded producers of best-sellers. They are not authors, either;they are merely writers.
Now, in all the world there is only one thing funnier than an author;and that is a number of them. But Brown didn't know that, either.
All authors are reformers. Said one of them to Brown in the EmpyreanClub:
"When an author in his own heart ceases to be a reformer he begins to bea menace!"
It was a fine sentiment, and Brown wrote it in his note-book.Afterward, the more he analyzed it the less it seemed to mean.
Another author informed him that the proper study for man is man. He'dheard that before, but the repetition steeled his resolve. And hisresolve was to reproduce in literature exactly what he observed abouthim; nothing more, nothing less.
There was to be no concession to imagination, none to convention, noneto that insidious form of human weakness known as good taste. As forart, Brown already knew what Art really was.
There was art enough for anybody in sheer truth, enough in the realismmade up of photographic detail, recorded uncompromisingly in orderedprocessional sequence. After all, there was really no beauty in theworld except the beauty of absolute truth. All other alleged beauty wasonly some form of weakness. Thus Brown, after inhaling literaryatmosphere.
Like the majority of young men, Brown realised that only a man, and aperfectly fearless, honest, and unprejudiced one, was properly equippedto study woman and tell the entire truth about her in literature.
So he began his first great novel--"The Unquiet Sex"--and he made heavyweather of it that autumn--what with contributing to the literaryatmosphere every afternoon and evening at various clubs and cafes--notto mention the social purlieus into which he ventured with the immortallustre already phosphorescent on his brow. Which left him little timefor mere writing. It is hard to be an author and a writer, too.
The proper study for man being woman, Brown studied her solemnly andearnestly. He studied his mother and his sisters, boring them to theverge of distraction; he attempted to dissect the motives which governedthe behaviour of assorted feminine relatives, scaring several of themore aged and timorous, agitating others, and infuriating one ortwo--until his father ordered him to desist.
House-maids, parlour-maids, ladies'-maids, waitresses, all fought veryshy of him; for true to his art, he had cast convention aside and hadstriven to fathom the souls and discover the hidden motives imbedded inMilesian, Scandinavian and Briton.
"The thing for me to do," said Brown rather bitterly to his father, "isto go out into the world and investigate far and wide."
"Investigate what?" asked his father.
"Woman!" said Brown sturdily.
"There's only one trouble about that."
"What's that?"
"Woman," said his father, "is likely to do the investigating. Thishousehold knows more about you than you do about it."
Brown smiled. So did his father.
"Son," said the latter, "what have you learned about women withoutknowing anything about them?"
"Nothing, naturally," said Brown.
"Then you will never have anything more than _that_ to say about them,"remarked Brown senior.
"Why not?"
"Because the only thing possible for a man to say about them is what hisimagination dictates. He'll never learn any more concerning women thanthat."
"Imagination is not literature," said Brown junior, with politetoleration.
"Imagination is often the truer truth," said the old gentleman.
"Father, that is rot."
"Yes, my son--and it is almost Good Literature, too. Go ahead, shake usif you like. But, if you do, you'll come back married."