“How can a man be other than pessimistic,” he answered, “with a foot like mine. Just think what it means. Look here.”
Rolling up his sleeve he showed me an arm a sculptor might have raved over.
“If I’d been all right, what an athlete I’d have made. Look at my torso, my other leg. And my whole heart is for action, for energy, for deeds. Just think how much that makes life worth while is barred to me. And I shrink from society, especially where there are women. I’m always thinking they pity me. Oh, that’s gall and wormwood—to be pitied! I should have a wife, children, a home, yet here I am a lonely, brooding misanthrope; and I’m only forty-six.”
Yet he cheered up when the Môme was near. The two were the greatest of friends now, and it was a notable sight to see the big man with his Forbes Robertson type of face and his iron-grey mane, leading by the hand the little girl of five with the slender limbs, the pansy-blue eyes, and the honey-yellow hair.
And what exciting tales the Môme would have to tell on her return: how they had surprised a deer nibbling at the short grass; how a wild boar with tushes gleaming had glared at them out of the brake; how an eagle had arisen from a lonely gorge! Then there were lizards crawling on the silver-grey rocks, and the ceaseless calling of cuckoos, and scolding squirrels, and drumming woodpeckers. Oh, that was the happy child! Yet sometimes I wondered if the man was not as happy in his own way.
He was a queer chap, was Helstern. I remember one time we all sat together on a fallen log, and the sky seen through the black bars of the pines was like a fire of glowing coals. Long, serene and mellow the evening lengthened to a close.
“You know,” said the sculptor, as he pulled steadily at the Turk’s head pipe, and regarded the Môme thoughtfully, “I believe that all children should be reared and educated by the State. Then there would be no unfair handicapping of the poor: each child would find its proper place in the world.”
“What would you do with the home?”
“I would surely destroy the millions of unworthy homes, stupid homes, needy homes, bigoted homes, sordid homes. I would replace these with a great glorious Home, run by a beneficent State, where from the very cradle children would be developed and trained on scientific principles, where they would be taught that the noblest effort of man is the service of man; the most ignoble, the seeking of money. I would teach them to live for the spiritual, not the sensual benefits of life. Many private homes do not teach these things. Their influence is pernicious. How many men can look back on such homes and not declare them bungling makeshifts, either stupidly narrow, or actually unhappy?”
“You would destroy the love ties of parent and child?”