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Read Ebook: Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy by Leacock Stephen
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Ebook has 1089 lines and 36723 words, and 22 pages
She seemed about to say more, her lips had already opened, when suddenly the dull raucous blast of the foghorn cut the night air. Wet fog rolled in about them, wetting everything.
The girl shivered.
"I must go," she said; "good night."
For a moment de Vere was about to detain her. The wild thought leaped to his mind to ask her her name or at least her mother's. With a powerful effort he checked himself.
"Good night," he said.
She was gone.
Limits of space forbid the insertion of the whole of this chapter. Its opening contains one of the most vivid word-pictures of the inside of an American customs house ever pictured in words. From the customs wharf de Vere is driven in a taxi to the Belmont. Here he engages a room; here, too, he sleeps; here also, though cautiously at first, he eats. All this is so admirably described that only those who have driven in a taxi to an hotel and slept there can hope to appreciate it.
Limits of space also forbid our describing in full de Vere's vain quest in New York of the beautiful creature whom he had met on the steamer and whom he had lost from sight in the aigrette department of the customs house. A thousand times he cursed his folly in not having asked her name.
Meanwhile no word comes from her, till suddenly, mysteriously, unexpectedly, on the fourth day a note is handed to de Vere by the Third Assistant Head Waiter of the Belmont. It is addressed in a lady's hand. He tears it open. It contains only the written words, "Call on Mr. J. Superman Overgold. He is a multimillionaire. He expects you."
To leap into a taxi was the work of a moment. To drive to the office of Mr. Overgold was less. The portion of the novel which follows is perhaps the most notable part of it. It is this part of the chapter which the Hibbert Journal declares to be the best piece of psychological analysis that appears in any novel of the season. We reproduce it here.
"Exactly, exactly," said de Vere, writing rapidly in his note-book as he sat in one of the deep leather armchairs of the luxurious office of Mr. Overgold. "So you sometimes feel as if the whole thing were not worth while."
"I do," said Mr. Overgold. "I can't help asking myself what it all means. Is life, after all, merely a series of immaterial phenomena, self-developing and based solely on sensation and reaction, or is it something else?"
He paused for a moment to sign a cheque for ,000 and throw it out of the window, and then went on, speaking still with the terse brevity of a man of business.
"Is sensation everywhere or is there perception too? On what grounds, if any, may the hypothesis of a self-explanatory consciousness be rejected? In how far are we warranted in supposing that innate ideas are inconsistent with pure materialism?"
De Vere listened, fascinated. Fortunately for himself, he was a University man, fresh from the examination halls of his Alma Mater. He was able to respond at once.
"I think," he said modestly, "I grasp your thought. You mean--to what extent are we prepared to endorse Hegel's dictum of immaterial evolution?"
"Exactly," said Mr. Overgold. "How far, if at all, do we substantiate the Kantian hypothesis of the transcendental?"
"Precisely," said de Vere eagerly. "And for what reasons must we reject Spencer's theory of the unknowable?"
"Entirely so," continued Mr. Overgold. "And why, if at all, does Bergsonian illusionism differ from pure nothingness?"
They both paused.
Mr. Overgold had risen. There was great weariness in his manner.
"It saddens one, does it not?" he said.
He had picked up a bundle of Panama two per cent. gold bonds and was looking at them in contempt.
"The emptiness of it all!" he muttered. He extended the bonds to de Vere.
"Do you want them," he said, "or shall I throw them away?"
"Give them to me," said de Vere quietly; "they are not worth the throwing."
"No, no," said Mr. Overgold, speaking half to himself, as he replaced the bonds in his desk. "It is a burden that I must carry alone. I have no right to ask any one to share it. But come," he continued, "I fear I am sadly lacking in the duties of international hospitality. I am forgetting what I owe to Anglo-American courtesy. I am neglecting the new obligations of our common Indo-Chinese policy. My motor is at the door. Pray let me take you to my house to lunch."
De Vere assented readily, telephoned to the Belmont not to keep lunch waiting for him, and in a moment was speeding up the magnificent Riverside Drive towards Mr. Overgold's home. On the way Mr. Overgold pointed out various objects of interest,--Grant's tomb, Lincoln's tomb, Edgar Allan Poe's grave, the ticket office of the New York Subway, and various other points of historic importance.
On arriving at the house, de Vere was ushered up a flight of broad marble steps to a hall fitted on every side with almost priceless objets d'art and others, ushered to the cloak-room and out of it, butlered into the lunch-room and footmanned to a chair.
As they entered, a lady already seated at the table turned to meet them.
One glance was enough--plenty.
It was she--the object of de Vere's impassioned quest. A rich lunch-gown was girdled about her with a twelve-o'clock band of pearls.
She reached out her hand, smiling.
"Dorothea," said the multimillionaire, "this is Mr. de Vere. Mr. de Vere--my wife."
Of this next chapter we need only say that the Blue Review declares it to be the most daring and yet conscientious handling of the sex-problem ever attempted and done. The fact that the Congregational Times declares that this chapter will undermine the whole foundations of English Society and let it fall, we pass over: we hold certificates in writing from a great number of the Anglican clergy, to the effect that they have carefully read the entire novel and see nothing in it.
. . . . . . .
They stood looking at one another.
"So you didn't know," she murmured.
In a flash de Vere realised that she hadn't known that he didn't know and knew now that he knew.
He found no words.
The situation was a tense one. Nothing but the woman's innate tact could save it. Dorothea Overgold rose to it with the dignity of a queen.
She turned to her husband.
"Take your soup over to the window," she said, "and eat it there."
The millionaire took his soup to the window and sat beneath a little palm tree, eating it.
"You didn't know," she repeated.
"No," said de Vere; "how could I?"
"And yet," she went on, "you loved me, although you didn't know that I was married?"
"Yes," answered de Vere simply. "I loved you, in spite of it."
"How splendid!" she said.
There was a moment's silence. Mr. Overgold had returned to the table, the empty plate in his hand. His wife turned to him again with the same unfailing tact.
"Take your asparagus to the billiard-room," she said, "and eat it there."
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