III.
The light in the studio was growing dim. Goetze had risen to his feetand was walking back and forth in front of the portraits. When he spokehe seemed to have forgotten them, except as the representation of anabstract principle; or, perhaps, he was thinking of his own nature, andwhat his friend had said of it.
"Good and bad are relative terms only," he said, as one pronouncing atext. Every man fulfills his purpose. I can put a stroke of paint on mycanvas, and you will call it white. I put another beside it, and bycontrast the first appears gray. Still another, and the second hasbecome gray, and the first still darker. And so on, until I havereached the purest white we know. It is the same with humanity. Men areonly dark or light as they are contrasted with others; nor can theyavoid the place they occupy on God's canvas any more than my colors canchoose their places on mine. The world is a great picture. God is thegreatest of all artists. His is the master hand--the unerring touch thatlays on the lights, the half-tones and the shadows. Each fulfills itspurpose. Without the shadows there would be no lights.
"What is true of masses is likewise true of individuals," he continued,after a moment's pause. "In a landscape, every blade of grass, everypebble, has its light and its dark side. If you see only the light sideof an object, it is only because the shadow is turned from you. It is sowith men; one side is sun, the other shadow. Sometimes the light, only,is presented to view, but the darker side is none the less there becauseunseen. Nature is never unbalanced. Whatever of brightness there istoward the sun there must be an equal amount of shadow opposing, withall the intergradations between. If the light is dim the shadow is soft;if the light is brilliant the shadow is black. Some of us are turnedwhite side to the world, some the reverse; some show the white and theblack alternately."
The man in the chair settled himself comfortably to listen. He likednothing better than to see the artist in his present mood, offering aword now and then that was likely to draw out his peculiar ideas.
"You believe in fate, then, and the absence of moral freedom," he saidreflectively.
"I believe nothing. Belief is not the word. What is, is right. To assertotherwise is an insult to the Supreme. He is all powerful, hence--wrongcannot exist."
"I should be glad to hear your argument in support of that position."
"Argument! It is a self-evident truth! Argument is not necessary!Argument is never necessary! If an assertion is not true no amount ofdiscussion will make it so, while the truth requires no support."
The other had lighted a pipe, and was smoking lazily.
"Well," he said, as the artist paused; "at least those who have crossedover have solved the mystery."
"Oh, they have! And how do you know that anyone has crossed over? You donot believe in the mortality nor the slumber of the soul; no more do I;but time exists only with life. A man dies and in the same instant openshis eyes upon eternity, and yet a million of years may have been sweptaway in that instant. As a tired child you have fallen asleep. A momentlater you have been called by your mother to breakfast. And yet, in thatmoment of dreamless sleep, the long winter night had passed. Adam, thefirst man, closing his eyes in death; you and I, who will do the sameten, twenty, forty years hence, and the generations who will follow usfor a million years, perhaps, will waken to eternity, if there be awaking, in one and the same instant of time, without a knowledge of theintervening years. There were no years. Eternity has no beginning, noend, no measurement."
He paused a moment, then suddenly burst out again.
"Nothing in life is real--it is all a dream. You think your being isreality and that you hear my voice speaking. I tell you it is but fancy.We are the figures--the mimes in some vast hypnotic exhibition--theshadows in some gigantic spirit's disordered dream. Hypnotism," hecontinued, pursuing a line of thought which his impulsive words hadsuggested, "has, in fact, proven that no one can distinguish the realfrom the unreal. You remember, when we went to see Flint, the greathypnotist, how his subjects passed from one condition to another andtook on any personality at the operator's will; capering and grimacingabout the stage with all the characteristics and even the facialexpression of monkeys, one minute, and simpering as silly school-girlsthe next; and to them it was all real--as real as this room, thesebodies, these pictures are to us. I read some lines once that seemed toexpress the idea:
"I sometimes think life but a dream Of some great soul in some great sphere, And what appear as truths but seem, And what seem truths do but appear."
He repeated these words with slow earnestness, adding solemnly, "Whoknows? Who knows?"
The man who sat listening drew a long breath. He was a rich idler with agood deal of worldly wisdom, but he loved and admired his erraticfriend. He felt that much of what he said was sophistry, wholly or inpart; but there was a charm about the earnest manner, the musical voice,and the flashing brevity of statement, more pleasing to his ear thansounder logic from a surer reasoner.
It was nearly dark now in the studio. The artist halted in his march,and offered to light the gas.
"Not for the world, Julian; I am far too happy in the dark. I was justthinking what a glorious agitator you would make; you would carry allbefore you. I wonder you have never dabbled in politics or socialism.Now I think of it, I have never heard you mention these things. Isuppose you belong to one or the other of the great parties, however."
"Politics? Party? Good heavens, no! I never meddle with such things; itis one step lower than I have ever gone."
"But a man must stand somewhere. He that stands nowhere stands uponnothing."
The artist paused before the open window and stood looking out upon thedusk of the little scented garden. A faint reflected glimmer from somefar-away lamp dimly illuminated one side of his face, silhouetting hisstriking profile sharply against a ground of blackness.
"If you mean," he began, slowly, "that I should have some opinions, thenI will tell you what they are.
"I believe neither in tariff nor trade. Currency nor coin. Traffic nortoil. I believe in _nothing_--but the absolute freedom of every livingbeing. Freedom!--freedom from the curse of creeds, the blight ofbigotry, and the leprosy of the law. Freedom to go and to come, to liveand to die. Life without loathing, love without bondage. To live in somesunlit valley, where the bud is ever bursting into flower, the flowerfading to fruit, and the fruit ripening to sustenance. The untouchedbosom of Nature would yield enough for her children had not the curse ofgreed been implanted in their bosoms."
Goetze had turned away from the window and was again striding up anddown the floor in the dark.
"A beautiful poem, Julian," said the other, dreamily; "but a sort ofdelightful barbarism, I'm afraid."
"Barbarism? No! A higher, purer intellectuality than we have ever yetknown--a civilization that knows not the curse of avarice nor themiseries of crime--the weariness of wealth nor the pangs of poverty. Thegarden of Eden is still about us, but we have torn up the flowers, anddesecrated it with the lust of gain. Man was never driven out of thatgarden. Greed was planted in his heart and he destroyed it."
"Come," he continued, suddenly changing the subject, "I have made youtired and hungry; let us go out, somewhere, to supper."
"Thanks," said the other, laughing; "I supposed a man in your conditionhad no need of bodily sustenance. You are comfortably situated here,Julian," he added, as they passed out into the street.
"Yes, it is quiet here--no bother with servants nor landladies. Once aweek my washerwoman comes and stays to put my establishment in order;the rest of the time I am disturbed only by my sitters."
"You forget _me_."
"Yes, Harry," said the artist, taking his arm affectionately; "and byyou, of course."