The Happy Man/Chapter 12
XII
“You speak as though it were already over,” said Allan.
“It will soon be the first of August,” responded Beryl, “and that is the beginning of the end. I shall not be sorry. It has been a rather stupid summer so far.”
They were seated on the porch, a few evenings later, Beryl in the chaise-longue and Allan beside her, so close that he could have laid his hand on hers where it lay, dimly white, in the half darkness, along the broad arm of her chair. As on many other evenings of the passing summer, the air was languid and fragrant with the scent of the sleeping flowers, a moon swam in and out of fleecy clouds, and, save for the low sound of voices from the open doorway and the elfin whispers from the garden, the night out there was very still. For a while she had resisted his efforts to draw her away from the players, wandering restlessly from table to table, her mood a strange mixture of vivacity and abstraction. And yet finally she had indifferently yielded to his request.
“You will be in Boston this winter?” asked Allan. “Or shall you go to Washington?”
“We usually go to Washington for a month or so while Congress is in session. Mamma likes it.”
“It is a curious place,” he said reflectively, “and, I think, interesting. A sort of Port Said, where East and West meet.”
“It is quite hopeless socially,” she remarked. Her tone held such a suggestion of snobbery that he almost winced. Then in the next instant he smiled in the darkness.
“That matters with you?” he asked lightly.
“Why, very naturally,” she answered.
“Perhaps, then,” he said, “that explains your present attitude toward me.” She knew he was smiling, although his face was in shadow. “You have discovered that I am socially a hopeless outsider, Miss Vernon?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Shortland; I have made no discoveries about you. As for my present attitude, as you called it, is it different from—any other?”
“Very. A week or so ago you didn't go out of your way to avoid me, Miss Vernon.”
“Really? And do I now? Or seem to?”
“Yes, don't you?”
“I'm afraid I haven't thought much about it, Mr. Shortland. I hope I have not been impolite?”
“Rather,” he responded.
“Really, Mr. Shortland!” she exclaimed.
“Well, you asked,” he said. “I am not conscious of having done anything to displease you, Miss Vernon. If I have, I am sorry. Let us start fresh again. Shall we?”
“Is it necessary to start at all?”
“I'm afraid it is—for me,” he replied gently. She made no answer. “Suppose, Miss Vernon, we sponge out last week and go back to where we were before.”
“I fear I don't remember just where that was,” she said uninterestedly.
“We were well along on a very pleasant friendship,” he replied. “Let us go back there. Shall we?”
“If you like.”
“You are not enthusiastic,” he said, with a smile. “I had dared to hope that you had missed my—nonsense a little.”
“Isn't nonsense something one can do fairly well without?”
“Bless you, no! It's one of the most indispensable things.”
“I haven't found it so,” she responded sweetly.
“That's disheartening.” He sighed. “It implies that I am no more indispensable than my nonsense. I had thought—or even hoped—that you found me—well, mildly amusing, perhaps even interesting.”
“I have, Mr. Shortland; quite amusing.”
“And interesting?”
“Doesn't amusement imply interest?”
“I think there's a distinction, Miss Vernon.”
“You attempt too many distinctions this evening, Mr. Shortland. My brain isn't capable of following them all.”
“I see I shall have to be satisfied for the present with being merely amusing.”
“I thought that that was—shall I say?—your main ambition, Mr. Shortland.”
“No. If I have any main ambition”
“Which you haven't!” she interrupted. “And that is what—what” She stopped rather breathlessly.
“What you hold against me?” he asked encouragingly.
“Yes,” she replied defiantly, “if you must know. And—and I hate it! To do nothing but amuse yourself, to be—be just a dawdler, a—a harlequin to make people laugh, to take nothing seriously—even yourself—oh, it's—disgusting!”
She ended with a little gasp that might have expressed either relief or temerity. He waited a moment, and then, as she did not go on, he said slowly:
“Do I really seem as bad as that to you? A dawdler—a harlequin—taking nothing seriously!” He was silent a moment. “A dawdler, yes; harlequin if you like; but for the rest—my dear, I take things so seriously that I can afford to laugh! It is not I who make a joke of life, but those who go about with sorry faces; for they pretend that existence is mean and paltry, a thing to be endured instead of enjoyed. They make of it a tawdry and somber tragedy, with here and there a grudging smile by way of 'comic relief.' I see life as a pleasant comedy, an idyllic farce, if you like, a thing of dancing and singing, of smiles and laughter, with the 'sunshine screen' over every light and the orchestra always playing. Why, in my play a sober look is only used for its contrast value, a sigh is sighed to the trilling of the piccolo, and there's never a tear written into a part! Come, now, which is the better amusement for the moment, mine or theirs?”
“Oh, I can't argue,” she answered rebelliously. “You make it sound right, but—but it isn't! Life isn't a farce, and there are far more tears than laughter.”
“Only because there are more weepers than laughers. Why not be a laugher? You say life isn't a farce, but it is, a joyous, merry, whimsical farce. What else could it be on such a stage, with such a setting, with a billion and a half of actors tumbled onto it, jostling and crowding, tripping and falling, elbowing for the center of the stage, stealing each other's business, forgetting their lines—for there's no prompter in the wings—and all playing, ill or well, the rôles that the Great Playwright has given them? No farce, you say! Heigho, but a very devil of a farce!”
“And—and that is all that life means to you? Just—just an excuse for laughter, for play”
“Laughter needs no excuse.” Then, more soberly, “Shall I tell you what life does mean to me? It means being happy oneself and making others happy. Only that.”
“And not necessarily—good?” she asked.
“Being happy is being good, and being good is being happy. Sin is only another name for unhappiness.”
“And you think that doing great things, great deeds, for the betterment of the world, is not necessary?”
“Great deeds or little deeds that help others to be happy are quite within my scheme. Some of us can do only little deeds, but perhaps, since we can do so many of them, we equalize matters.”
“Happiness!” she sighed. “With you, then, there is only that; nothing beyond!”
“No, there is nothing beyond happiness! There could not be. Happiness is the sum of it all. It is the present and the future reward. 'Be good,' says the moralist, 'and you will be happy.' 'Believe in God and obey his laws,' says the priest, 'and you will be happy now and hereafter.' Hereafter, by all means, but now too if you please!”
“You are a humanitarian!”
“Doubtless. And a harlequin. And a dawdler.”
“And—and very irritating!”
“Many irritants are beneficial.”
“But unpleasant. There, I didn't mean to say that, Mr. Shortland. You—goaded me into it.”
“I'm very glad you didn't mean it. If you had, I'd have—well, I fear I wouldn't have found the courage to ask the question that I've been wanting to ask for some time, and which I had firmly resolved to ask this evening.”
“What question, Mr. Shortland?”
“This, Miss Vernon: will you marry me?”