“Not quite. Storms don’t rage continually, nor is the wind for ever boisterous: sometimes it blows fair and strong, so that the ship leaps forward with animal delight; the mariner exults in his skilful power and in the joy of the limitless horizon. Sometimes the sea is placid like a sleeping youth, and the scented air, balmy and fresh, fills the heart with lazy pleasure. The ocean has its countless mysteries, its thoughts and manifold emotions. Why on earth should you not look upon the passage as a pleasure-trip, whereon the rough weather must necessarily be taken with the smooth—looking regretlessly towards the end, but joyful even amid hurricane or gale in the recollection of happy, easy days? Why not abandon life, saying: I have had evil fortune and good, and the pains were compensated by the pleasures; and though my journey, with all its perils, has led me nowhither, though I return tired and old to the port whence with my many hopes I started, I am content to have lived.”
“And so, for all your experience, your study, and your thought, you’ve found absolutely no meaning,” cried Frank, profoundly discouraged.
“I invented a meaning of sorts; like a critic explaining a symbolical picture, or a school-boy construing a passage he doesn’t at all understand, I at least made the words hang sensibly together. I aimed at happiness, and I think, on the whole, I’ve found it. I lived according to my instincts, and sought every emotion that my senses offered; I turned away deliberately from what was ugly and tedious, fixing my eyes with all my soul on Beauty—seen, I hope, with a discreet appreciation of the Ridiculous. I never troubled myself much with current notions of good and evil, for I knew they were merely relative, but strove always to order my life so that to my eyes at least it should form a graceful pattern on the dark inane.”
Miss Ley stopped, and a whimsical smile flickered across her face.
“But I should tell you that, like Mr. Shandy, who was so long about his treatise on the education of his son that by the time it was finished Tristram’s growth made it useless, I did not formulate my philosophy till it was too late to set much of it in practice.”
“Dinner is served, madam,” said the butler, coming into the room.
“By Jove!” cried Frank, springing up, “I had no idea it was so late.”
“But you’re going to stay? I think you’ll find a place laid for you.”
“I’ve ordered my dinner at home.”
“I’m sure it won’t be so good as mine.”