Читать книгу A Twentieth Century Idealist - Henry Pettit - Страница 6
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INQUISITIVE ADMIRATION
THERE certainly is a subtle charm from personal intercourse with those who seek a comprehensive view of life, and strive to live according to their own ideals. People who live upon broader lines than their neighbors are apt to be interesting from that fact alone, and the charm becomes quite fascinating when these ideals take form and they practice what they profess. Even if they do not succeed according to our notions, and fail to grasp until late in life some of the profound concepts which underlie the manifest workings of the mind of nature, the effort on their part counts in their favor—their actions speak louder than words.
The Doctor was in his library when he mused thus. Books upon peculiar subjects lay around him, some open, others closed; and his eye fell upon a few articles which had been selected for their special significance quite as carefully as the books. The Doctor was much interested in what he called “the hidden meaning of things,” and the character of his library, with its peculiar contents, showed the fact.
Putting aside his cigar, he looked across the room, as if to give audible expression to his thoughts, towards a younger man of quite a different type, an individual whose very presence suggested he had not ignored athletics while at college, even if the studies had been exacting.
The Doctor was about to call him by name, when he hesitated, his deeper interest in the young fellow asserted itself; he concluded to take a good look at him first, and avoid if possible any error in approaching the subject he wished to bring up. He already knew him so well that it did not take long to recall certain facts bearing upon the situation.
Paul was not as a general thing given to bothering about hidden meanings. His diving below the surface had been chiefly as a swimmer, from early boyhood until more recent experience. He possessed a keener appreciation of surface values and the exhilaration from a good bath rather than what he might bring up by deep diving. But being young, energetic, and sincere, his very energy itself was bound to bring him down to the verge of deeper experience. In fact as the Doctor looked at him he appeared like unto one standing upon the rockbound coast of the ocean of life ready to take the plunge, whenever—he felt like it.
“Take things as they are,” was one of Paul’s favorite expressions.
The Doctor concluded he would, and broke the silence:
“How did you enjoy last evening?”
“Immensely.”
“Thought you would.”
“Yes? Greatly obliged for the introduction,” and Paul continued examining some illustrations in a periodical apropos of the coming coronation in England.
The Doctor determined to rivet his attention.
“I admire Adele Cultus greatly, don’t you?”
“No doubt she would look well, wearing a coronet like this—look at it.”
The Doctor did not look, but continued:
“She certainly has some ideal of her own about life in general, and, I suspect, about herself in particular.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Paul, laconic.
“But she is thoroughly sincere about it.”
“Possibly, but last night the sincerity was all on my side.”
“How so?”
“Well, I would have danced with her the evening through, if she had let me—she loves dancing.”
The Doctor’s eyes twinkled: “Don’t you think she is a striking personality?”
“Striking? Oh, yes! gracefully so, deux-temps spirituelle. I felt the effect at once.”
“In character?”
Paul smiled. “I call it strikingly practical—no nonsense; she wouldn’t let me, and that settled it.”
“Of course she had her own way—at a ball,” remarked the Doctor dryly.
“Oh, of course! of course! She certainly would support a coronet first-rate; it would not be the coronet’s part to support her.”
“No doubt you are right, Paul. I was only asking some test questions,” and the Doctor subsided, as if he had more to say but would not venture.
“Test questions? Whom were you testing?” asked Paul.
“Both of you,” said the Doctor.
“Where did you first meet her?” asked Paul, still examining the periodical.
“Where?—we didn’t meet! I heard her voice through the crack of a door.”
“H’m!” And Paul put down his book.
“It was while I was convalescent at the hospital after that bicycle accident. She was a volunteer nurse, and a remarkably good one among not a few devoted women. You were right about her being practical and spirituelle, and so was I about her being spiritual.”
Paul took up a cigarette. A cloud of smoke enveloped his head, his facial expression hid behind the cloud. The Doctor continued:
“You know it takes a fair combination of the practical and spiritual to make a true nurse?”
Paul agreed mentally, but all the Doctor heard was a voice from behind the cloud, “she dances like an angel.”
Angelic dancing not being in the Doctor’s repertoire of investigation, he changed to another point of view.
“While I was convalescent at the hospital it was very amusing to read hands by palmistry. I read her hand.”
“You held her hand, you mean?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you read her character by the lines written in her hand! Nonsense!”
“I did not. I merely noticed the natural tendencies of the individual as shown by the form of the hand. Her characteristics, not her character.”
“I don’t believe in it,” remarked Paul, positive.
“You don’t? Well, just swap hands with some other fellow and observe the consequences.”
Paul laughed. “Excuse me—quite satisfied with my own.”
“Just so,” said the Doctor, “and there is good reason why you feel the satisfaction; the consequences would be not only absurd, but positively disastrous.”
Paul began to feel interested as the Doctor forced the practical issue upon his attention.
“The consequences of any change from the special form of your own hand would only prove that the other fellow’s hands do not fit your personality.”
Paul, who really knew much more about persons than personalities, blew another cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, and listened.
“You know, Nature never makes any mistakes.”
“I hope not, or I’m a goner,” quizzed Paul.
“And personality is really made up of three in one, a trinity of the physical, mental, and spiritual. You’re a sort of trinity yourself, my boy. You’ll find it out some day if you don’t swap hands with some other fellow and spoil your own combination.”
“What did you learn by holding Miss Cultus’ hand?”
The Doctor was a little slow in replying, in fact, choosing which of the many things he had observed was the particular one to which he had best call Paul’s attention. Then he spoke:
“She shows marked individuality based upon rather a rare type, yet a mixed hand; most Americans and Chinese are mixed. You know, pure types are very rare.”
“You don’t say so?” quizzed Paul; “‘mixed,’ and like the Chinese. What a wonderful insight for diagnosis palmistry possesses!” The Doctor continued:
“In the main, her hand manifests the exceeding rare psychic type,—that is, she loves and seeks the truth for its own sake.”
“There! I told you she was angelic, a practical angel,” interrupted Paul. The Doctor kept straight on:
“And with this there are other features indicating both the useful and the philosophic elements in her make-up, very strong, each in its own relative domain.”
“Extraordinary! truly!” quoth Paul. “The useful must have come to the front when she was acting nurse, and the philosophic when she told me we had danced enough for one evening. As to the psychic,—let me see! the psychic!—well, to be frank, Doctor, I can’t say I have seen that as yet.”
“Oh, yes, you have,” thought the Doctor, “or you would not be showing the interest you are taking just now.” This sub rosa, and then he turned the topic once more:
“Where do you suppose she got those traits, so forcible in combination?”
“Got her hands?” exclaimed Paul the practical. “Inherited them of course, even the skin-deep profundity of palmistry is not required to guess a diagnosis for that.”
The Doctor’s eyes again twinkled. “Whom did she inherit them from?”
“Father and mother,—what nonsense to ask!”
“Why not her grandparents?”
“Give it up,” said Paul. “Take things as they are.”
Now, the result of this decidedly mixed but suggestive conversation was to excite curiosity in both the Doctor and Paul. Not that they formed a conspiracy to learn about Miss Cultus’ forbears; quite the contrary. Simply by friction in time they learned something of the natural causes which had produced her charming personality, so attractive to all who met her.
That they both had been led to respect and admire her upon short acquaintance was only too evident,—on the surface. What was not quite so evident, for neither of them had said so, was that each had noticed her devotion to her mother, constant, ever thoughtful, as if to make her appear to the best advantage: as to her father, she simply idolized him.
Some of the items they learned had best be stated at once, for her ancestors, in immediate relationship, certainly did cast their shadows before; and the blending of the shades and shadows later on in her life, formed a character that was lovely and inspiring.
