CHAPTER 5. The Egotist Becomes a Personage
"A fathom deep in sleep I lie With old desires, restrained before, To clamor lifeward with a cry, As dark flies out the greying door; And so in quest of creeds to share I seek assertive day again... But old monotony is there: Endless avenues of rain.
Oh, might I rise again! Might I Throw off the heat of that old wine, See the new morning mass the sky With fairy towers, line on line; Find each mirage in the high air A symbol, not a dream again... But old monotony is there: Endless avenues of rain."
Under the glass portcullis of a theatre Amory stood, watching the firstgreat drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on thesidewalk. The air became gray and opalescent; a solitary light suddenlyoutlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred moredanced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studdedskylight turned yellow; in the street the lamps of the taxi-cabs sentout glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcomeNovember rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned itwith that ancient fence, the night.
The silence of the theatre behind him ended with a curious snappingsound, followed by the heavy roaring of a rising crowd and theinterlaced clatter of many voices. The matinee was over.
He stood aside, edged a little into the rain to let the throng pass. Asmall boy rushed out, sniffed in the damp, fresh air and turned up thecollar of his coat; came three or four couples in a great hurry; camea further scattering of people whose eyes as they emerged glancedinvariably, first at the wet street, then at the rain-filled air,finally at the dismal sky; last a dense, strolling mass that depressedhim with its heavy odor compounded of the tobacco smell of the men andthe fetid sensuousness of stale powder on women. After the thick crowdcame another scattering; a stray half-dozen; a man on crutches; finallythe rattling bang of folding seats inside announced that the ushers wereat work.
New York seemed not so much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallidmen rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm oftired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieksof strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marchingpolicemen passed, already miraculously protected by oilskin capes.
The rain gave Amory a feeling of detachment, and the numerous unpleasantaspects of city life without money occurred to him in threateningprocession. There was the ghastly, stinking crush of the subway--the carcards thrusting themselves at one, leering out like dull bores who grabyour arm with another story; the querulous worry as to whether some oneisn't leaning on you; a man deciding not to give his seat to a woman,hating her for it; the woman hating him for not doing it; at worst asqualid phantasmagoria of breath, and old cloth on human bodies and thesmells of the food men ate--at best just people--too hot or too cold,tired, worried.
He pictured the rooms where these people lived--where the patterns ofthe blistered wall-papers were heavy reiterated sunflowers on green andyellow backgrounds, where there were tin bathtubs and gloomy hallwaysand verdureless, unnamable spaces in back of the buildings; where evenlove dressed as seduction--a sordid murder around the corner, illicitmotherhood in the flat above. And always there was the economicalstuffiness of indoor winter, and the long summers, nightmares ofperspiration between sticky enveloping walls... dirty restaurants wherecareless, tired people helped themselves to sugar with their own usedcoffee-spoons, leaving hard brown deposits in the bowl.
It was not so bad where there were only men or else only women; it waswhen they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was someshame that women gave off at having men see them tired and poor--itwas some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It wasdirtier than any battle-field he had seen, harder to contemplate thanany actual hardship moulded of mire and sweat and danger, it was anatmosphere wherein birth and marriage and death were loathsome, secretthings.
He remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in agreat funeral wreath of fresh flowers, how the smell of it had suddenlycleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow.
"I detest poor people," thought Amory suddenly. "I hate them for beingpoor. Poverty may have been beautiful once, but it's rotten now. It'sthe ugliest thing in the world. It's essentially cleaner to be corruptand rich than it is to be innocent and poor." He seemed to see again afigure whose significance had once impressed him--a well-dressed youngman gazing from a club window on Fifth Avenue and saying something tohis companion with a look of utter disgust. Probably, thought Amory,what he said was: "My God! Aren't people horrible!"
Never before in his life had Amory considered poor people. He thoughtcynically how completely he was lacking in all human sympathy. O. Henryhad found in these people romance, pathos, love, hate--Amory saw onlycoarseness, physical filth, and stupidity. He made no self-accusations:never any more did he reproach himself for feelings that werenatural and sincere. He accepted all his reactions as a part of him,unchangeable, unmoral. This problem of poverty transformed, magnified,attached to some grander, more dignified attitude might some day even behis problem; at present it roused only his profound distaste.
He walked over to Fifth Avenue, dodging the blind, black menace ofumbrellas, and standing in front of Delmonico's hailed an auto-bus.Buttoning his coat closely around him he climbed to the roof, where herode in solitary state through the thin, persistent rain, stunginto alertness by the cool moisture perpetually reborn on his cheek.Somewhere in his mind a conversation began, rather resumed its placein his attention. It was composed not of two voices, but of one, whichacted alike as questioner and answerer:
Question.--Well--what's the situation?
Answer.--That I have about twenty-four dollars to my name.
Q.--You have the Lake Geneva estate.
A.--But I intend to keep it.
Q.--Can you live?
A.--I can't imagine not being able to. People make money in books andI've found that I can always do the things that people do in books.Really they are the only things I can do.
Q.--Be definite.
A.--I don't know what I'll do--nor have I much curiosity. To-morrow I'mgoing to leave New York for good. It's a bad town unless you're on topof it.
Q.--Do you want a lot of money?
A.--No. I am merely afraid of being poor.
Q.--Very afraid?
A.--Just passively afraid.
Q.--Where are you drifting?
A.--Don't ask _me!_
Q.--Don't you care?
A.--Rather. I don't want to commit moral suicide.
Q.--Have you no interests left?
A.--None. I've no more virtue to lose. Just as a cooling pot givesoff heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories ofvirtue. That's what's called ingenuousness.
Q.--An interesting idea.
A.--That's why a "good man going wrong" attracts people. They standaround and literally _warm themselves_ at the calories of virtue hegives off. Sarah makes an unsophisticated remark and the faces simper indelight--"How _innocent_ the poor child is!" They're warming themselvesat her virtue. But Sarah sees the simper and never makes that remarkagain. Only she feels a little colder after that.
Q.--All your calories gone?
A.--All of them. I'm beginning to warm myself at other people's virtue.
Q.--Are you corrupt?
A.--I think so. I'm not sure. I'm not sure about good and evil at allany more.
Q.--Is that a bad sign in itself?
A.--Not necessarily.
Q.--What would be the test of corruption?
A.--Becoming really insincere--calling myself "not such a bad fellow,"thinking I regretted my lost youth when I only envy the delights oflosing it. Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentaliststhink they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before theyate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all overagain. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girl
hood--she wants torepeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want thepleasure of losing it again.
Q.--Where are you drifting?
This dialogue merged grotesquely into his mind's most familiar state--agrotesque blending of desires, worries, exterior impressions andphysical reactions.
One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street--or One Hundred and Thirty-seventhStreet.... Two and three look alike--no, not much. Seat damp... areclothes absorbing wetness from seat, or seat absorbing dryness fromclothes?... Sitting on wet substance gave appendicitis, so FroggyParker's mother said. Well, he'd had it--I'll sue the steamboat company,Beatrice said, and my uncle has a quarter interest--did Beatrice go toheaven?... probably not--He represented Beatrice's immortality, alsolove-affairs of numerous dead men who surely had never thought ofhim... if it wasn't appendicitis, influenza maybe. What? One Hundredand Twentieth Street? That must have been One Hundred and Twelfth backthere. One O Two instead of One Two Seven. Rosalind not like Beatrice,Eleanor like Beatrice, only wilder and brainier. Apartments along hereexpensive--probably hundred and fifty a month--maybe two hundred. Unclehad only paid hundred a month for whole great big house in Minneapolis.Question--were the stairs on the left or right as you came in? Anyway,in 12 Univee they were straight back and to the left. What a dirtyriver--want to go down there and see if it's dirty--French rivers allbrown or black, so were Southern rivers. Twenty-four dollars meant fourhundred and eighty doughnuts. He could live on it three months and sleepin the park. Wonder where Jill was--Jill Bayne, Fayne, Sayne--what thedevil--neck hurts, darned uncomfortable seat. No desire to sleep withJill, what could Alec see in her? Alec had a coarse taste in women. Owntaste the best; Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all-American.Eleanor would pitch, probably southpaw. Rosalind was outfield, wonderfulhitter, Clara first base, maybe. Wonder what Humbird's body looked likenow. If he himself hadn't been bayonet instructor he'd have gone upto line three months sooner, probably been killed. Where's the darnedbell--
The street numbers of Riverside Drive were obscured by the mist anddripping trees from anything but the swiftest scrutiny, but Amory hadfinally caught sight of one--One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street. Hegot off and with no distinct destination followed a winding, descendingsidewalk and came out facing the river, in particular a long pier anda partitioned litter of shipyards for miniature craft: small launches,canoes, rowboats, and catboats. He turned northward and followed theshore, jumped a small wire fence and found himself in a great disorderlyyard adjoining a dock. The hulls of many boats in various stages ofrepair were around him; he smelled sawdust and paint and the scarcelydistinguishable fiat odor of the Hudson. A man approached through theheavy gloom.
"Hello," said Amory.
"Got a pass?"
"No. Is this private?"
"This is the Hudson River Sporting and Yacht Club."
"Oh! I didn't know. I'm just resting."
"Well--" began the man dubiously.
"I'll go if you want me to."
The man made non-committal noises in his throat and passed on. Amoryseated himself on an overturned boat and leaned forward thoughtfullyuntil his chin rested in his hand.
"Misfortune is liable to make me a damn bad man," he said slowly.
*****
IN THE DROOPING HOURS
While the rain drizzled on Amory looked futilely back at the stream ofhis life, all its glitterings and dirty shallows. To begin with, he wasstill afraid--not physically afraid any more, but afraid of people andprejudice and misery and monotony. Yet, deep in his bitter heart, hewondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He knewthat he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his ownweakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; thatoften when he raged at himself as an egotist something would whisperingratiatingly: "No. Genius!" That was one manifestation of fear, thatvoice which whispered that he could not be both great and good, thatgenius was the exact combination of those inexplicable grooves andtwists in his mind, that any discipline would curb it to mediocrity.Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his ownpersonality--he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand daysafter he would swell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill wordlike a third-rate musician or a first-class actor. He was ashamed of thefact that very simple and honest people usually distrusted him; thathe had been cruel, often, to those who had sunk their personalities inhim--several girls, and a man here and there through college, that hehad been an evil influence on; people who had followed him here andthere into mental adventures from which he alone rebounded unscathed.
Usually, on nights like this, for there had been many lately, he couldescape from this consuming introspection by thinking of children and theinfinite possibilities of children--he leaned and listened and he hearda startled baby awake in a house across the street and lend a tinywhimper to the still night. Quick as a flash he turned away, wonderingwith a touch of panic whether something in the brooding despair of hismood had made a darkness in its tiny soul. He shivered. What if someday the balance was overturned, and he became a thing that frightenedchildren and crept into rooms in the dark, approached dim communion withthose phantoms who whispered shadowy secrets to the mad of that darkcontinent upon the moon....
*****
Amory smiled a bit.
"You're too much wrapped up in yourself," he heard some one say. Andagain--
"Get out and do some real work--"
"Stop worrying--"
He fancied a possible future comment of his own.
"Yes--I was perhaps an egotist in youth, but I soon found it made memorbid to think too much about myself."
*****
Suddenly he felt an overwhelming desire to let himself go to thedevil--not to go violently as a gentleman should, but to sink safelyand sensuously out of sight. He pictured himself in an adobe house inMexico, half-reclining on a rug-covered couch, his slender, artisticfingers closed on a cigarette while he listened to guitars strummingmelancholy undertones to an age-old dirge of Castile and anolive-skinned, carmine-lipped girl caressed his hair. Here he might livea strange litany, delivered from right and wrong and from the hound ofheaven and from every God (except the exotic Mexican one who was prettyslack himself and rather addicted to Oriental scents)--delivered fromsuccess and hope and poverty into that long chute of indulgence whichled, after all, only to the artificial lake of death.
There were so many places where one might deteriorate pleasantly: PortSaid, Shanghai, parts of Turkestan, Constantinople, the South Seas--alllands of sad, haunting music and many odors, where lust could be a modeand expression of life, where the shades of night skies and sunsetswould seem to reflect only moods of passion: the colors of lips andpoppies.
*****
STILL WEEDING
Once he had been miraculously able to scent evil as a horse detects abroken bridge at night, but the man with the queer feet in Phoebe'sroom had diminished to the aura over Jill. His instinct perceived thefetidness of poverty, but no longer ferreted out the deeper evils inpride and sensuality.
There were no more wise men; there were no more heroes; Burne Holidaywas sunk from sight as though he had never lived; Monsignor was dead.Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listenedeagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. The mysticalreveries of saints that had once filled him with awe in the still hoursof night, now vaguely repelled him. The Byrons and Brookes who haddefied life from mountain tops were in the end but flaneurs and poseurs,at best mistaking the shadow of courage for the substance of wisdom.The pageantry of his disillusion took shape in a world-old processionof Prophets, Athenians, Martyrs, Saints, Scientists, Don Juans, Jesuits,Puritans, Fausts, Poets, Pacifists; like costumed alumni at a collegereunion they streamed before him as their dreams, personalities, andcreeds had in turn thrown colored lights on his soul; each had tried toexpress the glory of life and the tremendous significance of man; eachhad bo
asted of synchronizing what had gone before into his own ricketygeneralities; each had depended after all on the set stage and theconvention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faithwill feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food.
Women--of whom he had expected so much; whose beauty he had hoped totransmute into modes of art; whose unfathomable instincts, marvellouslyincoherent and inarticulate, he had thought to perpetuate in terms ofexperience--had become merely consecrations to their own posterity.Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all removed by theirvery beauty, around which men had swarmed, from the possibility ofcontributing anything but a sick heart and a page of puzzled words towrite.
Amory based his loss of faith in help from others on several sweepingsyllogisms. Granted that his generation, however bruised and decimatedfrom this Victorian war, were the heirs of progress. Waving aside pettydifferences of conclusions which, although they might occasionallycause the deaths of several millions of young men, might be explainedaway--supposing that after all Bernard Shaw and Bernhardi, Bonar Lawand Bethmann-Hollweg were mutual heirs of progress if only in agreeingagainst the ducking of witches--waiving the antitheses and approachingindividually these men who seemed to be the leaders, he was repelled bythe discrepancies and contradictions in the men themselves.
There was, for example, Thornton Hancock, respected by half theintellectual world as an authority on life, a man who had verified andbelieved the code he lived by, an educator of educators, an adviser toPresidents--yet Amory knew that this man had, in his heart, leaned onthe priest of another religion.
And Monsignor, upon whom a cardinal rested, had moments of strange andhorrible insecurity--inexplicable in a religion that explained evendisbelief in terms of its own faith: if you doubted the devil it was thedevil that made you doubt him. Amory had seen Monsignor go to the housesof stolid philistines, read popular novels furiously, saturate himselfin routine, to escape from that horror.
And this priest, a little wiser, somewhat purer, had been, Amory knew,not essentially older than he.
Amory was alone--he had escaped from a small enclosure into a greatlabyrinth. He was where Goethe was when he began "Faust"; he was whereConrad was when he wrote "Almayer's Folly."
Amory said to himself that there were essentially two sorts of peoplewho through natural clarity or disillusion left the enclosure andsought the labyrinth. There were men like Wells and Plato, who had,half unconsciously, a strange, hidden orthodoxy, who would acceptfor themselves only what could be accepted for all men--incurableromanticists who never, for all their efforts, could enter the labyrinthas stark souls; there were on the other hand sword-like pioneeringpersonalities, Samuel Butler, Renan, Voltaire, who progressed muchslower, yet eventually much further, not in the direct pessimistic lineof speculative philosophy but concerned in the eternal attempt to attacha positive value to life....
Amory stopped. He began for the first time in his life to have a strongdistrust of all generalities and epigrams. They were too easy, toodangerous to the public mind. Yet all thought usually reached thepublic after thirty years in some such form: Benson and Chesterton hadpopularized Huysmans and Newman; Shaw had sugar-coated Nietzsche andIbsen and Schopenhauer. The man in the street heard the conclusionsof dead genius through some one else's clever paradoxes and didacticepigrams.
Life was a damned muddle... a football game with every one off-side andthe referee gotten rid of--every one claiming the referee would havebeen on his side....
Progress was a labyrinth... people plunging blindly in and then rushingwildly back, shouting that they had found it... the invisible king--theelan vital--the principle of evolution... writing a book, starting awar, founding a school....
Amory, even had he not been a selfish man, would have started allinquiries with himself. He was his own best example--sitting in therain, a human creature of sex and pride, foiled by chance and his owntemperament of the balm of love and children, preserved to help inbuilding up the living consciousness of the race.
In self-reproach and loneliness and disillusion he came to the entranceof the labyrinth.
*****
Another dawn flung itself across the river, a belated taxi hurried alongthe street, its lamps still shining like burning eyes in a face whitefrom a night's carouse. A melancholy siren sounded far down the river.
*****
MONSIGNOR
Amory kept thinking how Monsignor would have enjoyed his own funeral.It was magnificently Catholic and liturgical. Bishop O'Neill sang solemnhigh mass and the cardinal gave the final absolutions. Thornton Hancock,Mrs. Lawrence, the British and Italian ambassadors, the papal delegate,and a host of friends and priests were there--yet the inexorable shearshad cut through all these threads that Monsignor had gathered into hishands. To Amory it was a haunting grief to see him lying in his coffin,with closed hands upon his purple vestments. His face had not changed,and, as he never knew he was dying, it showed no pain or fear. It wasAmory's dear old friend, his and the others'--for the church was fullof people with daft, staring faces, the most exalted seeming the moststricken.
The cardinal, like an archangel in cope and mitre, sprinkled the holywater; the organ broke into sound; the choir began to sing the RequiemEternam.
All these people grieved because they had to some extent depended uponMonsignor. Their grief was more than sentiment for the "crack in hisvoice or a certain break in his walk," as Wells put it. These peoplehad leaned on Monsignor's faith, his way of finding cheer, of makingreligion a thing of lights and shadows, making all light and shadowmerely aspects of God. People felt safe when he was near.
Of Amory's attempted sacrifice had been born merely the full realizationof his disillusion, but of Monsignor's funeral was born the romanticelf who was to enter the labyrinth with him. He found something that hewanted, had always wanted and always would want--not to be admired, ashe had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but tobe necessary to people, to be indispensable; he remembered the sense ofsecurity he had found in Burne.
Life opened up in one of its amazing bursts of radiance and Amorysuddenly and permanently rejected an old epigram that had been playinglistlessly in his mind: "Very few things matter and nothing matters verymuch."
On the contrary, Amory felt an immense desire to give people a sense ofsecurity.
*****
THE BIG MAN WITH GOGGLES
On the day that Amory started on his walk to Princeton the sky was acolorless vault, cool, high and barren of the threat of rain. It was agray day, that least fleshly of all weathers; a day of dreams and farhopes and clear visions. It was a day easily associated with thoseabstract truths and purities that dissolve in the sunshine or fade outin mocking laughter by the light of the moon. The trees and cloudswere carved in classical severity; the sounds of the countryside hadharmonized to a monotone, metallic as a trumpet, breathless as theGrecian urn.
The day had put Amory in such a contemplative mood that he caused muchannoyance to several motorists who were forced to slow up considerablyor else run him down. So engrossed in his thoughts was he that he wasscarcely surprised at that strange phenomenon--cordiality manifestedwithin fifty miles of Manhattan--when a passing car slowed downbeside him and a voice hailed him. He looked up and saw a magnificentLocomobile in which sat two middle-aged men, one of them small andanxious looking, apparently an artificial growth on the other who waslarge and begoggled and imposing.
"Do you want a lift?" asked the apparently artificial growth, glancingfrom the corner of his eye at the imposing man as if for some habitual,silent corroboration.
"You bet I do. Thanks."
The chauffeur swung open the door, and, climbing in, Amory settledhimself in the middle of the back seat. He took in his companionscuriously. The chief characteristic of the big man seemed to be agreat confidence in himself set off against a tremendous boredom witheverything around him. That part of his face which protruded under thegoggles was what is gener
ally termed "strong"; rolls of not undignifiedfat had collected near his chin; somewhere above was a wide thinmouth and the rough model for a Roman nose, and, below, his shoulderscollapsed without a struggle into the powerful bulk of his chest andbelly. He was excellently and quietly dressed. Amory noticed that hewas inclined to stare straight at the back of the chauffeur's head as ifspeculating steadily but hopelessly some baffling hirsute problem.
The smaller man was remarkable only for his complete submersion in thepersonality of the other. He was of that lower secretarial type whoat forty have engraved upon their business cards: "Assistant to thePresident," and without a sigh consecrate the rest of their lives tosecond-hand mannerisms.
"Going far?" asked the smaller man in a pleasant disinterested way.
"Quite a stretch."
"Hiking for exercise?"
"No," responded Amory succinctly, "I'm walking because I can't afford toride."
"Oh."
Then again:
"Are you looking for work? Because there's lots of work," he continuedrather testily. "All this talk of lack of work. The West is especiallyshort of labor." He expressed the West with a sweeping, lateral gesture.Amory nodded politely.
"Have you a trade?"
No--Amory had no trade.
"Clerk, eh?"
No--Amory was not a clerk.
"Whatever your line is," said the little man, seeming to agree wiselywith something Amory had said, "now is the time of opportunity andbusiness openings." He glanced again toward the big man, as a lawyergrilling a witness glances involuntarily at the jury.
Amory decided that he must say something and for the life of him couldthink of only one thing to say.
"Of course I want a great lot of money--"
The little man laughed mirthlessly but conscientiously.
"That's what every one wants nowadays, but they don't want to work forit."
"A very natural, healthy desire. Almost all normal people want to berich without great effort--except the financiers in problem plays, whowant to 'crash their way through.' Don't you want easy money?"
"Of course not," said the secretary indignantly.
"But," continued Amory disregarding him, "being very poor at present Iam contemplating socialism as possibly my forte."
Both men glanced at him curiously.
"These bomb throwers--" The little man ceased as words lurchedponderously from the big man's chest.
"If I thought you were a bomb thrower I'd run you over to the Newarkjail. That's what I think of Socialists."
Amory laughed.
"What are you," asked the big man, "one of these parlor Bolsheviks,one of these idealists? I must say I fail to see the difference.The idealists loaf around and write the stuff that stirs up the poorimmigrants."
"Well," said Amory, "if being an idealist is both safe and lucrative, Imight try it."
"What's your difficulty? Lost your job?"
"Not exactly, but--well, call it that."
"What was it?"
"Writing copy for an advertising agency."
"Lots of money in advertising."
Amory smiled discreetly.
"Oh, I'll admit there's money in it eventually. Talent doesn't starveany more. Even art gets enough to eat these days. Artists draw yourmagazine covers, write your advertisements, hash out rag-time foryour theatres. By the great commercializing of printing you've found aharmless, polite occupation for every genius who might have carved hisown niche. But beware the artist who's an intellectual also. The artistwho doesn't fit--the Rousseau, the Tolstoi, the Samuel Butler, the AmoryBlaine--"
"Who's he?" demanded the little man suspiciously.
"Well," said Amory, "he's a--he's an intellectual personage not verywell known at present."
The little man laughed his conscientious laugh, and stopped rathersuddenly as Amory's burning eyes turned on him.
"What are you laughing at?"
"These _intellectual_ people--"
"Do you know what it means?"
The little man's eyes twitched nervously.
"Why, it _usually_ means--"
"It _always_ means brainy and well-educated," interrupted Amory. "Itmeans having an active knowledge of the race's experience." Amorydecided to be very rude. He turned to the big man. "The young man," heindicated the secretary with his thumb, and said young man as onesays bell-boy, with no implication of youth, "has the usual muddledconnotation of all popular words."
"You object to the fact that capital controls printing?" said the bigman, fixing him with his goggles.
"Yes--and I object to doing their mental work for them. It seemed tome that the root of all the business I saw around me consisted inoverworking and underpaying a bunch of dubs who submitted to it."
"Here now," said the big man, "you'll have to admit that the laboringman is certainly highly paid--five and six hour days--it's ridiculous.You can't buy an honest day's work from a man in the trades-unions."
"You've brought it on yourselves," insisted Amory. "You people nevermake concessions until they're wrung out of you."
"What people?"
"Your class; the class I belonged to until recently; those who byinheritance or industry or brains or dishonesty have become the moneyedclass."
"Do you imagine that if that road-mender over there had the money he'dbe any more willing to give it up?"
"No, but what's that got to do with it?"
The older man considered.
"No, I'll admit it hasn't. It rather sounds as if it had though."
"In fact," continued Amory, "he'd be worse. The lower classes arenarrower, less pleasant and personally more selfish--certainly morestupid. But all that has nothing to do with the question."
"Just exactly what is the question?"
Here Amory had to pause to consider exactly what the question was.
*****
AMORY COINS A PHRASE
"When life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education," began Amoryslowly, "that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, aconservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. He maybe unselfish, kind-hearted, even just in his own way, but his first jobis to provide and to hold fast. His wife shoos him on, from ten thousanda year to twenty thousand a year, on and on, in an enclosed treadmillthat hasn't any windows. He's done! Life's got him! He's no help! He's aspiritually married man."
Amory paused and decided that it wasn't such a bad phrase.
"Some men," he continued, "escape the grip. Maybe their wives have nosocial ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerousbook' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I didand were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can'tbribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers,scientists, statesmen who aren't just popular grab-bags for a half-dozenwomen and children."
"He's the natural radical?"
"Yes," said Amory. "He may vary from the disillusioned critic like oldThornton Hancock, all the way to Trotsky. Now this spiritually unmarriedman hasn't direct power, for unfortunately the spiritually married man,as a by-product of his money chase, has garnered in the great newspaper,the popular magazine, the influential weekly--so that Mrs. Newspaper,Mrs. Magazine, Mrs. Weekly can have a better limousine than those oilpeople across the street or those cement people 'round the corner."
"Why not?"
"It makes wealthy men the keepers of the world's intellectual conscienceand, of course, a man who has money under one set of social institutionsquite naturally can't risk his family's happiness by letting the clamorfor another appear in his newspaper."
"But it appears," said the big man.
"Where?--in the discredited mediums. Rotten cheap-papered weeklies."
"All right--go on."
"Well, my first point is that through a mixture of conditions of whichthe family is the first, there are these two sorts of brains. One sorttakes human nature as it finds it, uses its timidity, its weakness, andits strength
for its own ends. Opposed is the man who, being spirituallyunmarried, continually seeks for new systems that will control orcounteract human nature. His problem is harder. It is not life that'scomplicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life. That is hisstruggle. He is a part of progress--the spiritually married man is not."
The big man produced three big cigars, and proffered them on his hugepalm. The little man took one, Amory shook his head and reached for acigarette.
"Go on talking," said the big man. "I've been wanting to hear one of youfellows."
*****
GOING FASTER
"Modern life," began Amory again, "changes no longer century by century,but year by year, ten times faster than it ever has before--populationsdoubling, civilizations unified more closely with other civilizations,economic interdependence, racial questions, and--we're _dawdling_along. My idea is that we've got to go very much faster." He slightlyemphasized the last words and the chauffeur unconsciously increased thespeed of the car. Amory and the big man laughed; the little man laughed,too, after a pause.
"Every child," said Amory, "should have an equal start. If his fathercan endow him with a good physique and his mother with some common sensein his early education, that should be his heritage. If the father can'tgive him a good physique, if the mother has spent in chasing men theyears in which she should have been preparing herself to educate herchildren, so much the worse for the child. He shouldn't be artificiallybolstered up with money, sent to these horrible tutoring schools,dragged through college... Every boy ought to have an equal start."
"All right," said the big man, his goggles indicating neither approvalnor objection.
"Next I'd have a fair trial of government ownership of all industries."
"That's been proven a failure."
"No--it merely failed. If we had government ownership we'd have thebest analytical business minds in the government working for somethingbesides themselves. We'd have Mackays instead of Burlesons; we'd haveMorgans in the Treasury Department; we'd have Hills running interstatecommerce. We'd have the best lawyers in the Senate."
"They wouldn't give their best efforts for nothing. McAdoo--"
"No," said Amory, shaking his head. "Money isn't the only stimulus thatbrings out the best that's in a man, even in America."
"You said a while ago that it was."
"It is, right now. But if it were made illegal to have more than acertain amount the best men would all flock for the one other rewardwhich attracts humanity--honor."
The big man made a sound that was very like _boo_.
"That's the silliest thing you've said yet."
"No, it isn't silly. It's quite plausible. If you'd gone to collegeyou'd have been struck by the fact that the men there would work twiceas hard for any one of a hundred petty honors as those other men did whowere earning their way through."
"Kids--child's play!" scoffed his antagonist.
"Not by a darned sight--unless we're all children. Did you ever seea grown man when he's trying for a secret society--or a rising familywhose name is up at some club? They'll jump when they hear the sound ofthe word. The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold infront of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so longthat we've forgotten there's any other way. We've made a world wherethat's necessary. Let me tell you"--Amory became emphatic--"if therewere ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered agreen ribbon for five hours' work a day and a blue ribbon for ten hours'work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon.That competitive instinct only wants a badge. If the size of their houseis the badge they'll sweat their heads off for that. If it's only ablue ribbon, I damn near believe they'll work just as hard. They have inother ages."
"I don't agree with you."
"I know it," said Amory nodding sadly. "It doesn't matter any morethough. I think these people are going to come and take what they wantpretty soon."
A fierce hiss came from the little man.
"_Machine-guns!_"
"Ah, but you've taught them their use."
The big man shook his head.
"In this country there are enough property owners not to permit thatsort of thing."
Amory wished he knew the statistics of property owners and non-propertyowners; he decided to change the subject.
But the big man was aroused.
"When you talk of 'taking things away,' you're on dangerous ground."
"How can they get it without taking it? For years people have beenstalled off with promises. Socialism may not be progress, but the threatof the red flag is certainly the inspiring force of all reform. You'vegot to be sensational to get attention."
"Russia is your example of a beneficent violence, I suppose?"
"Quite possibly," admitted Amory. "Of course, it's overflowing just asthe French Revolution did, but I've no doubt that it's really a greatexperiment and well worth while."
"Don't you believe in moderation?"
"You won't listen to the moderates, and it's almost too late. The truthis that the public has done one of those startling and amazing thingsthat they do about once in a hundred years. They've seized an idea."
"What is it?"
"That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachsare essentially the same."
*****
THE LITTLE MAN GETS HIS
"If you took all the money in the world," said the little man with muchprofundity, "and divided it up in equ--"
"Oh, shut up!" said Amory briskly and, paying no attention to the littleman's enraged stare, he went on with his argument.
"The human stomach--" he began; but the big man interrupted ratherimpatiently.
"I'm letting you talk, you know," he said, "but please avoid stomachs.I've been feeling mine all day. Anyway, I don't agree with one-halfyou've said. Government ownership is the basis of your whole argument,and it's invariably a beehive of corruption. Men won't work for blueribbons, that's all rot."
When he ceased the little man spoke up with a determined nod, as ifresolved this time to have his say out.
"There are certain things which are human nature," he asserted with anowl-like look, "which always have been and always will be, which can'tbe changed."
Amory looked from the small man to the big man helplessly.
"Listen to that! _That's_ what makes me discouraged with progress._Listen_ to that! I can name offhand over one hundred natural phenomenathat have been changed by the will of man--a hundred instincts in manthat have been wiped out or are now held in check by civilization. Whatthis man here just said has been for thousands of years the last refugeof the associated mutton-heads of the world. It negates the efforts ofevery scientist, statesman, moralist, reformer, doctor, and philosopherthat ever gave his life to humanity's service. It's a flat impeachmentof all that's worth while in human nature. Every person over twenty-fiveyears old who makes that statement in cold blood ought to be deprived ofthe franchise."
The little man leaned back against the seat, his face purple with rage.Amory continued, addressing his remarks to the big man.
"These quarter-educated, stale-minded men such as your friend here, who_think_ they think, every question that comes up, you'll find histype in the usual ghastly muddle. One minute it's 'the brutality andinhumanity of these Prussians'--the next it's 'we ought to exterminatethe whole German people.' They always believe that 'things are in a badway now,' but they 'haven't any faith in these idealists.' One minutethey call Wilson 'just a dreamer, not practical'--a year later they railat him for making his dreams realities. They haven't clear logical ideason one single subject except a sturdy, stolid opposition to all change.They don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won'tsee that if they don't pay the uneducated people their children aregoing to be uneducated too, and we're going round and round in a circle.That--is the great middle class!"
The big man with a broad grin on his face leaned over and smil
ed at thelittle man.
"You're catching it pretty heavy, Garvin; how do you feel?"
The little man made an attempt to smile and act as if the whole matterwere so ridiculous as to be beneath notice. But Amory was not through.
"The theory that people are fit to govern themselves rests on this man.If he can be educated to think clearly, concisely, and logically,freed of his habit of taking refuge in platitudes and prejudices andsentimentalisms, then I'm a militant Socialist. If he can't, then Idon't think it matters much what happens to man or his systems, now orhereafter."
"I am both interested and amused," said the big man. "You are veryyoung."
"Which may only mean that I have neither been corrupted nor made timidby contemporary experience. I possess the most valuable experience, theexperience of the race, for in spite of going to college I've managed topick up a good education."
"You talk glibly."
"It's not all rubbish," cried Amory passionately. "This is the firsttime in my life I've argued Socialism. It's the only panacea I know. I'mrestless. My whole generation is restless. I'm sick of a system wherethe richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, wherethe artist without an income has to sell his talents to a buttonmanufacturer. Even if I had no talents I'd not be content to work tenyears, condemned either to celibacy or a furtive indulgence, to givesome man's son an automobile."
"But, if you're not sure--"
"That doesn't matter," exclaimed Amory. "My position couldn't be worse.A social revolution might land me on top. Of course I'm selfish. Itseems to me I've been a fish out of water in too many outworn systems.I was probably one of the two dozen men in my class at college who gota decent education; still they'd let any well-tutored flathead playfootball and _I_ was ineligible, because some silly old men thought weshould _all_ profit by conic sections. I loathed the army. I loathedbusiness. I'm in love with change and I've killed my conscience--"
"So you'll go along crying that we must go faster."
"That, at least, is true," Amory insisted. "Reform won't catch up tothe needs of civilization unless it's made to. A laissez-faire policy islike spoiling a child by saying he'll turn out all right in the end. Hewill--if he's made to."
"But you don't believe all this Socialist patter you talk."
"I don't know. Until I talked to you I hadn't thought seriously aboutit. I wasn't sure of half of what I said."
"You puzzle me," said the big man, "but you're all alike. They sayBernard Shaw, in spite of his doctrines, is the most exacting of alldramatists about his royalties. To the last farthing."
"Well," said Amory, "I simply state that I'm a product of a versatilemind in a restless generation--with every reason to throw my mind andpen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we wereall blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I andmy sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displaceold cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at varioustimes, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't aseeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game."
For a minute neither spoke and then the big man asked:
"What was your university?"
"Princeton."
The big man became suddenly interested; the expression of his gogglesaltered slightly.
"I sent my son to Princeton."
"Did you?"
"Perhaps you knew him. His name was Jesse Ferrenby. He was killed lastyear in France."
"I knew him very well. In fact, he was one of my particular friends."
"He was--a--quite a fine boy. We were very close."
Amory began to perceive a resemblance between the father and thedead son and he told himself that there had been all along a sense offamiliarity. Jesse Ferrenby, the man who in college had borne off thecrown that he had aspired to. It was all so far away. What little boysthey had been, working for blue ribbons--
The car slowed up at the entrance to a great estate, ringed around by ahuge hedge and a tall iron fence.
"Won't you come in for lunch?"
Amory shook his head.
"Thank you, Mr. Ferrenby, but I've got to get on."
The big man held out his hand. Amory saw that the fact that he had knownJesse more than outweighed any disfavor he had created by his opinions.What ghosts were people with which to work! Even the little man insistedon shaking hands.
"Good-by!" shouted Mr. Ferrenby, as the car turned the corner andstarted up the drive. "Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories."
"Same to you, sir," cried Amory, smiling and waving his hand.
*****
"OUT OF THE FIRE, OUT OF THE LITTLE ROOM"
Eight hours from Princeton Amory sat down by the Jersey roadside andlooked at the frost-bitten country. Nature as a rather coarse phenomenoncomposed largely of flowers that, when closely inspected, appearedmoth-eaten, and of ants that endlessly traversed blades of grass, wasalways disillusioning; nature represented by skies and waters and farhorizons was more likable. Frost and the promise of winter thrilled himnow, made him think of a wild battle between St. Regis and Groton,ages ago, seven years ago--and of an autumn day in France twelve monthsbefore when he had lain in tall grass, his platoon flattened down closearound him, waiting to tap the shoulders of a Lewis gunner. He saw thetwo pictures together with somewhat the same primitive exaltation--twogames he had played, differing in quality of acerbity, linked in a waythat differed them from Rosalind or the subject of labyrinths whichwere, after all, the business of life.
"I am selfish," he thought.
"This is not a quality that will change when I 'see human suffering' or'lose my parents' or 'help others.'
"This selfishness is not only part of me. It is the most living part.
"It is by somehow transcending rather than by avoiding that selfishnessthat I can bring poise and balance into my life.
"There is no virtue of unselfishness that I cannot use. I can makesacrifices, be charitable, give to a friend, endure for a friend, laydown my life for a friend--all because these things may be the bestpossible expression of myself; yet I have not one drop of the milk ofhuman kindness."
The problem of evil had solidified for Amory into the problem of sex. Hewas beginning to identify evil with the strong phallic worship in Brookeand the early Wells. Inseparably linked with evil was beauty--beauty,still a constant rising tumult; soft in Eleanor's voice, in an old songat night, rioting deliriously through life like superimposed waterfalls,half rhythm, half darkness. Amory knew that every time he had reachedtoward it longingly it had leered out at him with the grotesque face ofevil. Beauty of great art, beauty of all joy, most of all the beauty ofwomen.
After all, it had too many associations with license and indulgence.Weak things were often beautiful, weak things were never good. And inthis new loneness of his that had been selected for what greatness hemight achieve, beauty must be relative or, itself a harmony, it wouldmake only a discord.
In a sense this gradual renunciation of beauty was the second step afterhis disillusion had been made complete. He felt that he was leavingbehind him his chance of being a certain type of artist. It seemed somuch more important to be a certain sort of man.
His mind turned a corner suddenly and he found himself thinking of theCatholic Church. The idea was strong in him that there was a certainintrinsic lack in those to whom orthodox religion was necessary, andreligion to Amory meant the Church of Rome. Quite conceivably it was anempty ritual but it was seemingly the only assimilative, traditionarybulwark against the decay of morals. Until the great mobs could beeducated into a moral sense some one must cry: "Thou shalt not!" Yetany acceptance was, for the present, impossible. He wanted time andthe absence of ulterior pressure. He wanted to keep the tree withoutornaments, realize fully the direction and momentum of this new start.
*****
The afternoon waned from the purging good of three o'clock to the goldenbeauty of four. Afterward he walked through the
dull ache of a settingsun when even the clouds seemed bleeding and at twilight he came to agraveyard. There was a dusky, dreamy smell of flowers and the ghost of anew moon in the sky and shadows everywhere. On an impulse he consideredtrying to open the door of a rusty iron vault built into the side ofa hill; a vault washed clean and covered with late-blooming, weepywatery-blue flowers that might have grown from dead eyes, sticky to thetouch with a sickening odor.
Amory wanted to feel "William Dayfield, 1864."
He wondered that graves ever made people consider life in vain. Somehowhe could find nothing hopeless in having lived. All the broken columnsand clasped hands and doves and angels meant romances. He fancied thatin a hundred years he would like having young people speculate as towhether his eyes were brown or blue, and he hoped quite passionatelythat his grave would have about it an air of many, many years ago. Itseemed strange that out of a row of Union soldiers two or three madehim think of dead loves and dead lovers, when they were exactly like therest, even to the yellowish moss.
*****
Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible,with here and there a late-burning light--and suddenly out of the cleardarkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spiritof the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from themuddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakesand half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a newgeneration, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, througha revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into thatdirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicatedmore than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success;grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in manshaken....
Amory, sorry for them, was still not sorry for himself--art, politics,religion, whatever his medium should be, he knew he was safe now, freefrom all hysteria--he could accept what was acceptable, roam, grow,rebel, sleep deep through many nights....
There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot;there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth--yetthe waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibilityand a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealizeddreams. But--oh, Rosalind! Rosalind!...
"It's all a poor substitute at best," he said sadly.
And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he haddetermined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from thepersonalities he had passed....
He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.
"I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."
Appendix: Production notes for eBook edition 11
The primary feature of edition 11 is restoration of em-dashes whichare missing from edition 10. (My favorite instance is "I won't belong"rather than "I won't be--long".)
Characters which are 8-bit in the printed text were misrepresented inedition 10. Edition 10 had some end-of-paragraph problems. A handful ofother minor errors are corrected.
Two volumes served as reference for edition 11: a 1960 reprint, andan undated reprint produced sometime after 1948. There are a number ofdifferences between the volumes. Evidence suggests that the 1960 reprinthas been somewhat "modernized", and that the undated reprint is abetter match for the original 1920 printing. Therefore, when the volumesdiffer, edition 11 more closely follows the undated reprint.
In edition 11, underscores are used to denote words and phrasesitalicized for emphasis.
There is a section of text in book 2, chapter 3, beginning with "WhenVanity kissed Vanity," which is referred to as "poetry" but is formattedas prose.
I considered, but decided against introducing an 8-bit version ofedition 11, in large part because the bulk of the 8-bit usage (as foundin the 1960 reprint) consists of words commonly used in their 7-bitform:
Aeschylus blase cafe debut debutante elan elite Encyclopaedia matinee minutiae paean regime soupcon unaesthetic
Less-commonly-used 8-bit word forms in this book include:
anaemic bleme coeur manoeuvered mediaevalist tete-a-tete and the name "Borge".
This Side of Paradise Page 10
