The Business of Life

"Your pursuits seem to be about as useful as his."

"Why should I pursue things? I don't want 'em."

"You are hopeless. There is pleasure even in pursuit of anything, no matter whether you ever attain it or not. I will never attain wisdom, but it's a pleasure to pursue it."

"It's a pleasure even to pursue pleasure – and it's the only pleasure in pleasure," he said, so gravely that for a moment she thought with horror that he was trying to be precious. Then the latent glimmer in his eyes set them laughing, and she rose and went over to the sofa and curled up in one corner, abandoning all pretense of industry.

"Once," she said, "I knew a poet who emitted such precious thoughts. He was the funniest thing; he had the round, pale, ancient eyes of an African parrot, a pasty countenance, and a derby hat resting on top of a great bunch of colourless curly hair. And that's the way he talked, Mr. Desboro!"

He seated himself on the other arm of the sofa:

"Did you adore him?"

"At first. He was a celebrity. He did write some pretty things."

"What woke you up?"

She blushed.

"I thought so," observed Desboro.

"Thought what?"

"That he came out of his trance and made love to you."

"How did you know? Wasn't it dreadful! And he'd always told me that he had never experienced an emotion except when adoring the moon. He was a very dreadful young man – perfectly horrid in his ideas – and I sent him about his business very quickly; and I remember being a little frightened and watching him from the window as he walked off down the street in his soiled drab overcoat and the derby hat on his frizzly hair, and his trousers too high on his ankles – "

Desboro was so immensely amused at the picture she drew that her pretty brows unbent and she smiled, too.

"What did he want of you?" he asked.

"I didn't fully understand at the time – " she hesitated, then, with an angry blush: "He asked me to go to Italy with him. And he said he couldn't marry me because he had already espoused the moon!"

Desboro's laughter rang through the old library; and Jacqueline was not quite certain whether she liked the way he took the matter or not.

"I know him," said Desboro. "I've seen him about town kissing women's hands, in company with a larger and fatter one. Isn't his name Munger?"

"Yes," she said.

"Certainly. And the fat one's name is Waudle. They were a hot team at fashionable literary stunts – the Back Alley Club, you know."

"No, I don't know."

"Oh, it's just silly; a number of fashionable and wealthy young men and women pin on aprons, now and then, and paint and model lumps of wet clay in several severely bare studios over some unfragrant stables. They proudly call it The Back Alley Club."

"Why do you sneer at it?"

"Because it isn't the real thing. It's a strutting ground for things like Munger and Waudle, and all the rag-tag that is always sniffing and snuffling at the back doors of the fine arts."

"At least," she said, "they sniff."

He said, good-humouredly: "Yes, and I don't even do that. Is that what you mean?"

She considered him: "Haven't you any profession?"

"I'm a farmer."

"Why aren't you busy with it, then?"

"I have been, disastrously. There was a sickening deficit this autumn."

She said, with pretty scorn: "I'll wager I could make your farm pay."

He smiled lazily, and indulgently. After a moment he said:

"So the spouse of the moon wanted you to go to Italy with him?"

She nodded absently: "A girl meets queer men in the world."

"Did you ever meet any others?"

She looked up listlessly: "Yes, several."

"As funny as the poet?"

"If you call him funny."

"I wonder who they were," he mused.

"Did you ever hear of the Reverend Bertie Dawley?"

"No."

"He was one."

"That kind?"

"Oh, yes. He collects soft paste figurines; he was a client of father's; but I found very soon that I couldn't go near him. He has a wife and children, too, and he keeps sending his wife to call on me. You know he's a good-looking young man, too, and I liked him; but I never dreamed – "

"Sure," he said, disgusted at his own sex – with the exception of himself.

"That seems to be the way of it," she said thoughtfully. "You can't be friends with men; they all annoy you sooner or later in one way or another!"

"Annoy you? Do you mean make love to you?"

"Yes."

"I don't; do I?"