NOTHING EL 
 MATTERS 
 
 WILLIAM SAMUEL
 
 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 Author of "Glamourie" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 MCMXIV
 
 COPYRIGHT 1914 BY 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY, 
 
 Printed in America
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Prelude 7 
 
 I. Initiation 9 
 
 II. Confidences 26 
 
 III. En Charette 38 
 
 IV. The Book 53 
 
 V. Alchemy 71 
 
 VI. Les Apaches 84 
 
 VII. A Vague Villain 106 
 
 VIII. Love 120 
 
 IX. The Rescue 130 
 
 X. Beamy Jimmy 146 
 
 XI. The Great Interrogation 156 
 
 XII. Vipers' Bites 171 
 
 XIII. Petal by Petal 185 
 
 XIV. Between the Horns 199 
 XV. La Brise du Reve 215 
 
 XVI. Frost Work 223 
 
 XVII. Strategics 231 
 
 XVIII. Veracities 246 
 
 XIX. The Will 262 
 
 XX. Burglary 271 
 
 XXI. Sub Silentio 290 
 
 Postlude 302 
 
 2136375
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 ^OU have asked me, you Five Dear Ones, 
 to record against the forgetful years 
 (still far ahead!) certain Little Adventures, 
 violent, vivid, yet whimsic-strange, that be- 
 fell us in Paris (ah! the lost Boheme!), col- 
 ouring the same, at my own proper peril, 
 with certain Little Emotions that ached 
 delicately in mute (but inter-gravitating) 
 hearts. 
 
 At my proper peril, forsooth; that should 
 give me pause . . . 
 
 Well, I accept the peril (what is a flitting 
 blush more or less against such a tale as 
 ours?) and shall do your bidding. Indeed, 
 it will be sweet to tune the strings of memory 
 into full accord and to beat out thereon such 
 music as I may word-music (since that is
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 the craft I live by) that shall clang of hap- 
 piness to other wistful souls. 
 
 Little Adventures; Little Emotions is 
 there nothing more? 
 
 Something more, an it please you 
 
 Strategics ! 
 
 You would fain, I think, have the minut- 
 est chronicle of that riddling word, though 
 you have been too loving-shy to say so. 
 
 The time has come when you may hear all 
 the truth; and that this truth shall have its 
 own colour too (the rose-flush of the Little 
 Emotions aforesaid), I hark back to that 
 lost Boheme and show our united life as it 
 was in the beginning.
 
 INITIATION 
 
 T N the beginning I was feeling like a moon- 
 calf. One of the Little Ones, long 
 afterwards, remembered cheerfully my lurid 
 ears. 
 
 There was cause! I was standing on one 
 of the brown iron chairs of the Luxembourg 
 Garden in Paris, the pink focus of concen- 
 tric rings of gamesome faces. The inner 
 ring was formed by the four Little Ones, the 
 outer by a waggish crowd of uninvited 
 Parisians that had gathered to see and re- 
 double my embarrassment. For I was feel- 
 ing (let me underline the sensation) like a 
 very mooncalf. 
 
 "Moreover," continued Childe Roland, 
 with a sweeping Gallic gesture to me-ward,
 
 10 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "he is very beautiful! Observe those waves 
 of jetty hair, that olive skin, those flashing 
 eyes. Look at the modeling of that noble 
 beak! See how Nature, with meticulous 
 thumb, has moulded the spirals of that rosy 
 ear! Admire the Cupid-bow of the lip and 
 the arch of the Olympian eyebrow. Is he 
 not very beautiful?" 
 
 "He is very beautiful," answered the 
 Little Ones, in accents of religious convic- 
 tion. 
 
 The Childe then invited the opinion of the 
 Parisians. 
 
 "Is it not that he is enormously beauti- 
 ful?" 
 
 "He is enormously beautiful!" came from 
 the outer rings, an appreciation uttered, so 
 sensitive is the Parisian soul to every nuance 
 of humor, ore rotundo. 
 
 "He stands six feet," the Childe pro- 
 ceeded, "he is prodigiously strong, an oars- 
 man, swimmer, athlete, yet gentle as the 
 dodo, now extinct through being gentle over-
 
 INITIATION 11 
 
 much. He garbs himself as one would ex- 
 pect from his vocation (which I shall touch 
 on presently) and I call upon you to admire 
 and applaud those baggy velveteens, those 
 flowing yards of cravat, that romantic bar- 
 rette." 
 
 Confound him! He himself had tricked 
 me out in this absurd fashion. 
 
 "Is he not very wonderful?" asked the 
 Childe. 
 
 "He is very wonderful," replied the Little 
 Ones in an awestruck whisper. 
 
 "Chouette, is it not?" he asked again. 
 
 I did not then understand what ef chou- 
 ette" which in the school of Stratford-atte- 
 Bowe means "owl," had to do with me. But 
 the French throng knew that the word 
 symbolized intensest and slangiest approba- 
 tion. 
 
 "He is very chouette" whispered the 
 throng. 
 
 "And," my expositor went on in a tremen- 
 dous voice, "for one so recently arrived in
 
 12 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Paris, he is rather intelligent. I am sure 
 you all think that he looks fairly in- 
 telligent?" 
 
 "He looks fairly intelligent," came the 
 guarded response of the Little Ones. 
 
 "Is it not that he has the air quite intelli- 
 gent?" 
 
 "He has the air quite intelligent," an- 
 swered the crowd. 
 
 "Moreover," said the Childe, sinking his 
 voice to an impressive bass, "he is a literary 
 chap ; yea, even a poet. Honour him, all ye 
 that hear he is a poet !" 
 
 "He is a poet," intoned the Little Ones. 
 
 "It is a great poet!" shouted my perse- 
 cutor. 
 
 "It is a great poet," chanted the throng. 
 
 "And now, little brother and sisters, 
 knowing something of his qualities, the rare 
 pulchritude of his person, the alpine altitudes 
 of his mind, the well, taking Hugh Lyd- 
 don just as he stands there, blushing on the 
 Pillar of Inspection, is he lowly enough to
 
 INITIATION 13 
 
 share our pride, is he great enough to be a 
 Little One? Speak! Is it Ay or No?" 
 
 "Ay!" chorused the Little Ones. 
 
 "We may accept him, is it not?" 
 
 "Oui!" roared the Parisians. 
 
 "Then, Hugh Lyddon, descend from the 
 Pillar of Inspection, and come with me to 
 take the final vow at the Colonne des 
 Baisers." 
 
 The Childe put his arm through mine 
 as I stepped down how gladly from my 
 chair; and we wandered off together through 
 the blessed alleys of tilleuls and marronniers 
 that are so dear to the lovers of the Luxem- 
 bourg. I inhaled a mighty breath, my first 
 real breath of Paris. 
 
 "I invented that initiation," said the 
 Childe, with a chuckle of glee; "how did you 
 like it?" 
 
 "It was worse than the last you worked on 
 me," I answered he and I were chums at 
 Yale. "A plague on your inventiveness, and, 
 you little villain, on my preposterous garb."
 
 14 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Yet observe, old fellow," he remarked, 
 "now that you are descended from your de- 
 risive height, no one so much as looks at 
 you." 
 
 It was true. I might, for all the note 
 taken of my existence, have been one of the 
 Luxembourg's marble queens, one of its 
 grey tree-trunks, an obstacle to be avoided, 
 nothing more. Nurses, irised with flowing 
 ribbons, bonnes with their marketings in 
 dangling nets, black-bloused boys kicking 
 an old tennis ball, brown-legged girls trun- 
 dling hoops, students, artists, flaneurs innu- 
 merable, passed me incuriously ; some wholly; 
 intent on a petty fragment of the world with- 
 out, some soul-wrapt, I suppose, on the in- 
 finities of the world within. And a vast, 
 lonely peace clothed my soul like a perfume, 
 the peace that is found only in deep wood- 
 lands, on the deep sea or in a public park 
 in Paris. The New York of my nativity, 
 electric, dynamic, ceased to flare and clank
 
 INITIATION 15 
 
 in my memory ; and well, I am not ashamed 
 of it tears came into my eyes. 
 
 "Infant," I said, giving my companion 
 one of his many diminutives. For when Ro- 
 land Elliot came to Yale, rosy, cherubic and 
 exiguous, he was at once baptised "Childe- 
 Roland-to-the-dark-tower-came Elliot," a 
 sacrament that, owing to the number of his 
 names and the perfervid ritualism of the 
 priests, became a mere irrigation. And 
 thereafter "Childe," with or without the 
 dignifying "e," and a score of infantile deriv- 
 atives, became his for life. 
 
 "Infant," I said, wiping my eyes, "1 am 
 an epitheted fool." 
 
 "Not at all! When we are born, we cry, 
 says Little Will. And you are just born; 
 therefore, like a logical and Shakespearian 
 babe, you cry. So blubber and enjoy your- 
 self." 
 
 "It's that perfume, I think," said I, seek- 
 ing to analyse my absurdity. "What is it, 
 Infant?"
 
 16 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "The pollen of the tilleul" he answered; 
 "does it tickle the convolutions of that subtle 
 brain?" 
 
 "Something does." 
 
 "It also makes, if the subtle brain conde- 
 scends to such details, an innocuous and in- 
 sipid tea. But, O trembling neophyte, we 
 draw near to the Column of the Kisses. 
 Make strong your soul!" 
 
 "Am I to be kissed?" I inquired anx- 
 iously. 
 
 "Fear not; no one will kiss you." 
 
 "Am I to be pilloried again?" 
 
 "No; you will take on you the awful vow 
 and clasp the hands of the Little Ones. That 
 is all; and here we are." 
 
 The Colonne des Baisers! may it stand 
 forever, as it stands in my memory, against 
 its shimmering background of leafage and 
 sunlight, a thing of tenderness, motherhood, 
 consolation and triumph over death. 
 
 Near it were gathered the Little Ones, to
 
 INITIATION 17 
 
 whom the Childe presented me in the follow- 
 ing terms. 
 
 "Little One," he intoned, "known to the 
 large ones of the world without as Aloys 
 Guex-Beny, take the tiny working paw of 
 Hugh Lyddon and pledge him with the 
 holy rune." 
 
 Tall, grey, gaunt and ascetic, a man who, 
 despite his name, bore the race-stamp of 
 New England in his hollow-shaven cheeks 
 and Emerson-like nose and brow, took my 
 hand. 
 
 "Little One," said he, making the high, 
 bleak accents ring like a benediction, "Little 
 One, 
 
 "I vow to be true 
 To the Power in you 
 And the Work you do." 
 
 "Repeat the vow to him, Hugh Lyddon," 
 commanded the Childe. 
 I did so. 
 He then introduced me by the mystic
 
 18 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 formula to Elizabeth Brown, who trilled not 
 unmelodiously the R of the northern line as 
 she laughingly repeated the rune. 
 
 Then behold our high-priest red and stam- 
 mering! until with an evident effort he re- 
 sumed his extravagant pose. 
 
 "What, O Little Hugh, shall I tell you of 
 Betty Brown? That she comes to Paris 
 from 'those continuous woods where r-r-rolls 
 the Or-r-regon and hear-r-rs no sound save 
 its own r-r-rippling R's,' as saith the poet? 
 That she etches ? Ay ! she etches indeed in a 
 Bettesque manner more whistling than 
 Whistler, a scratch here, the faint adumbra- 
 tion of a scratch there, all deliciously incom- 
 prehensible and incomprehensibly delicious. 
 
 "But alas!" he continued in tones of 
 trembling emotion, "Betty Brown, I must 
 caution you, splashes daily out of the enam- 
 eled tub of holy Art into the unformulated 
 ocean of human existence. Robed in steril- 
 ized linen, checkered with Philistine blue and 
 white, she tends the sordid sick against whol-
 
 INITIATION 19 
 
 ly inesthetic backgrounds. This grieves the 
 Little Ones ; for life, Hugh Lyddon, I need 
 hardly say to you, exists for them only as 
 patches of colour to be peered at with eyes 
 half closed. Patches of colour, Hugh Lyd- 
 don, shining through the theatric gauze of 
 the circumambient air. And whether you 
 use a palette-knife, Hugh Lyddon, or a 
 brush, or a burin, or a pen, those air-veiled 
 patches of colour and the cosmic meaning of 
 those patches are all your business as a loyal 
 Little One. Yet, woe is me! This Betty 
 Brown, with whose soul we have laboured in 
 vain, persists in painting with the heretical 
 brush of good deeds on the vibrating canvas 
 of humanity. Betty Brown is a grievous 
 trouble to the Little Ones." 
 
 Thus the Childe, beaming with transpa- 
 rent affection on the unconcerned object of 
 his tirade. 
 
 "Infant," said she, as he paused, "do you 
 want your ears boxed?" 
 
 "Sacrilege !" he cried, "Sacrilege ! Would
 
 20 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 you lay an impious hand on your hierophant 
 in the very exercise of his sacred functions?" 
 
 "I would," remarked Betty, serenely. 
 
 "Then," he answered majestically, "lest I 
 be tempted to hurl on your bonny brown 
 head I mean on your unregenerate soul 
 the fulminations of my maranatha, I pro- 
 ceed, even I, to pledge my faith to our 
 
 novice." 
 
 "I," he said, turning to me, "am the Paint- 
 er and the last great word of art. I pause., 
 that the import of this pronouncement may; 
 trickle into the lyric brain." 
 
 "You are indeed the Painter," I assented. 
 
 He then took my hand and, with much 
 latent feeling quivering in his voice, rolled 
 forth the rune. Dear old boy ! we needed no 
 words to bind our faith faster together. 
 
 "Under our awful code," he went on, 
 "none may seal faith with our Mystery till 
 he has sealed faith with me, the hierophant 
 and hierarch. Repeat the rune, Hugh Lyd- 
 don, once to the Air "
 
 INITIATION 21 
 
 "Once to the ghostly air," repeated Aloys 
 Guex-Beny softly, removing his hat. 
 
 "Once to the Book" 
 
 "Once to the Book of the Frost," said 
 Aloys. 
 
 "And once to our unseen playmates, the 
 immortal Little Ones." 
 
 Amid the silence of my comrades, I ut- 
 tered thrice the rune, and at each pause they 
 cried "Amen!" 
 
 "And now," said the Childe, "let the Mis- 
 tress of Music, let the Hoar-Frost, let 
 Pruina Guex-Beny, the Priestess of the 
 Book, seal faith with the Little One and all 
 will be accomplished, even unto the utter- 
 most." 
 
 The Hoar-Frost! It was no wintry 
 shape, cold-crisped and glittering, that came 
 to meet me; it was no glacial hand that mine 
 enclosed. I saw, like something in a dream, 
 the mellow sunshine of Paris falling on an 
 earnest face, all sunshine too. I heard, as 
 one follows the sound of one sweet instru-
 
 22 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 ment through the tangled perplexities of a 
 symphony, a wood-thrush voice thrilling 
 through the fluttering laughter of children, 
 the music of the dear French tongue and the 
 twittering of the Luxembourg sparrows. 
 
 "I vow to be true," said the voice; but ah! 
 what asons of time between each singing 
 word! It is not only to the drowning man 
 that the past envisages itself. I think that 
 whenever retrospect is threatened with ex- 
 tinction, it awakens suddenly from its placid 
 half --consciousness in the memory, makes its 
 scattered legions one, and rushes united like 
 a single frightened, savage thing to battle 
 for its life. 
 
 "To the power in you." The power in 
 me? What power? The dead years storm 
 by and give no comforting answer. I feel 
 myself drop senseless again in that old Yale 
 shell as she arrows across the winning line. 
 I sprint round Harvard's end once more 
 with the ball ah! the wild play! clutched 
 hard. I feel the water slide along my body
 
 INITIATION 23 
 
 as my rolling stroke, the "Lyddon crawl," 
 shoots me first through the race. I see 
 reams of scrawled paper, written, rewritten, 
 scratched, interlined, blotted; essays, stories, 
 poems, and visions of fame rising out of 
 them. I hear old Parr say: "Adhere to 
 literature, Mr. Lyddon eh, what? You 
 will, I venture to predict though my pro- 
 phetic vein is oversanguine at times eh, 
 what? You may arrive, Mr. Lyddon eh, 
 what?" And it all seems so futile, so un- 
 utterably banal. 
 
 "The power in me," forsooth! It is all in 
 the past, that power. And what is it doing, 
 this past with its flamboyant pictures? It is 
 quietly melting away in the little hand that 
 lies in mine ; vanishing, like the brute matter 
 of Lucretius, "atom and void, atom and void, 
 into the unseen forever." 
 
 And as I watch the hand I dare not raise 
 my eyes higher the ghost of that unfruitful 
 past seems to rise and float away, a thin wisp 
 of vapour.
 
 24 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Bending tranced over the hand, that 
 gloveless, ringless, confiding hand, I must 
 have looked prodigiously foolish. N'im- 
 porte! the humblest can pay at least this 
 tribute to truth: to look like a happy fool 
 when he is foolishly happy ! 
 
 "And the work you do." Work! ah, I 
 shall surely work and win win what? I 
 raise my eyes timidly and meet for the first 
 time the light of hers, those brown-gentle- 
 nesses, gold-flecked and peace-giving, the 
 eyes of Pruina. 
 
 Then I knew why the past had clashed so 
 plangent through my memory. For there 
 was no past any more forever; and life had 
 become a future, all sunning gold and be- 
 friending brown and is it I that speak, 
 speak for geologic ages? 
 
 "I vow to be true 
 To the Power in you 
 And the Work you do."
 
 INITIATION 25 
 
 "You are now a Little One," intoned the 
 Childe; and some centuries later I re- 
 leased Pruina's hand.
 
 II 
 
 CONFIDENCES 
 
 ," I murmured, keeping my 
 eyes fixed on the marble lovers of 
 the Fountain of the Medicis 
 
 Paris, once she has bewitched you, lays 
 your heart bare. She forces avowals. The 
 great mother-confessor, she bids you unveil 
 your soul to itself; and her absolutions, 
 uttered with Gallic prodigality of gesture, 
 bring comfort. She is so ancient-wise, that 
 Paris, and so foolish-young, that we are sure 
 she understands. And she bids you tell the 
 secret, so unveiled, to your oldest friend, or 
 in his default to the next child of Paris you 
 meet, to a stray dog, a flower, a tree or to 
 anything. And if the secret chances to be 
 love! . 
 
 26
 
 CONFIDENCES 27 
 
 "Childe," said I; and the sunlight, sifted 
 and shaken by the green vibrations overhead, 
 struck up from the water and fluttered warm 
 on the bodies of those marble lovers. 
 
 Paris ! the Franks and "frankness," 
 which is to be like unto a Frank in Arcadian 
 candour. Therein, surely, is the key to the 
 art of this race, to its passionate self-expres- 
 sion. The key to its literature, too, with its 
 ingenuous, ingratiating egotism. Just the 
 naked heart talking, both. And when one 
 becomes Parisian, lives in the focal point 
 where the refracted rays of that racial Frank 
 frankness meet and burn why, one melts, 
 willy-nilly. The old Puritan walls round the 
 emotions crumble; the thick scholastic dams 
 round the fluid mind wash away; rheumatic 
 reserves (for our Teutonic reserves are just 
 gout of the soul) become flexible and why, 
 one talks, willy-nilly. 
 
 "Infant," said I. Ovid tells the story of 
 those marble lovers and an egregiously dull 
 story it is, to my thinking. Acis and Galatea
 
 28 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 they are, cuddling at the foot of a crag, while 
 Polyphemus, huge, bronze, glowering, 
 watches from above 
 
 A dull story; but Paris has drawn it forth 
 from its antiquity, has humanised it, has 
 spiritualised it, has told it over again so 
 tenderly, so nobly, in words of marble, in 
 rhythms of flowing line, in suggestions that 
 reach back to some infinite source of loveli- 
 ness and love, that the thing becomes Paris- 
 ian. And the lovers, so transfigured, take 
 the whole universe into their confidence with 
 such an abandon of soul that one fancies it 
 is not sunlight flickering its way through 
 dancing leaves, but the light of some mystic 
 cosmic emotion breaking through the happy 
 souls of living lovers that plays so raptur- 
 ously over the quivering marble 
 
 "Infant," I repeated; and this time he 
 awakened from his day-dream and turned on 
 me the eye of attention. 
 
 "Childe," I said, "I have something mo- 
 mentous to tell you."
 
 CONFIDENCES 29 
 
 "Tell !" he answered gaily, "this is the mo- 
 ment for the momentous." 
 
 "Childe," I continued ; "I am in love." 
 
 To my surprise he became very pale. 
 
 "There!" he exclaimed, all the merriment 
 gone from his voice, "I knew that would be 
 the way!" 
 
 "But" 
 
 "Of course I'm only a round-faced, un- 
 romantic, good-natured little buffoon and all 
 the girls like to have me about; but as for 
 thinking of me as a lover or a husband, why 
 I might as well be the Polichinelle in that 
 show" he waved a scornful hand in the di- 
 rection of the Guignol, whose drum was 
 thumping among the distant trees "might 
 just as well be a wooden Punch and have 
 done with it." 
 
 "But, Infant" 
 
 "And here you come, big and poetic and 
 handsome, and fall in love with the only girl 
 I ever " 
 
 "But, Childe "
 
 30 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Why did you choose her? Why aren't 
 you a misogamist or a misogynist or any sort 
 of an 'ist that doesn't want to marry? Why 
 didn't you become a Catholic priest? Why 
 didn't you fall in love before you left home? 
 Why did you choose this time and this place 
 and That Girl for your outrageous and dis- 
 loyal passion? Why " 
 
 "Childe!" 
 
 "Why didn't you choose Pruina? Why 
 out of all the five hundred million women on 
 the earth must you select Betty? Why " 
 
 I seized my foolish little friend and put 
 my hand over his mouth. 
 
 "I have chosen Pruina," I shouted and in- 
 cautiously removed my hand. 
 
 "Why," he continued, showing no sign of 
 having understood my announcement, "why 
 Betty?" 
 
 I corked him up again. 
 
 "Infant," I roared, "I am not in love with 
 your Betty! Do you understand? I am in 
 love with Pruina."
 
 CONFIDENCES 31 
 
 This time I did not remove the cork till 
 the vintage of comprehension had ripened. 
 
 "Do you really mean that you are in love 
 with Pruina Guex-Beny and not with Betty 
 Brown?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 He exhaled his emotion, thereby aiding 
 the bottle metaphor, in a fizzing sigh of con- 
 tent. 
 
 "I cannot understand you," said he. 
 
 "Cannot understand what?" 
 
 "How, having eyes and ears and a mind 
 and a heart, you prefer Prue to Betty. Why, 
 man, you are the victim of juvenile demen- 
 tia" 
 
 "You needn't object." 
 
 "But I do object! I blush with shame at 
 your thrice sodden imbecility. Just look at 
 those girls!" 
 
 "De gustibus non est disputandum" said 
 I. 
 
 "This is no question de gustibus," he re- 
 torted, "it's a question de girl-ibus. Why,
 
 32 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 with Betty at your side you would go, you 
 and your poetry, straight to the heart of life. 
 You would be a Tennyson, a Keats." 
 
 "But, old man," I suggested, "where 
 would you be while I was taking that person- 
 ally conducted tour with Miss Elizabeth 
 Brown?" 
 
 "I'd be going to the canines," he said dole- 
 fully; "but it wouldn't matter." 
 
 "It would matter enormously," I pro- 
 tested. 
 
 "No," he insisted; "for if you don't win 
 her some other fellow will ; and I'd rather be 
 hurt by you than by some chap I've never 
 seen." 
 
 "Childe, you are an arrant ass." 
 
 "Yes; that's just it; and no woman with 
 any sense of humour Betty has a delicious 
 sense of humour wants to be Mrs. Arrant 
 Ass." 
 
 "The interrogation point is shaped like a 
 sickle," I remarked. 
 
 "What of it?"
 
 CONFIDENCES 33 
 
 "In proper hands it reaps the harvest of 
 truth. Have you ever asked her?" 
 
 "Never! and I never shall. In the first 
 place, I'm too poor. My book-plates and 
 illustrations and all that rubbish just bring 
 in enough to feed and clothe me. In the 
 second place, I'm Mr. Punch; just a blither- 
 ing, blundering joke-monger." 
 
 "Infant," I said severely, "you have 
 changed. At Yale you were our Democritus, 
 our laughing philosopher. You evolved a 
 gospel of merriment. For four years you 
 cheered the dear old class; and under your 
 maddest jests we always found something 
 wise and good and human. Even yesterday, 
 in that absurd initiation, I heard here and 
 there an echo of the old Roland Elliot. But 
 today you simply drivel. What the devil has 
 happened to you?" 
 
 "Betty," he answered, plaintively, "just 
 Betty." 
 
 "PooroldChilde,"saidI. 
 
 "Poor old Childe," sighed he.
 
 34, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 And there was a long silence. The sun 
 had found a rift in the leafage and now 
 shone unshadowed on the forms of Acis and 
 Galatea. We looked with eyes of deep self- 
 pity on the divine intimacy of these amorous 
 myths. 
 
 "In view of your dolorous state," I said, 
 whereat he sighed again, "considering your 
 love-deleted past, your sombre present and 
 your hopeless future, I have discovered that 
 I am not in love." 
 
 "But, my poor old Hugh" he spoke 
 as from heights of pitying omniscience 
 "nothing else matters." 
 
 "You are a one-sided mope; and several 
 things matter. I shall not fall in love, even 
 with Pruina Guex-Beny. Apropos., would 
 there be grounds for hope if I did?" 
 
 "Hope is symbolised by an anchor," he an- 
 swered enigmatically. 
 
 "Expound, Orlando." 
 
 "And an anchor, put to its raison d'etre, 
 indicates that the status quo is maintained."
 
 CONFIDENCES 35 
 
 "Unless the anchor drags." 
 
 "Just so. Now, if the status quo is main- 
 tained I fear that the ocean of your true 
 love " 
 
 "It is not my true love; the case is hypo- 
 thetical." 
 
 "All right. I fear, then, that the ocean of 
 hymeneal hypothesis will be non-navigable." 
 
 4 * Why ? Do be less metaphorical . ' ' 
 
 "I will be literal. The hypothetical father- 
 in-law, Aloys Guex-Beny, is a great man, 
 an unknown man, to be sure, but a great 
 one." 
 
 "That in itself is no obstacle." 
 
 "He is also a cam." 
 
 "Explain, please." 
 
 "A cam, my poetic friend, is a wheel with 
 a hump on its periphery. It is used in many 
 machines and is no doubt also useful in the 
 great engine of life. The hump on the cam 
 comes round once every revolution and opens 
 a valve, or trips a trigger, or closes a cir- 
 cuit, or "
 
 36 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Get to the point," I pleaded. 
 
 or something of the sort. And the 
 hump on the human cam does likewise. It is 
 the law of the machine. It is eternally there. 
 It is always true to its prearranged eccen- 
 tricity. It is destiny, Hugh; it is destiny. 
 Well, Aloys Guex-Beny, whom I revere and 
 love, is a splendidly lubricated cam with an 
 exceeding large hump." 
 
 "Tell me about it," I requested. 
 
 "No; the subject is rather too metaphysi- 
 cal for Mr. Punch." 
 
 "But how does it affect (this is all hypo- 
 thetical) Little Pruina?" 
 
 "Why, I rather think, my dear boy I am 
 not sure, of course, but I rather think from 
 little hints that I have gathered during the 
 past two years in Paris that Pruina is 
 vowed to celibacy." 
 
 "Good Lord," I exclaimed, adding, on 
 noting his quizzical smile, " an hypothetical 
 ejaculation." 
 
 "Yes; as a sort of priestess, or pythoness,
 
 CONFIDENCES 37 
 
 or vestal- virgin of her father's cult. In fact, 
 old man, I think that you are wise in 
 your determination not to fall in love with 
 Pruina." 
 
 The sun had gone from the marble lovers, 
 leaving them cold and grey above the mirror- 
 ing water. 
 
 I heaved a profound sigh. 
 
 "Is wisdom so woebegone?" he asked. 
 
 "Actually, I am 1' Allegro ; by hypothesis, 
 il Penseroso. I am glad to have sailed clear 
 of the doldrums in which you are becalmed; 
 but the ocean looks rather lonely. A man 
 must be in love with someone." 
 
 "Poor old Hugh," he said. 
 
 "Poor old Infant," said I.
 
 Ill 
 
 EN CHARETTE 
 
 JDOUQUINERlhow precious a thing is 
 the right word! And how desirable a 
 thing when it symbols an act at once graci- 
 ous, enticing and touched with grey romance. 
 
 Now bouquiner means to hunt for old 
 books. That is all. But the very thought 
 of the word raises a ghost in the memory, a 
 vision of those mile-long, stone-paved, pop- 
 lar-shaded hunting grounds that line the 
 quais on the left bank of the Seine. 
 
 An old story? Of course! and a musty, 
 dog-eared, broken-backed, much bethumbed 
 old story at that. But no matter the glam- 
 our clothes it still ; no time, no reiteration, no 
 vulgarising, can ever make it trite; and as 
 long as the quais guide the old Seine, as 
 
 38
 
 EN CHARETTE 39 
 
 long as books are books, so long will the 
 hunters bouquiner and be beatified by the 
 hunting. 
 
 I regret that my publishers, in all other 
 respects men that savour the finer essences of 
 literature, should have limited my medium. 
 Ah, the idols of the market ! I am bound by 
 adamantine vows to refrain from rhyme. It 
 is a pity! Song is man's natural speech, his 
 still most potent engine; the infant babbles 
 ma-ma and pa-pa; and the levies march to 
 Valmy roaring the Marseillaise. And then 
 song glides so easily through the hereditary 
 limitations (architectural limitations mostly) 
 of the human soul, glides as the Seine glides 
 between its quais and houses and palaces, 
 glides dimpling and swirling, catching up 
 fragments of the universal sunshine and 
 tossing them, like seeds of light, into the mis- 
 governed city of thought. 
 
 It is indeed a pity! for I have written a 
 pretty verse about the book-hunters, the 
 bouquineurs. I have put the dear quais in
 
 40 XOTHIXG ELSE MATTERS 
 
 it, just as they are, the square, grey stone 
 parapets with the boxes of books above, 
 boxes of all colours with a prismatic jumble 
 of books within. And the bouquinistes, the 
 men and women that sell the books, they are 
 there too; the crippled man with his fat 
 dog, the fat woman with her crippled dog 
 ("ecrase three times by auto-taxis, m'sieur, 
 and not dead yet!") and many others, dog- 
 ged and dogless. And the books are there, 
 the blessed things, almost too precious to be 
 named in prose. 
 
 What else? why, the wet wood pavement 
 is there and the smell of it, the vaporous, 
 putrescent smell that is like unto no other 
 for twangling the wires of a Parisian heart. 
 You know, if country-bred, the damp odours 
 of spring woods, odours of fecundity and 
 promise, when you have tramped into their 
 depths to greet the purple spathe of the 
 skunk cabbage and the green spikes of the 
 hellebore; and you know how love, primal 
 and elemental, stirs your being. You know,
 
 EN CHARETTE 41 
 
 if reared 'long-shore, the titillating, salt de- 
 cay that steams from the oozing flats at low 
 tide, and how it stirs ( God knows how !) long 
 dead dreams into a wistful semblance of life. 
 You know, if a New Yorker, how the stink 
 of the old ferryboats blends with the harbor- 
 wash they float on into a perfume that bites 
 to the core of your soul. Well, there is all 
 this and more how much more! in the 
 smell of the wet wood-pavement in Paris. 
 
 Only rhyme can recall that fragrance. 
 
 And this prose is a sorry tool. 
 
 Yes; the wood-pavement is in my verse 
 and the man that washes it (no bouquineur is 
 he!) , the man that sweeps down the gutters, 
 full and flowing rivulets, with rhythmic half- 
 circles of his great besom of twigs. Rhythmic 
 self-expression is permitted to him he has 
 no publishers! 
 
 Further, because it was springtime in my 
 verses, the air about the stalls was white with 
 the fluffy down that carries the seed of the 
 poplars. One can allegorise that poplar-
 
 42 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 down in singing verse and hint into it many 
 meanings, very shy-sweet and insubstantial, 
 but now 
 
 Fie on this uninsinuating prose ! 
 
 There was no poplar-down, however, on 
 the day, my third day in Paris, when Roland 
 Elliot taught me to bouquiner. That season 
 had passed. 
 
 "Childe," said I he was turning over a 
 portfolio of engravings "I have discovered 
 a treasure." 
 
 "Bon! But don't let the bouquiniste ob- 
 serve your rapture." 
 
 "And it is only fifty centimes." 
 
 "Horribly dear," said he, "you can't 
 afford it." " 
 
 "Ten cents? Of course I can afford it." 
 
 And I put my hand in my pocket. 
 
 "What?" cried my little friend, seizing my 
 arm and dragging me away, "would you 
 buy it, at first sight, like that?" 
 
 "Of course I would." 
 
 "You huckster!" said he; "you pedlar! you
 
 EN CHARETTE 43 
 
 costermongering cattle-thief of an Autoly- 
 cus! You" 
 
 "What have I done?" 
 
 "You crass, green, unenlightened Philis- 
 tine! You desecrating, recusant, schismatic 
 iconoclast! You would shoot a hare sitting! 
 You would cheat at cards! You would use 
 loaded dice! Youwouldthimblerig! You " 
 He paused either for lack of breath or 
 further illustrations and then continued 
 solemnly. 
 
 "No, my poor Hugh; one does not buy a 
 book the moment it is discovered. One 
 waits !" 
 
 "Then someone else may snap it up," I 
 protested. 
 
 "Of course; and that is where the sport 
 comes in. Let me explain. One discovers 
 the book; and a thrill, a glow of bibliophil- 
 ism, runs through the marrow of the soul. 
 But one doesn't show it. On the contrary, 
 one assumes a fatuous air, almost idiotic, and 
 idly examines his trover from title page to
 
 44 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 colophon. Then, noting its price and its 
 position in the stall, one puts it back and, 
 still fatuous and degage, picks up another 
 and another. And then one saunters away, 
 en vrai flaneur f with that precious book tug- 
 ging at the heart-strings. Next day, one 
 seeks it again. Will it be there or not? Ah, 
 the delicious torture! One approaches, al- 
 ways en flaneur, glancing furtively at the 
 place. The treasure has gone! Horror 
 fills the soul, but not despair. Smiling 
 haggardly, one searches the rows. Joy! it is 
 there ; and once again the flame of bibliophil- 
 ism leaps ecstatic. But does one buy the 
 book? Jamais de la vie! one goes away. 
 And one returns. And one goes away and 
 returns, until the delight and suspense are 
 almost intolerable. And one wakes at night 
 and thinks of the book lying expectant, a 
 padlocked prisoner, in its box on the quai, 
 listening to the flow of the river, the rustling 
 of the poplars and the tramp of belated feet. 
 At last! the book too is ready and the time
 
 EN CHARETTE 45 
 
 has come. One goes early to the quad on the 
 morrow, to be there when the stalls are un- 
 locked; and, mon Dieu, it is raining; the 
 bouquiniste will open no box today. And 
 rain next day and the next, and then " 
 
 "And then?" I asked; for a tumult on the 
 other side of the street made him pause. 
 
 "One buys the book !" he cried. "But let's 
 see what the fun is at the School." 
 
 "What School?" I asked. 
 
 "L'Ecole des Beaux Arts," he answered; 
 and we dashed across the street. 
 
 "It's a charette" said the Infant, joy- 
 ously. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Those are charettes" he answered, point- 
 ing to a row of two-wheeled hand carts 
 drawn up, like a battery, against the edge of 
 the sidewalk. They were laden with huge 
 white drawings, pasted on frames and 
 mounted on dark green paper; and between 
 the carts and the door of the School a crowd 
 of students rushed ant-like to and fro.
 
 46 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 What students! in shirt-sleeves, with 
 flapping pantaloons of brown velveteen; 
 students in blouses, yellow linen reaching to 
 the knees, most filthily and prismatically be- 
 smeared; students with long hair, with 
 cropped hair, with faces streaked with ink 
 and colours, with long black beards. 
 
 Quels types! and what sweating haste. 
 They dashed with the great drawings from 
 the charettes through the open door, to re- 
 turn empty-handed and panting. 
 
 Panting? They were all panting; tout le 
 monde soufflent. 
 
 "The drawings must be in at two o'clock," 
 explained Roland. "See! the guardian is 
 getting ready to close the grille. The ateliers 
 are far away, many of them; and the char- 
 ettes are often pulled a mile on a hard run. 
 Tiens! an express charette" 
 
 It came down the quai, this cart, past Vol- 
 taire's sneering statue, pushed by two shout- 
 ing maniacs behind, drawn by a student 
 harnessed to leather traces in front. Along-
 
 EN CHARETTE 47 
 
 side galloped a little youth, frowsily be- 
 bearded, carrying in one hand a pail, in the 
 other a bunch of narrow gilt paper. 
 
 "Paste," explained Roland, indicating the 
 pail. "They could not quite finish; and it's 
 one minute to two." 
 
 The cart stopped, the drawings were 
 whipped out, and then paste! Great gobs 
 of it fell on the sidewalk; blouses and vel- 
 veteens were stickily smeared; and dripping 
 hands were wiped on the tossing black hair 
 of unconscious neighbours. And in thirty 
 seconds the gilt paper was in place and the 
 drawings vanished within. 
 
 Not so the little youth with the beard and 
 the paste. He poured what remained into 
 a brown paper bag and approached the door 
 with this bomb concealed behind him. 
 
 "Another express!" cried the Childe; but 
 my eyes were filled with the bomb-bearer. 
 He was now near the door, against which 
 leaned a pursy, official-looking man in a blue 
 uniform.
 
 "Guardian des Beaux Arts" was adver- 
 tised by every pose and gesture, "c'est deja 
 grand' chose!" 
 
 He was watching the rush of the belated 
 charette with an indulgent smile. His lunch- 
 eon had touched his puffed face with flush- 
 ing content; and, tiens! what was a minute 
 or so, after all? They should enter, les 
 enfants 
 
 It was at this point, if I have read him 
 aright, that the bomb was thrown. Aimed, 
 not at him, but at the wall just above his 
 head, it broke, the clammy, mucilaginous 
 thing, in a white, wet, lumpy shower 
 
 Alas, poor guardian! 
 
 There were epic oaths and shoutings and 
 laughter, and the angry clang of the iron 
 grille as it closed behind the dripping official. 
 
 "Atelier Lalou, and too late," said Roland, 
 as the charette halted amid frenetic yells. 
 The students ran to the closed grille, beat 
 against it and screamed like lost souls to the
 
 EN CHARETTE 49 
 
 pasty guardian who glowered behind it, 
 Satanic. 
 
 All save one. He lay, the lad in the har- 
 ness, quite still under the charette with his 
 blond head in the gutter. The Childe and 
 I pulled him out and laid him on the side- 
 walk. Chalk-white and unconscious, he be- 
 came at once then center of a ring of com- 
 rades. 
 
 "He is an American," shouted the Infant; 
 "it's our affair. Hold his pretty head, Hugh. 
 I'll get brandy." 
 
 This elixir is never far to seek in Paris; 
 and presently I was adjusting his head (it 
 merited the Infant's adjective) to the recep- 
 tion of astonishing quantities of fine cham- 
 pagne. Half an hour later, he was able to 
 give us his address ; and we drove him to his 
 rooms on the Rue de Vaugirard. Once on 
 the sofa in his own den he revived rapidly. 
 
 "If I weren't so drunk," he began, "I'd 
 guess riddle." 
 
 "What riddle?" I asked.
 
 50 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Riddle why Cyril Harley is very drunk," 
 he explained. 
 
 "You fainted from running too hard with 
 Lalou's charette" said Roland; "and I filled 
 you up with brandy." 
 
 "My name," remarked the student, after 
 thinking over this observation, "is architec- 
 ture. What kind of architecture?" 
 
 "Doric," I suggested. 
 
 "Ionic," said he, taking hold of his head, 
 "all volutes at the top. It's most interesting 
 to be intoxicated Ionic column, all volutes 
 at the top. What's little fellow's name?" 
 
 "Roland Elliot," I answered. 
 
 "What's Roland nickname of?" 
 
 "Roland is the nickname for the Childe," 
 said its owner. 
 
 "Childe Roland to the dark tower came," 
 murmured Cyril, drowsily. "I have some- 
 thing, somewhere in my volutes a what? 
 a letter introduction Childe Roland > 
 from someone old Bill Watson tomor- 
 
 row."
 
 EN CHARETTE 51 
 
 "Yes; tomorrow," said the Childe; "we 
 will call tomorrow and see how you are." 
 
 Cyril closed his eyes, snored gently, and 
 awoke. 
 
 "Other chap?" he said, pointing at me. 
 
 "Hugh Lyddon," answered Roland. 
 
 "Stroke," whispered Cyril; "old drunken 
 Yale stroke good-night." 
 
 "I am," he proclaimed, after a short 
 slumber, "an admirable example inebriated 
 Ionic proud creator entirely new dis- 
 order of architecture." 
 
 And he sank into the sleep of fatigue and 
 intoxication. 
 
 We stayed in his rooms, dining on what 
 scraps we found, till after midnight, when 
 his regular breathing and pulse assured us 
 that all was well. 
 
 "He is a fine fellow that," said the In- 
 fant; "and I shall like him. His taste in 
 books is elegant and catholic; he is poor; he 
 smokes (they are all gone, by the way) 
 cigarettes paquet jaune a soixante. And a
 
 52 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 friend of old Bill Watson, to boot! He 
 must be an egregiously bully chap." 
 
 "But," he added later, in doleful accents, 
 as we sauntered through the deserted streets, 
 "there is a fly in the milk, Hugh." 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 "I foresee it all. Cyril is clever. Cyril is 
 charming. Cyril is handsome. We shall 
 make him a friend. We shall make him a 
 Little One. And then" he sighed pro- 
 foundly "he will fall in love with Betty." 
 
 "No," said I, with a jealous (but purely 
 hypothetical) melancholy in my heart, "he 
 will, of course, fall in love with Pruina." 
 
 "With Betty !" he cried, with irritation. 
 
 "With Pruina!" I growled; for I had 
 good reason to feel annoyed. 
 
 Then silence fell; and we parted at his 
 door in a passing shadow of disagreement. 
 
 Idiotic old Infant! Why couldn't he see 
 that it was far better for him that Cyril 
 should love Pruina. 
 
 I (by hypothesis) should suffer, not he !
 
 IV 
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 "/GREETING to your power, Little 
 
 ^^ One," said Aloys Guex-Beny, draw- 
 ing an iron chair across the gravel walk. 
 
 "And to your work, petit" I answered, 
 obedient to the letter of our code. 
 
 As Aloys adjusted his long, gaunt frame 
 to the inadequate chair, I could not forbear 
 smiling at our diminutives. But there was 
 no trace of amusement on that noble, ascetic 
 face. 
 
 "I am glad," he began, "to find you work- 
 ing, as a true poet should work, under the 
 seven-fingered benediction of the marron- 
 niers of our Luxembourg." 
 
 "Thank you," I answered, "that is a sweet 
 and stimulating thought. My work will be 
 the nobler for it."
 
 54 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "No thought of mine," said he; "only a 
 wayward fancy from the Book. And what 
 is your work?" 
 
 "I am sharpening my tools," said I, "and 
 trying to learn to use them. And the more 
 I try-" 
 
 "I know," he interrupted; "before the 
 Book came I also tried to write. Art is 
 long." 
 
 "I am not impressed by its length, Little 
 Aloys," I explained; "but rather by its 
 quintessences of refinement. We humans 
 have but five or six simple emotions, some 
 half dozen attractions and repulsions ; and to 
 phrase these we have, say, fifteen or twenty 
 thousand words that we can tangle into what 
 complexities we please. And each of these 
 words has its history reaching back to man's 
 beginnings, its connotations, its special 
 meaning to the man that uses it, besides the 
 reflected colour it gets from neighbouring 
 words and its place in the phrase sequence. 
 Now, with so little to say and so much to say
 
 THE BOOK 55 
 
 it with, I believe that man, for the next 
 thousand years or so, must perfect his tools. 
 Out of the perfected tool will be born the 
 artist to use it ; and man, in some far future 
 of self-expression, will be finally self- 
 revealed. That is the goal I work for: the 
 word for the word's sake. And nothing else 
 matters." 
 
 He looked at me and shook his head. 
 
 "And your reward?" he asked. 
 
 "The work," said I. 
 
 "Only the work?" 
 
 "No," I confessed ; "perhaps, years hence, 
 there may come a little poem, a little phrase, 
 something that men will remember when I 
 am dead something like 'the desire of the 
 moth for the star' you know, perhaps " 
 
 "I know," said he, with a sympathising 
 smile; "I know. And yet," he hesitated for 
 an instant and then went on, "you are right. 
 A man must obey the call of his own spirit. 
 The word for the word's sake so be it 1 But 
 remember that to be a Word-man you must
 
 56 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 be also a Thing-man. You must write with 
 granite-grit, with steel-filings, with sap of 
 the leaf, with spume of the sea. Flint and 
 steel ! that's your symbol. For what says the 
 Book? 'The sparks of the Spirit leap from 
 the clash of Things.' " 
 
 He was interrupted by the outstretched 
 hand, the dingy shawl and the smile of 
 wrinkled content that receive the rental of 
 the chairs. When we had each paid our ten 
 centimes, Aloys folded his yellow check and 
 put it in his buttonhole. 
 
 "The only order I shall ever wear," said 
 he. "Two sous! and the freedom of a Lux- 
 embourg chair for a whole sunny Parisian 
 day. Two sous foretaste of heaven, Little 
 One! 
 
 "But as to your art," he continued, "be a 
 Thing-man! Hunt for your facts, the flint- 
 iest, sharpest, individualest facts you can 
 find, and hammer 'em together. Hammer 
 'em up and down, right and left, day and 
 night, and let the spirit sparks fall on the
 
 THE BOOK 57 
 
 world. That's art, Little One, the highest 
 art there is ! Take that Pantheon over there" 
 he pointed at the great grey dome lifting 
 above the trees "and clash it against the 
 Brooklyn Bridge. Lord! what a spark you 
 get. Take a king, that helmeted Prussian 
 for example, and pound him against a dry 
 chunk of Daily Bread. More sparks and 
 big ones! Take that priest" he indicated 
 an evil mouth muttering over a breviary 
 "and beat him against Pasteur. There's a 
 shower for you! Take any two things that 
 are hard enough and antithetic enough and 
 you can clash out illumination. Antithesis 
 is the discovery of fire!" 
 
 "Excellent," I exclaimed. "I shall bor- 
 row that idea." 
 
 "And shun abstractions," he went on. 
 "The modern world welters in them. They 
 fill men's minds like an opiate vapour, so that 
 the Real looms like a ghost. Remember al- 
 ways the saying of the Book: 'Beware the 
 Word: it is either Thing or Fiend.' "
 
 58 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "The Book," said I. "I wish you would 
 tell me about it. Little Roland told me that 
 you were writing a wonderful book, but 
 would tell me no more." 
 
 "I wish that Little Pruina were here" 
 my heart stirred with a hypothetical thrill 
 "for she tells of the Book so lovingly, so 
 daughterly. She has a filial love for it. She 
 has only the Book and me in this world. I 
 have only the Book and her. And when I 
 die, she will go on with the work, that is " 
 
 Aloys paused and a shadow like a pain 
 crossed his face. 
 
 "That is" I prompted. 
 
 "That is if she can learn to read it. And 
 it is hard, hard even for me." 
 
 "Pray explain," I begged. "I have vowed 
 to be true to the work you do; and I long 
 to understand it." 
 
 "To understand it," he answered slowly, 
 "we must go far back, back to the mingling 
 of the blood in my veins. My father was a 
 Frenchman from the hot Midi, a true Latin
 
 THE BOOK 59 
 
 in his emotions and the lucid clarity of his 
 mind. He blended perfect daring with per- 
 fect simplicity, the characteristic of France 
 today. France! the nation that discovered 
 radium and still drinks camomile tea! 
 
 "That was my father, Little Hugh; radi- 
 um burning terribly without waste and 
 homely, comforting camomile. 
 
 "And he married my mother; married 
 mystic New England in the morbid, dream- 
 ing descendant of a dozen Puritan divines. 
 
 "I am the son of that union. I am a mys- 
 tic radium that burns out and up into the 
 spirit- world ; and yet, so potent is heredity, 
 I am not indifferent to the camomile of the 
 commonplace. 
 
 "I pass over my babyhood, my boyhood. 
 I hungered ! that was all. Hungered to know 
 the Thing Itself that lives beyond the range 
 of our paltry senses. I sought and found, 
 what every true modern finds, an eviscerated 
 Bible, fetish creeds, and sterile churches. So 
 I turned from all this (never mind the grop-
 
 60 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 ing processes between) and plunged into the 
 vibrations that quiver between the Not-Me 
 without and the Me within. 
 
 "And the revelation came " 
 
 Aloys pointed at the pond behind the grey 
 palace built for Marie de Medicis, the pond 
 that lay sparkling below the terrace where 
 we sat. 
 
 "There," he said, "something that we can- 
 not see blows the white veil of yonder foun- 
 tain into rainbows. The spray drifts far and 
 the children at play laugh as it kisses them. 
 Something touches the limpid blue eye of 
 the water; and it laughs, too, like the eye of a 
 merry maid. Something fills the bright sails 
 of the toy boats ; and they rush through the 
 ripples, while their little captains, shouting 
 with joy, dash around the pond to meet 
 them. Something tosses the leaves of that 
 green grove of plantanes., brings us the per- 
 fume of yonder parterres and the pleasant 
 jangle of the Boule' Miche. What is that 
 something, Little Hugh?"
 
 THE BOOK 61 
 
 "The air/* I answered. 
 
 "The air!" he cried. "The invisible-tan- 
 gible! We feel its cool in the roof of the 
 mouth, its delicious no-scent in the nostrils. 
 The flame of our life burns in its presence, 
 flickers if it grows rare, dies if it lacks. And 
 what do you call it?" 
 
 "The air," I repeated. 
 
 "Ay," said Aloys ; "so it is called by men. 
 But I call it the most transparent garment 
 of the Spirit of Life, or, if you prefer, its 
 most legible, its most unambiguous incarna- 
 tion. Man can read its metaphors in its 
 ghostlike mists, its love and anger in zephyr 
 and tempest. Man's prayers and hymns 
 woiild be dumb without it ; and it is the eter- 
 nal memory, too, of every sound of earth." 
 
 "The eternal memory," I repeated, as I 
 tried to grasp his meaning. 
 
 "Yes. Perhaps you have read the Ninth 
 Bridgewater Treatise? No? It is by Bab- 
 bage, who invented the calculating machine. 
 He writes that the air 'is one vast library, on
 
 62 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 whose pages are forever written all that man 
 has ever said or even whispered. There, in 
 their mutable but unerring characters, mixed 
 with the earliest as well as the latest sighs of 
 mortality, stand forever recorded, vows un- 
 redeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating 
 in the united movements of each particle the 
 testimony of man's changeful will.' ' 
 
 "Now I understand," said I ; "and it is an 
 illuminating thought." 
 
 "Illuminating, yes," said Aloys, "or still 
 better, a magnetising thought, one that 
 makes related thoughts cohere and coherent. 
 When I found it, the air ceased to be air; 
 its passions ceased to be mere metaphors of 
 the poets; its life-supporting breath ceased 
 to be oxygen; its memory ceased to be (what 
 it was to Babbage) waves of eternally cir- 
 cling sound. It became to me, then and for- 
 ever, an incarnation of deity ; and I breathed 
 and breathe the spirit divine." 
 
 Aloys drew in and slowly exhaled a 
 mighty breath.
 
 THE BOOK 63 
 
 "So much I had learned," he continued, 
 "and then I married. For two happy years 
 my wife shared my thoughts and hopes and 
 died in giving birth to Little Pruina. She 
 ought, by the way," he added parentheti- 
 cally, "to be passing here presently on her 
 way from the Sorbonne. Well, one hard 
 winter day in New England (it was shortly 
 before Pruina was born), I found my wife 
 staring at a window-pane covered with the 
 white ferns and leafage of the frost. I 
 spoke ; she did not hear. I touched her hand ; 
 she started and pointed at the window. 'It 
 writes/ she whispered, 'it writes words on the 
 glass.' I looked, but could see nothing save 
 the frost that grew like a tropical forest 
 turned to ice. 'That is Jack Frost, darling/ 
 I said, 'just old Jack Frost.' 'Hush/ she 
 answered, 'it is the blessed air and it writes 
 strange words on the glass. And I cannot 
 read them!' " 
 
 He paused, looking wistfully at the pond, 
 all broken lights under the crisping breeze.
 
 64 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 But I knew that the tender eyes saw through 
 their tears only the frosty window of his old 
 New England home. Poor Little Aloys ! 
 
 "Our baby was born soon after," he went 
 on, "and my dying wife bade me name it 
 Pruina, the Hoar-frost. 'I shall read its 
 writing soon/ she murmured, 'and many 
 strange books besides", many beautiful 
 books!' And then she left me for a little 
 while. Life is eternal ; but happily its stages 
 are very short. 
 
 "So she died, Little Hugh, but her whisper 
 lived on. Lived on in my soul, and became 
 a shout and a hunger. 
 
 "The frost! she was divinely inspired. It 
 is in truth the writing of the air the work 
 of the vibrations of that memory discovered 
 by Babbage, of the emotions we use for 
 metaphors, of the life that burns in our rush- 
 ing blood. The frost writes the book of the 
 air-god !" 
 
 "And you have proved it?" I gasped. 
 
 "And I have proved it," he answered, a
 
 THE BOOK 65 
 
 ring of conquest in his voice; "proved it in 
 the dry light of the scientific method ; proved 
 it by induction and deduction; proved it so 
 that Descartes would accept it, Bacon would 
 admit it, and Mill would use it as an illustra- 
 tion of his famous canons. The thing is 
 surel" 
 
 "I cannot conceive," I began. 
 
 "It is absurdly simple," he interrupted. 
 "One zero day, I filled a small room with the 
 steam of a tea-kettle. That is simple, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 I admitted so much. 
 
 "Then I sat in that room for two hours 
 and shouted 'O' at the top of my voice until 
 the window was covered with frost. And 
 that, too, is simple?" 
 
 "Very," said I. 
 
 "Then, Little Hugh, I photographed all 
 the panes and compared them. Curve by 
 curve, frond by frond, I compared them and 
 found, as I hoped to find, a recurring shape 
 that was stronger than the others. It was
 
 66 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 the phonetic frost-symbol of the long Eng- 
 lish O! 
 
 "Of course, I was months in arriving at 
 this one phonetic. I tried other rooms, ob- 
 ] ong, square, high, low. I used glass of 
 
 ious qualities, colours, thicknesses. And 
 die O was always there. 
 
 "Then I tried A, in the same rooms, on 
 
 the same glass. Victory! The O was gone 
 
 r very rare; and in its place was another 
 
 -ibol, the phonetic of the name-sound of 
 ihe English A; I had applied, as you see, 
 Mills' Second Canon, the Method of Differ- 
 ence." 
 
 I invented and uttered a croaking noise 
 intended to cloak ignorance and flaunt ac- 
 quiescence. 
 
 "These two sounds," he continued, "were 
 now shouted alternately and tested and re- 
 tested in a thousand ways. It took patience, 
 T ittle One; for, consider, my shoutings 
 j^ttled against the vibrations of the whole 
 life of the air, since it first appeared on earth.
 
 THE BOOK 67 
 
 "But I am very, very patient. There are 
 thirty-two elementary sounds in English; 
 and it required years to discover, test and 
 recognise those sounds in the frost writing. 
 Some, aspirate hissings and the like, elude 
 me still. That done, I had to study and re- 
 shape, for my own use, the whole science of 
 phonetics. You see . . ." 
 
 Here Aloys enthusiastically lifted himself 
 above my mental range and disappeared in a 
 mist of strange words. I caught "wave-mo- 
 tions" and "pitch-tones" and "phrase-rela- 
 tions," and, with a feeling of relief, heard 
 much learning as to the complications caused 
 by the nose, mouth and larynx. The larynx, 
 it seems, plays the mischief with phonetics, 
 aided and abetted by the nose. At last he 
 came down to earth with these words : 
 
 "And all these obscure elements I had to 
 trace to their frost effects for purposes of 
 elimination. That is, I tried to do so, and 
 with success enough to give me the final 
 proof I sought, the proof of Results. At the
 
 68 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 end of seventeen years, I could read the 
 frost! badly, to be sure, with gaps and 
 guesses innumerable, but I could read the 
 frost!" 
 
 I shook him hard by his thin hand. I 
 could not help it. The man was so big, so 
 earnest, so real, that his discovery (to me 
 who am no scientist) seemed proved. I ac- 
 cept the wireless telegraph with infant 
 credulity and perfect ignorance why not 
 this? 
 
 "I honour and believe you," I cried. "So 
 this is the Book?" 
 
 "Thank you," he said, nursing his right 
 hand with his left. "May your faith be as 
 strong as your grip. No; this is not the 
 Book, not yet. Alas ! I found, when I came 
 to read, little but banalities. Those that 
 shout the loudest, Little One, are not always 
 the worthiest to be remembered " 
 
 I nodded violently. 
 
 and I got little but roarings, plati- 
 tudes from the pulpit and demagogies from
 
 THE BOOK 69 
 
 the stump. May they melt as the frost 
 melts!" 
 
 I acquiesced heartily. 
 
 "After three years of such inanities, when 
 I had mastered, at least in part, the alphabet 
 of my frost, a change came. It came here in 
 Paris. I caught a phrase, at rare intervals, 
 big with meaning; and these grew more and 
 more frequent until at last the truth broke 
 into my soul like a rush of wings the truth 
 that the air itself, or that which it embodies, 
 was writing direct to me!" 
 
 His words beat violently against the gen- 
 erous limits of my credulity ; then I enlarged 
 the realm of faith a little (why not?) and 
 silently extended a proselyte hand. 
 
 "One finger," he said, smiling, projecting 
 the index; "my old bones fear your young 
 enthusiasms. I am happy, very happy in 
 your belief. Belief! in a direct, concrete, 
 sense-compelling revelation from the spirit 
 world. Life holds no other promise than this 
 nothing else matters."
 
 70 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Was he right, I wondered? Would man 
 indeed harken unto a eff able-ineffable? 
 Would he love 
 
 "See," said Aloys, looking toward the 
 pond; "it might be her mother twenty years 
 ago. See the light on her warm hair and how 
 she moves, slender and girlish, through that 
 ecstasy of Paris sunshine. All her dear 
 mother, my Pruina." 
 
 As I saw her coming, an entangling 
 hypothesis, a net of "supposes" and "ifs," 
 caught my soul; and freedom was only ob- 
 tained by the admission that, in such pre- 
 posterous circumstances, something else or 
 someone else might matter considerably. 
 
 She mounted the white steps, that Pruina, 
 all gold and flush and happy motion, kissed 
 her father and put her soft hand in mine. 
 
 "Greeting to your power, Little One," 
 said she ; and her voice, too, seemed wrought 
 of red gold. 
 
 "And to your work, petite!''
 
 ALCHEMY 
 
 AKE my chair," said Aloys to Pruina, 
 "and tell Little Hugh more about the 
 Book. I want to browse awhile along the 
 arcade of the Odeon. You see," he added, 
 turning an explanatory eye on me, "I try to 
 remember that there are already books in the 
 world." 
 
 "How much have you told him?" asked 
 Pruina. 
 
 "All the historic aspect," he answered, 
 "down to the Book itself. He has the out- 
 line ; you may add the colour." 
 
 As he descended the terrace steps and 
 moved slowly around the pond, he seemed in 
 that shadowless glare to be walking on sun- 
 shine. We saw him stop to look at a baby in 
 
 71
 
 72 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 its hooded carriage, stand for a moment in 
 the blown spray of the fountain with his face 
 upturned, and at last disappear around the 
 corner of the brown palace. 
 
 "Isn't it beautiful," said Pruina, her voice 
 mellow with daughter-love, "to live the life 
 he lives? Nothing seems voiceless to him; 
 and all he hears is refreshing and high." 
 
 "This is my first real talk with him," I an- 
 swered ; "and I feel as if I had been standing 
 before some gracious fire that burns benevo- 
 lently without cracking or snapping or wast- 
 ing. The image is banal, I fear, but it sug- 
 gests the warm content he has left within 
 me." 
 
 "And isn't it beautiful, too," she went on, 
 "to be the daughter of such a man. I share 
 all his thoughts and dreamings, Little 
 Hugh" she spoke the diminutive with a shy 
 smile that added (by hypothesis) not a little 
 to the glow left by Aloys "and even try, in 
 my stupid way, to help him piece together
 
 ALCHEMY 73 
 
 the strange, disordered words he finds in the 
 frost." 
 
 Permitting the bee of hypothesis to gather 
 what honey it might, I said to myself con- 
 fidentially that it was indeed beautiful to 
 be such a daughter. 
 
 Ah, but it was ! The vital gold of her hair 
 and voice, sunlight playing in both, were dis- 
 tilling into strange quintessences, more 
 precious than the dreamings of an alchemist, 
 in the alembic of my heart. Great is the vir- 
 tue of an hypothesis ! 
 
 "And it doesn't matter a bit," she con- 
 tinued, looking at me with her friendly eyes. 
 
 Autumnal eyes (the sorry phrase!) ; eyes 
 of Indian summer, warm and misty, tawny 
 and tender; eyes with the vibrant life of 
 spring and summer behind them. And as 
 they looked at me, another element, I know 
 not what, sank melting with a mist of dizzy 
 vapours in the alembic. Master Alchemist, 
 Little Love, pray be careful of that fragile 
 thing!
 
 74 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "You are not attending," said Pruina. 
 
 "Yes, yes," I protested; "I was attending 
 like a tender. I agree with you that it doesn't 
 matter a bit." 
 
 "But I hadn't finished my question," said 
 she. 
 
 "I know that," I answered volubly, my 
 brain reeling with the fumes aforesaid; "only 
 one thing at a time matters to anybody ; and 
 most things matter to nobody ; so I took the 
 chance of being right. Besides, a gorgeous 
 acquiscence fits better into the colour-scheme 
 of friendship than a blanched judgment." 
 
 "Acquiescences are always pink," com- 
 mented Pruina severely, "sweety-pink; and 
 I don't like them. Now listen. It doesn't 
 matter a bit, does it, whether the air is writ- 
 ing the Book or not, so long as what the 
 Book says is wonderful and true and help- 
 ful?" 
 
 "Not a bit," I agreed heartily. "No one 
 who really works, no true artist, whatever 
 his craft, feels that the results are his. He
 
 ALCHEMY 75 
 
 can train his hand, store his memory, fix his 
 attention, will to work, and put himself into 
 the attitude for work. But that is all; the 
 outcome is none of his. I believe this is true 
 of every grade, from Master Will Shake- 
 speare down to Apprentice Hugh. So it 
 doesn't matter, Miss Pruina " 
 
 She held out her hand. 
 
 "A franc, please," said she, "toward the 
 next feast of the Little Ones. You have 
 violated the letter and spirit of the Rule of 
 the Diminutive." 
 
 "Guilty," I confessed, paying my fine; "I 
 felt rather shy about it. So it doesn't mat- 
 ter, Little Pruina " 
 
 ' Her name for the first time ! Ah, what a 
 stirring in the alembic as the Hoar-frost 
 melted there! 
 
 " whether Little Aloys is writing the 
 book or only transcribing it. The product 
 in either case is none of his. His greatness, 
 like all human greatness, lies in his trans- 
 parency. He lets through the Beyond."
 
 76 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Her cheeks flushed with pleasure at my 
 poor praise. 
 
 O rose-petals ! rose-petals ! melting in that 
 alchemic brew, what tinted vapours, what 
 vertiginous fragrance, fills the alembic! 
 Have a care, Little Master, have a care! 
 
 "Or take the thing simply as a beautiful 
 metaphor," I continued, when I had some- 
 what recovered from the rose-petals, "and 
 it is still true." 
 
 "Sermons in stones?" r.he asked. 
 
 "Precisely. The life of the artist is one 
 long search for metaphors, for the concrete 
 expression of the human emotions. If " 
 
 She laughed (another aureate wonder in 
 the alembic!) and pointed behind me. Under 
 the trees, toddling through the flecks of sun 
 on the gravel, was a tiny lad. He carried a 
 wooden spoon as long as his fat little arm; 
 and his infant desires were centered on a 
 new and marvelous application of that spoon. 
 He wanted to scoop up a sparrow! And no 
 Luxembourg sparrow, however plump and
 
 ALCHEMY 77 
 
 friendly, would allow itself to be scooped. 
 Still, undiscouraged by repeated failure, 
 this great-hearted morsel of a man ap- 
 proached flock after flock of sparrows, 
 scooped gravely, watched their scattering 
 flight with solemn eyes and tottered off with 
 outstretched spoon to the next gathering. 
 
 And we laughed together (add that witch- 
 ing "together" to your mysteries, Little 
 Alchemist!) till hunter and spoon had van- 
 ished on their quest among the grey tree- 
 trunks. 
 
 "If " prompted Pruina. 
 
 "If but I have forgotten what I was 
 trying to say." 
 
 In truth, I was deliciously intoxicated with 
 the perfumed alchemic vapours. Little One, 
 cannot you do your work of transmutation 
 without this disabling inebriety? 
 
 "Metaphors " suggested Pruina. 
 
 "If," said I, striving hard to save the re- 
 mainder of my wits, "if I wanted a metaphor 
 for art, for example, I might take that child
 
 78 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 and his wooden spoon. Art, I might say, is 
 the effort to scoop up a sparrow with a wood- 
 en spoon; the effort to capture a winged 
 thought with a homely instrument. Look at 
 the greatest picture or statue or poem. It 
 is a failure, of course 
 
 "Of course," sighed Pruina. I never be- 
 fore understood the wistful significance of a 
 sigh. 
 
 "Of course," and I also sighed, "yet if the 
 artist has succeeded in hinting the spoon, 
 the effort to scoop and the sparrow, he has 
 (at least I think so) created a work of art. 
 But I fear I'm talking arrant twaddle." 
 
 "It seems quite wise to me," she said kind- 
 ly; "and my poor art I write music, you 
 know is nothing but spoon and frightened 
 sparrows. I can't even show how hard I 
 try to scoop." 
 
 She illustrated with an exquisite hand, 
 making (have a care, Sir, I pray!) a 
 swirling, rosy eddy in the crucible. 
 
 "Yet for all one's failures," said she, her
 
 ALCHEMY 79 
 
 eyes dreaming out on the colour and happy 
 stir before us, "nothing else seems to matter. 
 It's the affection for the thing that counts." 
 
 "It's the love," I assented. 
 
 How the alembic boils below the mantling 
 veil of vapour. Oh, the golden glamour, 
 dear Master, the fragrant colour! 
 
 "It's the love," said she. 
 
 With these words the fumes of the alembic 
 floated upward, pervaded my brain, and I 
 knew that I was marvelously gifted thereby 
 with divine eloquence. A quaint and ex- 
 quisite vocabulary suddenly swam into my 
 being like a shoal of little fish, darting, play- 
 ing, leaping through waves of limpid 
 thought. 
 
 Words? it was as if a casket of jewels 
 emptied there had quickened into the petu- 
 lent, sinuous motions of piscine life. Sap- 
 phires interflashing azure understandings; 
 topazes giving gold for gold; rubies close 
 together and blushingly aware; shy opals, 
 their red hearts aglow, whispering bashful
 
 80 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 chromatics; diamonds, emeralds, crysolites, 
 beryls, hyacinths all swirled, with pris- 
 matic interplay of dainty affection, in my 
 eloquent brain. 
 
 For I was about to be very eloquent. Al- 
 though to a critical and humorous reader the 
 image I have used may suggest a brain like 
 a bowl of goldfish, it brought no such sug- 
 gestion to me. No! I was surely about to 
 be egregiously eloquent. 
 
 The thing was inevitable. Such a poly- 
 chromatic shoal! All the warm, friendly, 
 intimate words; all the filmy, whispering, 
 hinting ones; all the old chivalric, patrician 
 courtesies; all the yearning, sighing, caress- 
 ing ideals of the heart. 
 
 And such a mise en scene! Paris, the very 
 foyer of all tenderness and mother of ardent 
 speech; the Gardens where happy lovers 
 wander forever and the leaves of the mar- 
 ronniers flutter under the amorous rain of the 
 sunshine; the statues, white against the 
 green, of those great queens that greatly
 
 ALCHEMY 81 
 
 loved of old; the marble poets on the lawns 
 whose songs environ us; and the aspiring 
 fountain, and the babies, the sparrows, the 
 shoutings and the easy Gallic laughter. 
 Surely, I shall be finely eloquent fa va tout 
 seull 
 
 Love is my theme, love in its whole rosy 
 history from the Garden of Eve to the 
 Garden of Pruina. Immortal lovers of olden 
 time shall come and go therein; and there 
 shall be shepherds with crooks, and rose- 
 wreathed maidens, and myrtles, and noon- 
 day trystings under a great oak, and the 
 pipings of a rustic flute. And there shall be 
 enchantment there and glamourie almost 
 beyond the poor hintings of words; and it 
 shall all say (but ah! how intangibly, in- 
 effably and, of course, altogether hypotheti- 
 cally!) "Pruina, I love you!" 
 
 So! All is planned, foreseen, even to the 
 faltering, dying fall of the tender climax. 
 I have only to begin. 
 
 I glanced at Pruina. Her eyes were day-
 
 82 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 dreaming. I fixed mine on the blue empti- 
 ness above the veil of the fountain and began 
 my oration. 
 
 "Love is love," said I. 
 
 She did not speak, but moved ever so little. 
 And by the warm Indian Summer in my 
 soul, I knew that she was looking at me 
 kindly. 
 
 An instinct of oratorical reserve told me 
 to emphasize my opening words by a 
 thoughtful silence. 
 
 I followed that by another silence, tense 
 and expectant 
 
 And by another, veiled and mysterious 
 
 Then I spoke again. 
 
 "I wonder," I remarked, "if the little lad 
 scooped up his sparrow at last." 
 
 "I wonder," said Pruina. 
 
 Another silence, asonian, surcharged with 
 blessedness 
 
 "The best proof of a good talk," said the 
 voice of Aloys Guex-Beny, "is an unembar-
 
 ALCHEMY 88 
 
 passed taciturnity; so I need not ask how 
 you have fared." 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "we have talked of the 
 Book and much besides. We have had, as 
 Dr. Johnson used to say, a good talk, Sir." 
 
 "The Book," said he; "I must get back 
 to its enigmas." 
 
 "And I to my spoon and sparrow," said 
 Pruina. 
 
 "And I to my failure," I groaned, tapping 
 my serviette. "Futilities, to be continued." 
 
 "Health to your power, Little One," they 
 chorused. 
 
 "And to your work, petits" 
 
 So they left me, hand in hand. 
 
 But I did not work. That afternoon I 
 wrote the octave and the first tercet of my 
 
 sonnet to Love. 
 
 I 
 
 It was completed later as follows 
 But I forget my pact! those publishers! 
 Besides, it doesn't matter. After all, the 
 poem and my emotions are equally hypo- 
 thetical.
 
 VI 
 
 LES APACHES 
 
 "JfOICI de bans lacets depuis un sou le 
 pair!" 
 
 But the voice proclaiming the impeccable 
 shoe-laces was not the funereal bass mono- 
 tone of the old blind man that stands (in all 
 weathers, poor fellow) at the gates of the 
 Garden, Eden-gates that he never enters. 
 
 For it was a cheerful tenor, the voice, and 
 flagrantly American, the accent. It be- 
 longed to Cyril Harley. 
 
 Three months had passed since the Childe 
 and I pulled him from under the cliarette 
 and left him, an involuntary Silenus, to the 
 slumber of ebriety. 
 
 When he was sober (to save misunder- 
 standing I note that he was always sober), 
 
 84
 
 LES APACHES 85 
 
 we found in him all the virtues, and more, 
 that the Infant had foretold.. A clever 
 architect and a mighty dreamer, he -stirred 
 us by the minglings of his craft and his 
 visions, by the subtleties he read into the* 
 grey facades of Paris, by the spiritualities 
 he promised to build into the living church. 
 We could not always follow him, to be sure ; 
 for he used a verbal algebra that sometimes 
 defied solution. Roland's quip, "the lad of 
 the stimulating equations," is finely descrip- 
 tive. 
 
 He had that highest art of friendship, the 
 art of seeing only the high-lights of human 
 nature and of making those lights intenser. 
 Dignity grew in his presence. "I always 
 meet him feeling Childe and leave him feel- 
 ing Roland," said the merry owner of that 
 name. 
 
 Despite this gift, perhaps because of this 
 gift, Cyril's Parisian friends were few. His 
 art, his reading and his economies (he was 
 forced to extreme frugality) deprived him of
 
 86 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 all comradeship save that of Boheme and 
 that he shrank from. "A Bohemian mind in 
 a Puritan body; that's me," said Cyril, and 
 remained solitary. 
 
 Our coming changed all that. We Little 
 Ones found in him a minikin humour, a 
 whimsic bias, that stamped him Ours. Also, 
 we needed his equations in our 'evening 
 Nurseries. 
 
 Those Nurseries! They had in them the 
 piquancy and salience that spring from 
 antithesis. We were Little Ones, yet prattled 
 of great things. We made the infant word 
 clash with the full-grown thought, and lisped 
 and stuttered high philosophies. From the 
 pages of Mother Goose we reached pudgy 
 hands up to Shakespeare, and scaled alps of 
 cold truth in the history of Jack and Jill. 
 The cosmos was tossed from hand to hand as 
 a pink worsted ball; and we heard sphere- 
 music (for Pruina would have it so) in a 
 lullaby. As 'we compared the dolls of Betty 
 and Roland, Praxiteles trembled and Rodin
 
 LES APACHES 87 
 
 grew pale. Nothing human escaped our 
 prying baby curiosity, our nursery meta- 
 phors. A common rubber rattle, shaken by 
 the Infant, became the cogito ergo sum of 
 Descartes. "Me rattles," said he, at the 
 close of a long discussion, "me rattles; so I 
 guess me is" an immemorial phraselet. 
 
 As we played thus in the kindergarten of 
 truth, Aloys (who could not well ape the 
 baby) beamed on us comprehendingly, let- 
 ting fall from time to time some words from 
 the great Book, words that always served as 
 the starting point for new chatter, fugitive 
 and gravely gay, on the eternal quest of man 
 or the elusive verities of art. In good sooth, 
 they were something to hear, the epic bab- 
 blings of our Nurseries ! 
 
 Plainly we had need of Cyril, both for his 
 word and his craft. We would buy him a 
 box of blocks; and he should build and 
 burble lustily. 
 
 And thus it was, in answer to our need, 
 that Cyril stood at the gate of the Garden,
 
 88 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 selling shoe-laces to all the world. High 
 Priest Roland had devised a new initiation 
 
 "Void de bons lacets depuis un sou le 
 pair!" chanted Cyril. 
 
 "Give me my pair," said I, handing him a 
 sou. "How do you like it?" 
 
 "It's colossal, except for the police. If 
 I'm pinched the guillotine! you make 
 three." 
 
 "Three what, Cyril?" 
 
 "Three Little Ones. That Roland-thing 
 sends one along every half hour. Miss 
 Brown was the last, a blue-checked angel. 
 And I've sold a lot of laces besides. All to 
 girls. Brown-eyed midinettes. Scientific 
 problem for you why do only brown-eyed 
 girls want shoe-laces?" 
 
 "But Betty Brown," I objected, "has the 
 whole sky under her lashes." 
 
 "True, Mr. Poet; but she was sent by the 
 Roland-thing, and not impelled by brown- 
 eyed desire for laces. Say, I like your com- 
 pany, Hugh Lyddon, but "
 
 LES APACHES 89 
 
 "But?" 
 
 "Your presence is a restraint on trade. 
 See the brown-eyes coming. "Void de bons 
 lacets depuis un sou le pair" 
 
 At this hint I left him. An hour and a 
 half later, at the Colonne des Baisers, he 
 was made a Little One. 
 
 That evening, to mark the event, we all 
 went to the Opera Comique (prix populaire, 
 of course) to hear Madame Butterfly. All, 
 that is, save Aloys, who was moored at home 
 by the anchor of his fixed idea. 
 
 I found him, when I reached the pretty 
 apartment that overlooked the Garden from 
 the rue d' Assas, busy with a cubical com- 
 plexity of plate glass, a brazen engine he 
 called an air-pump, and an oily, colourless 
 liquid which he introduced to me as sulphuric 
 acid. The air-pump seemed a polished crea- 
 ture; but the aspect of the acid was unin- 
 gratiating. 
 
 I said so. 
 
 "Yes," he answered; "it's the vitriol that
 
 90 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 certain parisiennes throw into the faces of 
 their successful rivals. It burns and dis- 
 figures." 
 
 "I hope it won't explode," I said, casting 
 an anxious glance at the disconcerting loveli- 
 ness of Pruina. Observe the effect of stirring 
 a poet's love of colour and light with the 
 spoon of hypothesis. Pruina, after three 
 months of comradeship, after all the juvenili- 
 ties of the Nursery, was still disconcerting. 
 When she appeared, reason became a mist; 
 as she drew near mirage! Then arose, as 
 in that first morning in the Garden, discord 
 between mind and tongue. My brain was 
 filled with corruscating eloquence my 
 mouth with niaiserie. The Childe often be- 
 rated me. 
 
 "With me, with Cyril," said he, "you are 
 fairly sane and sometimes rather brilliant. 
 With Pruina your mind wriggles like a pet 
 spaniel." 
 
 "Bully metaphor!" I exclaimed. "I have 
 watched it wriggle with the cold interest of a
 
 LES APACHES 91 
 
 scientist. It's just an experiment, you know ; 
 besides" I hurried on to block his protest 
 "y u are a parallel case. Witness your 
 fatuities with Betty Brown. We both should 
 be brayed for fools in a mortar." 
 
 "Why a mortar?" said he. "Such asses as 
 we will bray almost anywhere." 
 
 This idiocy will show, perhaps, the well- 
 spring of my banality, 
 "I hope it won't explode." 
 
 "No danger," said Aloys. "This is Carre's 
 refrigerating process, which I have adapted 
 to my purposes. You see I put water in 
 here and exhaust the air. That makes the 
 water evaporate. I dry the rarefied air with 
 the acid. That continues the evaporation. 
 This causes cold; and when the temperature 
 is sufficiently reduced frost forms on the 
 glass. Voila!" 
 
 "I have sometimes wondered," I re- 
 marked, watching (it was more beautiful 
 than any frost) Pruina putting on a pair of 
 new gloves, "how you got frost in Summer.
 
 92 NOTHING ELSF, MATTERS 
 
 It is an enchanting process." This referred, 
 perhaps-, to Pruina's cLiinty manipulations. 
 
 "Hardly enchanting," he corrected. "Let 
 us say interesting. An interesting process. 
 I might prefer the compression method " 
 
 "The compression method might serve," I 
 said, as Pruina struggled with a tight finger. 
 
 " the method of Perkins, Twining and 
 others, using anhydrous ammonia, methyl 
 chloride and so on. But the machine is large 
 and clumsy " 
 
 "Nothing large or clumsy would do," I 
 agreed heartily. Pruina must wear fives. 
 and requires considerable power 
 
 "It does require some power," said I. It 
 did, rather. 
 
 " and moreover, it would not be practical 
 for traveling." 
 
 "Decidedly not." White kid, glace., for 
 traveling indeed ! 
 
 "Of course," he continued, "these mechanic 
 means are but makeshifts after all. One gets 
 results, to be sure "
 
 LES APACHES 93 
 
 "Yes," I admitted, as the glove took at 
 last the mould of the perfect hand; "one gets 
 exquisite results." 
 
 " but the mise en scene is not the same. 
 I prefer nature " 
 
 "So do I," I murmured, watching the 
 eclipse of the red-gold hair by a vapourous 
 scarf. 
 
 " and when we go to Les Avants this 
 winter, I think, even if the writing is the 
 same, that I shall translate it better in the 
 large air with the white peaks above me." 
 
 "I am sure of it, Little Aloys," I said 
 enthusiastically. "High thoughts should fly 
 in high altitudes." 
 
 Les Avants ! we are going there together, 
 we three, in December; and the vision 
 of snowy summits creates the anomalous 
 emotioi. of a varm (but hypothetical) glow 
 in my heart. Les Avants! 
 
 "I'm ready at last, Little Hugh," said 
 Pruina. "Do not sit up for me, Little 
 Father; for we may be rather late."
 
 94 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Rather late it is a shuddering thought; 
 but had Pruina's prophecy not been ful- 
 filled, this story would not have been written. 
 
 Shuddering, indeed ! the poor world left 
 standing, inextinguishably bored, in the Bal- 
 zacian sands (whereof each grain is ennui) 
 with never a waving oasis of Hypothesis, of 
 Strategics, of the Beamy Jimmy or the 
 Bottle of L'Ombre-qui-passe. Sapristi! It 
 is well we were late. True, the malignant 
 shadow of Cadwalader Bent (who even now 
 seems unreal) might still have crossed the 
 path of Cyril, might even have blotted his 
 sunshine forever ; but Roland Elliot, lacking 
 the chance that made us late, would not have 
 moved from a gallant deed to a whimsic 
 crime, and thus (to thy undying glory, O 
 Childe!) become the hero of this chronicle. 
 
 However that may be, late we were; and 
 it fell thus: After poor Madame Butterfly 
 had ended her sanguinary writhings across 
 the stage (in most lusty voice), we sought 
 forgetfulness of her sufferings in the choco-
 
 LES APACHES 95 
 
 late of (seek not to know the name!) 
 Chocolate, bien entendu, was the artless 
 beverage of the Little Ones. Not that the 
 chocolate was artless, albeit with tricksy art 
 it brutalized its advent. It came in a huge, 
 dinted can, wrought of a dingy metal, small- 
 er above than below, a can that slobbered 
 from a tawny lip and steamed ecstatic. He 
 was stirred, the can, with a decomposing 
 wooden spoon; and one could hear it scrape 
 through the ancient, unctuous layers of 
 suave brown that lined him. Then, when 
 those rare juices were blended, they were 
 poured thickly into the thick white cups ; and, 
 on my Little Honour, no god of Olympus or 
 Valhalla ever lipped a nobler brew. 
 
 On the tonic of that decoction (and be- 
 cause taxis are extravagant and omnibuses 
 are complets) the Little Ones must walk 
 home. It chanced, his heroic destiny so 
 ordering it, that Roland led the way with 
 Betty; while Pruina, Cyril and I loitered 
 behind.
 
 96 NOTHING E1.SE MATTERS 
 
 The walk, qua walk, deserves no record. 
 I was happy, en hypothese, and probably 
 idiotic ; but that is my affair. Our talk, qua 
 talk, deserves no record either. 
 
 The five Little Ones, bracketed as afore- 
 said, kept in touch until they reached, on the 
 rue des Pyramids, the rue St. Honor e. 
 There they were checked by a caravan of 
 market carts, heaped with carrots, turnips 
 and other comestibles, snailing its slow way 
 to Les Halles. That is to say, three of the 
 five were thus delayed. Roland and Betty 
 managed to "nip through." So he told us 
 afterwards. 
 
 The caravan having passed, we proceeded 
 leisurely, until we reached the statue of 
 Jeanne d' Arc. There we began to run. 
 Madly. 
 
 There was cause. Betty stood alone in the 
 middle of the rue de Rivoli, shrieking for 
 help in English and French and beckoning 
 frenetic. Cyril and I sprinted first to her, 
 and there became mere pelting continua-
 
 LES APACHES 97 
 
 tions of her gestures. These led us to the 
 balustrade and steps that mark the Tuileries 
 station of the Metropolitan!. 
 
 It was tragi-comic, that sidewalk stage 
 under the lamp light. A slender old man in 
 evening dress lay quite still, his grey head 
 lolling unpleasantly over the curb, his legs 
 wide a-straddle. Another, far from still, lay 
 prone ; and on this figure rode the Childe, as 
 if (like a true Little One) he were playing 
 horse. Occasionally when his mount bucked 
 too violently, he pounded its head with the 
 solid cane he was carrying. 
 
 "Hugh," he remarked calmly, "if you 
 wouldn't mind taking my place on this 
 broncho, Cyril and I will apply some first 
 aid to the injured." 
 
 I took the seat so courteously offered ; and, 
 although the Apache became instantly static, 
 his language took on a high voltage. What 
 he said, being relevant only from the side- 
 light it throws on the writer, is omitted be- 
 cause (let us say) of its want of literary
 
 98 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 form. Presently, to make him more por- 
 table, I rose and, with a knee between his 
 shoulders, tied his wrists behind him with my 
 handkerchief. An old sea-captain once 
 taught me the trick of this ; and the Apache, 
 if I understood him, said that it was ef- 
 fectual. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Childe and Cyril had ar- 
 ranged the old gentleman in a less tragic 
 attitude, and were trying, under Betty's in- 
 structions, to restore him to consciousness. 
 They were interrupted by a cry from Pruina. 
 
 "They're coming back," said she. 
 
 We started up. Snaking rapidly along 
 the edge of the gardens of the Tuileries came 
 four silhouettes, advancing (observe how the 
 dramatic instinct stirs in the blood of this 
 France) exactly like bravoes on the stage. I 
 felt, mixed with a chuckling amusement, a 
 shadow of the old thrill that preceded the 
 big games. 
 
 "Team work!" I shouted. "Down into 
 the Metro, girls! Infant, guard your
 
 LES APACHES 99 
 
 broncho! Cyril, cross the street, run under 
 the arcade, and take them in the flank when 
 I get them in play. And we'll rough-house 
 poor old Harvard." 
 
 So (take notice, Alma Mater!) I went to 
 battle singing "Boola." 
 
 Now for two months past I had been 
 working in the salle de boxe of M , a 
 master of self-defense with the cane. He 
 had said that very morning that I was "al- 
 ready not bad," removing vainglory there- 
 after by shrewd raps. He had but one theme, 
 into which he eternally modulated "Keep 
 moving and swing for the legs." 
 
 Armed with this advice and my cane of 
 unbreakable cornouiller, I charged the dra- 
 matic silhouettes. They spread out as I 
 came; and I saw light flash on steel. I drove 
 at their right flank (boola-boola!) the man 
 next the park railings, so that as they closed 
 in Cyril might take them in the rear. 
 
 "Keep moving and swing for the legs;" 
 and I kept moving (boola-boola!) and
 
 100 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 swung with all my might (boola!) . The un- 
 breakable cornouiller hit something and 
 broke ; and a man fell, howling. I dashed at 
 the biggest (boola!), tackling low; and we 
 went down together. Lord! but it was like 
 old times! 
 
 I fancied for an instant that my Apache 
 was Harvard's quarter-back (beg pardon, 
 old man!) and quite forgot about the knives 
 of his allies. 
 
 But Cyril dM not forget. I heard a 
 hideous Indian war-whoop and saw another 
 man go down. 
 
 The quarter-back became limp; the re- 
 maining Apache made a swift-footed escape ; 
 and our amusing romp was over. 
 
 The quarter-back was secured with Cyril's 
 handkerchief, and his victim (whose crown 
 was cracked) with our combined white ties. 
 The right flank man needed no bonds. M 
 was right as to "swinging at the legs;" but 
 I advise a heavier cornouiller , say two centi- 
 metres in diameter.
 
 LES APACHES 101 
 
 "They look like horizontal atlantes, mis- 
 called caryatides," said architectural Cyril, 
 after we had dragged our quarry to the 
 Metro station and arranged them symmet- 
 rically. 
 
 The comment of the police (lucky that 
 they came no sooner!) took the conventional 
 form. 
 
 "Diables d' Anglais!" they cried, as they 
 opened the eternal notebook. 
 
 "We are not Anglais" said the patriotic 
 Childe, "but Americains." 
 
 "Amerique du Sud?" queried an agent. 
 
 "Non!" shouted the Childe. "Citoyens des 
 Etats-Unis!" 
 
 "Tiens!" exclaimed the agent, pointing to 
 our prey; "but it is altogether like your 
 Roosevelt, fa." And he wrote diligently. 
 
 Then we learnt, under the policeman's 
 questioning, of the genesis of the fray. The 
 heroic Childe, it seemed, on reaching the 
 statue of La Pucelle, had heard a cry and 
 saw two Apaches pounce on an old gentle-
 
 102 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 man. Reckless of odds, he had clubbed the 
 villains most unscientifically, until one fell 
 and the other ran for reinforcements. Thus 
 we have a veridical history of the capture of 
 "Le Rouge Cabot" by Childe-Roland-to- 
 the-dark-tower-came Elliot. 
 
 At this place, marked by the eclipse of the 
 official note-books, I insert a stage-direction, 
 "Enter the villain." My own whimsy this 
 phrase ; not a guide-post to the reader ! For 
 albeit I have eyed him, heard him, touched 
 him, traced his malign effects, yet Cadwala- 
 der Bent remains for me a filmy phantom, or 
 (in the cant of the critics) unconvincing. I 
 cannot make him real, though he was, 
 Heaven knows, real enough to the Infant. 
 
 Even his voice, when I heard it first, was 
 the merest metaphor a piece of velvet, say, 
 royal purple once, but stained by evil use, 
 faded and old. 
 
 "And to whom, fair ladies," said the vel- 
 vet drawl, "am I to be grateful for the 
 dubious pleasure of being still alive?"
 
 LES APACHES 103 
 
 Betty indicated the Childe. 
 
 "My plump and exiguous saviour," con- 
 tinued the voice, "accept my temperate 
 thanks for the undesirable gift of vitality. I 
 am, as you may perhaps find"^ and the 
 voice's owner struggled to his feet "a man 
 that always pays, some day, somehow, both 
 friends and enemies." 
 
 A sneering white face, like that of some 
 mocking courtier of Louis Seize; the upper 
 lip marked by a small, grey, excessively 
 curled moustache ; the eyelids drooping over 
 filmy eyes ; the form meagre and graceful 
 such was the man that took the Childe's 
 hand. 
 
 "I think," he said, "that I shall mention 
 you favourably in my prayers tonight" he 
 laughed hissingly. "On what name, my 
 heroic youth, shall I crave blessings at the 
 throne of grace?" 
 
 "My name," said the Infant, "is Richard 
 Elliot. But I don't want to be rude, of 
 course but, if it is quite the same to you,
 
 104 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 I'd rather be excused the benefit of your 
 prayers." 
 
 The old gentleman hissed approvingly. 
 
 "And why?" he asked. 
 
 "Not sure of their destination," answered 
 Roland. 
 
 "Excellent,"' murmured the other; "the 
 gods, who are nothing if not ironic, have 
 shaped us for friends. So prove it, subtle 
 Mr. Elliot, by finding a taxi and coming 
 home with me. I am, notwithstanding the 
 ministration of these fair and virtuous dam- 
 sels, to whom" he bowed with ceremony 
 "I hereby express my thanks, somewhat 
 shaken." 
 
 "You will excuse me," said Roland grave- 
 ly to the girls, "if I leave you and assist 
 Mr. . . ." 
 
 "Mr. Bent, Cadwalader Bent, and your 
 most humble servant," said he. 
 
 I heard Cyril, who stood near me, swearing 
 softly and continuously after this, until, one 
 taxi having departed with the Childe and the
 
 LES APACHES 105 
 
 unconvincing Bent, and two others with the 
 agents and the inefficient Apaches, we con- 
 tinued our homeward way. 
 
 Then Cyril explained. "Cadwalader Bent 
 is my father's first cousin; and (your little 
 pardon, ladies!) he is a damned rascal. He 
 and I are the only living descendants of 
 my grandfather, John Harley. Rich tea 
 merchant, that grandpa. Said to have 
 souchonged and oolonged himself into a 
 nervous grave. Somehow (I know nothing 
 of law) Cad Bent choused my dear father 
 sweethearted soul! out of his share of the 
 tea-leaves. So my father and mother lived 
 and died poor, leaving no treasure but the 
 son that is I. But Cad wasn't after the 
 money alone. Something behind! Mother 
 hinted it once. Some old, devilish hate that 
 made Cad gloat over their poverty and let 
 them know it. I wish," concluded Cyril; 
 and he seemed sincere, "that the Infant had 
 let those comparatively virtuous Apaches 
 rid the world of Cad Bent."
 
 VII 
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 
 
 " T^NTREZ!" said a weary voice when I 
 knocked at a door au cinquieme, 39 
 Rue Bonaparte. 
 
 It was a bloodshot, unshaven Infant that 
 greeted me, an Infant in an Isabella linen 
 blouse by way of dressing gown, boiling 
 water over a tin spirit lamp for his matutinal 
 coffee. 
 
 "Hail hero!" said I. 
 
 "Hero indeed I wish to God that I 
 hadn't saved that old rascal. What time is 
 it?" 
 
 "Nearly noon; and I am come, O valiant 
 Roland, to offer you a luncheon, a small 
 feast of appreciation, at shall we say 
 Voisins?" 
 
 106
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 107 
 
 "We shall indeed; but I must shave first, 
 though," he said, dipping a thermometric 
 finger in the hot water. 
 
 "You'll be-nose and be-ear yourself, In- 
 fant. See your fingers twiddle?'* 
 
 "I don't blame them. They got to sleep 
 at five. Bent kept me up for nearly three 
 hours, smoking wonderful perfectos and 
 drinking assorted lush." 
 
 "He also appreciates " 
 
 "He appreciates nothing," cried Roland, 
 putting soap in a coffee cup. "I never in my 
 life met such a man. Where's my shaving- 
 brush?" 
 
 After a long search, he shouted, "I have 
 it," and pulled it out of a shoe. 
 
 "That's a mem'oria technica," he explained. 
 "Just as I was dropping off to sleep last 
 night a new paint-theme came to me, a dainty 
 description of a breeze playing in Betty's 
 hair. So, half asleep, I dropped the brush 
 in the shoe to remind me. Brush suggests 
 hair, you see. Wait, I'll sketch it."
 
 108 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "No," I cried, "you shall not. You are 
 rather hysteric. Your hysteria will get into 
 those impish fingers of yours. I know you, 
 Infant; and I won't look. Shave! or no 
 Voisin." 
 
 He prepared the lather. 
 
 "And define your Bent," I added. 
 
 "Clever as the devil, Hugh, but with a 
 sort of warp, or twist, or kink in his nature. 
 He jolly well gave me the woolies." 
 
 As his round eyes were all I could see 
 through his fleece of suds the slang was not 
 inept. 
 
 "Just a bad man," I suggested. 
 
 "No," said he, producing, much to my 
 relief, a safety razor; "not just a bad man. 
 Rather a man that likes to be bad, glories in 
 badness and doesn't believe in goodness." 
 
 "Curious," I remarked, "for most evil do- 
 ings disguise themselves as high moralities; 
 witness the Inquisition, the burning of 
 Bruno, the Salem witchcraft, the " 
 
 "Witness your grandmother!" he inter-
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 109 
 
 rupted, scraping vigourously. "But Cad- 
 walader Bent has no such self-deceptions 
 (scrape). He is a damned (scrape) bad 
 (scrape) man (scrape) ! And he knows it!" 
 ^Scrape, scrape.) A safety razor, it may 
 not be generally known, makes a potent in- 
 strument of accompaniment and emphasis. 
 
 "Then Shakespeare is right and I am 
 wrong," said I. 
 
 "Not impossible," he agreed dryly; "but 
 why?" 
 
 "Because I have always held that 
 Richard's 'I am determined to prove a vil- 
 lain' was false to human nature." 
 
 "He probably knew some Elizabethan 
 Bent," said Roland. 
 
 "Perhaps. He was, judging from the 
 sonnets, a man of some experience. But 
 what form does Bent's evil take, Infant?" 
 
 "A satanic je ne sals quoi" he answered, 
 washing his face; "he sneers at everything 
 decent. His rooms in the Boulevard Male- 
 sherbes are full of art treasures; and he
 
 110 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 mocks at art. His shelves are full of rare 
 books; and he despises literature." 
 
 "Beast!" 
 
 "Beast," agreed Roland. "La Roche- 
 foucauld seems his only genuine passion. 
 He has the editio princeps of 1665 and every 
 French edition since. Or so he said." 
 
 "Well, that at least is a worthy affection." 
 
 "Not at all," he contradicted; "he loves 
 La Rochefoucauld because of his deification 
 of self. A man, said Cad, who could hold 
 in his hand all the threads of self could play 
 with the world like a puppet show. This was 
 towards the end of our talk and he spoke as 
 if he had my own particular thread round his 
 little finger. Brrr but I hate that man !" 
 
 "But, Childe," I said consolingly, "after 
 all, you need not see him again." 
 
 "A constant eye," he said solemnly, taking 
 off his blouse; "I shall have to keep a con- 
 stant eye on the old sinner. You'll think so 
 too before I finish. Thus far you've only had 
 the bare outline."
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 111 
 
 As his plump form, the blouse removed, 
 was inadequately attired in a pair of carpet 
 slippers, I could not help saying: 
 
 "The bare outline, old man, rather needs 
 training down than filling out. Shall we 
 give up Voisin?" 
 
 "Jamais de la vie!" he cried, "I was 
 mighty glad of my solidity last night. 
 Besides, that is nothing sillier than a circular 
 man that wants to be an angle and with the 
 angles stand." And he began to dress, add- 
 ing irrelevantly as he did so, "I washed when 
 I got up." 
 
 "Hygienic and polite," I agreed; "more- 
 over, according to Sir Walter, 'the rose is 
 sweetest washed with morning dew.' But 
 continue." 
 
 "Well, after an hour of rambling talk (he 
 talks well, the villain), he said suddenly, 
 'And who was the blue-eyed nurse, Mr. 
 Elliot?' " 
 
 "How did he know?" I asked. 
 
 "By her touch, he said. And then he asked
 
 me in that satiny, Satanic voice of his whether 
 she returned my penchant for her." 
 
 "He has eyes, your Mephisto." 
 
 "But how did he guess?" 
 
 "Because you also have eyes, Infant." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Barometric eyes that show what the 
 weather is in your soul." 
 
 "Develop, poetic Hugh! Knowing your 
 college record in physics, I want you to put 
 sail on that metaphor till it wrecks on the 
 reef of ignorance." 
 
 "Barometric eyes ... let me consider. 
 There is, I think, a vacuum somewhere in a 
 barometer, probably on top. Your vacuum, 
 Roland, is also on top." 
 
 "Not bad." 
 
 "The barometric vacuum is a mere lack of 
 air; the Rolandic vacuum is a mere lack of 
 Betty. How is that for a man that flunked 
 physics and is proud of it?" 
 
 "Chouette! But go on. I wait the 
 wreck."
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 113 
 
 "Now when Betty appears she makes 
 halcyon weather in your heart and and 
 your barometric optics glow with amorous 
 idolatry." 
 
 "Wrecked! a barometer never glows 
 with amorous idolatry." 
 
 "It must, Infant such a mercurial tem- 
 perament! But anyway, jesting apart, it 
 was your eyes that bewrayed your secret to 
 the satanic Bent. What did you say?" 
 
 "I denied it, of course; and he laughed 
 that hiss-hiss laugh he affects." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "And then he asked me about the blond 
 youngster, meaning Cyril. His voice 
 changed ; he assumed an air of the simplest, 
 heartiest, old-gentlemanly interest. 'A 
 young architect; ah! the noble career. Poor? 
 that doesn't matter; he will work the 
 harder and aim the higher. Industrious? 
 Clever? Virtuous? Excellent! just what 
 I would wish a boy, if I had one, to be!' 
 Well, Hugh, I rather thawed under this
 
 114 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 change of manner (he is a clever devil) and 
 told him all I knew about old Cyril. When 
 I finished, Cad leaned back in his chair and 
 hissed like a serpent, 'Cyril Harley!' said 
 he, 'Cyril Harley.' I had not mentioned 
 Cyril's name to him." 
 
 "Cyril told me that Cad is his first cousin," 
 I observed, "once removed." 
 
 "I wish," cried he violently, "that he were 
 once removed to" mentioning an obsoles- 
 cent country that not fifty years ago ranked 
 as a First Class Power and is now reduced to 
 the grade of a mere Buffer State. 
 
 "Infant," I said, "permit me to suggest 
 that your profane explosions and alleged 
 jeux d'esprit destroy the constructive ele- 
 ments of your tale. I get an uneasy sense 
 that there is a cloudy menace about Cadwal- 
 ader Bent, but no act or word on which to 
 predicate it. You open a door, roar 'Enter 
 the villain,' and no villain appears." 
 
 "That is all I get myself just a vague 
 fear."
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 115 
 
 "But, Infant, what did he say or do ? You 
 are like certain novelists that laboriously de- 
 scribe the souls of their dramatis personae, 
 their vices, virtues, penchants, springs of 
 action, and never worry about their words 
 or actions afterwards. What did Bent say 
 or do?" 
 
 "I can't remember every blessed word of a 
 three-hour talk, Mr. Realist." 
 
 "Stop! I am an Idealist, thou slanderer." 
 
 "You would be something with a big I 
 in it," he retorted. "But whatever you may 
 be, Cadwalader Bent is dangerous in himself 
 and dangerous to Cyril." 
 
 " Search your memory, old man, for little 
 diagnostic facts. You said, for example, 
 that Bent hissed and laughed and repeated 
 Cyril's name. That's what I want, little in- 
 dicative facts." 
 
 "Then be thankful for what you get ah! 
 that reminds me of something he said about 
 gratitude. 'You saved my life/ said Bent,
 
 116 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 'and, therefore, by all the rules you should 
 like me better than I like you.' ' 
 
 "La Rochefoucauld," I remarked. 
 
 "Probably. Then Bent proceeded to con- 
 tradict his maxim. 'But in our case,' said 
 he, 'I like you better than you like me. Why? 
 Because there is even a sweeter passion than 
 self-esteem hate! Moreover, you embody 
 an idea that has long been in my mind. You 
 are poor ; therefore you can be bought. You 
 are virtuous; therefore will become a hypo- 
 crite. You are a loyal friend in poverty; 
 therefore you will become a secret enemy in 
 wealth. You will serve my ends, Roland 
 Elliot; so I like you.'" 
 
 "What was the reply of Roland Elliot?" 
 
 "I got angry and told him that if he were 
 younger I'd punch his head." 
 
 "And he?" 
 
 "Hissed, damn him; simply grinned and 
 hissed," said the Infant, with an emphasis 
 that broke a shoe-string. "There it goes 
 again. I'll use Cyril's initiation lace"
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 117 
 
 which he proceeded to do "and, speaking of 
 Cyril, what does 'intestate' mean?" 
 
 "In, not; testari, to make a will," I an- 
 swered. 
 
 "I thought so. Bent remarked that he 
 was worth half a million. His exchequer 
 didn't interest me; so I grunted; and he 
 made about fifty smoke-rings by way of 
 marking time. Then, before I left, he said, 
 'If I should die intestate Cyril Harley would 
 get that half million.' And hissed. 'But I 
 won't die intestate.' And hissed again. 
 
 "It's no use, Infant," said I. "Bent rests 
 nebulous. He's not real. No real villain 
 would confide such things to a perfect 
 stranger. Bent is utterly unconvincing." 
 
 "You act as if he were a character in a 
 story. He isn't ! and he's a very real piece 
 of villainy. He's weaving a web, and these 
 sayings of his are threads in it. An infernal 
 web. Why, when we parted, he took me by 
 the hand and said: 'No, Roland Elliot, I 
 shall not die intestate now/ And I heard
 
 118 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 that hiss-hiss follow me all the way down 
 stairs till I cried Cordon! to the concierge." 
 
 "Unconvincing," I grumbled; "but per- 
 haps he will make you his heir." 
 
 "Then I'll give the money to Cyril," he 
 said stoutly, adding with a sigh, "and dear 
 Betty." 
 
 Poor old Infant; always that fly in the 
 milk! 
 
 "And now you see," he concluded, "why I 
 must watch Bent. Je suis la, moi! and he 
 shall not hurt Cyril." 
 
 And he clapped on his hat fiercely and 
 shook a round white fist Bent- ward. 
 
 "Bravo! and may Voisin give you strength 
 for the battle. Personally, though, I am en- 
 thusiastic about Bent. We needed him. We 
 were undramatic Little Ones, content with 
 our toys of art and words and thought. 
 Now, it is 'Enter the giant Blunderbore.' 
 By the way, shall you tell Cyril?" 
 
 "What do you think?"
 
 A VAGUE VILLAIN 119 
 
 "I think not. We'll make it our affair, the 
 business of Roland and Hugh, limited." 
 
 "Good! It's our affair," said the Childe, 
 as he locked his door.
 
 VIII 
 
 LOVE 
 
 "TTAPPY days!" I began if I could 
 not talk with Pruina I could at least 
 read my own work to her. "Happy days! 
 and, what is so sadly rare, days that were 
 conscious of their own happiness. The eyes 
 of life are presbyopic; youth looks forward 
 to manhood, age looks back to youth, with 
 the same clear vision and the same panting 
 desire. 'Fulfilment waits there/ cries the 
 one; 'Heaven was there,' croaks the other; 
 and neither sees, because of this focal defect, 
 that heaven and fulfilment, exquisite and 
 vital, are forever dancing together on the 
 indivisible mote we call the present." 
 
 Pruina's eyes, visioning into the stirring 
 
 120
 
 LOVE 121 
 
 leafage beyond the Colonne des Baisers, 
 turned for one assenting instant to mine. 
 
 "Platitudes?" I continued. "Yes; and of 
 the flattest. And greatly said heretofore by 
 great masters of verse and prose; and in- 
 geniously diluted, with much edifying mar- 
 gent, by watery commentators. But after 
 all, be this said in its behalf, is it not the very 
 flatness of a platitude that makes it so 
 favourite a promenade for indolent or gouty 
 souls ? The old sun shines there ; the place is 
 much frequented; the atrophied climbing 
 muscles feel no ache; and even a palsied 
 creed, in its bath chair, may continue its far 
 niente. There is much repose in a platitude. 
 
 "Even the Book " 
 
 "I see," said Pruina; "you are writing of 
 the present as if it were already auld lang 
 syne." 
 
 "Gold," I stammered (the sun, that rare 
 old placer-miner, was panning out the treas- 
 ure of her hair) "gold glisters brightest in 
 the gray years."
 
 122 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Even the Book itself," I continued, to 
 avoid further idiocies, "is not all snow peaks. 
 There are levels. 'The lens of life' it says 
 with charming gallicism, r is of a dimpleness!' 
 a saying that the Little Ones played with 
 merrily in the Nursery. Roland, the rascal, 
 treated the thing lightly. And he our 
 hierophant! 'Man first sees life,' he para- 
 phrased, 'when he notices a dimple.' I 
 joined the others, of course, in chiding him 
 for his frivolity (I had almost said, pro- 
 fanity) buW 
 
 "But what?" asked Pruina; for I hesi- 
 tated. 
 
 "What follows," said I, "is irrelevant, a 
 mere personal comment on the Infant's fool- 
 ishness." 
 
 In my heart I agreed with him; for 
 Pruina, as well as Betty, has very desirable 
 dimples. 
 
 "Pruina," I read, skipping some lines, 
 "who loves the widest effects of light and 
 colour, saw a misprint, or a misfrost, in the
 
 LOVE 123 
 
 Book. 'The lens of life (and the real lens 
 of life is art),' she corrected, 'is of a simple- 
 ness.' But the last word was cried down as 
 a hybrid; and I dared not bring Shake- 
 speare to its defense. We permitted no fetich 
 worship. Little Will was of our guild, loved 
 and quoted (as such should ever be) in love 
 and not as authority. Indeed all the gently 
 great or greatly gentle were on our muster- 
 roll; Spinoza (Little Baruch), for example, 
 was there; and there, too, was Elia, the be- 
 loved." 
 
 'The lens of life is of a dimpleness," said 
 Cyril, "means nothing whatever" ; and I, be- 
 cause I was somewhat disconcerted, agreed 
 with Cyril. 
 
 "Why were you disconcerted?" asked 
 Pruina. 
 
 "By a propinquous glamour," said I, and 
 read on hastily. 
 
 "Then Aloys, smiling benignly on our 
 juvenilities, took up the tale. 'Dimpleness 
 means concavity,' said he; 'the lens of life is
 
 124 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 concave. Do any of your children know 
 anything of optics?' 
 
 None knew anything of optics. 
 
 'Then I may venture, without fear of 
 scientific contradiction, to expand the meta- 
 phor thus. As man looks forward and back 
 through the diminishing lens of life, all seems 
 (as in a Claude Loraine glass) fairer, com- 
 pacter, more pictorial, than the gross objects 
 within instant touch. The Book states, 
 rather vaguely I confess, a vulgar error. 
 Judging from the lightness of the phrase, I 
 should call it ironic.' ' 
 
 "The Little Ones accepted both exegesis 
 and comment; and their acceptance brings 
 me round again to the commonplace that be- 
 gins the essay. 
 
 "For it is false, this commonplace! Yeasty 
 To-come (fuming with germination) and 
 fusty Has-been (high as an epicure's game) 
 smell sweeter in your nostrils, do they, Mr. 
 Moralist, than the fugitive whiffs from the 
 garden of the Now? Poor Grown-up! it
 
 LOVE 125 
 
 would not be so were you a Little One living 
 on the surface of Paris. No; you would 
 exult (ah! with what innocent exultation) 
 that you were alive, that Paris was alive, 
 and that the filmy Now played like an 
 iridescence between you." 
 
 "I love that," said Pruina, with sympa- 
 thetic underlining of the emotional verb. I 
 bowed my thanks. I also love that. 
 
 "I said," my reading continued, "that the 
 Little Ones lived on the surface of Paris. 
 It is a lamping phrase. It lights the Little 
 Ones, their characters, deeds, aspirations, 
 and the angle from which they gazed on life." 
 
 "A lamping phrase," echoed that dear 
 Pruina. 
 
 "The Englishman," I read on, "makes a 
 religion of anything he likes very much to 
 do; the Frenchman makes an art of it; and 
 the American a business." 
 
 "That sounds rather smart," said Pruina 
 doubtfully. 
 
 "It is disgustingly smart," I agreed, "but
 
 126 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 it is as true as most aphorisms. Listen to 
 its application." 
 
 "But the Little Ones made neither a re- 
 ligion, an art nor a business of the things 
 (how many?) that they liked very much to 
 do. They nonchalantly did them; did them 
 gaily, earnestly, always conscious of the 
 aroma of the fragrant Now, always rejoic- 
 ing in the surface of Paris. 
 
 "That shining surface! Below it in the 
 dark ocean no doubt were the slow writhings 
 of evolving life and the petulant leaps of 
 nervous egoism. But we knew nothing, we 
 sea-gulls afloat, of the motions in the deep. 
 
 "Or say (to change the image) that we 
 dwelt in the iridescence of a bubble. We 
 played eagerly amid the filmy nothings of 
 the arts, the melodious colour, the informing 
 music, the chiseled phrase, the glowing 
 marble. Played, too, how earnestly! in the 
 rainbow spectrum of human thought, rang- 
 ing freely from ultra-violet to ultra-red, 
 rays visible and invisible. We recked not of
 
 LOVE 127 
 
 the hollow fluid sphere we lived on, blown 
 into form by the vague afflatus we called La 
 France. 
 
 "Perhaps, had we turned microscopic eyes 
 downwards, we should have seen swarming 
 life, the rod-like bacilli of the law, the whirl- 
 ing rotifera of fashion, political and military 
 microbes and other pathogenic creatures. 
 But we looked not down. The iridescence 
 fulfilled our vision." 
 
 It was not iridescence, though, that ful- 
 filled my vision. It was gold, a warm, 
 breathing, aureate glow which, centered in 
 Pruina, touched the pleasant lawns, the 
 bright parterres, the dark boscage and the 
 fluttering tree-tops with the consciousness 
 that She was there. Until this moment I 
 had kept the glow off my manuscript by a 
 blind effort of the will ; but now ah ! it was 
 striding up through the written words and 
 my eyes drank it in like an opiate. One 
 effort morel 
 
 "Yet we sometimes left the surface," I
 
 128 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 read. "Of the breath that filled our bubble 
 we knew something and ever sought to know 
 more. It is an honest breath out of deep 
 lungs, the bourgeois breath of the French 
 people. Garlic? yes; a little, and good red 
 Bordeaux besides; and all the healthier for 
 it. It smells, too, of the salt sea, the tilled 
 fields and the pines of the Vosges. It is the 
 sustaining breath of France. Puffing the 
 hollow, mobile film of the State (inhabited 
 microscopically as aforesaid) into a perfect 
 sphere, it creates by warm pressure from 
 within the iridescence on the surface without. 
 What wonder if the Little Ones loved this 
 afflatus?" 
 
 She is there, beside me, Pruina! Pruina! 
 Gold! Gold! Shall I speak now, saying 
 I know not what? Is it love? Has it 
 passed from the region of hypothesis? Shall 
 I speak? Read, fool, read! 
 
 "I should be proud of that image, were it 
 mine," I read; "but alas! it is not mine. 
 'Life?' inquires the Book, 'Life a bubble?
 
 LOVE 129 
 
 Then catch its opalescence, breathe its breath 
 and don't get wet!' Adapted to our 
 parochial purposes, it explains the joy of the 
 Little Ones in Paris." 
 
 She is there, beside me, Love! Love 
 Nothing hypothetic now. It is fact, winged 
 and lyric, blond in the blond sunshine. I 
 shall speak, forthright, without eloquence, 
 saying simply, "Pruina, I love you " 
 
 I turn to her 
 
 I hear a cheery greeting 
 
 There, coming along the walk, was a glint 
 of brown and sparkle, checked blue and 
 white linen borne on springing steps. 
 
 I like Little Betty- 
 
 But now 
 
 Absolutely antiseptic!
 
 IX 
 
 THE RESCUE 
 
 ;< TAO I interpose between the questing 
 
 brain and the elusive word?" queried 
 
 Roland, breaking in on my Garden solitude. 
 
 "You come between an egregious ass and 
 his stinking fodder," I answered in disgust. 
 "Listen, if you please, to this scintillating 
 sunset trope: 'The sky behind was a grey- 
 blue, as if cigarette smoke had been blown 
 through the bright hair of the tangled 
 clouds.' What do you think of that ?" 
 
 "Poor old Hugh! Did you really, in a 
 lucid, waking moment, mix that hogwash?" 
 
 "I, or the scribbling devil that possesses 
 me." 
 
 "And whose, if I may venture into the 
 
 130
 
 THE RESCUE 131 
 
 penetralia of the artistic soul, was the bright 
 hair of your windy metaphor?" 
 
 "It was hair in the abstract," I answered 
 evasively. "Do you suppose that Milton was 
 thinking of some girl when he wrote 'the 
 loose train of thy amber-dropping hair'?" 
 
 "I do, and also that thou art a liar, O 
 Hugh." 
 
 "I am verity incarnate," I answered ; "and, 
 to change the subject, I wonder how an 
 ordinary human man ever captures a phrase 
 like that. 'Thy amber-dropping hair!' How 
 did Milton do it?" 
 
 "Not by smoking cigarettes in the Luxem- 
 bourg Garden and dreaming inanities," he 
 said. "No; he went forth into the shouting 
 world; he got in touch with the living con- 
 crete. That's what you need, old man, the 
 living concrete. Now, there is nothing so 
 intensely living, so obstinately concrete, as a 
 dog. Hence, logically, you must go to the 
 dogs for salvation." 
 
 "Metaphorically?" I asked.
 
 132 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Most literally," he answered. "I, as high 
 priest of the Little Ones, do command thee 
 to expiate thy abominable trope by going 
 (as I am going) to the dogs." 
 
 "Interpret, Mr. Sphinx." 
 
 "I am on my way to see the dogs clipped 
 and washed at the Pont de Solferino. I am 
 fond of dogs." 
 
 I peered steadily at the Childe through the 
 pinched eyelids of just suspicion. 
 
 He grew pink. 
 
 "Infant," I said, "thou also art a liar." 
 
 "I love dogs," said he. 
 
 "Where," I thundered, "is Betty Brown 
 this morning?" 
 
 "The dog is the friend of man," he said, "a 
 most noble creature. Think of Ulysses and 
 Argos. Think of the Seven Sleepers and 
 Katmir " 
 
 "Think of Punch and Toby," I inter- 
 rupted. "Where is Betty Brown this morn- 
 ing?"
 
 THE RESCUE 133 
 
 'I am neither prophet nor the son of a 
 prophet." 
 
 "Is she etching under the Pont Royal?" 
 
 "She is generally etching something some- 
 where when she is not nursing someone some 
 otherwhere." 
 
 "Don't you know?" 
 
 "Who am I to aspire to know? Knowl- 
 edge, says Tennyson, is the swallow on the 
 lake. Yet a little bird (not the Tennysonian 
 swallow) has whispered in my ear that if by 
 any chance she should be etching under the 
 Pont Royal, Miss Bright Hair would be 
 with her." 
 
 "Suppose," I said, pocketing my manu- 
 script, "that we go to the dogs together." 
 
 The Infant bestowed on me the nodding 
 smile of fellow-feeling. Yet he did not 
 know, from me at least, that my affection had 
 passed beyond the stage of hypothesis. Some 
 things are sweeter unspoken. Delicate reser- 
 vations form a flowering hedge between 
 friendships.
 
 134 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 We found the tondeur of the Pont de 
 Solferino plying his clippers on the pelt of 
 a morose and diminishing poodle. A patch 
 of felted hair grew on the cobbles of the qual, 
 and as it waxed so did that poodle wane in 
 bulk and self-respect. No wonder! he came 
 to that place of metamorphoses a saucy dog 
 and would depart the ridiculous travesty of 
 a lion. And he knew it. Also he would be 
 washed, washed wriggling in the cold Seine, 
 with soap in his eyes and every circumstance 
 of publicity and indignity. Pauvre Loulou! 
 
 "There, Mr. Author," said the Childe, "is 
 an instructive metaphor for you. You are 
 now an honest dog, a rollicking, rat-hunting, 
 bone-burying tike. Suppose you should 
 finish your book; suppose you should find a 
 weak-minded publisher; suppose you should 
 become a best-seller; suppose the publicity 
 man should deem it meet to flaunt your 
 name, your book and your physiognomy in 
 the trolley cars of New York, guarded by a 
 hair restorer on the one side and a breakfast
 
 THE RESCUE 135 
 
 food on the other; suppose that reading 
 notices, intimate ones, should appear, telling 
 how Hugh Lyddon, author of 'The Pearl 
 and the Swine,' now in its blanky-blankth 
 thousand, always eats with his knife o' Sun- 
 days to remind him of his old farm days in 
 New England; suppose " 
 
 "Shut up, old ass," I pleaded. 
 
 "Why? When I am discoursing on the 
 sacred theme of literature." 
 
 "Literature!" I ejaculated. 
 
 "Of course, literature! the sort that is 
 literally littered all over the public sty. 
 Well, suppose all these supposes, and what 
 becomes of Master Hugh Lyddon? He be- 
 comes a tiny caricature of a lion, clipped by 
 the critics, exploited by the publicity man, 
 shivering in the ungenial atmosphere of the 
 market. No more buried bones for him ; he 
 must gnaw them in reading-notices. No 
 more rat-huntings, unless he is photographed 
 in the act. He must always be washed, al- 
 ways have soap in his eyes, always "
 
 136 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Childe," I cried, "you forget that I am 
 a Little One. The diseases you described 
 afflict only the grown-up world." 
 
 He patted my shoulder. 
 
 "Pray against temptation," said he. "But, 
 speaking of Little Ones, I fancy that your 
 weird foreshadowing of the whereabouts of 
 Betty Brown was veridical. I chanced, in 
 looking up the river, to observe two dots of 
 colour near the Pont Royal." 
 
 "I also," I admitted, "chanced to notice 
 something of the kind. What an occult 
 coincidence!" 
 
 "Mysterious! But a thought, the out- 
 growth of my love of truth and the scientific 
 method, occurs to me. We should examine 
 those dots of colour more proximately." 
 
 "I care not a jot or a tittle for the scien- 
 tific method," said I; "but I love truth with 
 the marrow of my soul. Let us approximate, 
 Childe, or in the vernacular draw nigh to 
 yonder chromatic splotches." 
 
 "If distance lends enchantment," re-
 
 THE RESCUE 137 
 
 marked Roland, as we descended the steps 
 and walked along the quai, "will nearness 
 borrow disenchantment, that's the question? 
 What do you think?" 
 
 "The enchantment appears to me to in- 
 crease; but it may be a subjective delusion. 
 How is it with you?" 
 
 "It increases like the force of gravity, 
 inversely as the square of the distance. 
 Extraordinary how one simple law runs 
 through all nature ! Now if Sir Isaac New- 
 ton and his apple were here " 
 
 "I should find him de trop" said I. 
 
 "Maybe; but he was a glorious Little 
 One. Greeting to your power, petites!" 
 
 This to the girls. 
 
 "And to your work, petits" answered 
 Betty; "though I am grieved" the words 
 came like an antiseptic spray "to see no 
 indication of work about either of you. You 
 are simply demoralizing flaneurs' 9 
 
 Pruina nodded golden assent. 
 
 "Work," said the Infant loftily, address-
 
 138 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 ing Pruina, "thrives not only by working. 
 You know what the Bhagavad-Gita says?" 
 
 They did not know. 
 
 ' 'He who may behold,' ' quoted the 
 Childe, " 'as it were, inaction in action, and 
 action in inaction, is wise amongst mankind.' 
 Now, Little Hugh and I, simple as we stand 
 before you, have learnt to behold action in 
 inaction." 
 
 "And therefore," said Pruina, "you and 
 he" 
 
 "Modesty forbids that I should chase the 
 rabbit of logic into the burrow of vainglory. 
 Suffice it to say that Little Hugh and I were 
 wrapt on high matters ; like the gentlemen in 
 Milton, we 
 
 " ' reasoned high. 
 
 " 'Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate 
 " 'Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute; 
 " 'And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.' " 
 
 "A moment ago," remarked Betty to 
 Pruina, in an awestruck whisper, "they were
 
 THE RESCUE 139 
 
 only wise among mankind; now they are 
 fallen angels." 
 
 "And as such," said the Childe sadly, "un- 
 meet for angelic society. Come, Little 
 Hugh." 
 
 He raised his hat with the sweeping ges- 
 ture of Cyrano, took my arm and led me to 
 the edge of the river. 
 
 "But we won't go far," he murmured; 
 "we'll sit here in plain sight and make our 
 backs look as discontented as possible." 
 
 "Discontented backs." As we sat on the 
 shelving cobbles, feet almost touching the 
 water, knees drawn up under our chins, I 
 found myself laughing at the phrase. 
 
 "Don't laugh," said Roland. "Your 
 whole future may depend on the curve of 
 your backbone. Make it express, as I am 
 doing, a chastened loneliness, an immense 
 yearning. Since you are the highest of ver- 
 tebrates, make your vertebrae mean unutter- 
 able things. Think of the bones of the 
 dinosaur in the Metropolitan Museum and
 
 140 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 how his back seems to be carrying an aeonian, 
 prehistoric solitude. That's the effect you 
 should aim at. And, speaking of effects, 
 how did I get on this time?" 
 
 "Much better. You were almost your 
 natural self. And how did I get on?" 
 
 "You did not say a word." 
 
 "I did not say a word?" 
 
 "Not a single monosyllable, my poor old 
 Hugh. How did you like my Bhagavad?" 
 
 "Chouette! And I really did not utter a 
 word?" 
 
 "Not one; but you looked whole tomes of 
 effable eloquence. What did you think of 
 my Milton?" 
 
 "Apt enough; but somewhat demode. 
 Poor old Milton! he has become one huge 
 'light fantastic toe' nowadays. Such is 
 fame." 
 
 "His only claim to Littleoneness," com- 
 mented the Infant. "Did I phrase my 
 thoughts well?"
 
 THE RESCUE 141 
 
 "Excellently to Pruina. You did not 
 speak to Betty." 
 
 "I did not speak to Betty?" 
 
 "Not the smallest Indo-Germanic root, 
 my poor old Childe." 
 
 "What a fool I am!" 
 
 "No; what a Little One you are! And, 
 speaking of Little Ones, does love affect 
 grown-ups as ridiculously as it does you and 
 me?" 
 
 "I think not," he answered, "their habits 
 of thought protect them from our perturba- 
 tions. As far as I have observed, they calmly 
 study what they call the Opposite Sex " 
 
 "An undainty phrase!" 
 
 "Say rancid! find someone who is Mar- 
 riageable " 
 
 "An insipid epithet!" 
 
 "Say mawkish! and marry her." 
 
 "Ah, they marry her," I repeated, judi- 
 cially considering this vagary of the grown- 
 up world, "I had not thought of that, at 
 least as it might affect me. I have played
 
 142 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 with the hypothesis of love, but not with the 
 hypothesis of marriage. Have you?" 
 
 "Never!" he exclaimed, his eyes mere 
 circles of denial. "I have sometimes thought 
 that I should like to kiss the feet of Betty 
 Brown, though I should probably die of the 
 joy of it." 
 
 "And I," I confessed, "have sometimes 
 dreamed of kissing a hand; and the mere 
 dream is almost fatal." 
 
 "Poor old Hugh." 
 
 "Poor old Childe." 
 
 At this moment there was a shout from 
 Pruina. 
 
 "Hugh! Hugh! Come quickly," she cried. 
 
 I went quickly. 
 
 "That man," she said, pointing at a re- 
 treating figure, "has been annoying us!" 
 
 I gave chase, caught the rascal (a mere 
 crumbling wisp of a man) and, because he 
 was too small to thrash, threw him into the 
 Seine. He sank, came up, yelped horribly, 
 whirled off in the eddies, projected his fool-
 
 THE RESCUE 143 
 
 ish arms with a gurgling cry and sank 
 again. 
 
 It was high time to act. I did not want 
 his corpse, a bloated accusation, to reappear 
 in the Morgue. So I splashed in. As the 
 river was low (say two metres fifty at the 
 Pont Royal) , the water was fairly clear and 
 I was able to find him soon after his third 
 eclipse. Found, he became a sea-thing all 
 terror and tentacles; and I had to spend 
 more than the usual time undei water before 
 his grip relaxed. By the time this happened 
 and I was able to tow him ashore, we had 
 been swept down to the Pont de Solferino, 
 where we were received by the joyous yelp- 
 ings of the released and naked poodle and 
 the assisting hands of the Little Ones. 
 
 I did not see clearly all that followed ; but 
 it is described in any treatise on "Aid to the 
 Apparently Drowned." I had only a dizzy 
 vision of the Childe tilting and squeezing the 
 water out of a limp and dripping rascal, and 
 of Betty dragging at an elongated red
 
 144 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 tongue with a handkerchief. Such an effi- 
 cient Bettine! And there was much pump- 
 ing of arms and kneading of ribs before 
 Pruina (bless her!) came back with the 
 brandy. Then I felt much better, for my 
 part, and admired the rhythmic vigour of the 
 pumping and the kneading, and Betty'j un- 
 relaxing grasp of the extruded tongue. I 
 even found breath to cheer them on and to 
 gasp a faint hurrah when they shouted "He 
 is breathing." Just then arrived the men 
 from the "Secours aux Noyes" and an agent 
 with his note book. Thus, with the making of 
 the official record (silent as to the rascal's 
 entry into the river) ended the adventure. 
 
 "Little Pruina," remarked the Childe, as 
 we wandered homeward, "I trust you now 
 behold, as it were " 
 
 "As it were," repeated Betty; for he was 
 looking at her. 
 
 "As it were, inaction in action, and action 
 in inaction." 
 
 "As it were," agreed Betty kindly.
 
 THE RESCUE 145 
 
 I looked at Pruina (ah, love, there is now 
 no hypothesis!) and knocked timidly, my 
 foolish heart keeping time, on the gate of 
 interrogation. 
 
 "As it were?" murmured I. 
 
 And I heard the golden affirmative, 
 sounding in my ears like a shy, far trumpet 
 of capitulation 
 
 "As it were," said Pruina, her dear eyes 
 to mine.
 
 BEAMY JIMMY 
 
 "T> L. S., in the epilogue to "The Wreck- 
 er," writes of "dead leaves from the 
 Bas Breau." Unconsumed and unmouldered, 
 they gather there year by year, fallen from 
 the great trees that Rousseau loved to paint. 
 Smokers are besought, in politest French, to 
 be watchful over the fiery instruments of 
 their pleasure ; and one is sure, as one settles 
 into that couch, that they have been politely 
 watchful from generation to generation. 
 
 Upon those leaves, not far from Barbison, 
 iear the bearded faces, wrought in enduring 
 Sronze, of Millet and Rousseau, nestled the 
 
 ittle Ones 
 
 "This is a true tale," I began, addressing 
 the Five; "and it happened yesterday." 
 
 146
 
 BEAMY JIMMY 147 
 
 "Watch, gentles all," murmured the 
 Childe, "for hoary inveracities." 
 
 "True and of yesterday," I went on, "yet 
 touched with old romance and fraught with 
 a solemn question." 
 
 "Awaken me," said the Childe, drowsily, 
 "after the arrival and departure of the 
 solemn question." 
 
 "This is a record of art misdirected" I 
 looked sternly at Roland "and of love mis- 
 placed" I looked anywhere but at Pruina. 
 
 Not at Pruina shimmering like a patch of 
 sunshine on the brown leaves ; for on this day 
 of days and in this forest of forests, I shall 
 (so may the loving local gods grant me 
 utterance!) speak unto her soul the Great 
 Affirmative, ask of her heart the Great In- 
 terrogation. 
 
 "Art is long," remarked the Infant, 
 wearily, disposing himself to fictive slumber ; 
 "you may wake me at love misplaced." 
 
 "The tale," I continued, "is the ending or 
 continuation, I don't know which, of our
 
 148 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 little adventure with the drowning rascal. 
 While I was writing in my room yesterday 
 morning " 
 
 "He egregiously epics o' mornings," 
 chanted the Childe with his eyes closed, "de- 
 liriously lyrics at noon, and preciously 
 proses o' nights." 
 
 "I was writing in my room," said I, and 
 stopped. My eyes, despite my inhibition, 
 suddenly rested on Pruina 
 
 Today then, and in our sacred Fontaine- 
 bleau, I shall win or lose her love forever. 
 Her love! Nothing else matters. My art 
 may become dumb; my force may fail; all 
 the gods and godlings of youth may die 
 
 "The fact," observed Roland slowly, "that 
 you were writing in your room has at last 
 percolated into every recess of our intelli- 
 gences." 
 
 "I was writing in my room," I continued 
 hastily, "when I heard a voice behind me say- 
 ing: f Bon jour, mon vieux ' 3 ' 
 
 If she says no, I shall go away. I shall
 
 BEAMY JIMMY 149 
 
 not stay and plead, year after year, as many 
 lovers have done, unmanly and unlovely. I 
 shall go away, to India perhaps, and find a 
 mountain cave, an ascetic retreat, where 
 
 ' 'Bon jour, mon vieux* " prompted the 
 Childe; "we all know enough French to 
 translate that perspicuous phrase. We await 
 further excitements." 
 
 "Your idiotic comments put me out," said 
 I. "I swung round and there, sitting quietly 
 on a chair in the exact centre of the room, 
 smiling prodigiously " 
 
 No; not the ascetic life! That were a 
 sorry return to the gods for the privilege of 
 having loved Pruina. I shall do settlement 
 work (whatever that is) on the East Side 
 (wherever that is) and thus live out the 
 lonely remainder of my days. I shall 
 
 "Was my own familiar cat," said the 
 Childe, "my too familiar cat, addressing me, 
 somewhat to my surprise, in its native 
 tongue. Shall I continue?" 
 
 "Shut up, Infant! There, smiling prodig-
 
 150 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 iously, was our drowned rascal. I jumped 
 up and grabbed an Indian club; for I 
 thought he had come to knife me. Nothing, 
 as he assured me in a strange jargon, was 
 further from his thoughts. It appeared, as 
 far as I was permitted to understand him, 
 that he was immeasurably reconnaissant and 
 affectioned himself strongly to me as the 
 saviour of his life. The incident leading to 
 his immersion seemed to have left no mark 
 on his memory. He wished well to embrace 
 me, and proceeded to do so, secundum artem, 
 on both cheeks. It was, if you will forgive 
 the realism, a garlicky rite." 
 
 "Lo! the literary aroma!" cried the Infant. 
 
 "Then we settled down for a long, long 
 talk, a talk all thee's and thou's and con- 
 fidences on his part. He was, it seemed, a 
 burglar by trade, maitre cambrioleur, and 
 his name for his friends (among whom I was 
 noblest and dearest) was L'Ombre-qui- 
 passe." 
 
 "I warned you, gentles all," said the
 
 BEAMY JIMMY 151 
 
 Childe, "to watch for fanciful men- 
 dacities." 
 
 "On my Little Honour," I asseverated, 
 "this is all true. Moreover, due to the sav j 
 ing grace of his baptism, he had suffered a 
 change of heart. Like the great Vidocq, he 
 had decided to become detective, maitre 
 mouchard, and win a second fame in the 
 world of crime. It would be less glorious, 
 but, on the whole, more profitable. He would 
 cut off the oily black curls over his ears, his 
 identifying rouflaquettes, and give them to 
 me as a pledge of continuing virtue and 
 eternal amity." 
 
 "Proof!" cried the Infant. 
 
 "The proof is here," I answered calmly, 
 handing him a greasy packet, "which, once 
 your incredulity is satisfied, may be offered 
 to the manes of yonder bearded artists." 
 
 "To the ma-nes or the manes?" asked the 
 Incorrigible. 
 
 "Furthermore," I continued, ignoring his 
 atrocity, "he would well to give me, unto me
 
 152 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 and my children's children, his nickel-steel 
 monseigneur, his famous Jimmy, which he 
 did. Do you believe me?" I asked the Childe 
 sternly. 
 
 "I do," he answered, as he scooped a grave 
 for the oily curls; "who can resist the capil- 
 lary attraction of the True?" 
 
 "At the touch of Jimmy," I went on, "so 
 my rascal assured me, that fat oyster, the 
 world, would fly open. Though, to do him 
 justice, he counseled me to open the oyster 
 only by lawful means. His friend Hugh, 
 in his judgment, was too large for a cam- 
 brioleur. Having read me this lesson of 
 practical morality, he assumed an air of 
 mystery and produced a Bottle " 
 
 "May I ne'er want a friend nor a bottle to 
 give him," sang Roland, patting down the 
 earth that covered the rouflaquettes. 
 
 "A Bottle, containing, quoth my rascal, a 
 potent anaesthetic, or rather hypnotic. An 
 oath was an oath; and he would not disclose 
 its chemistry. However, his beloved one
 
 BEAMY JIMMY, 153 
 
 should have some practical hints. Squirt a 
 few drops through a keyhole, wait five min- 
 utes et voila! One enters to find all the 
 world asleep, smiling out of heavenly dreams 
 and none the worse for the experience 
 (except in material possessions) on awaken- 
 ing." 
 
 "I must analyse that stuff," said Aloys; 
 "your story is not devoid of interest." 
 
 "Thank you; and so you shall. L'Ombre- 
 qui-passe laid stress on the delights of his 
 dream-bottle " 
 
 "It is a natural law," said Aloys, as if to 
 himself, "that good often springs from and 
 thrives on evil, as the rose roots in the black 
 soil of decay. Your pardon, Little Hugh." 
 
 "He himself, by accident, had inhaled its 
 fumes. Tiens! He was at the door of 
 heaven! A squirt through the great key- 
 hole, a wrench of the Jimmy " 
 
 "Be Homeric," cried Roland; "say the 
 beamy Jimmy." 
 
 "Good; a heave of the beamy Jimmy!
 
 He enters. The angels sleep with the heads 
 under the wings, en oiseaux. Saint Peter 
 snores, his golden keys beside him. Golden 
 crowns everywhere. Sceptres and jeweled 
 belts. Chouette! Like an endless Rue de la 
 Paix. He assembles all in a colossal sack. 
 He saves himself ! He wakes ! Quel horreur!" 
 
 "True or not," said the doubting Cyril, 
 "it is a convincing story." 
 
 "I have the beamy Jimmy and the dreamy 
 Bottle for proofs," said I. "Well, that was 
 the end of our serious conversation; for he 
 insisted that we should go to the Lipp and 
 strangle a parrot." 
 
 "Strangle a parrot?" inquired Pruina, 
 looking at me with wide disconcerting eyes. 
 
 The Childe explained. He often answered 
 when Pruina spoke to me. I often answered 
 when Betty spoke to him. 
 
 "Absinthe is green," said he; "so is a 
 parrot. It is a convivial metaphor." 
 
 "Did you go?" asked Betty, in tones of 
 antiseptic disapproval.
 
 BEAMY JIMMY 155 
 
 "On high artistic grounds," said I, "it is 
 meet that the story of L'Ombre-qui-passe 
 should end with the climax-phrase 'strangle 
 a parrot.' ' 
 
 "Your tale," said Aloys gravely, "sug- 
 gests a quaint possibility. We live, as we 
 Little Ones believe, in a universe of perfect 
 adjustments. Everything that we need 
 must come to us ; nothing that we do not need 
 can come to us. 'God's gifts spell futurity,' 
 says the Book. Now, what, in the name of 
 all the Little Moralities, shall you be ex- 
 pected to do with a burglar's Jimmy and a 
 burglarious dream-bottle? That is the 
 solemn question." 
 
 I shook my head and sauntered over to 
 commune with the bearded painters. No, 
 Little Aloys ; that is not the question ! There 
 is another, another, another; and, Love 
 helping me, it shall be asked and answered 
 today.
 
 XI 
 
 THE GREAT INTERROGATION 
 
 TTERE then! The Great Interrogation 
 shall have this contrasting back- 
 ground, this grim Gorge d' Apremont, this 
 geologic charnel. 
 
 If only the Childe would go ! 
 
 Pruina, leaning against a knucklebone 
 for the plateau where we stood was all 
 blanched knucklebones of rocks, uncount- 
 able, set in scanty green brake, grey-green 
 heather, with here and there the emphatic 
 note of a charred stump 
 
 Pruina, I say, seated on the heather, lean- 
 ing against a knucklebone, was busy with 
 her note-book, where crotchets and quavers 
 were scattered by her small white hand across 
 the page, even as, ages ago, yonder boulders 
 
 156
 
 GREAT INTERROGATION 157 
 
 were dotted on the plateau by the great 
 white glacier. At another time I should 
 have been proud of that simile ; but now . . . 
 
 If only that Infant would go! 
 
 "Pruina," said I, in a voice shakingly pro- 
 phetic of the Great Interrogation, "what is 
 music?" 
 
 She touched the red flower of shy excuse 
 with the finger of silence. Yes ; I know what 
 will happen, what will grow out that glacier- 
 drift across her note-book. Some day she 
 will play to me, as we sit in that dear room 
 overlooking the Gardens. She will play with 
 impish fingers that leap madly on the sound- 
 ing keys, play me divine fancies, make me 
 achingly happy, make me gloriously woe- 
 begone, and say: "That is the Gorge d' 
 Apremont." 
 
 If only that Infant would go! 
 
 "Infant," said I softly, "what is art?" 
 
 "Art," he snapped, sketching-box on his 
 knee, brush waving in the air, "art is this 
 particular moment. Shut up!"
 
 158 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Humbled, I followed his eyes. In the 
 gorge below us were more knucklebones, in- 
 numerable, neutral-tinted by distance; and 
 on the rise beyond still more, lavender 
 against lilac-green. Living, wistful colours 
 these, that seemed to strive in vain against 
 the bleached, dead boniness of our macabre 
 plateau. And Pruina (Pruina! Pruina!) 
 puts all that into her strange music ; and the 
 Infant (if he would only go!) into his wild 
 art. Let me imitate them and turn it into 
 what I am pleased to call literature. It will 
 serve at least to pass the time until (that In- 
 fant exorcised) the moment of the Great 
 Interrogation. 
 
 A soft bit of heather; a kindly knuckle- 
 bone; my note-book me voila! 
 
 Betty and Cyril (alas, poor Infant! small 
 marvel that you snapped at me) wander to- 
 gether, occulted for the most part by far, 
 hyacinthian knucklebones. Is there, I 
 wonder, another Interrogation, made beauti-
 
 GREAT INTERROGATION 159 
 
 ful by violet distances, in the Gorge d' Apre- 
 mont? 
 
 Aloys, learned in all that ends in "ic" or 
 "ology," is pursuing an Interrogation of his 
 own among the rocks. I can hear his ham- 
 mer tap-tapping far away, questioning 
 mysterious knucklebones and hearing stories 
 of their cataclysmic past. 
 
 There should be literature in all this, in 
 the heather and bracken, in the trembling 
 amethyst vista of Interrogations, in the An- 
 swers moving to us-ward out of music, out 
 of colours, out of seonian stone, out of young, 
 loving human hearts. 
 
 Let me see 
 
 "Is life," I wrote, "a question or an an- 
 swer? Or is it 
 
 And then Pruina closed her note-book and 
 began to sing, pianissimo 
 
 An ascending roulade that rose fountain- 
 like and sprayed into clear, sunny drops 
 then silence. 
 
 I rose and sauntered over to the Infant,
 
 160 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 who was putting the final touches on his 
 sketch. 
 
 I laid a supplicating hand on his arm. 
 
 "Dear Childe," I murmured, as another 
 roulade tinkled heavenward, "three is an odd 
 number." 
 
 "Even so," he mumbled, and began to ar- 
 range his sketching-box. There are moments 
 (as I told him by a pat on the shoulder) of 
 sublime comprehension in that dear Infant's 
 soul. 
 
 "Pruina," said I, "what is music?" 
 
 "Music," answered Roland, rising and 
 strolling away, "is a noise with a good inten- 
 tion behind it. I am going to gather wisdom 
 from Aloys." 
 
 "Then ask him," said Pruina, "to come 
 here and tell me what music is." 
 
 "Even so," acquiesced that blessed In- 
 fant, prophetic (to my ears) of tactful 
 forgetfulness. He has, as I have noted 
 above, sublime moments. 
 
 We were alone
 
 GREAT INTERROGATION 161 
 
 The moment had come! 
 
 "Pruina," I said; for I must first create 
 an enveloping atmosphere of interrogation, 
 "does this" with a gesture of affection 
 towards the glimmering knucklebones 
 "does this come to you as music f ' 
 
 "No," she answered, her eyes searching the 
 landscape horizonward, plane by plane, into 
 its remotest lavenders; "no; it comes as 
 blessedness." 
 
 "It comes," I forced my lips to shape the 
 Great Noun; "it comes as love, Pruina?" 
 
 "As the All Love," she said, gently, "lov- 
 ing Itself through me." 
 
 Then silence fell upon us. "The All Love, 
 lov|ng Itself through her." The thought is 
 in our pure Spinoza, in our fervent Fichte; 
 but the emotion itself, the^practice, the wor- 
 ship, is with me here, alive and glowing, 
 blond in the blond sunshine! The thought, 
 the verbal abstraction, was, of course, no 
 clearer to my understanding; but the. quick 
 reality! somehow the instant consciousness
 
 162 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 of this living miracle (for it is no less) re- 
 moved Pruina, as if she herself had melted 
 into the violet vistas, from the crude regions 
 of interrogation. 
 
 I must bring her back. 
 
 "And music?" I asked. 
 
 "Music?" she repeated thoughtfully; "I 
 don't quite know. Perhaps " 
 
 "Perhaps?" 
 
 "Perhaps it is just my poor way of ex- 
 pressing the love 
 
 "The love," I caught at the bright skirts 
 of the passing word, "the love that loves It- 
 self through you." 
 
 "Yes ; and when I am making music, with 
 this blessedness in my soul, nothing else 
 seems to matter." 
 
 "Does nothing else really matter, Pruina? 
 There are human sympathies " 
 
 "They fill the days," said she; "they are 
 unutterably precious. Yet the rare creative 
 moments, when they come, and this"
 
 GREAT INTERROGATION 163 
 
 she indicated the glimmering distances 
 "this"- 
 
 "Is more precious still?" I suggested. 
 
 "Yes; don't you feel it so?" 
 
 The time had come! Interrogation was 
 about us, in the air, in my fluttering heart, on 
 her lips. 
 
 "Do I feel it so?" I answered slowly. 
 "Not quite. Formerly, my art, my word- 
 weaving, came first ; and life, so far as it 
 seemed lovely or love- worthy, was just the 
 warp in my loom. Now, I see the world 
 from another angle, the angle of a Ques- 
 tion" 
 
 Tap! Tap! the little hammer of Aloys 
 rang louder, rang on a nearer knucklebone. 
 Deflect him, ye local gods, from the pathway 
 hitherward ! 
 
 "A Question," I went on, "that involves 
 in its answer my relations, my soul's rela- 
 tions, to this mysterious life of ours. Nothing 
 else matters except this Great Interroga- 
 tion"
 
 164 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Tap ! Tap ! like the philologic Pivert in 
 Chantecler came the intruding hammer. And 
 nearer! fie on thee, Childe Roland! in- 
 genious friendship should have discovered, 
 for my sake, geologic abnormalities in re- 
 mote perspective 
 
 "Then," said Pruina, "the Dilettante has 
 become Philosopher." 
 
 "A Philosopher," said I, "is a lover of wis- 
 dom, whereas I am rather a lover " 
 
 Tap! Tap! how I execrate science, a 
 science that continuously approximates, 
 pecking the romance out of the young in- 
 terrogating world. It is almost here, this 
 science, and the uningenious Infant. I must 
 wait! 
 
 "A lover," I concluded, hoping that the 
 seed of a subtle phrase would grow into the 
 tender flower of an expectation, "a lover of 
 the most love-worthy." 
 
 Enter Science. Enter the Infant, secretly 
 shaking at me an apologetic head.
 
 GREAT INTERROGATION 165 
 
 "Little Father," said Pruina, "what is 
 music?" 
 
 "Yes," said I ; "what is music?" Not that 
 I cared for the answer, or for any answer but 
 one. 
 
 "Music," began Aloys, when the Infant 
 bade him wait. 
 
 Cyril and Betty, winding through the 
 knucklebones, joined our group. Did I read 
 their faces aright? Was the one still vibrat- 
 ing with the Great Question, the other still 
 radiant with the Great Answer? 
 
 I looked at Roland, thinking to read the 
 truth through him. He studied them, that 
 miserable Infant, his round face twitching 
 a little, and then became an hysteric clown. 
 
 "Hear ye! Hear ye !" he shouted. "Beit 
 known that Aloys, in the hearing of gods, 
 men and knucklebones, will discourse on 
 music. Give ear, ye heathers; and ye little 
 brackens, hear!" 
 
 Cyril and Betty showed the detached in- 
 terest of intense happiness, the interest
 
 166 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 springing from the consciousness that what- 
 ever happens is part of the Beatific Now. 
 
 I did not like it. 
 
 "Music," began Aloys again, "is our most 
 solemn vibratory experience." 
 
 Roland, sighing gustily, sank into a clump 
 of bracken. 
 
 "I do not mean, of course," continued 
 Aloys, "the so-called programme music, which 
 frankly expresses the earthy, the vernacular 
 emotions. True music is, if you will allow 
 me a rather cryptic phrase, the joy of Space 
 in its own mathematics." 
 
 At this point the Childe groaned in seem- 
 ing agony and fell prone among the bracken. 
 
 "Consider," Aloys went on, with a smile 
 at the sufferer, "my intelligent listeners 
 and Little Childe" a moan of contrition 
 followed this reproof "consider the joy of 
 mathematics, the threefold joy. First, there 
 is the pleasing combination of your spacial 
 elements, your web of time, extension, 
 motion. Next, there is the detection of the
 
 GREAT INTERROGATION 167 
 
 problem, the thing to be solved, the Great 
 Interrogation." 
 
 "The what?" I asked, startled. 
 
 "The Great Interrogation. Third, there 
 is the solution of the problem, the mastery of 
 the mystery. Hence, the threefold joy the 
 joy of the mixing, the joy of the quest, the 
 joy of power. Is that clear?" 
 
 It was clear. 
 
 "The next thought-step is more difficult. 
 Suppose the joy you feel in the problem 
 transferred to the problem itself " 
 
 The Childe bellowed aloud. 
 
 "Just as when we hear a foolish noise in 
 our ears we attribute a noisy foolishness to 
 the Infant. Forgive me, Little One!" 
 
 "Granted," said the Childe. 
 
 "In thus making our joy in the problem 
 reside in the problem itself, we are but ex- 
 tending a daily habit, the habit that makes 
 us call this French sunshine warm, those 
 knucklebones hard, that bracken green." 
 
 We assented.
 
 168 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "One thought-step more," he continued, 
 "and the last within my power. Let us 
 attribute the joy that now resides in the 
 problem itself to the space without which 
 there would be no problem." 
 
 There was a pause. The step was a long 
 one. 
 
 "I am standing with reluctant feet," 
 sighed the Infant. 
 
 "Fancy that Space is happy because it is 
 continuously dancing over the Pons Asinor- 
 um," said Cyril. 
 
 "Exactly," said Aloys; "I accept your 
 somewhat lightsome phrasing. Now, let us 
 come back to music. This, too, is mathe- 
 matics and, therefore, a spatial emotion. It 
 differs from lines and numbers only in that 
 it comes to us through the ear. Music is 
 audible geometry, nothing more; it is aerial 
 Euclid!" 
 
 "The air!" exclaimed Pruina; and as she 
 .spoke I seemed on a sudden endowed with 
 perfect understanding.
 
 "The air!" echoed Aloys (how under- 
 standing dizzied and blurred!) , "the air that 
 expresses space and the emotions of space 
 to our ears. Now you know, as far as my 
 poor words will tell you, what music really 
 is. Try to feel it as well as know it. Try to 
 feel that the air itself is glad for its music 
 and that this gladness is, au fond, pure 
 mathematics. So much for music. Now, let 
 us plunge into the forest." 
 
 And Aloys, putting the gathering-horn 
 (always carried on the jaunts) to his lips, 
 blew a blast of farewell to the local gods. 
 
 The forest! there among the giant trees 
 and the listening silences shall Answer and 
 Question keep their sacred tryst. Let us 
 seek the forest 
 
 The Childe walks sadly beside me, Cyril 
 and Betty a little apart, and Pruina with 
 her father. 
 
 Again the ascending roulade that rose 
 fountain-like and sprayed into clear, sunnjr 
 drops
 
 170 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Aerial Euclid?" Ah, no, dear Aloys; it 
 is Pruina, drawing my soul to Godward and 
 to Loveward. That is music, the only music, 
 for Hugh Lyddon.
 
 XII 
 
 VIPERS' BITES 
 
 F> AEDEKER, in writing of the Forest of 
 Fontainebleau, remarks that "Those 
 who stray from the beaten path should be- 
 ware of adders." 
 
 The warning itself, pinched into nonpareil, 
 lurks adder-like in the text, ambushed be- 
 hind distances, dates, italics and stars of 
 appreciation. 
 
 In the Guide- Joanne, one reads that al- 
 though the number of vipers has diminished, 
 it is prudent to wear gaiters to the knees and 
 provide oneself with acide phenique or alcali 
 volatil! 
 
 Now the Little Ones were not gaitered to 
 the knees, nor did they saunter armed with 
 carbolic acid and ammonia through the leafy 
 
 171
 
 172 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 romance of Fontainebleau. And as for 
 beaten paths! a true Little One and a 
 beaten path are antithetical, antipodean, oil 
 and water, and the sedate latter disgustedly 
 vanishes from under the vagrant patterings 
 of the former, leaving them to quote the 
 warning Guide- Joanne en dehors des 
 routes. 
 
 It so befell us now. All tracks had failed ; 
 and we wandered, broken into murmuring 
 groups of two, under the great, paternal 
 trees. I was strolling with the Hoar-frost 
 (Pruina! Pruina!), effervescing internally 
 with divine eloquence that was bewitched, on 
 becoming articulate, into ineptest bleatings. 
 
 The Great Interrogation played above us 
 in the whispering leaves and refused to 
 incarnate. 
 
 Well, we moved side by side under 
 those benignant trees, avoiding (I at least 
 avoided) contact with the other groups that 
 swung like double stars, in orbits of their 
 gravitating affections.
 
 VIPERS' BITES 178 
 
 Aloys and Botany (that arid goddess of 
 classification) walked hand in hand, culling 
 swingeing polysyllabics from the shy tacti- 
 turnities of the woodland. Man (it is far 
 easier to frame an aphorism than to ask a 
 question) so desires to know that he creates 
 distinctions and calls them knowledge. 
 
 Cyril and Betty passed slowly through the 
 checkers of sun and shadow, their heads 
 bowed, their lips moving. They fret me. 
 How can one shape his soul into a Divine 
 Question when his friendship is on the rack? 
 I like Cyril, to be sure, but at that moment 
 I wished him back in his native California. 
 No Cyril was needed in the Little Scheme of 
 Things. Fate and a winsome intertwining 
 of their lives had brought Betty and Roland 
 together; love and his unasking adoration 
 should do the rest. Cyril, ce sacre Cyril 
 his name and an abolishing euthanasia 
 hummed agreeably together in my mind. 
 
 Some hundred meters away on a little 
 grey hilltop, we saw that unhappy Infant
 
 174 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 sitting alone, hunched against a white 
 boulder. His arms were clasped around his 
 knees. He was a huddled sphere of de- 
 jection. 
 
 An idea! I would watch the Infant; and 
 on the instant that he un-sphered himself I 
 should blurt forth the Great Interrogation. 
 Nine words would suffice: "Pruina, I love 
 you; will you be my wife?" Thus, unless the 
 Infant became a petrifaction, I should be 
 forced to speak. Anyhow, the act was on 
 the knees of the gods. 
 
 "Poor old Roland," I sighed, suddenly re- 
 gaining speech. 
 
 Now women are generally pleased to 
 mark the sputtering arc-light, the wasting 
 carbons, of male passion. They prove, both 
 the sputter and the waste, the voltage of 
 muliebrity, the dynamic continuity of sex. 
 But Pruina, being not Woman but Herself, 
 was not pleased. She looked at Betty and 
 Cyril, and shook her head at the spheroidal 
 melancholy of the Childe, and sighed.
 
 VIPERS' BITES 175 
 
 "Poor old Infant," said she. 
 
 "Poor old Infant," I echoed, my eyes 
 fixed on him; "but what can be done? The 
 question is, is Betty, by any chance, in love 
 with Cyril?" 
 
 "I don't know," she answered, slowly. 
 "Sometimes I think she is, and sometimes 
 but not so often I think she is not. Girls," 
 she added seriously, "are harder to read than 
 the frost-words." 
 
 "And Cyril?" I asked, after a silence de- 
 voted to a consideration of the hieroglyphic 
 feminine. 
 
 "Of course," said she, "that was clear at 
 their first meeting." 
 
 I believed her. How wonderful, how un- 
 thinkable to us men are the messages sent 
 over no wire of logic by Truth to woman- 
 kind. We need the palpable line, we males, 
 the insulating glasses, the spaced poles of 
 reason. Our receiving instrument is too 
 gross to record the Hertzian flashes from the 
 All-true.
 
 176 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 The Infant stirred a little. He raised a 
 hand to his brow. 
 
 "Pruina," I began, in a cavernous whisper 
 when he englobed himself anew "y u like 
 Cyril?" 
 
 "Yes; I like Cyril; but I love that poor 
 old Infant there." 
 
 Love! the golden word sang itself into 
 my soul and echoed yodel-like in its empty 
 spaces. Confusing and continuing echoes, 
 these ; for there was much abiding emptiness 
 in that soul because of Pruina. It leaped, 
 the word, from wall to wall of that aching, 
 hollow soul of mine and then (because I am 
 a poor little poet, I suppose, and see foolish 
 metaphors in simple things) the golden 
 sound of it became a golden shuttle which 
 left behind it, in its rebounding flights, 
 threads of opal colour. And across that 
 empty soul grew something beautiful first 
 a web of spider-lines all intertangled then 
 a gauze, aureate-filmy then a texture subtly 
 patterned and then a Picture.
 
 VIPERS' BITES 177 
 
 The Picture was not clear at first because 
 the flashing shuttle-word blurred the inner 
 vision. But the weaving ceased at last; the 
 work of the word was done; and I saw! 
 
 I saw Pruina, blond in the blond sun- 
 light- 
 
 I saw Roland, radiant, standing beside 
 her 
 
 I saw my Little Duty plain before me 
 
 "Hugh," said Pruina, "what is the mat- 
 ter? You have gone white as ashes. Are 
 you ill?" 
 
 "No," I said, "I have just recovered my 
 health, and" but my answer was never 
 finished. We heard a shriek from Betty and 
 ran in the direction of the sound, arriving 
 some seconds after the others. Betty lay on 
 the ground, very white, with Cyril support- 
 ing her head. 
 
 "A viper," said Aloys, examining the 
 mangled remains of a snake, "vipera corn- 
 munis. She has fainted."
 
 178 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "She is bitten in the ankle," cried Cyril, 
 wildly. 
 
 Pruina kneeled and pulled off Betty's 
 stocking. 
 
 "There are two tiny holes here," she said, 
 turning to Aloys, "just above the ankle- 
 bone. What ought we to do?" 
 
 The Childe threw himself on the ground. 
 
 "Let me suck the poison from the wound," 
 said he. 
 
 Cyril let Betty's tawny head settle down 
 among the brown leaves, touched the Childe 
 gently on the shoulder and whispered some- 
 thing in his ear. 
 
 That poor Infant scrambled to his feet, 
 pale and shaking, while Cyril took his place 
 and reverently, as a votary that kisses a holy 
 relic, put his lips to the slender ankle. 
 
 Aloys, while this was happening, was 
 seated on the ground rapidly dissecting the 
 adder by aid of a penknife and a magnifying 
 glass. It made a tragic little picture to me 
 who stood uselessly aloof Cyril, bent to his
 
 VIPERS' BITES 179 
 
 sacred task, the anxious faces of the two 
 girls, that trembling Infant, and the hurried 
 slicings and pickings of our grey, wise Aloys. 
 
 At last the latter spoke. 
 
 "It is a very old viper," said he, smiling; 
 "and its poison glands and ducts are dry and 
 harmless. There is no danger to our dear 
 Betty except from the bite qua bite. And I 
 fancy that Little Cyril has cured that." 
 
 There followed a cheerful bustle of relief. 
 Betty was soon brought to a rosy Betty 
 when, her bare foot hidden under her skirt, 
 she heard from Pruina of the drama that was 
 played in her absence; such a damask rose 
 of a Bettine, in fact, toward the end of the 
 recital, that I thought it seemly to withdraw. 
 
 Moreover, there were many reasons why 
 I must find that ashen and shaking Infant 
 who had fled on hearing Aloys' words of 
 comfort. There was much to say to him, 
 much to hint, much to prepare him for. 
 
 But first to prepare the reader. 
 
 Some chemist once explained to me the
 
 180 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 method of preparing perfumes ; and I stored 
 part of it in my memory as the subject of a 
 metaphor. Rose petals, for example, quoth 
 my chemist, are dropped into some sub- 
 stance (I forget what) and left there. The 
 substance absorbs the perfume of the petals 
 and is then dissolved in spirits. And thus 
 the perfume. This description may not serve 
 the ends of Jiilichs-Platz or La Rue de la 
 Paix ; but it suffices for a metaphor, which is 
 all, in the last analysis, that any science is 
 good for. My chemist then divagated into 
 synthetic perfumes, things, I gathered, in- 
 sulting to the rose, a mockery to man and 
 useless as tropes. 
 
 Now, to develop my metaphor, much had 
 happened to Roland Elliot and more had 
 happened to me since he sat, a globular 
 grief, on his little grey hilltop. And the 
 growth of these happenings was a flower in 
 my soul, a bitter-thorned, viper-rooted, light- 
 shunning, abnormal bloom with a perfume 
 marvelous sweet. And the scented petals of
 
 VIPERS' BITES 181 
 
 this flower, so I read the word of fate, I was 
 to drop, petal by petal, into that dear In- 
 fant's soul. Unknowing, lost in what he 
 thinks is sorrow (what does he know of 
 sorrow?) he will absorb that perfume; and 
 then, behold ! the spirit of love will flow over 
 him; and his poor soul will dissolve into 
 fragrance. 
 
 Petal by petal! Courage, Hugh Lyddon! 
 one stroke at a time and a slow recover 
 pulls one through the hardest race! 
 
 After searching some time for Roland, I 
 came on Pruina, reading one of the tiny blue 
 books of the Bibliotheque Nationale. 
 
 "Little Hugh," said she, "you told me a 
 little fib just now." 
 
 "Which fib?" I asked rather jauntily. 
 
 She looked at me gravely. 
 
 "That does not sound a bit like you," said 
 she. 
 
 "We literary persons," I answered airily, 
 "seldom sound exactly like ourselves. We 
 are merely incarnate rhetorics, books like
 
 182 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS - 
 
 men walking. We are poseurs; if we seem 
 earnest, serious, good, it is only the expres- 
 sion of some subtlety of technique, some 
 trick of divine art. At one moment we are 
 Allegories or Fables ; at another we are Epi- 
 grams or Innuendoes. We are Metonymies 
 and Synecdoches (if you know what they 
 are) and most egregious Antitheses. As 
 Lord Hamlet said, believe none of us ! We 
 have eyes to see, tongues to express, and a 
 most perplexing, artful, whirling, clicking 
 machine, all levers and cams and springs, be- 
 tween the seeing and the expression. We 
 are rather vain, Little Pruina, and deucedly 
 insincere. Believe none of us! We are 
 prophets of nothing at all, high priests of 
 nothing whatever, that wander through a 
 doting, believing world darkly veiled in u-r 
 beautiful technique. Have you seen Roland 
 Elliot?" 
 
 "I suppose," remarked Pruina calmly, 
 "that you are playing some Little Game?" 
 
 "I am playing no Little Game," I an-
 
 VIPERS' BITES 183 
 
 swered solemnly. "I am stating important 
 and undeviating laws of psychology as I 
 find them illustrated in the depths and shal- 
 lows of my own cryptic soul. Have you 
 seen Roland Elliot?" 
 
 "Roland Elliot, as you call him, vanished 
 in that direction." 
 
 Blessed be the direction, I thought, that 
 won that identifying sacramental gesture. 
 But the thought, the last of such thoughts, 
 died in silence. 
 
 "I thank you," I said. "I go to seek that 
 unhappy Childe and pour the balm of wis- 
 dom on the wound of love." 
 
 And I bowed and walked away, very 
 straight and soldierly, feeling shafts of 
 golden interrogation strike just below the 
 shoulder-blades. 
 
 Little Game indeed! It is a Great Game 
 that I have set out to play, the hardest a 
 man has ever played, a game worthy a Little 
 One.
 
 184 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 And it will last all my life, Pruina, all my; 
 lonely life. 
 
 But how interesting! Note, for example, 
 as a curious psychologic fact, that I am able 
 to talk naturally and rather eloquently with 
 Pruina since I ceased to love her.
 
 XIII 
 
 PETAL BY PETAL 
 
 Infant, when I found him, lay 
 stretched, like the listless author of 
 the Elegy, at the foot of a nodding beech. 
 
 He greeted me with an elegiac smile, a 
 smile that outpathosed saltest tears; and 
 when I sat down beside him with a hearten- 
 ing tap on the shoulder, he caught my hand 
 in both of his, gave it a wrenching, shaking 
 grip, and let it fall. My big paw ached 
 afterward, as if his suffering had poisoned 
 it. The chiefest evil of love and friendship 
 is this : that pain becomes contagious. 
 
 "You remember," he said, in the level, 
 sighing voice of despair. 
 
 "What shall I remember, old man?" 
 
 "Our talk," said he and became silent. 
 
 185
 
 Ah ! for a saving modicum of womanly in- 
 tuition! Lacking that, by male logic and 
 crass eliminations, I arrived by slow stages 
 at the night when Cyril came into our lives, 
 what time the Infant and I parted in wasp- 
 ish contradiction, each testily prophetic of 
 a love to be lost. 
 
 "You were wrong," he continued wearily. 
 
 "We might both be wrong," I hinted. 
 
 "I was right," said he. 
 
 "How far right?" 
 
 "Absolutely right. Betty is engaged to 
 Cyril." 
 
 "That is what he whispered to you?" 
 
 "Yes" the word was like a passing bell. 
 
 The time had come to drop my first petal. 
 O thou infestive Childe! thou tristful Ro- 
 land! what fragrant anodyne shall be thine, 
 what balm in Gilead! 
 
 "We might both be right," I said absurd- 
 ly, just to provoke his answer. 
 
 "You were wrong," it came. 
 
 I held the petal, the perfumed, curling,
 
 PETAL BY PETAL 187 
 
 filmy thing, in the fingers of my soul and let 
 it flutter downward. 
 
 "I am glad that I was wrong," said I; 
 "and I am also glad" an impressive pause 
 
 -"that you were right." 
 
 He showed no emotion. The petal had 
 fallen too softly. 
 
 "I am glad that I was wrong," I repeated. 
 
 This stirred him. 
 
 "You have reason," he said. "Suppose 
 that Cyril had loved Pruina 
 
 "It would have embarrassed my strateg- 
 ics," said I. 
 
 The reader, whether of a turn of mind 
 geometric, psychologic or merely (as I hope) 
 romantic, will be interested to note that this 
 chance word "Strategics" is the exact pivotal 
 centre of this history. True ; the unconvinc- 
 ing Bent, the beamy Jimmy, and the dreamy 
 Bottle of L' Ombre-qui-passe might have 
 shaped the days of the Little Ones into the 
 ordered congruity of a story, but the oriented 
 will, the thrill in the spinal marrow, the
 
 188 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 quintessential freakishness of real life would 
 all have been lacking without Strategics. 
 Moreover, the word was needed to give form 
 to my inchoate good intention. 
 
 "It would have embarrassed my strateg- 
 ics," said I. 
 
 A dainty petal, this ; but it fell unheeded. 
 
 "I am also glad," I said again, "that you 
 were right." 
 
 His poor soul looked out at me through 
 unlighted windows. 
 
 "I am too dull to understand," he sighed. 
 
 "I don't want you to understand, dear 
 Childe," I said gently, "I want you to feel 
 that there is still fragrance on earth even 
 though your own rose has faded." 
 
 "It is sweet enough to you, no doubt," he 
 moaned. "You have Pruina." 
 
 I have Pruina! Infant! Infant! what 
 do you know of pain? 
 
 "I am glad," I remarked, hoping to wake 
 him by the drumming repetition, "that you 
 were right."
 
 PETAL BY PETAL 189 
 
 "You are glad that I was right," he mut- 
 tered, repeating the phrase twice or thrice. 
 "Do you mean that you are glad that I can't 
 have Betty?" 
 
 Now was the time for a handful of petals, 
 delivered in a rich casket of words. 
 
 "You phrase the thought, or rather you 
 voice my inner feelings, rather infelicitous- 
 ly," said I. "A spade should not be called a 
 spade when it is used for sublime purposes. 
 The church knows this ; and before the altar 
 a coat becomes a chasuble and a chemise de 
 nuit a surplice. My gladness is not ortho- 
 dox gladness, the sort that springs impul- 
 sively from a patent good" (this was a 
 petal!) "near at hand" (another!). "No! 
 it is rather the gladness that grows out of 
 the death-enriched, tear-watered soil of 
 present grief" (a petal). "It sees you in 
 your whole life from cradle to crematory " 
 
 "I wish I were in it now," he interrupted. 
 
 "From cradle to crematory," I went on; 
 "and it marks the gradual convergence of
 
 190 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 certain bright lines that move to some shin- 
 ing focal point, the point of your true, last- 
 ing happiness" (a petal). "Dear little 
 Betty herself" he moaned at her name 
 "may be one of these bright lines, these 
 pleasing tendencies, that lead you to your 
 real destiny" (a petal). "My gladness, you 
 see, is no present joy; it looks far into the 
 future." 
 
 "Of course she would love him," said he. 
 
 "Far into the future," I repeated; "and 
 it sees you blessed. It sees you moving, 
 year by year, toward the goal of your noble 
 art; and, blond in the blond sunshine, love 
 walks beside you." 
 
 This was a golden petal, such as I have 
 seen fall, in the Jardin des Plantes, from a 
 Gloire de Dijon. 
 
 "Love is not for me," he said, "any more 
 forever." 
 
 "Love comes to all true artists," I pro- 
 ceeded, "in answer to the call of their art.
 
 PETAL BY PETAL 191 
 
 It may almost be measured in units of the 
 artistic vehicle." 
 
 "No more forever," he murmured. 
 
 "Love," I insisted stoutly; for the phrase 
 was too pearl-like to be wasted on grunting 
 inattention, "may be accurately measured in 
 units of the artistic vehicle. You painter- 
 folk, for example, have your triad of 
 coloured clays, your blue, your red, your 
 yellow. So your heart, that palette of the 
 emotions, must have its three colours too 
 its calf-love who was she, Infant?" 
 
 He smiled for the second time, most wear- 
 Uy. 
 
 "There has been no one but Betty," said 
 he. 
 
 "Its calf-love," I continued unperturbed, 
 "its Betty and Another." 
 
 "No other," he sighed. 
 
 "With these simple elements he can solve 
 his simple problems, his genre, his nature 
 morte, his paysage intime." 
 
 "No other," he repeated; "no other."
 
 192 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "The music-folk," I went on, "with their 
 diatonic scales, their chromatics, their reeds 
 and strings and brazen complexities, require 
 a long gamut of heart adventures. Witness, 
 in the biographies of musicians, the volume 
 and mutability of their affaires du cceur. A 
 misogynist might paint La Joconde; but 
 only the chaste lover of many could write 
 the Fifth Symphony." 
 
 "You are talking rot," said the Childe. 
 
 Perhaps I was; no matter! 
 
 "We writer-folk," I continued, disregard- 
 ing his comment, "with our dictionaries of 
 symbols and our incalculable combinations of 
 them, need for our craft an infinity of ama- 
 tory experiences." 
 
 "You ought to be Sultans of Turkey," he 
 broke in savagely. I had his attention at 
 last! 
 
 "No," I answered softly; "not if one is a 
 writer and a Little One. He is then like a 
 bee, to employ a thread-worn trope, that 
 gathers the sweetness of a thousand flowers
 
 PETAL BY PETAL 193 
 
 but leaves the flowers unchanged. The 
 clover is his, the pure passion of an instant; 
 the curved horn of the honeysuckle ; and the 
 tilleul's myriad blossoms. And if he hovers 
 a while, in ecstasy, over some tender thing 
 standing radiantly blond in the blond sun- 
 shine" 
 
 "You said that before." Truly, I had his 
 attention. 
 
 "Blond in the blond sunshine, it is that he 
 finds in it a symbol of the Love he loves, the 
 goal and the grail of his eternal quest. But, 
 aware that it is only a symbol, he buzzes 
 away. It is the honey he wants, not the 
 honey-bearer!" 
 
 Lost was the elegiac pose, as the Childe 
 sat up briskly on one of the fantastic roots. 
 
 "You seem to me," he said very slowly, "to 
 be absolutely mad." 
 
 "Was Hamlet mad?" This question, so 
 suggestive of my present spring of action, 
 was a strategic fault. His mind, however, 
 stopped at the literary fact.
 
 194 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "He was a character in fiction; and his 
 madness was a ruse." 
 
 "We are all, in a certain sense," said I, 
 shying rapidly from the end of his phrase, 
 "characters in fiction, or play-actors. No 
 man is all himself. He acts, or thinks he 
 acts, before the audience of his own times. 
 Hence, he is never quite what he is, but 
 rather what he wants others to think he is. 
 Now, the great masters of the pen " 
 
 He raised a satiric eyebrow. 
 
 " and even the poor little apprentices 
 like me, stand in fancy as mediators and 
 spokesmen between Abstract Love and the 
 stuttering world. So, for the dear sake of 
 that Abstract, we all, master and apprentice 
 alike, buzz away from the beautiful Con- 
 crete, growing so blond in the blond sun- 
 shine " 
 
 "I suppose," he said, "that you are playing 
 some damned Little Game." 
 
 Just Pruina's words, barring the incan- 
 descent adjective!
 
 PETAL BY PETAL 195 
 
 "I am playing no Little Game," I replied. 
 "I sought for you because you were un- 
 happy" he sank back into his former atti- 
 tude "and I hoped to bring you comfort 
 by wrenching your mind away from the par- 
 ticular and making it touch the fringes of 
 universal law. Somewhere, dear Roland, 
 somewhere in the universe Love is waiting 
 for you, standing- 
 He sat up. 
 
 "You will be telling me next," he jerked, 
 "that there are as good fish " 
 
 "No!" I cried. "I am an artist, Infant, 
 not a fishmonger; and one should never en- 
 shrine a possible truth in impossible lan- 
 guage." 
 
 "But you mean the same thing I" 
 "I mean something quite different. A 
 fish caught or a fish missed is just a fish not 
 a mystic symbol. The proverb, vulgar in 
 form, vulgarises love. The women we love 
 are embodiments of Love itself or (to return 
 to my first metaphor) the vehicles of artistic
 
 196 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 emotions. To you they are splendid colours, 
 to me fragrant and perfected phrases. Per- 
 haps (who knows?) some day you may come 
 on some slender, swaying vision, standing so 
 blond in the blond sunshine " 
 
 "You blessed old donkey," said he, in 
 something like his own cherry voice, "y u 
 are absolutely daft; but no doubt you are 
 trying to brace me up. One would think, 
 what with your bees and your phrases, that 
 you were no longer in love with Pruina." 
 
 The time had come ! O transcendent petal ! 
 
 "I am no longer in love with Pruina," 
 said I. 
 
 "What?" he shouted. 
 
 "I am no longer in love with Pruina." 
 
 "You are a most egregious ass," he re- 
 marked. 
 
 "I am no longer in love with Pruina." 
 
 "Or a most egregious liar." 
 
 "No; merely a man expiessing himself 
 faithfully to an old friend in all the sincerity 
 of his artistic consciousness and conscience.
 
 PETAL BY PETAL 197 
 
 3 learnt the perfect phrase, gathered the 
 honey, breathed the fragrance et voild! The 
 hunger of art is satisfied ! I leave her stand- 
 ing so " 
 
 "Not again!" he cried. "Of all the cold- 
 blooded brutes ! How about her? Eh? How 
 about that lovely girl?" 
 
 Thank the strategic gods 1 The petal had 
 fallen home. 
 
 "The flower is indifferent to the bee," 
 said I. 
 
 "You are metaphor-mad," cried the In- 
 fant; and I loved him for the pitying anger 
 in his voice. "You are not a bee, but a man. 
 Pruina is not a flower, but " 
 
 "A flower," said I, " a delicate flower 
 standing so " 
 
 At this moment the conversation was in 
 danger of losing its savour of art. When the 
 Delphic whisper becomes a shriek, when the 
 arri&re pensee bleats, art ceases. 
 
 Luckily, however, only the beginning of 
 the Infant's outburst (mostly imprecatory)
 
 198 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 was permitted. The rest was lost in the blare 
 of Aloys' horn calling the Little Ones to- 
 gether. 
 
 We were the last to reach the place. Cyril 
 and Betty, those demure shakers of hearts, 
 were sitting together on the ground, he illus- 
 trating with twigs and pebbles the ground- 
 plan of some ancient temple. And Pruina 
 was standing by her father, one hand snug- 
 gling within his arm while the other held the 
 rallying horn. 
 
 It was Pruina herself so cunningly in- 
 termeshed are the wheels of Fate that blew 
 the closing summons. 
 
 Summons? or was it "Taps" played over 
 the grave of a buried passion?
 
 XIV 
 
 BETWEEN THE HOENS 
 
 TV/TEMORY is a freakish jade, well 
 worthy to be a Little One. She sits 
 in the twilight corners of our souls stringing 
 rosaries of foolish beads. Values and beauty 
 are nothing to her; she marries whim to 
 whim, which, fingered not-prayerfully by 
 bald psychology, change on a sudden to pro- 
 foundest Laws of Association. 
 
 Hence it is that the blast of Pruina's horn 
 stirs memories of another; a horn sounding 
 far above me from slopes of snow, signal of 
 the bob-sleds starting above Les Avants. 
 
 Memory leaves no gap between these 
 blasts. I see Aloys and Pruina, the Infant 
 and Hugh Lyddon, amid the beaches of 
 Fontainebleau, and then in a flash, together 
 
 199
 
 200 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 still, amid the hills, my great confederates. 
 
 But, notwithstanding the witness of mem- 
 ory, there were many days between the 
 horns, days of beauty, work, mounting pas- 
 sion, hopeless love and strategics. Each of 
 the Little Ones, in that interval, embodied 
 one or more of these things. I, for my part, 
 was simply Strategics! 
 
 Happy days? Ah! that is now another 
 matter. "Happiness," trumpets the Book, 
 "is not being happy but doing happily." If 
 that be so, then some of us were happy; and 
 as to the rest who knows? 
 
 Aloys, for example, our calm, wise Aloys, 
 was surely blessed. Day by day the frost 
 grew ever easier to read and its messages 
 ever ghostlier and nobler. We believed in 
 his work, we Little Ones, or we "willed to 
 believe" (which may be the same thing) ; 
 and in this atmosphere of faith the frost- 
 ferns grew mightily. One day, I remember, 
 he strode up to me in our Gardens, where I 
 was working near the memory-haunted
 
 Colonne des Baisers, waving a photograph 
 of the latest cryptogram. He handed it to 
 me with a reverent gesture, as one might 
 present, blaringly announced, the message 
 of a great king. Indeed, the thing was rare- 
 ly beautiful. No sinuous dragon writhing 
 out of a curling, crisping sea in some old 
 Chinese painting had ever lovelier opulence 
 of artistic surprises, of curve-themes re- 
 peated and embellished and developed into 
 a symphony of fernlike grace. It seemed no 
 work of chance, no whim of crystalization; 
 but rather abstract Expression and abstract 
 Beauty shaped somehow by viewless will out 
 of viewless vapour. 
 
 "What does it say?" I asked. 
 
 "It says 'I am,*" he answered; "only 
 those two words, echoed curve by curve and 
 each exquisitely different. I am!" 
 
 There were tears in his eyes; I dared to 
 ask no further questions; and he strode 
 away. Beauty is ; Love is ; and the loving 
 God; and Another what more does Aloys,
 
 202 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 what more does any one of us need to know? 
 Surely he was very happy. 
 
 What of Cyril? His love, save as an ally 
 of Strategics, did not interest me. Indeed, 
 even to us who knew of his engagement to 
 Betty, his work seemed to overshadow his 
 love. This no doubt was a matter of ex- 
 ternals, of reticent New-Englandism. None 
 of us, unless it was Betty, got below his 
 surface. 
 
 But Cyril's work was its own herald. It 
 sprang, in the Gallic idiom, at the eyes. The 
 rewards of the School came to him as of 
 right, rewards not easily won in a nation 
 where art beats hotly in the blood and comes, 
 a precious heritage, to the humblest. We 
 bleak Yankees, who cannot "let ourselves 
 go," who see in beauty rather craftsmanship 
 than emotion, must be content for some cen- 
 turies, I think, to warm our shivering souls 
 by the glow of alien fires. When Naples, 
 when Sicily, when the despised Calabria, 
 shall have leavened our race with the yeasty
 
 BETWEEN THE HORNS 203 
 
 ferment of the south, then, perhaps who 
 knows? we may then produce the sym- 
 phony, the poem, the picture, the temple, of 
 the new Democracy. But Cyril needed no 
 such yeast he was a Little One! 
 
 What of Betty? She lived her sweet, im- 
 perturbable, dual life, in sterilized linen and 
 smudged blouse, nursing the sick and etch- 
 ing the copper, a comely and desirable 
 Anomaly. As nurse and artist she had 
 every reason for content; and I have no 
 doubt (except for a timid masculine reserva- 
 tion) that she was placidly happy. How 
 her happiness and goodness can be trans- 
 lated into terms of the Childe's wasting 
 misery, I cannot say; that also is an Anom- 
 aly, feminine like herself, but not so comely 
 or desirable. 
 
 I used the words "wasting misery" to 
 image the Childe. Betty's placid joy may 
 have provoked the antithesis, which, if not 
 sadly inept, needs expansion. 
 
 Perhaps "wasting," nounless and alone,
 
 204 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 connotes well enough the filing, grinding, 
 shredding lathe in which he was spinning. 
 It hints at least the bodily story. The 
 cherubic look had gone; the cheek-bones 
 showed, valleyed by grey hollows. No need 
 any more to "train down the bare outline," 
 as I once advised. He fed like an ascetic; 
 and rarely, in those meager days, could he 
 be lured chez Lavenue or Voisin. His tailor 
 was far more content with his shape than 
 was I. To be sure, dignity (a negligible 
 quality in a Little One) gained something 
 by this attenuation. "He gets more Roland 
 and less Infant every day," said Cyril. "I 
 can't make it out." 
 
 And no one made it out, as far I could 
 note, except Pruina and me. For Pruina 
 and I, under the sway of compelling Stra- 
 tegics, made the Infant a focus of intensest 
 observation. 
 
 So his body wasted. That is easy to 
 phrase; but to envisage his mind, his soul, 
 calls for a filmier vehicle. I am only sure of
 
 BETWEEN THE HORNS 205 
 
 this, that "misery" is not that magic thing, 
 the right word. Yet it has some warrant. 
 "Grief," says the Book, with surprising 
 modernity, "is only life short-circuited"; and 
 I fancy that the simile (Aloys showed me 
 why) is exact. When the vibrant force 
 flows through the whole system of the soul, 
 brisk bells call, informing sounders click, 
 motors buzz, filaments glow, carbons hum 
 and chuckle, and even stock- tickers (which 
 have little to do with soul) add their impish 
 jargon. But when this sacred vibration 
 circles in some petty round, the poor soul 
 becomes all dumb and actionless, and (like 
 Gloucester's blinded earl) "all dark and 
 comfortless." 
 
 Now, although the Childe was short-cir- 
 cuited, yet the intense voltage of his idee fixe 
 saved him from cold and inaction. Its forces 
 operated three sub-stations between which 
 his waking existence was divided his Work, 
 our Nurseries and Cadwalader Bent. And
 
 206 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 he showed in each the same hot, leaping 
 energy. 
 
 The artistic results of this period, the half 
 year that lay between the horns of Fontaine- 
 bleau and Les Avants, were amazing for 
 quantity and intensity. Esquisses and cro- 
 quis fell from him like leaves. He essayed 
 many vehicles; aquarelle, gouache, pastel, 
 oil, charcoal, pencil and flagrant marriages 
 of these materials he used them all. He 
 groped, wandered, created, destroyed, for 
 some four months ; and then, on a sudden, in 
 one hectic week (when I was denied his 
 studio) he painted Les Ailes Rognees. The 
 world knows the picture now through the 
 crude publicities of popular art, knows at 
 least something of its austere loveliness. But 
 the world cannot grasp, indeed not even all 
 the Little Ones could grasp, the contents of 
 that beauty. "It makes one's soul ache," I 
 heard a precieuse say, "to see Love clip off 
 those lovely opalescent wings. I wonder 
 why he does it!"
 
 BETWEEN THE HORNS 207 
 
 This book, madame, tells why! 
 
 But in our Nurseries the Childe showed 
 none of the fever of the studio. There he 
 was his old self and more, frolic, rattling, 
 foldtre. In one thing only had he changed : 
 he could talk to Betty! No stammering 
 now; no pink-faced idiocies. I do not know 
 whether the others noticed this fact; but it 
 was shouted at me because of a parallel 
 prodigy: I could talk to Pruina! These 
 hand in hand phenomena are curious, I 
 think, and well worth the analysis of psy- 
 chology. Their causes, without tracing the 
 intermediate processes, were obviously the 
 same love was honourably or diplomatical- 
 ly suppressed. But (to add something more 
 to the data of psychology) the identity of 
 the glib results was independent of motive. 
 His was the happiness (dear old Infant!) 
 of Betty and Cyril. Mine was simply 
 Strategics. I used to wonder at times if, 
 when I had played my Little Game to the 
 end, when Roland opened his eyes and saw
 
 208 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Pruina as she really was, he would be strick- 
 en dumb before her. I hoped so ; his silence 
 would be a triumphant song to me, a paean 
 of Strategics. 
 
 The recurrence of the word reminds me 
 of the third substation of the Infant's activi- 
 ties Cadwalader Bent. Possessed by the 
 shadowy fear of some vague evil to Cyril, 
 he haunted Bent's society, to the end that 
 the danger, foreseen, might be crushed or 
 turned aside. I thought the apprehension 
 groundless. Bent continued to be inartistic, 
 unconvincing, like a crude blur in charcoal. 
 Moreover, the worst that the most malign 
 testator can do is to leave his fortune to a 
 benign corporation. 
 
 The Childe, however, studied Bent's 
 wicked serpent of a brain with the birdlike, 
 fluttering attention of fear. Every visit he 
 made to Bent was patent the following day 
 in his sour mood and truculent speech, con- 
 ditions aggravated not a little by my un- 
 belief. In vain I pictured Bent as a humor-
 
 BETWEEN THE HORNS 209 
 
 ous Giant Blunder-bore watching invisible 
 over a herd of fattening Little Ones; to 
 Roland Elliot he was nothing humorous; 
 and the temper, vocabulary and appetite of 
 my friend suffered grievously thereby. 
 
 Appetite the word suggests gastronomy 
 and a sweet happening of this period. 
 
 It was Betty's birthday; and, barkening 
 ever to the whispers of profound Strategics, 
 I gave her and her betrothed a Little Dinner 
 at Lavenue's. 
 
 There, in his old Parisian days, the cigar- 
 ettes of R. L. S. (that rare Little One) 
 added its ghost to the pervading mistiness. 
 That must have been in the crowded room 
 below, where a chastened Bohemia gathers 
 o' nights for its music and consommation. 
 There, when your demie blonde stands bead- 
 ing on your table, when the red-tipped 
 matches of France have done their reluctant 
 work, and the air grows thick and the music 
 comes down at nine o'clock from the salon 
 above there it is good for a Little One to
 
 210 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 be and surpassingly good to remember in 
 his exiled, im-Parised days. 
 
 But that room is for common evenings 
 when one has already dined, tant bien que 
 mal, and longs to herd in Bohemia with the 
 unknown masters of the art to come. Betty's 
 birthday, her betrothal (now "formally an- 
 nounced") and high Strategics, demanded 
 another mise en scene, the white room above 
 with the pale green trellis that hints some- 
 how, to a Little One, of vagrant holidays 
 and Italian villeggiature. 
 
 In this retreat, under the Arcadian influ- 
 ences of our trellis, we fed on gastronomic 
 marvels that came veiled in exotic names. I 
 had made a concordat (nothing less) with 
 the chef garcon (born for the Vatican, but 
 providentially deflected) that afternoon; 
 and the dinner, thanks to him, became an 
 aesthetic rite. He had put my suggestions 
 blandly aside, had written the menu as it 
 were a papal rescript, and ended, "And we
 
 BETWEEN THE HORNS 211 
 
 will finish, if monsieur pleases, with Pche 
 cardinale, a specialite of the House." 
 
 Monsieur did please. Alone, upon the 
 rescript, monsieur could foretaste the de- 
 lights of Peche cardinale. 
 
 "And we will drink," I said, trying to 
 speak firmly, "Vouvray mousseux." 
 
 Consideration, pencil to lips doubt an 
 indulgent smile consent! 
 
 "Bien, m'sieur" 
 
 True, Little Ones, I think, are gourmets 
 only by accident. Content and passing con- 
 tent with the fare of Omar, seeking no diete- 
 tic complexities, they nevertheless accept the 
 latter, if these happen along, as sparrows do 
 crumbs, with gay twitterings. So my papal 
 friend, watching our enjoyment with a pas- 
 toral smile, was content with his flock. When 
 the Peche cardinale appeared, he exhibited it 
 himself to Betty and dispensed it like a bene- 
 diction. 
 
 It was with the Peche cardinale, or rather 
 with its (may I say?) occultation, that
 
 212 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 began the stress of the gathering, its tense 
 emphasis. 
 
 Up to that moment our feast had been 
 for us all a merry Nursery of an uncommon 
 kind ; though to me, perhaps, it had a subtler 
 flavour than to the others, the gust of dainty 
 Strategics. 
 
 Suppose yourself, Little Reader, seated 
 at the next table on my left hand, playing 
 with the bread-crumbs, sipping your wine 
 and peering furtively to us-ward. You see 
 a round table de six converts, with a pale 
 golden something beading in the glasses and 
 deep golden chrysanthemums from the 
 Marche aux Fleurs rather Pruinesque than 
 Bettesque, the colour-scheme, an effect in- 
 tended for the eye of Roland Elliot, lover 
 and artist. You see in profile Hugh Lyd- 
 don, strategist and master of the feast. On 
 his left hand, Pruina! Her back is toward 
 you, but her hair, even by electric light, is 
 very good to look upon; though it sounds a
 
 BETWEEN THE HORNS 213 
 
 tenderer note of colour under the touch of 
 the blond sunshine. 
 
 Next to her (this is Strategics!) sits that 
 dear Childe, our Infant, Roland Elliot. You 
 see his face, quartering from the right, a 
 pale face now, its lines strengthened and 
 dignified by suffering and intensest labour. 
 A happy face tonight! and as it turns now 
 and again to Pruina it catches, very beauti- 
 fully, I think, something of the spiritual 
 purity of hers. It is so, looking back to 
 those days, that I love to remember it. 
 
 Then Aloys, that fervent, patient spirit. 
 You will read him at once, if you can look 
 below the gaunt, grey husk of the man, read 
 him as the dweller amid voices and visions 
 who, for the sake of those he loves, descends 
 to share the mood and movement of their 
 daily life. And, if you have an eye for the 
 invisible, Little Reader, you will feel a cer- 
 tain inward stir, a sense of consecration, 
 from having gazed on Aloys Guex-Beny. 
 
 Between him and the dark bulk of Hugh
 
 214 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Lyddon sit Cyril and Betty, both meshed, 
 unknown to themselves, in viewless Strateg- 
 ics. He is whimsically altering the plan of 
 Azay le Rideau into a Palace of joy for 
 the Little Ones. The projet, as you see, 
 pleases us. 
 
 You have now, if your fancy be of the 
 helpful sort, a picture of the six Little Ones 
 when they heard for the first time the strains 
 of "La Brise du Reve," what time the 
 orchestra descended to expectant Bohemia 
 and its place was taken (such is the custom 
 at Lavenue's) by a pale magician with a 
 violin and a darkly bearded assistant with a 
 piano. 
 
 Watch the Little Ones now, you of the 
 helpful fancy, as that pale magician tosses 
 back his yellow hair, cuddles his violin under 
 his chin and begins to play upon their heart- 
 strings.
 
 XV 
 
 LA BEISE DU REVE 
 
 IXTHEN this fantasia was first played at 
 Queen's Hall it was called "Dream 
 Zephyrs," a sticky-sweetness that has clung. 
 It was given its French name when it was 
 orchestrated for the Concert Colonne. But 
 the Little Ones call it "Op. 5." It needs 
 no title. It is simply Itself. 
 
 The critics, vocative by vocation, dub it 
 "programme music." Perhaps! but if it 
 be programme music, let me coin a verb and 
 ask you, dear sirs, what it prographs? 
 
 No; the fantasia in E b is music, absolute 
 music, a thing higher even than words. 
 
 Do not mistake me! I, Hugh Lyddon, 
 apprentice of letters, love and reverence my 
 own art. I worship its mechanism, its form, 
 
 215
 
 216 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 as ends in themselves and strive mightily to 
 make these vibrant and pure. For although 
 I, a wistful, nonchalant Little One, warped 
 by heredity, teased by environment, be- 
 trayed by instruction, can add no force of 
 my own to the thought-rush of the world, 
 yet I can, the least of us can, by patience 
 and love, do something toward shaping the 
 matrix that shall hold the final word of the 
 ghost in man. 
 
 But I know that my art is a mediate art, 
 a stuff of hints and indirections, a distant 
 reflex of human emotions. Whereas music 
 is emotion itself, bodiless and unconditioned. 
 
 Shut your eyes, surrender your petulant, 
 febrile will, and ah ! how it comes, this music ! 
 All the dark emptiness behind the eyes, all 
 the hollow chambers within the ears, all the 
 vague, blind dome that seems to house your 
 soul, are fulfilled with harmony. There 
 is no orchestra, no sound from without; 
 the music is within you, begotten, ripened 
 and born within you, and growing from
 
 LA BRISE DU REVE 217 
 
 beauty into emotion (your own soul-beauty 
 and your own soul-emotion) becomes You, 
 triumphantly and significantly You. That 
 is music! 
 
 Perhaps, especially if you are a poor 
 word-monger like Hugh Lyddon, you may 
 be stirred to speech when you open your 
 eyes, awaking from music's internal reality 
 (as it seems) into the shimmering, chatter- 
 ing external world. That is my excuse for 
 trying to phrase the effect of La Brise du 
 Reve on me that and my duty as Little 
 Historian. 
 
 This then is what I heard and felt, what 
 time the pale magician tossed back his yel- 
 low hair, cuddled his violin under his chin 
 and began . . . 
 
 An ascending roulade that rose fountain- 
 like, sprayed into clear, sunny drops that 
 fell, with a half-heard, hinting minor into 
 black, sleeping waters. I thought of the 
 Luxembourg pond and of Pruina as she 
 moved, ages ago, in the careless, unforsee-
 
 218 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 ing day before Strategics was begotten, 
 "through the ecstasy of Paris sunshine." 
 
 Another tinkling roulade, happy silver 
 notes, but higher, higher, spraying into 
 blown mist that dispersed through sighing 
 minors into a trembling diminuendo . . . 
 
 And then it began! Wail on wail of slid- 
 ing, rising sixths, troubling, calling, in- 
 sistent ; and my soul ( already aching a little 
 from Strategics) sobbed in answer. "Come," 
 wailed the strings, "come and come and 
 come ! Leave that hungry, thirsty flesh-ma- 
 chine that you blundered into God knows 
 how; leave your rhymes and reasons, 
 your babbling philosophy, your fancies and 
 phrases, and come to me. Me! that blows 
 the vapour, and frosts the pane, and shakes 
 the leafage, and images the fire air of the 
 spirit. Come! Come with me!" 
 
 Wail on wail, ever rising, ever shriller and 
 more beautifully compelling; and then a dis- 
 cordant, rending crash, a pang of separation, 
 and my free soul was afloat.
 
 LA BRISE DU REVE 219 
 
 The discord resolved (and with it all 
 coveting ardours of earth and aching Stra- 
 tegics) into an uplifting atmosphere of har- 
 mony; and I moved drifting within it, bird- 
 like. And it blew against me, this fine air, 
 this quintessential music, tuning my soul (I 
 grope for the phrase) with soft-fingering 
 voices into unison with its spirit. And at 
 last, when its work of love was done and I 
 was quivering with every vibration without 
 me, aiding with my whole being the univer- 
 sal symphony, I rose, up, up, on an echo of 
 that first bubbling roulade and descended, 
 struggling, unwilling, through fretful, sob- 
 bing minors, back to earth. 
 
 That is my little story of La Brise du 
 Reve. Others, wiser than I, have told it 
 otherwise. Others, wiser still, have remained 
 dumb, as all should remain, in the presence 
 of the ineffable. 
 
 My eyes opened (I was surprised to find 
 them shut) on Little Emotions. The Childe's 
 head was in his hands, elbows on the table.
 
 220 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Aloys, always moved by great music, raised 
 his hands and made vague, unmeaning 
 gestures. Betty was flagrantly weeping; and 
 Pruina's eyes wandered from one face to 
 another with a certain golden mastery. 
 
 Cyril, the impassive, the ever-practical, 
 rose and stalked over to the musicians. The 
 violinist, in answer to his question, tapped 
 with his bow the manuscript sheet on the 
 music-stand. Cyril stooped, read and re- 
 turned. Impassive? Not now, with those 
 wide eyes, that mouth a-quiver! He tried 
 to speak, our ready Cyril, and no words 
 came. Then, stuttering, he pointed a shak- 
 ing finger at Pruina and we understood! 
 
 Understood! as only Little Ones can un- 
 derstand; and we held out our arms, all of 
 us, by some dumb, common instinct, toward 
 that pure, singing spirit, that rare genius, 
 our Little Pruina. 
 
 "And you like it so much, so much," said 
 she. "I am very happy." 
 
 Her simple words relaxed the tense emo-
 
 LA BRISE DU REVE 221 
 
 tions; and we fed her solemnly, as it were a 
 sacrament, with the last bit of Peche car- 
 dinale, and put a royal chrysanthemum in 
 her hair, and coined tender Little Names 
 for her and flamboyant titles. For her no 
 Grand Croix, Nobel prize, or Prix de Rome 
 below her worth and work, all of them! 
 For her a unique distinction, invented by 
 our hierophant, the Grand Guerdon of 
 Littleonehood ! 
 
 Then the magician and his pianist went 
 down to Bohemia; and presently we heard, 
 far away, faint echoes of those sliding 
 minors and wailing sixths. As they ended, 
 Bohemia spoke spoke with its generous 
 unreserve, with clappings and howls and 
 eiffelesque enthusiasms. The magician was 
 so be-kissed, I heard later, that he revealed 
 in self-defense the secret that the composi- 
 trice was en haut. 
 
 "She is here," went up a mighty shout. 
 "Let her come!" 
 
 At this the Little Ones "saved them-
 
 222 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 selves," hustling their genius away through 
 twisting passages and out by the door that 
 gives on the Rue du Depart. 
 
 What more of that night? 
 
 Little more only the unsleeping eyes of 
 Hugh Lyddon and his Machiavellian self- 
 communings. 
 
 "He is a great genius," said he, "and she 
 a great genius. The game is in my hands. 
 He and she. She and he." 
 
 And so on, in wearying iteration, until he 
 ached himself into tossing slumber.
 
 XVI 
 
 FROST WORK 
 
 rpHE horn of Les Avants recommences 
 its echoing insistence; and memory 
 sees four Little Ones listening to its calling 
 on the heights. She sees them leave Paris 
 early in January, pass their leafless Fon- 
 tainebleau, slide by the spires of Dijon, and 
 climb, amid the snow-laden Christmas firs 
 on their slopes, the white valleys of the 
 Juras. Then did our Aloys watch the moun- 
 tain frost write on the car windows bizarre 
 modernities for the Book; then did our 
 Pruina prattle happily of her girlhood and 
 New England winters. Then did the Childe 
 put off his wan introspections and spin 
 hyperbolic fancies; and Hugh Lyddon, that 
 shaper of destinies, eclipsed his Machiavelli 
 
 223
 
 in his traveling bag, which he snapped to, 
 like the shears of Atropos, with a clash of 
 finality. For he was content in a grim, 
 gnawing, griping fashion of his own with 
 the march of strategics. There is a crepitat- 
 ing pleasure in playing a great game even 
 when it excruciates. Together now, both of 
 his beloved puppets, on a stage befitting 
 their drama; and the subtle threads were in 
 his fingers. 
 
 For the Childe's presence in the snows 
 was the harvest of sown hintings strategic 
 seeds, cast by Hugh, harrowed by Betty, 
 and warmed by the blond sunshine of 
 Pruina. 
 
 I find now, looking backward, a vague 
 symbolism in our first sight of the Lake of 
 Geneva. As our train skirted the shore be- 
 tween Lausanne and Montreux the lake was 
 hidden in fog. On the morrow too, as we 
 stood on the heights of Les Avants, all be- 
 low us was grey vapour. A veil, not to be 
 raised by cunningest strategics, lay over the
 
 FROST WORK 225 
 
 beauty we had hoped to find. But with the 
 next day came a persuasive sun. By noon 
 he had coaxed the fog into transparency; 
 and we came into our own. Grammont, 
 girdled by wisps of vapour, gloomed across 
 the water; the Dent du Midi jagged white 
 against the southern sky; and the peaked 
 wings of the lake boats flashed agreeably in 
 the sunshine. 
 
 "Little Lake," sighed Pruina "Little 
 Lake." 
 
 She had found the word. It was ours, 
 Lac Leman, in the very aloofness of its ap- 
 peal. Far away the white Ideals of its 
 crisp peaks ; far away the invisible brother- 
 hood of mountain Aspirations behind them. 
 And around us and them the flowing air, 
 the creedless symbol of That which all who 
 are Little Ones worship "in spirit and in 
 truth." 
 
 The reticent beauty of the cold heights 
 had also to me a machinal interest. Here 
 was that chilled misery of an Infant; here
 
 226 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 was that genial sunshine of a Pruina; here 
 they were vibrating electric together, charged 
 by this great dynamo of nature, in the closed 
 circuit of the hills. Something would hap- 
 pen! These alpine currents (aided by fine 
 strategics), what might not be their output 
 in fulfillment and joy. The hills and I. En 
 avant! Hardi, mes braves! 
 
 Fortunately for my gigantic allies and 
 me (for life needs some beer and skittles), 
 there were Little Distractions. One could 
 luger, for example, which is simply coasting 
 translated into a sociaJ function for those of 
 mature years. A sport invented for Little 
 Ones, we joined in it madly; so that even 
 now I have mad dreams of the vertiginous 
 swirl of the sled round the banked curve at 
 Les Avants. 
 
 Lugeing suggests (if the reader will for- 
 give the latinism) a tibial digression. There 
 existed in the last generation a stratum of 
 society of abnormal anatomy. It had feet 
 "her feet beneath her petticoat, like little
 
 FROST WORK 227 
 
 mice stole in and out" so much was patent. 
 It had knees proved by genuflection, the 
 word and the pose so much was conceded. 
 But between the feet and the knees 
 nothing! Pink euphemisms clothed it. 
 "Priscilla has fractured a limb," perhaps, 
 leaving the literal mind a-quiver between a 
 broken cherry bough and a white arm in 
 splints. Or perchance it is a "lower ex- 
 tremity," thus bewitching the blushing hurt 
 into a mere pedestrial ambiguity. Fancy 
 the Ancient Mariner so bowdlerised: "Yea, 
 slimy things did walk with lower extremities 
 upon a slimy sea." That were an extremity 
 indeed ! 
 
 Well, we have changed all that; and at 
 Les Avants, where all ages and both sexes 
 shot, straddling bounding luges, down a 
 peopled slope, this "nothing more than mat- 
 ter" became a Little Merriment. 
 
 It was generally extremely English, the 
 extremity. "The nation that marches on 
 those things," said the Childe, indicating a
 
 228 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 scudding General, "need fear no Germans." 
 It was titled, middle-class, lay and cleric. It 
 affected brown puttees. It belonged to a 
 cabinet minister; even, it was whispered, to 
 a duchess. It assisted the poet, whose verses 
 you know so well, to climb the slide. It 
 guided, as he rocketed by (belly- whoppers, 
 if you please), the course of a muscular 
 bishop. There were, thank the playful gods, 
 the feet of many Little Ones on the moun- 
 tains ! So much for the tibial digression. 
 
 One could also skii, vaingloriously, if one 
 could; one could also skii, diffusing merri- 
 ment, if one could not. I came one morning, 
 after a strategic absence that I called work, 
 on Pruina and the Infant. He was lying in 
 the snow with his legs and the skiis tied in 
 an extraordinary knot. She was standing 
 with her back to him, some twenty feet away, 
 trying in vain to turn secundum art em. 
 
 "Hugh," said he, "will you diagnose this 
 knot?"
 
 FROST WORK 229 
 
 "It is," I answered, "either Shakespeare's 
 'self -figured knot' or a carrick bend." 
 
 "Will you kindly undo it without dislo- 
 cating my legs or breaking a ski." 
 
 "No, Childe! So perfect a thing as that 
 should be preserved inviolate. You shall re- 
 main here and become an icy petrifaction. 
 
 "Old ass!" 
 
 "Obloquy moves me not. Au revoir! I 
 shall seek you at nightfall with remnants 
 from the table d'hote." 
 
 And I skiied away to the top of a little hill 
 whence I watched Pruina unbuckle her skiis 
 and go to her comrade's rescue. 
 
 Observe, ye mountains, my master-game 
 and play yours as well! It will not wail in 
 your granite souls like the sliding minors of 
 La Brise du Reve . . . 
 
 Dear old Childe! Dear Pruina I . . . 
 
 While we luged and skiied, laughed, ached 
 and played, Aloys read the mountain frost. 
 "Fish skywards!" with its religious sugges- 
 tion, is of this epoch; so also is that sweet
 
 230 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 command, "Make thyself into a singing 
 blossom." 
 
 These were very well, but greater was to 
 follow. One morning Aloys (Strategics 
 kept me much in his calm company) handed 
 me a frost-script. 
 
 "There is nothing like it," he said, "in any 
 Bible of any faith or in any philosophy. It's 
 the final word of truth." 
 
 "Read it," I prayed. 
 
 "The kingliest word," he read, "the king- 
 liest word in the Book is this : May a kinglier 
 soon discrown me." 
 
 Whatever one believes as to the work of 
 the frost, this proves, I think, that truth had 
 descended among the Little Ones and that 
 our good Aloys was its prophet.
 
 XVII 
 
 STRATEGICS 
 
 FT is afternoon. We have come down by 
 the electric railway to Vevey and stroll 
 in the good winter sunshine under the leaf- 
 less platanes along the Quai. The stone 
 parapet is warm to the hand ; the sun burns 
 on the face; and the only snow in sight is 
 cloaking those great allies that watch me 
 with confederate interest from across the 
 lake, the alps of the Valais and the hills of 
 Savoy. May they find me worthy! 
 
 Destiny (Le Destin, c'est mot!) has de- 
 creed that Aloys should walk with the 
 Childe, that I should walk with Pruina, and 
 that an interval, exquisitely hesitating be- 
 tween aloofness and comradeship, should 
 divide the groups. We walked, therefore, 
 
 231
 
 232 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Pruina and I, in a sort of transparent 
 cloister. Our voices did not pass beyond its 
 walls. Only the hills bore witness. 
 
 Day after slow day, ever since the viper's 
 bite at Fontainebleau by hints, gestures, 
 reticences innumerable by underlining this 
 and deleting that by study of the poetic 
 masters of the emotions by grubbing (me 
 miserable!) through modernest psychology 
 I had made Pruina and myself ready for 
 this moment. 
 
 And it had come. 
 
 "You are doing good work," I began, 
 nodding at the Infant's back, "you and the 
 mountains." 
 
 "My collaborators," she answered, look- 
 ing up at the Rochers de Naye, white against 
 the blue, "have done it all." 
 
 "Not all," I said. "They image the cold 
 heights ; you give the sunny levels. He needs 
 both, I think, poor fellow." 
 
 Pity is a degree to love, says Little Will.
 
 STRATEGICS 233 
 
 Strategics, then, demands this mediate pas- 
 sion in Pruina. 
 
 "Aspiration and sympathy," she said, as 
 if she were translating my words. 
 
 "Sympathy," I commented, "the word 
 rings rather false. It means to suffer with, 
 I suppose; and you are not precisely a fel- 
 low-victim. You can't know his suffering 
 unless you suffer or have suffered in the 
 same way. No; we want some finer word." 
 
 "Compassion?" she suggested. 
 
 "That's just to passion with, or to suffer 
 with." 
 
 "Ruth?" said she. 
 
 "It is exact," I admitted, rather grudg- 
 ingly, "but the colour, the connotation, the 
 fragrance " 
 
 "There's rue for you," she quoted; "and 
 here's some for me." 
 
 "I know; but Ophelia was mad; and a 
 true Little Word must be romance. These 
 icy northern dialects Brr!" 
 
 "Then how will pity do?"
 
 234 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Pity" I pretended to hesitate "that is 
 near. 'And Pity like a naked new-born babe' 
 -You have it a most dainty diminutive! 
 Give him that, Pruina, and let the hills do 
 the rest. You'll find it easy; 'for pitee 
 renneth sone in gentil herte,' says Little 
 Geoffrey." 
 
 "Not always," she said, not looking at me, 
 but watching the gulls circling expectantly 
 along the shore. "Indeed, it is rather hard 
 for a girl to think that a strong man needs 
 pity for the loss of another girl. Suppose a 
 baby breaks a toy " 
 
 This would not do at all. 
 
 "You are right," I broke in. "The man, 
 perhaps, deserves no pity for the loss of the 
 girl qua girl; but consider! How about the 
 symbol, Little Pruina; how about the 
 mystic symbol? He has knelt at a shrine, 
 year by year; one day he finds the image 
 shattered " 
 
 "But Betty's not shattered." 
 
 "Right! I stumbled. He finds the image
 
 STRATEGICS 235 
 
 gone, stolen, vanished; and the nerve be- 
 tween his yearning soul and the universal 
 love is dead. That particular girl was the 
 organ, the eye, whereby and wherethrough 
 he saw the infinite. The eye gone, he gropes, 
 he suffers, he is a blind man at the door of 
 Love's temple; he is worthy of the alms of 
 pity." 
 
 My words rang hollow. I felt clothed 
 with inadequacy as with a motley coat. 
 
 Pruina's eyes, tawny dubieties, following 
 the gull-swirls, showed no assenting light. 
 
 "A broken toy," she murmured. 
 
 "Take it so," I cried, suddenly inspired; 
 "take it so if you will. Are we not Little 
 Ones? A broken toy! A poor broken toy! 
 The pity of it Oh, the pity of it, Pruina!" 
 
 "I was wrong" ah, the wet, brown light 
 in the eyes now! "Poor Little Roland; I 
 am so sorry for him." 
 
 Victory! of a sort. What an emotional 
 process it is, this victory. 
 
 "Poor Little Roland," I echoed; "but"
 
 236 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 This was a strategic hesitation, that the 
 designed transition of thought might have 
 the initial emphasis of incompleteness. 
 
 "But," she prompted. 
 
 "But," I continued, "our duty does not 
 end with pity for the Little One." 
 
 "What follows?" 
 
 "This, admiration and reverence for the 
 Genius. Roland Elliot is a very great 
 man!" 
 
 Brown deeps of wonder were opened on 
 me. 
 
 "When you have seen Les Ailes Rog- 
 nees" I said, "you will understand." 
 
 "A picture?" 
 
 "I am not betraying a Little Confidence," 
 said I; "and yet 
 
 "And yet" the wonder-light flickered in- 
 to bright curiosity "you are a Little Ex- 
 asperation." 
 
 "Perhaps. Fate sometimes forces us, 
 against our wills, into invidious reticences." 
 
 "When someone becomes polysyllabic,"
 
 STRATEGICS 287 
 
 she remarked dreamily, "someone evades 
 something." 
 
 This would never do. It is not strategics 
 to babble of the vagaries of Someone. 
 
 "No; I am not evasive. I was playing a 
 little on the doorstep of a pleasant subject. 
 The literal fact is that Roland has painted 
 a great picture." 
 
 "Soul or technique?" 
 
 "Both," said I. "Infinitely both. Tell 
 me, what do you call the greatest picture in 
 the world?" 
 
 "The" 
 
 "Wait!" I cried; "this is an artistic crisis. 
 The thing is impossible, but suppose! sup- 
 pose, Pruina, that our Little Tastes do not 
 go on all fours!" 
 
 "Impossible! There is no choice. It 
 is" 
 
 "No; I prithee, no! Approach it by 
 dainty steps, mincing steps. Let us respect 
 this signal moment." 
 
 "There is a street," said she, her eyes re-
 
 238 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 flective wells of reminiscence; "shall I tell 
 its name?" 
 
 "No names, an you love me. There is a 
 street" 
 
 "A broad, fair street, sloping upwards." 
 
 "It must surely slope upwards." 
 
 "We reach a gateway in a brown 
 wall" 
 
 "An old, brown wall." 
 
 "A massive, brown gateway, deeply 
 arched; and beyond " 
 
 "That beyond!" 
 
 "Are meadows " 
 
 "And trees, Pruina?" 
 
 "And solemn trees, ilexes, stonepines and 
 cypresses. And old statues and temples 
 and fountains. We turn to the right and 
 walk under the pines over places worn bare 
 by children's feet " 
 
 "The playing feet of Little Ones." 
 
 "And we come to a building." 
 
 "Do we go in?" 
 
 "What else? We pay"
 
 STRATEGICS 239 
 
 "No; I insist on paying for both. What 
 shall I pay, Pruina?" 
 
 "Two francs." 
 
 "Not francs," I cried; "y u torture me! 
 Not francs." 
 
 "Two lire then." 
 
 "Two lire, one for you and one for me. 
 And then?" 
 
 "We go right to it." 
 
 "Looking at nothing else?" 
 
 "There is nothing else just then." 
 
 "And we find it, discover it all over again, 
 and for some blind, blessed moments we 
 cannot see it, or our fellow-worshipers, or 
 each other." 
 
 Brown, wet light in those dear eyes again. 
 Ah, Titian, mighty master, what a deathless 
 Little Magic was thine! 
 
 "We are there," she said; "and now it is 
 your turn. Tell me about the picture, Little 
 Hugh." 
 
 My word ! I had not foreseen this. Yet, 
 could I but do it, our masterpiece might be
 
 240 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 cunningly dovetailed into the strategic 
 scheme of things. 
 
 "There are two processes of art," I began, 
 didactically. "One is to leave out what you 
 don't like. This is a sort of artistic cult of 
 hate ; and its disciples go through life hating 
 more and more, leaving out more and more, 
 and end by being great artists because they 
 find so little to love." 
 
 "You are a Little Exaggeration." 
 
 "Of course I am. Exaggeration is only 
 an awkward kangaroo leap toward an eva- 
 sive truth. The other process of art is this 
 to master the whole sumptuous vocabulary 
 of nature and use it to phrase your creed, 
 your faith I grope for the word " 
 
 "Grope on, Little Hugh." 
 
 "Your religion, whatever is highest and 
 holiest. Art! what is it? What but the 
 equation, stated in hard symbols, between 
 what you think you see and what you know 
 you feel." 
 
 "Wait," said Pruina.
 
 STRATEGICS 241 
 
 I saw her lips form the words, one by one; 
 and the happy things, in that rosy incarna- 
 tion, became on a sudden beautifully signifi- 
 cant. I was obliged to remind Hugh Lyd- 
 don, strategist, that his special science was 
 not created to study rosy incarnations. 
 
 "Allezl" she commanded. 
 
 "I'm not sure that those words mean any- 
 thing," I said doubtfully. "What do you 
 think?" 
 
 "Let's hope for the best," she answered. 
 "Alias!" 
 
 "Then we may apply them to our picture. 
 We see there the world that Titian thought 
 he saw, through the aura of wealth, beauty, 
 health and gentle culture in which he lived. 
 We feel too the gracious calm, the opulent 
 colour of his sea-dwelling Venetian soul. 
 Well, what did he do? He used Selection, 
 that choice tool of the spirit, and Antithesis, 
 that engine of the mind, and he wrought a 
 picture. A picture? No! it is a great moral 
 scales, in which he balanced, one against the
 
 242 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 other, the warring answers to the riddle of 
 life. And in the fearlessness of his faith, he 
 made both as beautiful as he saw them, as we 
 ourselves see them. And what do we see? 
 Two women seated on the edge of a carved 
 marble basin. One, richly clothed, leans on 
 a closed vessel, which she half covers with 
 her flowing sleeve and her gloved hand. The 
 other, giving her young beauty to the sun- 
 light, holds up a censer whence rises a waver- 
 ing fume of incense. What are these women, 
 what do they hypostatize? Are they Having 
 and Giving, Dogma and Freedom " 
 
 "Or," Pruina broke in, "a Grown-up and 
 a Little One?" 
 
 "Who knows? They are themes in Titian's 
 symphony, themes that he develops until 
 none can miss their inner meaning. By the 
 one is shadow; by the other light. Here a 
 broken hill ; there a pleasant meadow. Here, 
 on dark heights, a feudal castle hints of war 
 and captivity; there, on the sea beyond the 
 grove, a white sail beckons toward free ad-
 
 STRATEGICS 243 
 
 venture. Even the sombre lines of the rough 
 hillside and the prudish folds of the dress 
 battle with the wan streakings of the far sky 
 and the curves of the young limbs. What is 
 in that guarded, covered vessel? a creed? 
 a cloistered selfishness? a frozen soul? Who 
 knows? What is the scent of that incense 
 that blows vanishing into space? Love? 
 Life? Aspiration? Again, who knows 1 
 We are only sure that it all sings of the Here 
 and the Beyond, of the World and Little- 
 oneness." 
 
 "What of the Cupid?" asked Pruina. 
 
 As if it were all the arrows in his quiver, 
 the name martyred my heart. Now courage, 
 strategic Hugh, and play the man! 
 
 "I am glad you asked the question," I 
 said doggedly; "for it brings us back to 
 Les Ailes Rognees. The Childe has taken 
 up the Cupid-theme where Titian left off. 
 Titian gives Love no voice in his symphony. 
 He sends him away, tells him not to bother; 
 and poor Cupid, his vocation gone, dabbles
 
 244 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 idly in the pool. Our great Infant has re- 
 stated the riddle, giving Love his separate 
 theme ; and his picture, on my Little Honour, 
 is worthy to hang beside the master's in the 
 Villa Borghese." 
 
 Jo/ victory is mine. Ate! but it aches, the 
 victory. I see the admiration demanded by 
 strategics in that dear, glowing face. Pity 
 and admiration! the time is ripe, and I 
 shatter the cloister walls by a shout to the 
 unconscious Childe. 
 
 He came toward us. 
 
 "Tell Little Pruina," I said, "about Les 
 Ailes Rognees." 
 
 "Traitor!" he cried. 
 
 "The Pruina tempted me and I did tell," 
 said I. 
 
 "Adam!" cried Pruina. 
 
 "As a temporarily unpopular person," I 
 remarked, "I shall join Little Aloys yonder, 
 buy some petits pains and feed the gulls. 
 They also (also, if you please) squawk and 
 jeer at their benefactors,"
 
 STRATEGICS 245 
 
 So saying, I left them and, at a strategic 
 distance, fed the wheeling gulls that seemed, 
 so white they flashed in the sunshine, to be 
 detached fragments of my snowy confeder- 
 ates, the alps of the Valais and the hills of 
 Savoy.
 
 XVIII 
 
 VERACITIES 
 
 Childe and I were sitting that even- 
 ing in the parlour of the hotel. It was 
 midnight. Pruina, pleading weariness, had 
 left us early. Aloys was busy with the frost. 
 Pair by pair, the putteed legs came in from 
 moonlight lugeing, sank heavily into chairs, 
 crossed and re-crossed themselves nervously, 
 and at last took their blowsed and yawning 
 owners up to bed. Finally, the episcopal 
 gaiters bade us a sacerdotal good-night ; and 
 we were left alone. 
 
 "Do you remember," began the Childe, in 
 melancholy accents. 
 
 "I do not," I answered firmly. "I am 
 careful never to remember anything so hark- 
 from-the-tomb-y as your voice predicts." 
 
 246
 
 VERACITIES 247 
 
 "Our talk by the Fountain of the 
 Medicis?" he continued, with a weary smile. 
 
 "Vaguely," I answered; "we talked of 
 goldfish." 
 
 "Of love," said he. "I remember nothing 
 about goldfish." 
 
 "Of goldfish," said I. "I remember nothing 
 about love." 
 
 He looked at me with surprise. 
 
 "Are you telling the truth, Hugh?" 
 
 "No; I was occupied by my art. You must 
 have observed the antithetic balance of your 
 phrase and mine. Now Bain says 
 
 "Please be serious, old fellow. Sometimes 
 your nonsense is amusing; but just now it 
 hurts." 
 
 "Forgive me, Childe! Yes; of course I 
 remember every word we spoke. We did 
 talk of love." 
 
 "And of Betty." 
 
 "And," I forced my lips to add, "of 
 Pruina."
 
 248 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Of love, Betty and Pruina. Hugh, I 
 am very unhappy!" 
 
 O frustrate Strategics, why smilest thou, 
 fatuous, on thine own defeat? 
 
 "The man," I said severely, "that con- 
 ceived and painted Les Ailes Rognees has 
 no right to the minor emotions." 
 
 "Minor emotions," he sighed miserably, 
 and then added irrelevantly, "I wish I could 
 trust you for a plain statement of fact." 
 
 "Anything I know " I began urbanely, 
 when he broke in with the following rude 
 and astounding words. 
 
 "But," said he, "you have become such 
 a liar." 
 
 Galileo's "E pur si muove" must have had 
 the same clang of conviction. 
 
 Thus, O Strategics, dost thou lead thy 
 martyrs to the crass stake of plain-speaking! 
 
 While I was considering my answer, he 
 added as an afterthought. 
 
 "And such an egregious ass." 
 
 "I don't mind playing ass to your Ba-
 
 VERACITIES 249 
 
 laam," I said; "and I'd much rather be 
 egregious than not. But I don't like to be 
 called a liar. True! I grant you that in 
 the process of artistic selection, I may omit 
 notes of jarring colour, just as you do when 
 you paint. Also, I may get so drunk with 
 the intoxication of a certain mood as to see 
 the thoughts and things embraced by that 
 mood doubled, wavering and eiffelesque. 
 What else did you do, Mr. Artist, when you 
 painted Les Ailes Rognees?" 
 
 "That was a matter of art," he said; "and 
 what is art " 
 
 "Art," I interjected, clutching the fore- 
 lock of didactic opportunity, "is the equa- 
 tion, stated in hard symbols, between what 
 you think you see and what you know you 
 feel. Now which, I ask you, is the more 
 sacred, the more inviolable thing what you 
 know you feel or what you think you see 
 the Mood, which is almost yourself, or the 
 Fact, which is almost illusion? If my mood 
 distorts my fact, tant pis pour le fait, say I."
 
 250 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Then," he said slowly, with a rather 
 Socratic accent, "your lies " 
 
 "Pardon me, old man, but I have pled 
 guilty to no vice so monosyllabic." 
 
 "Your selective exercises " 
 
 "Much daintier." 
 
 "Only relate to facts." 
 
 "Only to facts." I assented carelessly, 
 never thinking of logical consequences. 
 These, says Huxley, can always take care of 
 themselves. 
 
 "Then I may trust," he said, looking into 
 my face, "anything you tell me as to your 
 mood, your feelings?" 
 
 "Absolutely," said I, letting him read in 
 my eyes the truth at least that springs from 
 good intentions. 
 
 "Now," he continued, "let us go back to 
 another conversation. I mean the talk we 
 had after Betty was bitten by the adder. Do 
 you remember it?" 
 
 "Petal by petal," said I, tasting in retro- 
 spect the bitter-sweet of that hour.
 
 VERACITIES 251 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" he asked 
 suspiciously. 
 
 "Nothing much," I answered, "it was a 
 metaphor flowers of speech, you know." 
 
 "Old ass! Now, Hugh, toward the end 
 of that conversation you made a statement 
 as to your feelings. Was that statement 
 true?" 
 
 "Be a bit more specific," said I, "lest there 
 be misunderstandings, and you again see 
 shadows in the white light of my truth." 
 
 "You said," he explained, exhibiting the 
 up-wrinkled forehead of anxious inquiry, 
 "that you no longer loved Pruina. Was that 
 true?" 
 
 I was opening my mouth in reply, when 
 he raised an arrestive hand. 
 
 "Wait," he commanded. "I want none 
 of your verbal subtleties. Was that state- 
 ment one of fact or one of feeling?" 
 
 Here was a fine net for a fluttering strate- 
 gist! 
 
 "Let me think," I answered slowly, "that
 
 252 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 statement (I remember it well) may have 
 been a fact about a feeling. Or, on the other 
 hand, it may have been a feeling about a fact. 
 I really do not know, as I look backward in- 
 to my memory, whether dear Little Pruina 
 was a glorious fact, getting part of her glow 
 and colour from my mood, or whether she 
 was, for a time, the very mood itself. But, 
 whatever she was, whatever my feeling was, 
 I tell you this, in all solemnity, in all truth, 
 on my Little Honour " 
 
 At this point something happened in my 
 soul, something that calls for a long paren- 
 thesis. I search memory for an image of 
 that happening, that the reader may see it 
 in some pictorial shape; and I find (saved by 
 that magpie of a Mnemosyne) a broken 
 shard of coloured glass! Such iridescences 
 lie round the feet of children only; for 
 blanched age the paths are swept and 
 acromatic. If ever you have been a human, 
 country child (God pity you, otherwise!) 
 you shall have found such a fragment. A
 
 VERACITIES 253 
 
 jagged triangle or trapezium it was, whereof 
 the watchful angel that had dropped it had 
 ground and rounded the cutting edges to the 
 use of little figures. Found, there came the 
 cleaning of the thing, the scratching of the 
 caked mud (what an educational angel it 
 is!), the rubbing with frock or knicker- 
 bockers, the breathing on the glass with a 
 long, warm, moist "Ha-a-a," a final polish, 
 and then a new earth! One eye shut tight 
 and the other glazed with mystery, you 
 gyrate in solemn joy, looking out on the 
 glamoured landscape. You do not know it 
 then, perhaps you may never know it; but 
 (what a metaphysical angel it is!) you are 
 illustrating filmiest philosophies and walk- 
 ing, a tiny peripatetic, with recondite ab- 
 stractions abstractions raised, if you please, 
 by Kant on Plato's shoulders, by Schopen- 
 hauer on Kant's shoulders, to the nth degree 
 of untouchability. 
 
 Thus you gyrate and stare for a long, long 
 time, a whole minute perhaps, until it seems
 
 254 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 as if the world had always been so colour- 
 bewitched. Then, quite suddenly, you grow 
 tired of the game, throw the glass away and 
 find (what a wise psychologist of an angel 
 it is!) that the world is far prettier in its 
 everyday tints. 
 
 This reminiscence, you will recall, is but 
 the foundation for a metaphor, something to 
 image an abnormal mental change. 
 
 Consider ! I began my answer to Roland's 
 question as a strategist : I ended it as a mere 
 babbler of truth. For months, ever since 
 that vipered and petaled day at Fontaine- 
 bleau, I had played a part ; now the part was 
 playing me! Then and since I had ached 
 miserably with every seeming victory and 
 glowed miserably with every defeat; now is 
 neither ache nor glow, nought but the mild 
 thrill of accurate self-expression. Have I 
 capitulated to my own strategics? Have I 
 been moved by the Great Player on some 
 long diagonal of the chess-board of fate? Or 
 have I, as when a child, ceased to stare
 
 VERACITIES 255 
 
 through my shard of rainbow? Who can 
 say? 
 
 For the instant, as I write, the coloured 
 glass theory underlines itself. Pruina, blond 
 in the blond sunshine ! did I not see her and 
 life and my own soul through that warm, 
 amber phrase? Did I not worship the halo 
 rather than the saint; the grail rather than 
 the god? Perhaps not a word of convic- 
 tion, I know, yet perhaps! 
 
 And then, following hard on aching stra- 
 tegics, come these austere whitenesses, these 
 frozen aspirations, heights where even the 
 warm life-breath fogs into grey symbolisms. 
 No blond sunshine here, no surface illusion 
 of colour; and yet I know it now for the 
 first time these alps are mine, my own 
 soul's home and not Pruina's. She is France, 
 the France that treads the red vintage of 
 nature's beauty, the glow, the flow, the in- 
 toxication, into the wine of art. And I, I 
 am New England, witch-burning, puritan, 
 aspiring, mystic New England, whose bleak
 
 256 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 eye turns forever to the bleak soul within, 
 whose ear, deaf to earthy music, listens pain- 
 fully to the unechoing silences of God. 
 
 Words! these sounding phrases mean 
 only this that for some feverish months I 
 have been telling and living the truth with- 
 out knowing it, that what I called strategics 
 was an honest impulse, that my achings were 
 affectations and my joys delusions, and that 
 I loved nothing whatever save the Little 
 Ones, my art and (let us tell all the truth) 
 myself. Thus ends the long parenthesis, with- 
 "Exit Strategics; Enter Truth." 
 
 "On my Little Honour," I repeated, 
 rather dizzily conscious of my refound 
 veracity, "I am not in love with Pruina." 
 
 He studied me earnestly. 
 
 "For the first time in months," said he, 
 smiling, "your eyes agree with your tongue. 
 You think you are telling the truth." 
 
 "Of course I am telling the truth," said I, 
 rather testily; "and I don't like your this-
 
 VERACITIES 257 
 
 my-brother-was-lost-and-is-found fashion of 
 speech and your welcome-O-Prodigal smile." 
 
 "Forgive me, old chap," he said humbly, 
 "I mean no harm. God knows I have nothing 
 to smile over." 
 
 "The man that conceived and painted Les 
 Ailes Rognees," I began 
 
 "Hugh," he interrupted dolefully, "I am 
 very unhappy." 
 
 "Why, Childe Roland, why?" 
 
 "Because," came the astounding answer, 
 "I am not nearly as unhappy as I ought to 
 be!" 
 
 "O last regret," I quoted, "regret can die. 
 You eiffelesque old donkey, let it die!" 
 
 "But it won't die," he sighed. 
 
 "Then cherish it; make it live," I sug- 
 gested experimentally. 
 
 "It won't quite live." 
 
 "Then" but I had exhausted the alterna- 
 tives ; a sentiment must surely be either dead 
 or alive. 
 
 "Infant," I recommenced, "you are illog-
 
 258 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 ical. You refuse to obey the' law of the ex- 
 cluded middle. You " 
 
 "There's a sort of war going on," said he; 
 "and I'm the field of battle. There's an old 
 trend of sentiment on one side, you know, 
 memory of happy days, loyalty to one's 
 deepest emotions, and all that. And on the 
 other" 
 
 "What is the other?" I asked; for he 
 seemed to need the shog of friendly curiosity. 
 
 "That's just what I don't know," he an- 
 swered. "It's all a vagueness, a sort of 
 warm, golden vagueness; and I am very, 
 very miserable." 
 
 "No; you're not," I contradicted. "A 
 warm, golden vagueness doesn't sound half 
 bad. If I chanced to have a sentiment like 
 that I shouldn't let her make me sad." 
 
 "Her?" 
 
 "It sounds somewhat feminine. No; I 
 should bask in it, study it, beg it to grow 
 concrete. In short, I should make it ex- 
 ceedingly welcome, and then await results."
 
 VERACITIES 259 
 
 "Then besides the golden vagueness" he 
 evidently had not attended to my last homily 
 "there is a bothering phrase. You know 
 how tunes haunt one sometimes. A phrase 
 I feel like an unutterable ass to talk like 
 this a phrase. Never mind what it is " 
 
 "I do mind. Make a full confession, 
 Infant." 
 
 "Blond in the blond sunshine, it goes,'* 
 said he. "Utter rot! What the devil does 
 it mean?" 
 
 "It is probably the battle-cry of your 
 warm, golden vagueness," I answered non- 
 chalantly; but, O strategics, how my heart 
 leaped for joy! "And a rather dainty bit 
 of word music it is. Proceed with your other 
 symptoms." 
 
 "That is all; and I am a most miserable 
 devil." 
 
 "Let us sum up your troubles," I said 
 judicially. "If I have understood you aright, 
 a blond vagueness has insinuated itself be- 
 tween you and the love you used to bear
 
 260 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Betty, a love that your loyal conscience will 
 not permit you to cherish, but which never- 
 theless it pains you to relinquish wholly. You 
 are not sorrowing because you cannot marry 
 Betty, but because you cannot take sorrow 
 itself to wife." 
 
 "How clearly you put it." 
 
 "I put it clearly because I feel it emotion- 
 ally. You don't love Betty; but you love 
 the idea of loving her, and cling achingly to 
 that idea." 
 
 "Achingly," he agreed. 
 
 "Achingly. Well, we have now diagnosed 
 your trouble. It remains to dictate the cure." 
 
 He shook a doubting head. 
 
 "I can cure you," I said firmly, "if you 
 will do just what I say." 
 
 "What do you say?" 
 
 "This; be a strategic Providence. Ar- 
 range things! Try, actively try, to help 
 Cyril and Betty; help them; get them 
 married " 
 
 He moaned slightly.
 
 VERACITIES 261 
 
 "Encourage the golden vagueness; seek 
 the blond sunshine; and you will be cured." 
 
 "How do you know that if I get them 
 married," he began, wavering between doubt 
 and the will to believe. 
 
 "By something very like experience," I 
 said. 
 
 "A strategic Providence," he mused. 
 
 "Precisely." 
 
 "I don't see how." 
 
 "The How will happen along, if you 
 watch for it," said I, rising with a yawn. 
 
 "Arrange things?" he questioned, rising 
 also. 
 
 "By fine strategics. Good-night, Roland." 
 
 "By strategics. Good-night, Hugh." 
 
 And so we parted . . .
 
 THE WILL 
 
 TN the morning of the following day, I 
 found the Childe alone in the reading- 
 room. 
 
 "How do you happen," I asked, on seeing 
 how he was occupied, "to have such a lot of 
 letters." 
 
 "Why," he answered, "I quite forgot till 
 the other day that such things existed. Then 
 I wrote my concierge to forward my mail. 
 Behold the result, some of it four weeks old ; 
 and I want to go skating." 
 
 "His Lordship won't miss you," I said 
 Roland had accidentally upset the bishop 
 yesterday "so be as industrious as your ar- 
 tistic nature will permit. I'll wait for you." 
 
 So I waited, reviewing in the light of day 
 
 262
 
 THE WILL 263 
 
 the talk and thought of the dark hours. In 
 the course of this review I saw again from 
 a new angle the consecrated phrase, "Blond 
 in the blond sunshine." Good Lord! Who 
 can reckon after this with the dynamics of 
 literary suggestion? Words are life itself; 
 and nothing exists emotionally until it has 
 been adequately phrased. Love, even love, 
 perhaps is but a lyric phrase, uplifted on 
 such music as La Brise du Reve . . . 
 
 It was hereabouts in my meditation that 
 the Childe began to swear, extemporising 
 a Bach-like fugue of French oaths on a har- 
 monious counterpoint of damns. I longed 
 for the presence of the episcopal gaiters. 
 
 "An admirable composition," I said, after 
 listening awhile, "but unenlightening." 
 
 "Cad Bent!" he cried, throwing me a let- 
 ter. "Read that!" 
 
 "Infant," said I, "your eyes are scarlet, 
 your face is a royal purple, and the veins on 
 your temple are about to burst. Control 
 your Little Emotions."
 
 264 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Read!" he shouted ; and I read as follows : 
 
 "DEAR ELLIOT: I sail for New York tomor- 
 row. The sea has its sharks and shoals, New York 
 its typhoid and Tammany, even Paris its puritans 
 and pharisees. My will, in case heaven claims me, 
 is to be found in my desk, the Louis Quinze. To 
 make sure that you will find it, dear puritan, and 
 profit thereby, I enclose a copy. 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "C. BENT." 
 
 "There is no date," I said. 
 
 "It is post-marked a month ago," said 
 Roland. "Read the will." 
 
 This is what I read: 
 
 "In the Name of God, Amen: 
 
 "I, Cadwalader Bent, of New York, U.S.A., now 
 residing in Paris, do make, publish and declare 
 this to be my last will and testament: 
 
 "I give my collection of La Rochfoucauld to the 
 Bibliotheque Mazarine. 
 
 "I give to Cyril Harley, student of architecture, 
 my natural son by Margaret Harley, wife of 
 my esteemed first cousin, Paul Harley, the sum of 
 One hundred dollars and my paternal benediction.
 
 THE WILL 265 
 
 "All the rest, residue and remainder of my 
 estate, both real and personal, I give, devise and 
 bequeath to my young friend, the gallant pre- 
 server of my life, Roland Elliot, artist, of Paris, 
 whom I appoint as my sole executor." 
 
 That was all, except for the formal end- 
 ing and the attestation clause. 
 
 "Well, why don't you swear?" asked 
 Bent's beneficiary, when I had finished. 
 
 "Anti-climax," I gasped. "What does 
 this clause about Cyril mean?" 
 
 "Why, Bent was engaged to be married to 
 Cyril's mother, who was a beautiful Balti- 
 morean. I thought Cyril told you the story 
 after he had written home for information 
 as to Bent. No? Well, she found out what 
 he was and gave him his cong. Later she 
 married Paul Harley, Cyril's father; and 
 Bent vowed vengeance on them both. He 
 began by getting the grandfather's fortune. 
 I don't know how; ancient claims or trusts 
 or legal deviltries and ends by trying to 
 smirch her reputation."
 
 266 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 And the fugue recommenced. 
 
 "Does Bent seem real to you now," asked 
 the improvisor savagely, interrupting him- 
 self ; "does he seem a shadow, a figment of 
 my imagination?" 
 
 Fugue with guttural variations into 
 German. 
 
 "He is fairly concrete," I admitted, "but 
 rather too hellish for real life." 
 
 The word "hellish" started him on a 
 scheme of eternal punishment that would 
 have pleased Dante. 
 
 "Fiendish!" said I, when he became silent. 
 "Just think of it! That infernal paper filed 
 in the Surrogate's Court, copied by the 
 gloating press, repeated in the records, pre- 
 served from mischance, there for all the 
 world to read, lying its way into men's eyes 
 and minds. It is devilish, Infant, just 
 devilish." 
 
 This theme, by way of finale, was executed 
 prestissimo to a breathless close.
 
 THE WILL 267 
 
 "There!" he panted. "That probably 
 saved me an apoplexy. What shall we do?" 
 
 "Wait till Bent comes back and make him 
 swallow that will," I suggested. 
 
 "And then kill him," added the ungrate- 
 ful legatee ferociously. 
 
 "He deserves it," I granted ; "but it is not 
 regarded as etiquette. No; Bent shall live, 
 frustrate and terrified, under our supervision. 
 How will that do?" 
 
 "We'll supervise him with a rack and 
 thumbscrew," he decided grimly. 
 
 "No," I said; "torture is contrary to the 
 Constitution of the United States, which 
 though obsolescent at home is still vener- 
 ated by Americans abroad. No rack for 
 Bent." 
 
 While we were playing with the subject, 
 he was idly turning over his unopened mail. 
 
 "A note from old Cyril," he exclaimed, 
 tearing it open. "What hieroglyphics! and 
 all in telegraphese, as usual." 
 
 "What does he say?"
 
 268 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "We probably shall never know" his 
 eyes wandered down the page "here's some- 
 thing about sailing." 
 
 "Is he sailing?" 
 
 "Lord knows! It's dated day before yes- 
 terday. I can read that much." 
 
 "Then the good fellow was extant on that 
 date. That's something." 
 
 He was all wrinkled attention and pinched 
 eyelids for some minutes, and then frightened 
 me by a stertorous groan. 
 
 "Hugh," he cried, "Bent is dead." 
 
 It took two agitated Little Ones over half 
 an hour to guess out Cyril's meaning. This 
 is what we made of it: 
 
 "Cherbourg, Feb. 2. 
 
 "Sailing home ten minutes. Bent a claque. A 
 lawyer's letter. No will. II y a gras. Shall 
 claim galette. Marry April. Love, 
 
 Which may be translated that Bent hav- 
 ing died intestate, his lawyer announced to
 
 THE WILL 269 
 
 Cyril that he had fallen heir to a considerable 
 estate, which he was going home to claim. 
 
 I laid a hand on Roland's shoulder. 
 
 "Didn't I predict last night that the How 
 would happen along?" 
 
 "The How," he cried, springing up. 
 "That will! Paris! That damned will!" 
 he dashed into the office of the hotel "My 
 bill! A timetable! A carriage! My valise!" 
 
 And he rushed upstairs. 
 
 The polite clerk raised questioning eye- 
 brows and looked at me. 
 
 "No," I answered in excellent French, 
 "Monsieur is not mad. Monsieur is only 
 emotioned. What is the next train to 
 Paris?" 
 
 "Monsieur may make his trunks and his 
 adieux, dejeuner., smoke his cigarette and 
 take the great express from Milan to Paris, 
 where he will arrive at 22.55." 
 
 As the suave clerk predicted, so it suavely 
 befell. At five minutes to eleven that even- 
 ing, the Childe and I were back in Paris,
 
 270 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 though my memory of our arrival is of the 
 vaguest. 
 
 The Childe will explain why.
 
 XX 
 
 BURGLARY 
 
 T AM Roland Elliot, artist-painter, as we 
 say here. 
 
 My friend Hugh Lyddon has asked me to 
 calendar (the word is his) certain Little 
 Happenings. 
 
 Might I read what he had already written? 
 
 I might not. 
 
 Would he give a coup de pouce to what I 
 should write? 
 
 He would not. 
 
 Could he suggest a model that I might 
 imitate? 
 
 He could. The Odyssey! 
 
 And that was all I could get. He obstin- 
 ated himself, as we say here, to help me. I 
 
 271
 
 
 shall get jolly well even with him for this! 
 As follows: 
 
 Hail, goddess, grey-eyed daughter of 
 cloud-gathering Zeus, and thou Saint Dis- 
 mas (eyes and parentage unknown), patron 
 saint of thieves ! 
 
 Assist me, both! 
 
 With my rose-pink tongue (is that 
 Homeric, Master Hugh?) I can make shift 
 to speak winged words; but with my sable 
 pen I burble blitheringly. Help me, Pallas! 
 
 With my flame-hued brush I can bedaub 
 the shining canvas; but with the beamy 
 jimmy I am all unskilled. Help me, Dismas! 
 
 I sing the fleece-white heights and the 
 parting hand-clasps of the golden-eyed 
 Pruina and the grey-browed Aloys. And 
 she grew rosy-red and white again to mark 
 our sweating haste, then glowed dawn-pure. 
 I am a painter, I; and colour, that highest 
 gift of the high gods, is mine to see. And 
 as I see it, so it is and not otherwise. 
 
 Hugh Lyddon too was there, the god-like
 
 BURGLARY 273 
 
 poet, eagle-beaked, nut-brown, Olympian. 
 And as he stood speaking winged farewells, 
 of a verity, not since the days of great Odys- 
 seus has there lived a nobler man. And as I 
 see him, so he is, and not otherwise. 
 
 I sing the towered Gare de Lyon and a 
 Parisian night of wind-blown lamps and 
 wheeling stars. The snake-like train clanked 
 in ; the curved-backed porters came ; the folk- 
 thronged ticket-gates are passed; and lo, our 
 Paris! Then did the Olympian, bulking 
 huge, part the surging throng as a ship with 
 crooked keel the yeasty waves. We mount 
 a panting chariot, pass the light-flashing 
 Seine, and reach the dark portal of his 
 heaven-scaling home. As the wolf mounts 
 Ida's craggy heights, so we the five score and 
 seven steps to his skiey chamber. We seize 
 the beamy jimmy, and and and 
 
 And! ' 
 
 There is something wrong! Pallas, the 
 grey-eyed, balks at the jimmy and refuses 
 to add epic dignity to crime. Dismas, who
 
 274. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 did well by us on that dire night, seems 
 ignorant of the rudiments of rhetoric. 
 
 Left helpless, therefore, on classic heights, 
 I must come down. I am not (pray forgive 
 me!) at home with Homer. 
 
 Getting down is the rub ; to cease from the 
 Bard and become the Childe ! 
 
 Let me consider . . . 
 
 We painters have a trick whereby we 
 make our pictures "hold together." We 
 select a cloud, it may be pink, grey, lavender, 
 or what you will; and we mix a lot of that 
 colour on our palette. Some of us call this 
 "soup." Well, by adding more or less of 
 that soup to all the other colours we give 
 an effect of unity to our picture. 
 
 Why, there are fellows that can paint a 
 pig looking at a sunset so that both pig and 
 sky are equally divine, equally lost in the 
 glory of the light. And it is just "soup" 
 and genius ! 
 
 Now, writers ought to have, perhaps they 
 do have, some such trick; so that they could
 
 BURGLARY 275 
 
 combine any facts, sublime and grotesque, 
 pathetic and humorous, and yet give the 
 same general colour to their work. Some 
 repeated twists of language, for example, or 
 some pet adjectives, might make incongrui- 
 ties (pigs and sunsets) hold together. I 
 offer the idea, with artistic generosity, to 
 Master Hugh, and shall proceed during the 
 remainder of this chapter to illustrate my 
 meaning. As "soup," for example, I shall 
 here and there use some Homeric adjective; 
 Hugh shall often be the "god-like poet" 
 (which will exasperate him) ; and the jimmy 
 of L'Ombre-qui-passe shall continue to be 
 the beamy jimmy. 
 
 I think that I am pretty well down from 
 my epic flight by now, and may continue 
 my story. 
 
 I pocketed the beamy jimmy a sectional 
 tool which unscrewed into three pieces and 
 the god-like poet donned a huge Latin 
 Quarter cloak, a slouch hat and a great black 
 beard, the relic of a dramatic Nursery. We
 
 276 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 hesitated when we saw standing on the 
 mantel the mysterious Bottle of L'Ombre- 
 qui-passe. 
 
 "We might try it on Bent's concierge," 
 said Hugh, his eyes sparkling with romantic 
 anticipation. 
 
 "We might not," I answered; "we will 
 stick tight to the plan we've made. It's 
 quite risky enough as it is." 
 
 Every detail of our crime, I may note, 
 had been worked out during the journey. 
 
 Then we legged it! legged it down stairs, 
 across the river, and to the cab-stand over 
 against the Madeleine. 
 
 There we hired a sapin. The driver 
 (surely the gods were with us!) was far gone 
 in drink. 
 
 We drove up the Boulevard Malesherbes, 
 passed Bent's apartment, and left the cab 
 in a side street named after Fortuny, a 
 painter like myself. His colour-sense but 
 I must (though it is mighty hard) stick to 
 my tale of felony.
 
 BURGLARY 277 
 
 I left my shoes in the cab. 
 
 We walked to Bent's door. 
 
 Where the god-like poet rang the clang- 
 ing bell! 
 
 "Childe Roland to the dark tower came," 
 he whispered. 
 
 Now a French apartment, gentle reader, 
 is guarded day and night by a Cerberus of a 
 concierge. He sleeps in a kennel near the 
 street door; and, when your ringing has at 
 last awakened him, he pulls a cord (cordon) 
 which springs the latch. When you enter 
 he eyes you from his restless bed through a 
 little unglazed window, wh.'ch commands (in 
 Bent's apartment) only your head and 
 shoulders. 
 
 I knew that window; that was our advan- 
 tage. 
 
 But Cerberus knew me ; that was the rub. 
 
 Hugh rings ; and on the seventh clanging 
 the latch clicks. 
 
 We enter . . . 
 
 But we enter as one! I hold fast by the
 
 278 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Olympian waist; my head is under the 
 Olympian cloak; my legs (viewless to Cer- 
 berus) keep lock-step with the Olympian 
 staggers. 
 
 For the god-like poet is drunk. Very. 
 
 He reels, we reel, to the little window, 
 which the great hat, tremendous beard, and 
 mighty shoulders covered completely. 
 
 "Bon soir, magnificient Pierre," he said, 
 in the drunkenest French I ever heard, "O 
 superb, vigilant and remarkable Pierre, bon 
 soir!" 
 
 "I'm not Pierre," growled Cerberus. 
 "You're in the wrong house. Search else- 
 where, pochard. Get along." 
 
 Under cover of the Olympian wails, I 
 slipped from under the cloak and stole to 
 the landing of the stairway. 
 
 "Thou art not Pierre?" rose the tearful 
 voice. "Thou art not that man, so loved, so 
 honoured, so extraordinary? And I" the 
 voice moved toward the door "am not chez 
 moi. I am drunk? O the suspicion unjust!
 
 BURGLARY 279 
 
 And I am banished with curses loud" this 
 was quite true "into the night profound. 
 Hclas! Helas!" 
 
 And the street door clashed to ... 
 
 I had to wait on that landing till the con- 
 cierge snored. 
 
 I waited for aeons. 
 
 When at last he began, he was amazing. 
 Cerberus, all three heads at once, could have 
 done no better. 
 
 Then, stocking-footed, I mounted. 
 
 My spine! I never knew where it lived 
 before. It crinkled. Through its whole 
 length, it crinkled. 
 
 Also, there was goose-flesh. Universally. 
 
 I reached Bent's door, second floor, front, 
 chilled through. 
 
 I screwed the beamy jimmy together, 
 sweating generously. 
 
 It was slippery with sweat when I 
 jammed it into the crack of Bent's door. 
 
 Then, as I applied pressure, my fear
 
 280 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 passed. I wonder if professionals feel that 
 way? 
 
 More pressure . . . 
 
 Brave little jimmy! There is a crack, a 
 splintering, and the door is open. 
 
 I listen. Cerberus snores below. 
 
 I slip in, close the door and light a match. 
 
 The air is dead. It smells of velvet cur- 
 tains, morocco, old cigars and malignant 
 thoughts. 
 
 I am not afraid of Bent or his damned 
 old ghost either. 
 
 I draw a curtain aside and open a window. 
 The god-like poet, watching below, looks 
 up and nods. Jove-like. 
 
 I close the curtain and light a candle. 
 
 One small flame makes many shadows . . . 
 
 Bent is dead ("a claque" wrote Cyril) 
 and has gone to his own place. The 
 shadows are merely effects of chiaroscuro. 
 No* painter is afraid of mere effects of 
 chiaroscuro. 
 
 To work, Roland Elliot!
 
 BURGLARY 281 
 
 The desk I have often admired it is a 
 superb Louis Quinze. 
 
 It is locked. 
 
 More work light labour this time for 
 the beamy jimmy. 
 
 I pull open the drawers . . . 
 
 Here it is! a long blue envelope, sealed 
 with red wax, addressed to me. 
 
 I tear it open the Will ! 
 
 Pinned to one corner is a slip of paper. 
 "Ah, Elliot," it reads, "I knew on whom 
 to reckon !" 
 
 Did you know, Cad Bent? I only hope 
 you are watching and know what a silly 
 fool you were. That will be damnation 
 enough ! 
 
 I compare the will with the copy he sent 
 me. Correct ! 
 
 I take a Sevres bowl a beauty to the 
 fireplace and burn therein both will and 
 copy. 
 
 Bent fool! are you watching?
 
 282 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 I crumple the ashes ; I make them as dust 
 with my fingers. 
 
 Behold the ashes, fool! 
 
 I take the bowl to the window, blow out 
 the candle, draw the curtain and look out. 
 
 The Olympian greets me, god-like. 
 
 I invert the bowl are you watching, fool ? 
 and the ashes of villainy blow off into 
 night. 
 
 My Little Chore is done! 
 
 I close the window and the curtain, light 
 a match, find, unscrew and pocket the beamy 
 jimmy. 
 
 Then, after making the door fast with a 
 splinter of wood, I steal down stairs to the 
 landing and wait. 
 
 Now, it is quite as hard to get out of an 
 appartement as to get in. One can no more 
 open the door from the inside than from 
 the outside. Cerberus, in either case, must 
 pull the sacred cord. 
 
 The lawful outgoer tramps downstairs,
 
 BURGLARY 283 
 
 shouts "Cordon, s'il vous plait/' and is al- 
 lowed to pass. 
 
 I am not a lawful outgoer. 
 
 Item, my legs, now that safety is near, 
 are trembling violently. 
 
 Steady, Roland Elliot! 
 
 An old verse comes into my mind : "The 
 Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy 
 coming in." 
 
 I hope so, indeed! 
 
 Would that be compounding a felony? 
 
 I wish Hugh would ring . . . 
 
 He does, clang on clang. Drunkenly. 
 
 The latch clicks. 
 
 He reels in. 
 
 "I am a lost man," he whimpers. "I search 
 everywhere; I draw a thousand bells; I 
 awaken all the world. Concierges innumer- 
 able have cursed me. A moi, magnificient 
 Pierre! Harken, while I sing to thee the 
 horrors inexorable of the night profound." 
 
 And he sang, quavering, "Au clair de la
 
 284 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 lune, mon ami Pierrot, 31 until the song was 
 lost in the roars of Cerberus. 
 
 By that time we were both outside the 
 door, which we pulled to and then walked 
 quietly away. At the corner of the Rue 
 Fortuny that emotional old Hugh flung his 
 great arm around my shoulders. 
 
 "Well done, you!" said he. "By God, it 
 was eiffelesque!" 
 
 And wiped his eyes, the sentimental 
 Olympian! . . . 
 
 Our driver had got into his cab and was 
 sleeping. Stertorously. 
 
 No shaking could arouse him. 
 
 "Give me his hat," said the god-like Im- 
 perturbable. "I'll drive." 
 
 He drove through Les Ternes, passed the 
 Arc de 1'Etoile, followed the Champs 
 Elysees and the Avenue d'Antin to the 
 Pont des Invalides. 
 
 Here, the innocent aids to our crime, the 
 beard and the beamy jimmy, were thrown 
 into the Seine. Will the latter reappear as
 
 BURGLARY 285 
 
 a Gallo-Roman bronze at the astonished 
 Musee Carnavalet? 
 
 Thence Hugh, the Olympian charioteer, 
 followed the Quai d'Orsay-and the Boule- 
 vard St. Germain to the Rue du Bac. At 
 this point, where the monument to Chappe 
 holds out its telegraphic arms, our cab was 
 hit by a taxi- auto and overturned. 
 
 Some time passed before I was released 
 by two agents from under the sleeping bulk 
 of the fat cocker. The old peine forte et 
 dure must have been something like it; flnd 
 when I was stood on my pins I felt a bit 
 dizzy and uncertain. 
 
 "All the world drunk?" asked an agent. 
 
 As that seemed an unfelonious theory, I 
 stammered an assent. 
 
 "Anglais?" 
 
 Patriotism called for no denial; so I was 
 silent. 
 
 Then I saw Hugh, my senses came back, 
 and I managed to stagger to the sidewalk 
 where they had placed him.
 
 286 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 He lay on his back, unconscious, hardly 
 breathing. 
 
 "His address?" asked the agent. 
 
 I just managed to give it before I 
 fainted . . . 
 
 Some bad weeks followed. 
 
 Hugh had pitched on his head ; and there 
 was fever, delirium and anxious weighings 
 of the chances of life. 
 
 His superb physique pulled him through. 
 
 Our executive Betty organized us into a 
 corps of nurses; and we had a grand Little 
 Fight with death. 
 
 I said that there was delirium. 
 
 There was! 
 
 And it had consequences Our Hugh 
 talked . . . 
 
 One day, when Betty and I were watch- 
 ing him, he told the whole story of Bent's 
 will and the burglary. He is naturally 
 fluent; but on this theme he was really elo- 
 quent. Had Betty not been present, I 
 should have enjoyed it; but as it was
 
 BURGLARY 287 
 
 diable! She wept bitterly and most unpro 
 fessionally because we had been so good to 
 her Cyril ; and I had a blamed uncomfortable 
 time of it. Hugh, at that moment, was the 
 lucky dog. 
 
 It was he, though, that rescued me at last. 
 Just when Betty was sobbing hardest on 
 my shoulder and saying her f oolishest things, 
 Hugh began to laugh. Betty stopped sob- 
 bing, and I stopped protesting, and we 
 listened. 
 
 "Strategics," said Hugh. 
 
 And laughed. 
 
 An Olympian laugh! 
 
 Then "Strategics" again; and laughed. 
 
 And so on, alternating, ad infinitum. 
 
 I think, what with his idiotic "strategics" 
 and his laughter, that Hugh had, on the 
 whole, rather a pleasant delirium. Humour, 
 and the habit of never being afraid of any- 
 thing, help one through the dark places of 
 life. 
 
 About two days before he (as the saying
 
 288 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 is) came to himself, however, there was a 
 change. "Strategics" ceased, and with it, 
 laughter. 
 
 And Hugh began to sing! The exclama- 
 tion-point belongs there; for Hugh cannot 
 sing. Moreover he was, temporarily, nearly 
 stone deaf. Indeed, I have heard him argue 
 that his intense love of music is his purest 
 passion, in that music does not return his 
 affection. However that may be, his fevered 
 flights of song were excruciating. 
 
 And La Brise du Reve, too! 
 
 He would hum the three opening bars 
 that at least was his intention then stop 
 and smile contentedly. Then repeat the 
 effort with an added bar, and smile beatific- 
 ally. And so on, ever mastering (as he 
 thought) a new bar, ever growing divinely 
 happier. 
 
 And he was divinely happy. I, Roland 
 Elliot, painter, know the face of man ; and as 
 I see it so it is and not otherwise. He was 
 divinely happy.
 
 BURGLARY 289 
 
 Thus, with thanks to the grey-eyed god- 
 dess, to Saint Dismas, good at need, and all 
 those truly gentle readers who carp not at 
 an unskilled pen thus endeth Roland Elliot.
 
 XXI. 
 
 SUB SILENTIO 
 
 T SEEK in vain for the informing phrase; 
 language is one vast inadequacy. With 
 the words of swordsmen and ploughmen we 
 must needs envisage the meshed tenuities of 
 the soul. Oh, for a new Pentecost; the 
 rushing, mighty wind ; the cloven tongues of 
 utterance ! 
 
 I have such things to say . 
 
 Delirium a ploughman's word! How 
 it roots in earth! de, meaning "from," and 
 lira, meaning "furrow." The wit has strayed 
 from the furrow that is delirium, a sorry, 
 clod-scented image of the mystic retirement 
 of the soul into haunted subjectivities. 
 
 What can the man of visions, the youth of 
 
 290
 
 SUB SILENTIO 291 
 
 dreams, do with such tools? His stuttering 
 best? So be it. 
 
 The furrow . . . 
 
 When I came back into the furrow, when 
 the foolish partition between the Me and the 
 Not Me rebuilded itself, I became a Little 
 Interrogation. 
 
 My room? perhaps. There was the 
 "Suonatore," Bellini's Little One; the tapes- 
 try copied from that of Bayeux; the blue 
 pennon with the Y; the masks and foils. 
 There on the mantel was the Florentine 
 lady ; the matches and cigarettes and an un- 
 familiar group of medicine bottles at one 
 end; and at the other, meticulously segre- 
 gated, the lonely Bottle of L'Ombre-qui- 
 passe. It carried conviction, the Bottle I 
 was in my own room. 
 
 But why? Why does Aloys, smiling 
 gravely, lean against the mantel and watch 
 me? Why does Roland "Holloa, Infant!" 
 move wordless lips and watch me? Why 
 does Betty "Holloa, Bettine!" in a
 
 292 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 nurse's dress and cap, wipe her blue eyes and 
 watch me? A nurse have I been ill? 
 
 My hands (be scientific, Hugh!) will an- 
 swer that question. The left (for the other 
 seems paralysed) is white and thin. It 
 would make but sorry work with an oar. It 
 could not "rough-house poor old Harvard" 
 now. Argal (ah, that good Shakespeare!), 
 I have been ill. 
 
 The right hand (science, Hugh!) will not 
 stir. Why ? Shall I ask those fatuous mutes 
 that smile and watch me, those Little Dumb- 
 nesses? I shall. 
 
 "Why?" I ask, rolling my eyes to each in 
 turn. "Why?" 
 
 They move their smiling lips, pantomimic. 
 Hamlet comes into my mind: "That are 
 but mutes and audience to this act." They 
 must deem it amusing, I suppose. Not so 
 I. "Oh, reform it altogether," says Hamlet. 
 Change it! a mutation of mutism, I pray 
 you. There is a quirk of wit in that, if one 
 could phrase it. I can't; wit and hand are
 
 SUB SILENTIO 293 
 
 alike what is the word ? debile, extenuate, 
 sapless. 
 
 My hand science, Hugh Lyddon! If I 
 should roll my head to the right? This must 
 be pondered; for the head is ponderous. I 
 shall ask the mutes. 
 
 "If," I say; and they smile, gesture, and 
 move their exasperating lips. "Mutate, ye 
 mutes;" is what I wish to say; but articula- 
 tion shies. 
 
 They nod; that (as the dear French say) 
 is already something, is already great-thing. 
 I shall, hours hence, rotate my poll to right- 
 ward. Poll the finical wordlet! "All 
 flaxen was his poll" That poor Ophelia! 
 But my poll is sable "It was, as I have 
 seen it in his life, a sable, silvered." Not 
 silvered, mine, unless from the snows of Les 
 Avants. How is it, white left hand? Is my 
 poll a Dent de Jaman, snowy-crowned? 
 The chill (so whispers searching science) 
 makes me fear it ... 
 
 It is not snow; cloth rather. Cold it is
 
 294 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 and of a humidity! A turban, forsooth 
 "an you be not turned Turk, there's no more 
 sailing by the star." "Base Phrygian Turk," 
 turbaned with congelation. And cold to the 
 poll (so argues science) spells fever. "After 
 life's fitful fever he sleeps well." 
 
 But I have slept ill, I think, babbling, 
 laughing, singing, groping, "following dark- 
 ness like a dream." Shakespeare! how he 
 comes, that Little Will, as the guerdon of 
 much weeping 
 
 Aimerais-tu les fleurs, les pres et la verdure, 
 
 Les sonnets de Petrarque et le chant des oiseaux, 
 
 Michel-Ange et les arts, Shakespeare et la nature, 
 Si tu n'y retrouvais quelques anciens sanglots? 
 
 A few old sobs, pardieu! and then Pe- 
 trarch, Michael- Angelo and Shakespeare; 
 flowers, fields and the song of birds. Any- 
 thing more? 
 
 Something more, I think. What is it? 
 I would fain ask ye an I could, ye uncom- 
 municating mouthers! Aloys Guex-Beny, 
 you at least, grey-haired and gaunt, perfect
 
 SUB SILENTIO 295 
 
 lover of the viewless dead, should know. 
 What is it, Aloys? My eyes to yours; your 
 eyes to mine so! What is it, grey-one? 
 
 You point, smiling, with a slow grand 
 gesture. To my right, dear Aloys? So be 
 it my turbaned poll shall rotate to right- 
 ward, an it may. 
 
 It is done. The world must turn far 
 faciler or it had stopped langsyne. 
 
 My hand at last; but hidden all in sunny 
 tangles and trembling warmth. 
 
 Pruina? Pruina? . . . 
 
 Is this the thing I lack, this most desirable 
 sunlight? Wait, Hugh; be scientific still. 
 Wait! 
 
 Pruina? Pruina? . . . 
 
 "Blond in the blond sunshine" is it that? 
 There is a struggle in my soul, a wrenching 
 . . . I am near, near . . . 
 
 Pruina? Pruina? . . . 
 
 "Blond in the blond sunshine." Ha! that 
 was Roland's phrase, not mine. 
 
 Pruina? Pruina?
 
 296 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 She lifts her golden face, tear-stained and 
 glowing . . . 
 
 No, dear God, it was Roland's phrase, not 
 mine, not mine. 
 
 "Roland!" I call. "Roland!" 
 
 He comes and stands beside the kneeling 
 Pruina. 
 
 His lips move. Good lack, another 
 mouther! But I understand; how well I 
 understand . . . 
 
 A few old sobs, pardieu! and then Pe- 
 trarch, Michael- Angelo and Shakespeare; 
 flowers, fields and the song of birds. Any- 
 thing more? 
 
 Ay Strategics ! 
 
 How well I understand. I look at him. 
 I look at her. Strategics ! 
 
 "Is it all right, you two?" I whisper. 
 
 He nods, radiant. 
 
 She nods, rose-red. 
 
 Strength, their strength, flowed rioting 
 into my heart. With that shaking right
 
 SUB SILENTIO 297 
 
 hand I found hers, found his, and put them 
 together. 
 
 "God bless you both," said I and looked 
 at the others joyfully. 
 
 Delight touched their faces like sunshine; 
 their rapid lips were voluble with unsound- 
 ing words ; Betty clapped glad, silent hands ; 
 and Aloys, in a mighty gesture like a bene- 
 diction, swept from the mantel the Bottle of 
 L'Ombre-qui-passe. 
 
 It made no sound when it fell . . . 
 
 Fifteen seconds, it could not have been 
 longer, sufficed for what followed. 
 
 I saw Aloys reel, clutch at the chimney- 
 piece, and fall full length like a forest tree. 
 
 The Infant started with a rush, no doubt 
 to open the window, pitched forward and 
 was caught by the arm of my reading chair, 
 over which he hung limply, face downward, 
 like a long, black bolster. 
 
 Betty sank in a huddled heap, wavered, 
 rolled over and became a crumpled bunch 
 of blue.
 
 298 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 Pruina slipped to the floor, still clutching 
 my hand, put her golden face against it and 
 fell asleep . . . 
 
 What is happening? 
 
 Ages ago! There was a pale magician 
 then, who tossed back yellow hair, cuddled 
 his violin under his chin and played on the 
 stretched strings of my heart. 
 
 How they ached afterward, until now, 
 Pruina! Pruina! 
 
 And is he playing still, playing eternally, 
 the pale magician? Who but he could play 
 that air upon my quivering soul . . . 
 
 An ascending roulade that rises fountain- 
 like, sprays into clear, sunny drops that fall, 
 with a half-heard, hinting minor, into black, 
 voiceless waters. 
 
 Your music, Pruina mia. 
 
 Music, dear God? Ah, no ; it is not music. 
 It is I. 
 
 It is I myself, the very soul of me, that 
 leaps in fancy sunward, plays in the large
 
 SUB SILENTIO 299 
 
 air, sinks sobbing back again into this sleep- 
 ing flesh . . . 
 
 Ages ago! There was a pale magician 
 then, who tossed back yellow hair, cuddled 
 his violin under his chin and played on the 
 trembling strings of my soul. 
 
 How they agonized afterward, until now, 
 Pruina! Pruina! 
 
 And is he playing still, playing down the 
 ecstatic centuries, the pale magician ? Sure- 
 ly, none but he has mastery of the tortured 
 chords of the soul. 
 
 That air, dear God! that o'ermastering 
 air! . . . 
 
 Another tinkling roulade, happy silver 
 notes, but higher, higher, spraying into 
 blown mist that disperses through sighing 
 minors into a trembling diminuendo. 
 
 Your music, dear Pruina! 
 
 Music ? No, thou Wonder ; it is not music. 
 It is I. 
 
 It is I myself, the purest soul of me, that 
 breaks, ecstatic silver, in the high airs of
 
 300 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 the Spirit; I myself that blows, a vaporous 
 mist, out into trembling expectancies, into 
 infinite aspirations . . . 
 
 Ages ago ! There was a mighty magician 
 then, who tossed back lambent hair, clutched 
 the great earth in his hands, and played on 
 the blond chopds of the sunshine, played the 
 Call of the Spirit. 
 
 Then, I did not know the name of the air 
 he played. Now, I know . . . 
 
 "Come," wail the sliding sixths, "come 
 and come and come! Leave that hungry, 
 thirsty flesh-machine you blundered into 
 God knows how; leave your rhymes and rea- 
 sons, your babbling philosophy, your fancies 
 and phrases; leave all but the love that 
 taught you how to hear my call; and come 
 to me! Me! the Ghost that quickens the 
 flesh, the Thought that kneads the clay, the 
 Love wherein all lives and thoughts and 
 loves are One. Come to me!" 
 
 Your music, my love, soul of my soul, 
 Pruina !
 
 SUB SILENTIO 801 
 
 Music? No; it is We, beyond all utter- 
 ance, Ourself ! 
 
 It is We that answer, wail on yearning 
 wail, to that spirit call. It is We that rise, 
 with a discordant, rending cry, from our 
 sleeping clay . . . 
 
 Pruina! Pruina! . . . 
 
 One and twain, twain and one, will-waf ced 
 through the blond chords of the sunshine. . . 
 
 Thy sunshine, far Orient of Love . . . 
 that brightens, vista by vista, up to the Un- 
 changing Light . . . that fades through 
 glimmering twilights back to the wan Paris- 
 ian day . . . that glows itself into that 
 frail right hand of mine, hidden all in sunny 
 tangles and trembling warmth.
 
 POSTLUDE 
 
 . . . Days, weeks, months after (what 
 does Time matter? that striding greybeard is 
 no Little One), there came an instant when 
 I made an end of reading the foregoing 
 chronicle to Pruina, laid down my manu- 
 script and looked anxiously at that golden 
 but inexorable critic. 
 
 "That's all," said I. 
 
 She went to the piano (she loves a parable, 
 that Pruina!), struck a chord and looked a 
 masterful question to me-ward. 
 
 "The tonic," I answered. Pruina is 
 teaching me harmony. 
 
 Another chord 
 
 "The dominant-seventh," I said proudly; 
 "and to reward me move your head into that 
 pleasant slant of sunlight." 
 
 302
 
 POSTLUDE 803 
 
 Another 
 
 "The tonic again and the sub-dominant; 
 and the dominant-seventh once more 
 
 Pruina paused. 
 
 "Which will surely be followed, my dear 
 Pruina, by the tonic. Why? Because you 
 are by way of creating an Authentic Ca- 
 dence!" this in tones of not unnatural vain- 
 glory. 
 
 But that Pruina wrecked my prophecy. 
 She played the dominant-seventh again and 
 again, clashing it madly, until my exasper- 
 ated ears ached for the closing chord. 
 
 "Resolve it!" I cried, technical even in my 
 agony. "Resolve it, an you love me!" 
 
 She left the piano, left that unhappy chord 
 shrieking for resolution, came over to me, 
 and tapped my manuscript with an allegor- 
 ical finger. 
 
 "Another dominant-seventh?" I asked 
 humbly. 
 
 She nodded and put her arm round my 
 neck.
 
 304 NOTHING ELSE MATTERS 
 
 "Suppose," said she. 
 
 "Continue to suppose," said I; "it is a 
 most sweet hypothesis." 
 
 "Suppose that there had been no vision, 
 no Bottle of L'Ombre-qui-passe?" 
 
 "In that case," I answered, sliding into the 
 jesting-earnest of my aching days, "Stra- 
 tegics, which had already conquered my 
 fancy for one standing so beautifully blond 
 in the blond sunshine " 
 
 "You should have heard what you said 
 in your fever," cooed Pruina happily. 
 
 " and the Infant's fancy for Betty, 
 would have surely wrought its perfected 
 work; and (although immortal fame and 
 Pruina together are beyond the deserts of 
 any mortal man) you and he would at 
 last" 
 
 "You really should have heard yourself," 
 murmured that irrelevant Pruina. 
 
 "My reason for this belief is written in the 
 Book," I went on, all earnest now. "From 
 the love that wants,, it says, to the love that
 
 POSTLUDE 805 
 
 loves rise, tJiou Lover! Now, the love that 
 wants is of the earth, earthly, and may be 
 moulded and shattered by sublime Stra- 
 tegics; but the love that loves is of the 
 ghost, ghostly, and has no master save the 
 Eternal. Such is our love, my own a love 
 that has seen the other side of the rainbow" 
 she nestled close in my arms "that has 
 touched in united vision the white fringes of 
 the Ineffable Presence; that throws over all 
 the passions and joys and fears of life a 
 luminous shadow of the Shekinah. This 
 earth shall pass, the blond sunshine shall 
 fade, but love like ours, shining in the grail 
 of divine experience, shall glow unchanging 
 for evermore." 
 
 "The Authentic Cadence," said Pruina; 
 and she left my arms, went to the piano, 
 and resolved that waiting seventh into the 
 closing chord. 
 
 I followed. The piano, just then, seemed 
 very far away.
 
 "Dear," I said, when she was in my arms 
 again, "why did this blessedness come to us, 
 out of all the world?" 
 
 "Because we are Little Ones," said 
 Pruina; "nothing else really matters." 
 
 THE END.
 
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