“Bah! a chimera! futile babble! No, no; there are too many old scores to settle, too many wrongs to right, too many blood feuds to be fought to a finish. But there will be International War such as the world has never seen. And why not? We are becoming a race of egotists, civilisation’s mollycoddles; we set far too high a value on our lives. Oh, I will hate to see the day when grand old war will cease, when we will have the hearts of women, and the splendid spirit of revenge will have passed away!”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Lorrimer; “he isn’t so bloodthirsty as he sounds. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He’s actually a vegetarian. What work are you doing now, you old fraud?”
Helstern looked round in that shy self-conscious way of his:
“I’m working on an allegorical group for the Salon.”
“What’s the subject?”
“Well, if I must confess it, it’s International Peace. Of course, it’s absurd; but the only consolation for living in this execrable world is that one can dream of a better one. To dream of beauty and to create according to his dream, that is the divine privilege of the artist.”
“Yes, what dreamers are we artists!” said Lorrimer thoughtfully. “You, Helstern, dream of leaving the world a little better than you find it; I dream of Fame, of doing work that will win me applause; and you, Madden—what do you dream of?”
“Oh, I don’t take myself quite so grandiosely,” I said with a laugh. “I dream of making enough money to take me back to the States, to show them I’m not a failure.”
“Failure!” said Lorrimer with some feeling; “it’s those who stay at home that are the failures. Look at them—small country ministers, provincial lawyers, flourishing shopkeepers; such are the shining lights of our school-boy days. Tax-payers, pillars of respectability, good honest souls, but—failures all.”
“A few are drummers,” I said. “The rest are humdrummers.”