Читать книгу The Romance of the Commonplace - Gelett Burgess - Страница 6

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Two lives moving in mysterious orbits are drawn together, and for an instant, or maybe for ever after, whirl side by side. We call the encounter an introduction, and we usually proceed to stifle the wonder of it by impersonal talk of art, books or the drama. It is an every-day affair and does not commonly stir the imagination. And yet to the connoisseur in living the meeting may be an event as well as an episode. He is a discoverer come to an unknown shore--it may be the margent of a boundless sea or not, but of a certain it is swung by new tides and currents to be adventured and plumbed.

How can we, supercivilized out of almost all real emotion, develop the potential charm of this first glimpse of a new personality? It is guarded by conventionality; the shutters are down, the door is barricaded; you may knock in vain with polite interrogations, and no one appears at the window. Must we perforce set the house afire, smite or shriek aloud to bring this stranger's soul to his eyes for one searching gaze, face to face? The time is so short--we must greet, and pass on to the next; we exchange easy commonplaces, and so the chance vanishes. Why not defy custom and boldly snatch in that magic moment some satisfactory taste of warm human intercourse?

Curiously enough, this strangeness--this lack of background in new acquaintances--is one of the freshest charms of meeting. Who would not throw off all restraint and talk frankly with a man from the planet Mars or Venus? Could we resurrect an inhabitant of Atlantis we could give him our whole confidence--and even a South Sea Islander, were he intelligent, might be our confessor. Where then shall we draw the line of convention? Mars is some 140,000,000 miles away--San Francisco is but 9,000--the ratio is inadequate but there is a guarantee of candour in mere distance. May we not apply the same rule to nearer neighbours and look upon them in this interesting light?

There is no such stimulating instant possible for old friends for they are bound by preconceived ideals of personality--they are pigeon-holed as this or that--circumscribed by mutual duty and sacrifice; they must reconcile present whims to past vagaries; they are held to strict account of consistency with previous moods; but on our first meeting with another we are free of all this constraint, and if we have courage may meet soul to soul without reserves. We may confess unreliable things in that moment, for there is no perspective of formulated opinion into which the confidence must be fitted--the little secret is safe alone in the new mind, and will not be held to intolerable account. We may even for this once state a brutal truth, for we are unpledged to distressing considerations. We may be in some few sacred thoughts more intimate with a stranger than with an old friend. Such is the divine franchise of this first sudden opportunity. No compact is yet sealed; you must take me as you find me, like me or not, it matters little, since it is for us to say whether or not we shall meet again.

This play is, as Dickens says of melancholy, "one of the cheapest and most accessible of luxuries," for the scene is always ready, set in the nearest drawing-room. Every stranger has a possible fascination and comes like a prince incognito. It is probably your own fault, not his, if the disguise is not dropped during the first impetuous flurry of talk. Children do these things better, making friends not inch by inch, but by bold advances of genuine confidence, yet approaching each new mystery with respect. So we, too, like the child, must dress these our dolls, and put them into their first mental attitudes with sincerity and trust before they will come to life. We must put much feeling into the relation--giving and taking--so much that we cannot only confide our tenderest spiritual aspirations, but invest trifles with unaccustomed worth and significance. These are not impossible sensations even for such accidental fellowship, for nothing is too unimportant to reveal personality and orient one's point of view. But we must proceed from the inside, outward--beginning with truths and thence to fancy. It is the apriori method; not deducing the character of your neighbour from his visible idiosyncracies of taste and habit, but boldly inducing a new conception, making him what you will, and varying the picture by successive approximations as his words and actions modify your theory.

No one is too dull for the experiment, as no mummy is too common to be unwrapped. Granted only that he is newly found, so that you have imagination, romance and sentiment on your palette, you may paint him as you will. The colours may wash, but for the while he is your puppet and must dance to your piping, if, indeed, you do not become his.

There are those, of course, who will but cry "Oh!" and "Ah!" to your essays--dolts with neither wits nor words nor worth, who take all and give nothing; no one can set such damp stuff afire. Well, after all, though you have unmasked, retreat is still possible. With how many duller friends have you given your parole and cannot escape with honour!

Indeed, it is not so desirable that we should always win, as that the game itself be worth the playing. One must not expect to make a friend at each introduction. To make the most of the minute in this way, then, to strike while the iron is hot (and, better, to heat it yourself)--this is the art of getting acquainted. It is the higher flirtation, not dependent upon sex or temperament, but of many subtler dimensions, and though it soon turns into the old familiar ruts, the first steps, made picturesque by a common fancy, shall never lose their glamour, and one shall remember to the very last how the first shots went home.

But do not confound playing with playing a part. One may do all this sincerely, honestly giving good coin, and that is the only game worth while; for of a sudden it may wake into new beauty like a dream come true, and you will find yourself in Arcady. No more fooling then, for the real you is walking by my side, hand in hand. We shall not be sorry either, shall we, that we hurried round the first corner into the open--that we jumped a few hedges? Surely we have an infinite friendship for our inaccessible goal, and though the first rush was exhilarating, there are more inspiring heights beyond!