XIV
Yes, this is a delightful toy-shop. Now we are going by a whole row of Noah’s Arks. I stop to raise the lid on one of them, and there are all the animals. Little Frances, who is holding my hand, notices particularly the giraffe, because he has such a long, spotted neck, and can look down upon the other animals with disdain. I inform her that the giraffe is the only animal that has never been heard to utter a sound.
“Isn’t-it-terrible!” says she, in one breath.
“No,” I said, “it must be blissful.”
Frances does not comprehend her cynical father; and so we move along. She says that her mother told her to tell me that we could take plenty of time to look at the toys, as mother had to be fitted for two gowns.
Sam declares that he wishes I would buy him that big boat over yonder. And he tugs me off by the other hand to examine it, but on the way our attention is diverted by a remarkable looking doll which Frances has discovered. Sam forgets his boat and decides to stand and stare at the doll. I confess this doll is attractive, for she seems to be precisely what she pretends to be. So I buy her and give her to Frances, and then the three of us make more headway. We get as far as the pop-gun counter. I never did like pop-guns. They are too symbolical. But Sam pulls me down to him and whispers:
“Dada, pease get me one. I need it.”
His little fat fingers stroke my face and persuade me in spite of myself. How often does he remind me of his mother! He has the same helpless, beseeching manner with which Susanne has always managed to get what she wanted.
Then we succeeded nicely. We got past the sleds and the hobby-horses and the moolley-cows and the dreary donkeys. I never knew how we did it. But Sam threw out an anchor when we reached the marbles. Those huge crystals and beautiful agates were too much for him.
“Dada, pease buy me some.”
“How many, my son?”
“All’s you can.”
“Well, give us a boxful;” I said to the indifferent clerk. Imagine being indifferent in a toy store, surrounded by little children. Here is certainly the one place where I would search for the Fountain of Eternal Youth. But now it is time to meet mother, and we picked up the doll and the pop-gun, and scurried off through the other shoppers. My two children snuggled close to me.
The door opened and in walked old Sandy, carrying a fresh pitcher of sangaree. I was startled into my senses.
“You drove them away, Sandy.”
“What I done do, maarstar?”
“You drove them away. I was out shopping with Miss Susan and the children.”
Sandy thinks that my brain is “addled,” as he calls it, and so he makes no further answer.
Children! My children! The dream children whom poor Charles Lamb saw. And how many other lonely folk have seen them?
Look at that shelf of books there; see that volume bound in limp leather? That was my first book. You did not know that I was a writer, did you, Sandy? Yes, but I was. And when I wrote that book I thought that I knew more than I did. It is about young love and interfering parents and selfish relatives and romantic folk who went astray. It is crude, very crude; but I love the book, for it was my first-born. I thought of recasting it, and then I found that one can not mangle his own child.
The volume next to it, that one in stiff boards, I am more proud, perhaps, of that one. I tried hard to tell the truth as I saw the truth in it, even though I knew that readers do not really want the truth. We live our life under a vast veil of mystery, humbug and fear. And so I wanted to tell young boys and growing girls why they felt strange feelings and had new thoughts as they gradually became men and women. I wanted them to know how simple, natural and beautiful the whole realm of being is; and above all, that their fresh, confused feelings and glowing thoughts are not abnormal, nothing to be ashamed of, perfectly healthy and vigorous, if only their parents would tell them so.
And as to humbug, I tried to show silly women and foolish men how unhappy and strained they make their lives by assuming emotions which they think they possess, and by expressing thoughts which mean nothing, because they have never thought them out. How easy this world would be if we could all of us simply be ourselves, as a dachshund is only a dog, a donkey a donkey, and a cat a cat. Then there would be no imitations, no misunderstandings, no mistakes, no subtle motives, no boring waste of time.
Lastly, I attempted to handle the broad, ever-present cloud of fear. Why do we fear to be frank? Why are we afraid to say things which all of us think and know? We even fear death, though each one has to realize deeply that we are every one of us dying men. With this homily and more too, I tried to help mankind in that second volume in stiff boards. And when it was finished and printed, I grasped the fact that the whole book was trite; that those same things had been said and resaid and said again from time out of mind, doing no good, as long as men are men, and women are women.
Bring me that book with the worn, sheepskin covers, Sandy. Ah, how I love this recent child, who longed to make people do their own thinking and their own believing by giving them bits of our vast heritage of philosophy which only a few have the time or the inclination to read. But readers will not endure moralizing, said my tactful self. Therefore, give them bits of philosophy in action! Alas, I know that it, too, is abortive.
What! I reach out now, and my dear, dear books are gone! My gold turned to crumpling, dead leaves. They, too, were dream children, were they? Children of my mind, as the others might have been children of my body. Farewell, little Frances and Samuel, concrete happiness that never was. Farewell, my books, visions of undone good.