I am sorry the house is finished. There is a proverb: "Fools build houses for wise men to live in." It depends upon what you are after.
The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks and mortar. I remember a whimsical story I picked up at the bookstall of the Gare de Lyon. I read it between Paris and Fontainebleau many years ago.
Three friends, youthful Bohemians, smoking their pipes after the meagre dinner of a cheap restaurant in the Latin Quarter, fell to thinking of their poverty, of the long and bitter struggle that lay before them.
"My themes are so original," sighed the Musician. "It will take me a year of fete days to teach the public to understand them, even if ever I do succeed. And meanwhile I shall live unknown, neglected; watching the men without ideals passing me by in the race, splashed with the mud from their carriage-wheels as I beat the pavements with worn shoes. It is really a most unjust world."
"An abominable world," agreed the Poet. "But think of me! My case is far harder than yours. Your gift lies within you. Mine is to translate what lies around me; and that, for so far ahead as I can see, will always be the shadow side of life. To develop my genius to its fullest I need the sunshine of existence. My soul is being starved for lack of the beautiful things of life. A little of the wealth that vulgar people waste would make a great poet for France.
It is not only of myself that I am thinking."
The Painter laughed. "I cannot soar to your heights," he said.
"Frankly speaking, it is myself that chiefly appeals to me. Why not?
I give the world Beauty, and in return what does it give me? This dingy restaurant, where I eat ill-flavoured food off hideous platters, a foul garret giving on to chimney-pots. After long years of ill-requited labour I may--as others have before me--come into my kingdom: possess my studio in the Champs Elysees, my fine house at Neuilly; but the prospect of the intervening period, I confess, appals me."
Absorbed in themselves, they had not noticed that a stranger, seated at a neighbouring table, had been listening with attention. He rose and, apologising with easy grace for intrusion into a conversation he could hardly have avoided overhearing, requested permission to be of service. The restaurant was dimly lighted; the three friends on entering had chosen its obscurest corner. The Stranger appeared to be well-dressed; his voice and bearing suggested the man of affairs; his face--what feeble light there was being behind him--remained in shadow.
The three friends eyed him furtively: possibly some rich but eccentric patron of the arts; not beyond the bounds of speculation that he was acquainted with their work, had read the Poet's verses in one of the minor magazines, had stumbled upon some sketch of the Painter's while bargain-hunting among the dealers of the Quartier St.
Antoine, been struck by the beauty of the Composer's Nocturne in F heard at some student's concert; having made enquiries concerning their haunts, had chosen this method of introducing himself. The young men made room for him with feelings of hope mingled with curiosity. The affable Stranger called for liqueurs, and handed round his cigar-case. And almost his first words brought them joy.
"Before we go further," said the smiling Stranger, "it is my pleasure to inform you that all three of you are destined to become great."
The liqueurs to their unaccustomed palates were proving potent. The Stranger's cigars were singularly aromatic. It seemed the most reasonable thing in the world that the Stranger should be thus able to foretell to them their future.
"Fame, fortune will be yours," continued the agreeable Stranger.
"All things delightful will be to your hand: the adoration of women, the honour of men, the incense of Society, joys spiritual and material, beauteous surroundings, choice foods, all luxury and ease, the world your pleasure-ground."
The stained walls of the dingy restaurant were fading into space before the young men's eyes. They saw themselves as gods walking in the garden of their hearts' desires.
"But, alas," went on the Stranger--and with the first note of his changed voice the visions vanished, the dingy walls came back--"these things take time. You will, all three, be well past middle-age before you will reap the just reward of your toil and talents.
Meanwhile--" the sympathetic Stranger shrugged his shoulders--"it is the old story: genius spending its youth battling for recognition against indifference, ridicule, envy; the spirit crushed by its sordid environment, the drab monotony of narrow days. There will be winter nights when you will tramp the streets, cold, hungry, forlorn; summer days when you will hide in your attics, ashamed of the sunlight on your ragged garments; chill dawns when you will watch wild-eyed the suffering of those you love, helpless by reason of your poverty to alleviate their pain."
The Stranger paused while the ancient waiter replenished the empty glasses. The three friends drank in silence.
"I propose," said the Stranger, with a pleasant laugh, "that we pass over this customary period of probation--that we skip the intervening years--arrive at once at our true destination."
The Stranger, leaning back in his chair, regarded the three friends with a smile they felt rather than saw. And something about the Stranger--they could not have told themselves what--made all things possible.
"A quite simple matter," the Stranger assured them. "A little sleep and a forgetting, and the years lie behind us. Come, gentlemen.
Have I your consent?"
It seemed a question hardly needing answer. To escape at one stride the long, weary struggle; to enter without fighting into victory!
The young men looked at one another. And each one, thinking of his gain, bartered the battle for the spoil.
