But though the notion called forth a healthy self-ridicule in the man who didn’t know, a throb within him of common humanity, which he had hitherto believed dormant, was queerly uneasy for all the sightless lovers of all the world, stumbling on towards disillusion. He felt like a diver who from drowning depths had rescued a pearl, brought it up in his hand—“And was looking about for the swine,” finished Stuart’s sense of humour, also reawakened.
Nevertheless, the uneasiness dogged him, and the impatience. The philosophy of the shears was now indisputably his; not from the far-off speculations of a dreamer, but by claim of pain and payment. He had animated theory with blood-sacrifice, so that theory had become a live thing, a truth which he had no right to retain, which must be flung to the world. After that, let the world take it or leave it, as they willed; his part would be done. They would probably leave it.... And again he burnt with a fiery impatience somehow to pierce that thick denseness of spirit overlying mankind like a pall; so that nine-tenths have lost grip of their own lives, and the remaining tenth have too firm a grip on other people’s; and most are unseeingly miserable, but some benumbed in happiness; and all without wings.
Stuart did not feel any vocation for the platform nor the pulpit; neither had he any desire to throw his theories on to paper and thus propagate them among the unenlightened. It struck him that what he needed was a disciple; some young enthusiast who, believing in him devoutly and to the extent of imitation in all things, would also zealously spread his creed by eloquent tongue and by diligent pen. All prophets had their disciples; a disciple was a necessary adjunct to the master. Stuart was inclined to think himself modest in only seeking one fervent youth to squat at his feet. Most of the old Greek philosophers had founded a whole school. Perhaps that would follow in time. Meanwhile, let him but find some intelligent lad, tumultuously unhappy, restless and miserable and knowing not what he craved, and it ought to be a matter of ease to convert him to the Hairpin Vision, the Essential Renunciation, the Necessity of Conflict, and the Art of Ceasing to Suck the Orange before the Orange Runs Dry of Juice.
—From the shadow-side of the hulk against which Stuart leant, enumerating his ethics to the stars, a long-drawn-out sigh quivered through the air; then a low and satisfied grunt; both sounds expressive of the mood in man, when, having reached a fatuity of content too great for words, he has to resort to animal noises in which to relieve his feelings. Stuart strolled round, and stood gazing down at a reclining figure upon the sand, figure which he recognized as one-half of the lovers who had so often shattered his evening calm.
“Where’s Letty?”
“Hullo!” in languorous slumberous surprise. Then, raising a thatch of ruffled auburn hair and an exceedingly flushed face, the young man enquired: “I say, have you got a match on you? I was just thinking there was nothing on earth left for me to want, when I discovered that I couldn’t light up.”
Stuart looked disgusted: was this a thing for a fellow’s star to send a fellow, in answer to fellow’s wish for a disciple? this creature who had nothing left on earth to desire except a match. In silence he proffered his box; it was not worth while to withhold it.
“Letty’s mother had a sick headache to-night,” gurgled Sebastian Levi, in answer to the query first spoken. He was not so richly communicative as a rule; but to-night he was rather beyond himself with a father’s consent just won to his engagement, and several glasses of wine tossed down in celebration thereof; followed by one ecstatic embrace of his betrothed, a rush at fifty miles an hour through the warm sea-scented air, and much solitary starlight imbibed from the dim flat shores of the Haven. So, from drowsy oblivion of his fellow-man, he became suddenly eager and willing to talk:
“We’ve often run out here before, Letty and I. It’s quiet. And it’s only twenty minutes by car. I say, how did you know about Letty? I suppose you must have seen us.”
“I have occasionally noticed an indistinguishable blur or two,” replied Stuart, sitting down upon a black and moss-grown spar, and lighting his own cigarette. “The blur being to-day shrunken to half its size, I subtracted one from two, and asked you where she was. And thus the mystery is explained.”