To love literature is all right in its way; to love it too well is to mistake the appreciative for the creative genius. Reverence and devotion are no equipment for creative authorship. It is not enough to have something to say about what other people have said. And the inspiration which comes from what others have done is never the true one. But Brown didn"t know these things. They were not revealed unto him at Harvard; no inward instinct made them plain to him.
He began by foregathering with authors. Many, many authors foregather, from various causes--tradition, inclination, general shiftlessness. When they do that they produce a sort of serum called literary atmosphere, which is said to be delightful. And so Brown found it. However, there are authors who seem to be too busy with their profession to foregather and exhale atmosphere. But these are doubtless either literary hacks or the degraded producers of best-sellers. They are not authors, either; they are merely writers.
Now, in all the world there is only one thing funnier than an author; and that is a number of them. But Brown didn"t know that, either.
All authors are reformers. Said one of them to Brown in the Empyrean Club:
"When an author in his own heart ceases to be a reformer he begins to be a menace!"
It was a fine sentiment, and Brown wrote it in his note-book.
Afterward, the more he a.n.a.lyzed it the less it seemed to mean.
Another author informed him that the proper study for man is man. He"d heard that before, but the repet.i.tion steeled his resolve. And his resolve was to reproduce in literature exactly what he observed about him; nothing more, nothing less.
There was to be no concession to imagination, none to convention, none to that insidious form of human weakness known as good taste. As for art, Brown already knew what Art really was.
There was art enough for anybody in sheer truth, enough in the realism made up of photographic detail, recorded uncompromisingly in ordered processional sequence. After all, there was really no beauty in the world except the beauty of absolute truth. All other alleged beauty was only some form of weakness. Thus Brown, after inhaling literary atmosphere.
Like the majority of young men, Brown realised that only a man, and a perfectly fearless, honest, and unprejudiced one, was properly equipped to study woman and tell the entire truth about her in literature.
So he began his first great novel--"The Unquiet s.e.x"--and he made heavy weather of it that autumn--what with contributing to the literary atmosphere every afternoon and evening at various clubs and cafes--not to mention the social purlieus into which he ventured with the immortal l.u.s.tre already phosph.o.r.escent on his brow. Which left him little time for mere writing. It is hard to be an author and a writer, too.
The proper study for man being woman, Brown studied her solemnly and earnestly. He studied his mother and his sisters, boring them to the verge of distraction; he attempted to dissect the motives which governed the behaviour of a.s.sorted feminine relatives, scaring several of the more aged and timorous, agitating others, and infuriating one or two--until his father ordered him to desist.
House-maids, parlour-maids, ladies"-maids, waitresses, all fought very shy of him; for true to his art, he had cast convention aside and had striven to fathom the souls and discover the hidden motives imbedded in Milesian, Scandinavian and Briton.
"The thing for me to do," said Brown rather bitterly to his father, "is to go out into the world and investigate far and wide."
"Investigate what?" asked his father.
"Woman!" said Brown st.u.r.dily.
"There"s only one trouble about that."
"What"s that?"
"Woman," said his father, "is likely to do the investigating. This household knows more about you than you do about it."
Brown smiled. So did his father.
"Son," said the latter, "what have you learned about women without knowing anything about them?"
"Nothing, naturally," said Brown.
"Then you will never have anything more than _that_ to say about them,"
remarked Brown senior.
"Why not?"
"Because the only thing possible for a man to say about them is what his imagination dictates. He"ll never learn any more concerning women than that."
"Imagination is not literature," said Brown junior, with polite toleration.
"Imagination is often the truer truth," said the old gentleman.
"Father, that is rot."
"Yes, my son--and it is almost Good Literature, too. Go ahead, shake us if you like. But, if you do, you"ll come back married."
XIII
So Brown, who was nourishing a theory, shook his family and, requiring mental solitude to develop his idea, he went to Verbena Inlet. Not to the enormous and expensive caravansary swarming with wealth, ennui, envy, and fashion; not even to its sister hotel similarly infested. But to West Verbena, where for a mile along the white sh.e.l.l road modest hotels, boarding houses, and cottages nestled behind mosquito screens under the dingy cabbage-palmettos.
Here was stranded the winter driftwood from the North--that peculiar flotsam and jetsam which summered in similar resorts in the North, rocked in rocking chairs on dreary rural verandas, congregated at the village post-office, awaited its men folk every week-end from the filthy and sweltering metropolis.
It was at a shabby but pretentious hostelry called the Villa Hibiscus that Brown took up his quarters. Several rusty cabbage-palmettos waved above the whitish, sandy soil surrounding it; one or two discouraged orange trees fruited despondently near the veranda. And the place swarmed with human beings from all over the United States, lured from inclement climes, into the land of the orange and the palm--wistfully seeking in the land of advertised perpetual sunshine what the restless world has never yet discovered anywhere--surcease from care, from longing, from the unkindliness of its fellow seekers.
Dowdiness filled the veranda rocking chairs; unlovely hands were folded; faded eyes gazed vacantly at the white road, at the oranges; enviously at the flashing wheels and fluttering lingerie from the great Hotel Verbena.
Womanhood was there in all its ages and average phases; infancy, youth, middle age, age--all were there in the rusty villas and hotels ranged for a mile along the smooth sh.e.l.l road.
The region, thought Brown to himself, was rich in material. And the reflection helped him somewhat with his dinner, which needed a fillip or two.
In his faultless dinner jacket he sauntered out after the evening meal; and the idea which possessed and even thrilled him aided him to forget what he had eaten.
The lagoon glimmered mysteriously in the starlight; the royal palms bordering it rustled high in the night breeze from the sea. Perfume from oleander hedges smote softly the olfactories of Brown; the southern whip-poor-wills" hurried whisper thrilled the darkness with a deeper mystery.
Here was the place to study woman. There could be no doubt about that.
Here, untrammelled, uninterrupted, unvexed by the jarring of the world, he could place his model, turn her loose, and observe her.
To concentrate all his powers of a.n.a.lytical observation upon a single specimen of woman was his plan. Painters and sculptors used models. He meant to use one, too.
It would be simple. First, he must discover what he wanted. This accomplished, he had decided to make a plain business proposition to her. She was to go about her own affairs and her pleasure without embarra.s.sment or self-consciousness--behave naturally; do whatever it pleased her to do. But he was to be permitted to observe her, follow her, make what notes he chose; and, as a resume of each day, they were to meet in some quiet spot in order that he might question her as he chose, concerning whatever interested him, or whatever in her movements or behaviour had seemed to him involved or inexplicable.
Thus and thus only, he had decided, could light be shed upon the mysterious twilight veiling the inner woman! Thus only might carefully concealed motives be detected, cause and effect co-ordinated, the very source of all feminine logic, reason, and emotion be laid bare and dissected at leisure.
Never had anybody written such a novel as he would be equipped to write.
The ultimate word concerning woman was about to be written.
Inwardly excited, outwardly calm, he had seated himself on the coquina wall which ran along the lagoon under the Royal Palms. He was about to study his subject as the great masters studied, coolly, impersonally, with clear and merciless intelligence, setting down with calm simplicity nothing except facts.
All that was worthy and unworthy should be recorded--the good with the evil--nothing should be too ephemeral, too minute, to escape his searching a.n.a.lysis.
And all the while, though Brown was not aware of it, the memory of a face he had seen in the dining-room grew vaguely and faded, waxing and waning alternately, like a phantom ill.u.s.tration accompanying his thoughts.