Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [130]
“Not if it’s going to be like this one!” She protested. “Jamais! ‘Why do you write this way, when you can write so very differently if you want to? Why do you do it?”
“Why? Because I must,” he explained. “The public demands it. Publishers are slaves of the public, and I am a slave of the publishers. That makes me a slave raised to the nth power. This kind of thing is only a symptom of a world gone into fatty degeneration as a result of a gross surfeit of creature comforts. Shall I knock out my pipe?”
“No, you needn’t. Father smokes from morning till night, and doesn’t even use cartridges. Still sticks to the untidy old habits of his grandfather and insists that loose tobacco is the only thing in the world, for him. I’m used to it. The only way you can really please me will be to stop your terrific materialism. Why not give us another pure romance of the old days — the days when there was adventure in the world, and romance? The period, say, of 1900 to 1925? Another book, for instance, like The Quarry or Llewellyn?”
He shook his head and for a moment kept silence, then drew at his pipe. It was dead. He slipped a fresh cartridge into it, pressed the knurl that set the rim glowing, and puffed the tobacco to ignition.
“Another book like those?” He queried. “Impossible! All that’s dead now, and has been these twenty years past. The modern world isn’t a romantic world, that’s all. Fifty-odd years ago, at the time of the final war, or even thirty, when the United Republics were still fledglings, some romance still survived. But since then — ”
Eloquently he blew a lance of smoke into the sheltered air of the ‘tween-decks.
“You see,” he added, “now that there’s no war, no poverty, no crime, no misery, no peril, no accident, no struggle any more, to try men’s souls, all the exciting elements of romance have disappeared. When there hasn’t been a fatal accident of any moment either on land or sea or in the air, for a decade or two, you can imagine the state of dull complacency into which the world has relapsed. It’s magnificent of course, but it’s fatal to the state of mind that my particular brand of labor needs as a culture-medium.”
He made a gesture of impatience, frowning with displeasure.
“Literature has grown as dull as life itself!” He exclaimed. “The world of other times used to look forward to the actuality of to-day as to a wonderful ideal, never realizing that it was just the uncertainty and danger and cruelty of life that gave birth to powerful situations and real literature. Men were real men in those days; women were real women. Today we’re all a flock of tame, colorless, self-satisfied nonentities. All the zest of life, all the big, powerful, primitive emotions are dead and gone, forever — and exit all excitement, all tension, all romance!”
The girl, leaning forward, looked at him with sudden enthusiasm.
“My own thought, to a T!” She agreed. “Only, I’ve never formulated it before, or tried to express it. I’m awfully glad you see things as I do, and understand. If I’d found you conventional, self-satisfied, smug, you don’t know how you’d have disillusioned me, or how sadly you’d have destroyed an ideal — ”
“An ideal?”
“I mean,” she parried hastily, ‘’I’d have been terribly disappointed. You and I both view the world from the same angle, that’s evident. A world surrounded by every safeguard and choked with material comfort — why, it’s a dead world! What could be more stagnating than perfection? What more deadly than secure monotony? I’ve wished all my life — oh, how I’ve wished! — That I might have lived in the old days when life meant struggle and achievement, when there were obstacles to overcome and sufferings to conquer, when at least a little of the primitive was left in men and women, and when romance meant more than a vague memory!”
Silence, a moment, between them, while the man smoked and seemed to weigh her words. Suddenly she spoke.
“Why write at all?” She demanded. “In your capacity as a surgeon you’re of inestimable value to the world. The whole world knows you that way. Why