South Wind. Norman Douglas Douglas
to reality! The industry is decaying," he added, "but I hope it will outlive my time."
"Everything seems to decay up here in sober and gracious fashion. I am delighted, Count, with your Old Town. There is an autumnal flavour about the place. It is a poet's dream. Some philosopher might dwell here—some sage who has grown weary of disentangling life's threads."
Rarely did Mr. Heard use florid and sentimental language like this. The soft light, the reposeful surroundings, the homelike influence of the Villa Mon Repos—all had conspired to put him into an uncommonly idyllic mood of mind. He felt disposed to linger with the kindly stranger who seemed so much more communicative and affable than on the occasion of those theatricals. He lit a cigarette and watched, for a while, the flow of life through that gateway. Its passage was pierced, like the eye of a needle, with a slender shaft of light from the westering sun. Fine particles of dust, suspended overhead, enveloped the homeward moving peasantry in a tender mist of gold.
"Yes," replied the Count. "This citadel is a microcosm of what the world might be, if men were reasonable. Not all men! A great proportion must be good enough to remain what they are. We could not live without those whose business it is to bring the reasonableness of the few into its proper relief. Were it otherwise, there would be no more reasonableness on earth, would there?"
"And that would be a pity," observed Mr. Heard. "I was much interested, Count, in what you said yesterday. You spoke of the Mediterranean becoming once more the center of human activity. There is an attraction in the idea to one who, like myself, has been brought up on the classics and has never forgotten his spiritual debt to antiquity. But I question whether the majority of my countrymen would be moved by such considerations."
The old man replied:
"I think we need not trouble about majorities. No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble. Your English majority, in particular, is quite unaware of its debt to us: why should it turn eyes in our direction? But as for other Northern men, the enlightened ones—I cannot help thinking that they will come to their senses again one of these days. Oh yes! They will recover their sanity. They will perceive under what artificial and cramping conditions, under what false standards, they have been living; they will realize the advantages of a climate where nature meets you half-way. I know little of England, but the United States are pretty familiar to me; the two climates, I imagine, cannot be very dissimilar. That a man should wear himself to the bone in the acquisition of material gain is not pretty. But what else can he do in lands adapted only for wolves and bears? Without a degree of comfort which would be superfluous hereabouts, he would feel humiliated. He must become strenuous if he wishes to rise superior to his inhospitable surroundings."
"We think a good deal of strenuousness," objected the bishop.
"Have you not noticed that whenever anything, however fantastic, is imposed upon men by physical forces, they straightway make a god of it? That is why you deify strenuousness. You dare not forgo it. The Eskimo doubtless deifies seal-blubber; he could not survive without it. Yet nobody would be an Eskimo if he had a chance of bettering his condition. By all means let us take life seriously. But let us be serious about things that matter."
"Things that matter, Count! Is it not creditable for a man to support his wife and family in the best conditions possible?"
"Assuredly. But chosen spirits will do this in regions where the same results can be obtained with a smaller outlay of vital force. We have only a certain amount of energy at our disposal. It is not seemly to consume every ounce of it in a contest with brute nature. Man is made for better things. Whatever fails to elevate the mind is not truly profitable. Tell me, sir, how shall the mind be elevated if the body be exhausted with material preoccupations? Consider the complex conditions under which a Northern family is obliged to live. Think of the labour expended upon that unceasing duel with the elements—the extra clothing and footwear and mufflers and mantles, the carpets, the rugs, the abundant and costly food required to keep the body in sound working condition, the plumbing, the gas, the woodwork, the paintings and repaintings, the tons of fuel, the lighting in winter, the contrivances against frost and rain, the never-ending repairs to houses, the daily polishings and dustings and scrubbings and those thousand other impediments to the life of the spirit! Half of them are non-existent in these latitudes; half the vitality expended upon them could therefore be directed to other ends. At close of day, your Northerner is pleased with himself. He has survived; he has even prospered. His family is adequately housed and clothed. He feels 'presentable,' as he calls it, in the eyes of those who share his illusions. He fancies he has attained the aim and object of existence. He is too dazed with the struggle to perceive how incongruous his efforts have been. What has he done? He has sacrificed himself on the altar of a false ideal. He has not touched the fringe of a reasonable life. He has performed certain social and political duties—he knows nothing of the duties towards himself. I am speaking of men from whom better things might have been expected. As for the majority, the crowd, the herd—they do not exist, neither here nor anywhere else. They leave a purely physiological mark upon posterity; they propagate the species and protect their offspring. So do foxes. It is not enough for us. Living in our lands, men would have leisure to cultivate nobler aspects of their nature. They would be accessible to purer aspirations, worthier delights. They would enjoy the happiness of sages. What other happiness deserves the name? In the Mediterranean, Mr. Heard, lies the hope of humanity."
The bishop was thoughtful. There occurred to him various objections to this rather fanciful argument. Still, he said nothing. He was naturally chary of words; it was so interesting to listen to other people! And at this particular period he was more than usually reflective and absorbent.
Happiness—an honourable, justifiable happiness—how was it to be attained? Not otherwise, he used to think, than through the twofold agency of Christianity and civilization. That was his old College attitude. Imperceptibly his outlook had shifted since then. Something had been stirring within him; new points of view had floated into his ken. He was no longer so sure about things. The structure of his mind had lost that old stability; its elements seemed to be held in solution, ready to form new combinations. China had taught him that men can be happy and virtuous while lacking, and even scorning the first of these twin blessings. Then had come Africa, where his notions had been further dislocated by those natives who derided both the one and the other—such fine healthy animals, all the same! A candid soul, he allowed his natural shrewdness and logic to play freely with memories of his earlier experiences among the London poor. Those experiences now became fraught with a new meaning. The solemn doctrines he had preached in those days: were they really a panacea for all the ills of the flesh? He thought upon the gaunt bodies, starved souls, and white faces—the dirt, the squalor of it! Was that Christianity, civilization?
The Count, pursuing some other line of thought, broke out into a kind of Delphic rhapsody:
"Folly of men! The wits of our people have been blunted, their habits bestialized, their very climate and landscape ruined. The alert genius of the Greeks is clogged by a barbaric, leaden-hued religion—the fertile plains of Asia Minor and Spain converted into deserts! We begin, at last, to apprehend the mischief; we know who is to blame; we are turning the corner. Enclosed within the soft imagination of the HOMO MEDITERRANEUS lies a kernel of hard reason. We have reached that kernel. The Northerner's hardness is on the surface; his core, his inner being, is apt to quaver in a state of fluid irresponsibility. Yet there must be reasonable men everywhere; men who refuse to wear away their faculties in a degrading effort to plunder one another, men who are tired of hustle and strife. What, sir, would you call the phenomenon of to-day? What is the outstanding feature of modern life? The bankruptcy, the proven fatuity, of everything that is bound up under the name of Western civilization. Men are perceiving, I think, the baseness of mercantile and military ideals, the loftiness of those older ones. They will band together, the elect of every nation, in god-favoured regions round the Inland Sea, thee to lead serener lives. To those how have hitherto preached indecorous maxims of conduct they will say: 'What is all this ferocious nonsense about strenuousness? An unbecoming fluster. And who are you, to dictate how we shall order our day? Go! Shiver and struggle in your hyperborean dens. Trample about those misty rain-sodden fields, and hack each other's eyes out with antideluvian bayonets. Or career up and down the ocean, in