Floating Fancies among the Weird and the Occult

by Clara H. Holmes

The reverse was the opinion of Philip Aultman. Life seemed a failure, every venture foredoomed; and this sunny June morning, when all nature seemed to give the lie to evil prognostications, he sat in his room with the curtains of his soul pulled down, brooding over his misfortunes, not once considering that he was in fault. A maple grew just outside the window, and a little branch tapped on the uplifted sash coaxingly; the soft wind whispered through its branches, and entering lifted his curly brown locks shyly; a bluebird tilted its bright head, and swelled its throat in song of enticement; he lifted his face from the melancholy arch of his arms, and said as if in answer to the appeal: “I will go out, this is of no use! Anything is better than staying within brooding over my trouble!”

As he wandered about the sweet wind seemed to blow away much of his despondency, although he still smarted with indignation against fate. Yet—what is fate? The evil we bring upon ourselves. We clasp our hands above our heads, prostrate ourselves with our foreheads in the dust, and say with the devout Oriental: “Kismet!” Thus we are absolved from all blame.

Philip had been poor all his life; not miserably indigent, though many things which go to make life comfortable were lacking. He had inherited a taste for art from his father; hard work had been the rule of his life, and as a result he was a very creditable artist, though not by any means entering into the soul of the work. It is one thing to paint a fair picture, to write an acceptable story; it is quite another thing to put your very self into your work, and endow it with a subtle life which is past all explaining.

When he was twenty-five he inherited money—worse for him; he thought that henceforward life held no need for exertion; as though food and raiment constitute all for which we should exert ourselves. He fancied that happiness lay in two things; going to sleep, and letting the enervating wind of pleasure drift him whithersoever it would; or getting astride of the billow of self-will, to ride over everything. He did not find his mistake until slice by slice his inheritance had been cut away from him, and he looked with astonished gaze upon those who, under the guise of friendship, had fastened themselves upon him in his prosperity, and now stared at him with unseeing eyes. He looked upon it as the worst misfortune which could have befallen him. He was no more shortsighted than the majority of persons; because a certain condition brings present discomfort, we rebel against it as being to our great detriment; most frequently we rebel without reason. The loss was a blessing to him, against which he railed, beat, and bruised himself.

Just at this point I take up his history.

He wandered about the woods all day, sometimes throwing himself on the grass to look up into the immeasurable depths of the ether; again, idly throwing pebbles into the flashing water; but during all that sweet, restful afternoon his soul was awakening from its lethargy; thoughts which seemed to him a glimpse of the divine, surprised his hitherto dormant intellectuality; he began to realize that life held possibilities of which he had never caught a glimpse.

Evil is but good gone astray; it is the oscillation of the pendulum; Philip had reached the adverse limit, and the pendulum of its own momentum was returning to the center of gravity. As deadly nausea is the precursor of a cleansed stomach, so he felt a thorough disgust with all the world, which meant to him—as it does to every one of us—the people with whom he was in daily association; he indignantly compared them to a flock of geese—all gabble and greed. It is a hard truth, that if we will submit to be plucked we can soon find all the worst characteristics of the worst people. He thought savagely that he desired never to see one of them again.

He took a small memorandum book from his pocket, and setting down a few figures ran them over rapidly; he laughed harshly, a sound that held the threat of a sob: “Six hundred dollars! Well, that is a great showing from fifty thousand! No wonder the elegant Mabel DeVere gave me the cold shoulder; she and her kind have no use for a man without money; then there was that little dancer—she had no further use for the goose after it was thoroughly plucked, as she took pains to tell me; she was at least honest. They are all alike, a treacherous, tricky lot!” he muttered to himself, with moody brow; but he remembered with a pang of shame that his loving, patient, helpful mother had been like none of those with whom he had associated, and his shame was that he had sought such company; it had been of his own choosing; what better was he, that he should fling at them? He was looking at himself in a new light.

He tried not to think about it, it made him restless and ashamed; but such thoughts once aroused will not be quieted; when the light is once admitted the germ of higher growth will strengthen rapidly.

“How sweet it would be to live like this,” he said thoughtfully. A sudden smile lighted the gloom of his face; “Why not? I have my outfit, and money enough to procure food and shelter whenever I desire it. It is not so very much that a person needs after all; it is what he fancies that he needs, and is much better without, that takes the money—and what his friends require,” he added with a rueful grimace.