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Show H ' ,-r"'" THE LATEST THING l By John Galsworthy. M Thcro was in her blood that which bade her B hasten, lest there should be something still now H to her when she died. Death! She was contln- H ually haunted by the fear lest that itself might B bo new. And she would say: "Do you know H what it feels like to be dead? I do." If she had B not known this, sho felt that she would not have H lived her life to the full. And one must livo one's H life to the full. Indeed, yes! Ono must experi- H once everything. In her relations with men, for v Instance, there was nothing, so far as she could H boo, to prevent her from being a good wife, good H mother, good mistress, and good friend to dif- m ferent men all at the same time, and even to H more than one man of each kind, if necessary. H One had merely to 'bo oneself, a full nature, fully M expressed. Greed was a low and contemptible at- B tribute, especially in women; a woman wanted B nothing more than everything, and the best of M that. And it was Intolerable if one could not 1 have that little. Women had always been kept H down. Not to be kept down was still, on the H whole, new. Yet sometimes, after she had not H bean kept down rather violently, sho would feel: MB Oh! the weariness! I shall throw it all up, and H live on a shilling a day, like a sweated worker 1MB that, at all events, will be new! She even some- H times dreamed of retirement to convent life the H freshness of its old-world novelty appealed to H To such an idealist, the very colors of the H rainbow did not suffice, nor all the breeds of H birds there were; and her life was piled with 1 cages. Here she had them one by one, borrowed H their songs, relieved them of their plumes; then, H finding that they no longer had any, let them H go; for to look at things without possessing them H was intolerable, but to keep them when she had H got them even more so. H She often wondered how people could get along at nil whose natures were not so full as H hers. Life, sho thought, must be so dull for the H poor creatures, only doing one thing at a time, BH and that time so long. What with her painting, B and her music, her dancing, her flying, her motor- B ing, her writing of novels and poeraB, her love- H making, maternal cares, entertaining, friendships, H housekeeping, wifely duties, political and social Ml interests, her gardening, talking, acting, her in- BH torost in Russian linen and the Woman's Move- H ment; what with traveling in new countries, 11s- H toning to new preachers, lunching new novelists, H discovering new dishes for dinner, new religions, H new dogs, new dresses, new duties to new neigh- VH bors, and newer charities life was so full that H the moment it stood still and was simply old H "Life," it seemed to be no life at all. She could not bear the amateur; feeling within 1JH herself some sacred fire that made her " artist" M whatever she took up or dropped. She had a M particular dislike, too, of machine-made clothes; BVf for her, personality must be deep-woven into B everything; look at flowers, how wonderful they M were in that' way, growing quietly to perfection, H each in Its corner, and inviting butterflies to sip fl their dew! Sho knew, for she had been told it j so often, that she was the crown of creation H the latest thing in women, who were, of course, H the latest thing in creatures. There had never, H till qulto recently, been a woman like her, so H awfully interested in so many things, so likely to H bo interested in so many more. She had flung J open all the doors of Life, and was so contin- H ually going out and coming in, that Life had H some considerable difficulty In catching a glimpse of her at all. Just as the cinematograph was the H future of the theatre, so was sho the future of H women, and in tho words of the poet, "prou' title." To sip at every flower before her wings closed, if necessary, to make new flowers to sip at. To smoke the whole box of cigarettes straight off, and in the last puff of smoke expire! And withal, no feverishness, only a certain reposeful and womanly febrillty; a mere perpetual glancing from quick-sliding eyes, to see the next move, to catch tho new movement God bless it! And mind you, a high sense of duty perhaps a higher sense of duty than that of any woman who had gone before; a deep and intimate conviction that women had an immensity of leeway to make up, that their old, starved, stunted lives must be avenged, and that right soon. To enlarge tho horizon this was the sacred duty! No mere Boccaccian or Louis Quinze cult of pleasurable sensations; no crude, lolling, plutocratic dollery of a spoiled dame. No! tho full, deep river of sensations nibbling each others' tails. Life was real, life was earnest, and Time the essence of its contract. To say that she had favorite books, plays, men, dogs, colors, was to do her but momentary justice. jus-tice. A deeper equity assigned her only one favorite the net; and for the sake of that one favorite, no Catherine, no Semiramls, or Messa-Hna Messa-Hna could more swiftly dispose of all the others. With what avidity she sprang into its arms, drained its lips of, kisses, looking hurriedly the while for its successors; for God alone she felt knew what would happen to her if she finished drinking before she caught sight of that next necessary one. And yet, now and again, Time played her false, and she got through too soon. It was then that she realized the sensation of death. After the first terrible inanition, those moments lived without with-out "living" would begin to assume a sort of preciousness, to acquire holy sensations of their own. "I am dead," she would say to herself; "I really am dead; I lie motionless, hearing, feeling, feel-ing, smelling, seeing, thinking nothing. I lie impalpable; im-palpable; ahove me I can see the vast blue, and all around me the vast brown brown it is something some-thing like what I remember of Egypt. And there is a kind of singing in my ears, that are really not ears now, a grey, thin sound, like ah! Maeterlinck, and a very faint honey smell, like er Omar Khayyam. And I just move as a blade of grass moves in the wind. Yes, I am dead. It feels exactly like it." And a new exhilaration would seize her, for sho felt, in that sensation of death, she was living! At lunch, or it might bo dinner, she would tell her newest man what it felt like to be dead. "It's not really disagreeable," disagree-able," she would say; "it has its own flavor. You know, like Turkish coffee." And the new one would sneeze, and answer: "Yes, I know a little what you mean; asphodels, too; you get it in Greece. My only difficulty is that, if you aro dead, you know you er are." She would not admit that; it sounded true, but she was sure it was not, because, to be dead like that would bo the end of novelty, which was, to her, unthinkable. unthink-able. Once, in a new book, she came across a little tale of a man who "lived" in Persia, of all heavenly heav-enly places, frantically pursuing sensation. Entering En-tering ono day the court yard of his house, he heard a sigh behind him, and, looking around, saw his own spirit, apparently in the act of breathing its last. Tho little thing, dry and penrly-white as a seed-pot of ".honesty," was opening and shutting its mouth, for all the world like an oyster trying to breathe. "What 1b it?" he said. "You don't seem well." And his Bpirlt answered: "All right, all right! Don't distress yourself it's nothing! I've just been crowded out. That's all. Good-bye!" And, with a wheeze, the little thing went flat, fell on to the special blue tiles he 'had caused to bo put down flHHHHHHK29HHHHHHHHHHMiflHHHHVflHHMHH" there, and lay still. He Dent to pick it up, but it came off as his thumb in a smudge of grey-white powder. This fancy was so now that it pleased her greatly, and she recommended the book to all her friends. The moral, of course, was purely eastern, and had no applicability whatever to western life, where, the more one did and expressed, ex-pressed, tho bigger and more healthy one's spirit grow as, witness what sho always felt to bo going on within herself. But next spring ho changed the blue tiles of her Turkish smoking room, put in a birch-wood floor, and made it all Russian. This sho did, however, merely becauad ono new room a year was absolutely essential g, to her spirit. $ In her perpetual journey towards an ever- i widening horizon of woman's life, she was not bo foolish as to prize danger for its own Bake that was by no means her idea of adventure. That she ran some risks it would bo idle to deny, but only when she had discerned tho substantial advantage ad-vantage of a new sensation to be had out of them, not at all because they were necessary to keep her soul alive. She was, she felt, a Greek in spirit, only more so, perhaps, having in her also something of America and the West End. How she came to be at all was only known to that Age whoso daughter she undoubtedly was an Ago which ran all the time, without any foolish notion where it was running to. There was no novelty in a destination, and no sensation sensa-tion to be had from sitting cross-legged in a tub of sunlight not, at least, after you had done It once. She had been born to dance the moon down, to ragtime. Tho moon, the moon! Ah! yes. It was the one thing that had as yet eluded her avidity. That, and her own soul. |