“That’s unjust, I think, because, as I understand it, one of the conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”
“You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich people–they may not be thinking of money, but they’re breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp!”
Lily sat gazing absently through the blue rings of her cigarette-smoke.
“It seems to me,” she said at length, “that you spend a good deal of your time in the element you disapprove of.”
Selden received this thrust without discomposure. “Yes; but I have tried to remain amphibious: it’s all right as long as one’s lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that’s the secret that most of your friends have lost.”
Lily mused. “Don’t you think,” she rejoined after a moment, “that the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn’t it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user?”
“That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is that the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not the critics on the fence. It’s just the other way with most shows–the audience may be under the illusion, but the actors know that real life is on the other side of the footlights. The people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life.” Selden raised himself on his elbow. “Good heavens!” he went on, “I don’t underrate the decorative side of life. It seems to me the sense of splendour has justified itself by what it has produced. The worst of it is that so much human nature is used up in the process. If we’re all the raw stuff of the cosmic effects, one would rather be the fire that tempers a sword than the fish that dyes a purple cloak. And a society like ours wastes such good material in producing its little patch of purple! Look at a boy like Ned Silverton–he’s really too good to be used to refurbish anybody’s social shabbiness. There’s a lad just setting out to discover the universe: isn’t it a pity he should end by finding it in Mrs. Fisher’s drawing-room?”
“Ned is a dear boy, and I hope he will keep his illusions long enough to write some nice poetry about them; but do you think it is only in society that he is likely to lose them?”
Selden answered her with a shrug. “Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? Isn’t it a sufficient condemnation of society to find one’s self accepting such phraseology? I very nearly acquired the jargon at Silverton’s age, and I know how names can alter the colour of beliefs.”
She had never heard him speak with such energy of affirmation. His habitual touch was that of the eclectic, who lightly turns over and compares; and she was moved by this sudden glimpse into the laboratory where his faiths were formed.
“Ah, you are as bad as the other sectarians,” she exclaimed; “why do you call your republic a republic? It is a closed corporation, and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out.”
“It is not my republic; if it were, I should have a coup d’etat and seat you on the throne.”
“Whereas, in reality, you think I can never even get my foot across the threshold? Oh, I understand what you mean. You despise my ambitions–you think them unworthy of me!”