Such a one will have little need to fear that last call of which I have been writing. In Kipling's phrase, he has taken his fun where he found it, and his barns are well stocked with the various harvests of the years. Not his the wild regret for having "safely got away." Rather he laughs to remember how often he was taken captive by the enchantments of the world, how whenever there was any piece of wildness afoot he was always found in the thick of it. When the bacchantes were out on Mount Cithaeron, and the mad Evoe! Evoe! rang through the moonstruck woods, be sure he was up and away, with ardent hands clutched in the flying tresses. Ah! the vine leaves and the tiger skins and the ivory bodies, the clash of the cymbals and the dithyramb shrilling up to the stars! "If I forget thee, O golden Aphrodite!" He is no hypocrite, no weary "king ecclesiast," shaking his head over the orgies of sap and song in which he can no longer share. He frankly acknowledges that then came in the sweet o' the year, and he is still as young as the youngest by virtue of having drunk deep of the only elixir, the Dionysiac cup of life.
At the same time, while he may not ungratefully rejoice with Sophocles at being "set free from service to a band of madmen," that ripening of his nature which comes most fruitfully of a generous exercise of its powers will have instinctively taught him that secret of the transmutation of the passions which is one of the most precious rewards of experience. It is quite possible for a lifelong passion for fair women to become insensibly and unregretfully transmuted into a passion for first editions, and you may become quite sincerely content that a younger fellow catch the flying maiden, if only you can catch yon flitting butterfly for your collection. And, strangest of all, your grand passion for your own remarkable self may suffer a miraculous transformation into a warm appreciation for other people. It is true that you may smile a little sadly to find them even more interesting than yourself. But such passing sadness has the relish of salvation in it. Self is a weary throne, and the abdication of the ego is to be free of one of the burdens rather than the pleasures of existence.
But, to conclude, it is all too possible that you who read this may have no such assets of a wilful well spent life to draw on as he whom I have pictured. It may be that you have starved your emotions and fled your opportunities, or you may simply have had bad luck. The golden moments seldom came your way. The wilderness of life has seldom blossomed with a rose. "The breast of the nymph in the brake" and "the chimes at midnight" were not for you. And there is a menacing murmur of autumn in the air. The days are shortening, and the twilight comes early, with a chilly breath. The crickets have stopped singing, and the garden is sad with elegiac blooms. The chrysanthemum is growing on the grave of the rose. Perhaps already it is too late—too late for life and joy. You must take to first editions and entomology and other people's interests in good earnest. But no! Suddenly on the wind there comes a cry—a sound of cymbals and flutes and dancing feet. It is life's last call. You have one chance left. There is still Indian summer. It is better than nothing. Hurry and join the music, ere it be too late. For this is the last call!
When time lets slip a little perfect hour,
Take it, for it will not come again.
VII
THE PERSECUTIONS OF BEAUTY
All religions have periods in their history which are looked back to with retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and each religion has its own book of martyrs. The religion of beauty is no exception. Far from it. For most other religions, however they may have differed among themselves, have agreed in fearing beauty, and even in Greece there were stern sanctuaries and ascetic academes where the white bosom of Phryne would have pleaded in vain. Christianity has not been beauty's only enemy, by any means; though, when the Book of Martyrs of Beauty comes to be written, it will, doubtless, be the Christian persecutions of beauty that will bulk largest in the record—for the Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty have been warring creeds from the beginning.
At the present moment, there is reason to fear, or to rejoice—according to one's individual leanings—that the Religion of Beauty is gaining upon its ancient rival; for perhaps never since the Renaissance has there been such a widespread impulse to assert Beauty and Joy as the ideals of human life. As evidence one has but to turn one's eyes on the youth of both sexes, as they rainbow the city thoroughfares with their laughing, heartless faces, evident children of beauty and joy, "pagan" to the core of them, however ostensibly Christian their homes and their country. In our time, at all events, Beauty has never walked the streets with so frank a radiance, so confident an air of security, and in her eyes and in her carriage, as in her subtly shaped and subtly scented garments, so conspicuous a challenge to the musty, outworn, proprieties to frown upon her all they please. From the humblest shop-girl to the greatest lady, there is apparent an intention to be beautiful, sweet maid, and let who will be hum-drum, at whatever cost, by whatever means. This, of course, at all periods, has been woman's chief thought, but till recently, in our times, she has more or less affected a certain secrecy in her intention. She has hinted rather than fully expressed it, as though fearing a certain flagrancy in too public an exhibition of her enchantments. It has hardly seemed proper to her heretofore to be as beautiful in the public gaze as in the sanctuary of her boudoir. But now, bless you, she has no such misgivings, and the flower-like effect upon the city streets is as dazzling as if, some fine morning in Constantinople, all the ladies of the various harems should suddenly appear abroad without their yashmaks, setting fire to the hearts and turning the heads of the unaccustomed male. Or, to make comparison nearer home, it is almost as startling as if the ladies of the various musical comedies in town should suddenly be let loose upon our senses in broad daylight, in all the adorable sorceries of "make-up" and diaphanous draperies. I swear that it can be no more thrilling to penetrate into that mysterious paradise "behind the scenes," than to walk up Fifth Avenue one of these summer afternoons, in the present year of grace,—humming to one's self that wistful old song, which goes something like this:
The girls that never can be mine!
In every lane and street
I hear the rustle of their gowns,
The whisper of their feet;
The sweetness of their passing by,
Their glances strong as wine,
Provoke the unpossessive sigh—
Ah! girls that never can be mine.