shonto collected wood and built a fire, while charmian undid the packs. at an early hour the sun sank behind the mountain peaks, and night descended fast. they cooked and ate a simple meal and wasted not a crumb, for this was a serious business that they were upon and the success of it might depend on their husbanding of food.
they cleaned up after the meal, and, while the thin light lasted, sought out their sleeping places for the night and spread the blankets. both were ineffably weary, for even charmian’s pack was a heavy one. but the warmth of the leaping fire that they now built up from the red cooking coals soothed their aching joints and muscles and made existence rosier. they sat one on either side of it, and shonto rolled and lighted a cigarette to be drawn upon between sips of hot black coffee.
“i’ll take one too, please,” said charmian. “i don’t often smoke, but i know how; and it seems to me that, with only us two away out here in the land of nowhere, i ought to smoke to keep you company. do you approve of women smoking, doctor?”
“never before having had any women to be solicitous about,” replied shonto thoughtfully, as he rolled[146] her cigarette, “i have never given the subject much thought.”
he arose and handed her the rolled cylinder. she accepted it a bit awkwardly and ran the tip of her pink tongue along the edge of the paper to moisten it. with the toe of his heavy high-laced boot he scraped a burning twig from the fire and supplied her with a light.
“women who smoke not being looked upon with favour,” he remarked, as he squatted over his coffee cup again, “strikes me as only another example of the slavery to which woman has been subjected from the beginning of history. laying aside any harm that may come from the practice, why shouldn’t she smoke? it may stain her teeth and work havoc with her digestive apparatus, but her teeth and digestive apparatus are identical with man’s. so we can’t justly prohibit her from smoking on those grounds. the smoking woman is looked upon with disfavour, then, merely because tradition has it that she cannot smoke and remain in the good graces of conservative society. to the bourgeois mind, she is not a lady. now, the act of smoking is in itself absolutely no more unmoral than spinning a top. if men derived pleasure from top-spinning, doubtless women would be permitted to likewise enjoy themselves. men eat candy, and women may do so too without losing caste. just why they can’t smoke without getting in bad is beyond me.”
“it’s simply another of our stupid taboos,” said charmian, puffing grandly to show her independence, and choking just a little now and then. “we’re[147] hemmed in with taboos on all sides. they are grounded in our conservative minds from childhood, and we can’t shake them off. years ago some one decided that women ought not to smoke. some one agreed with him. others took it up, perhaps; and finally it became the accepted rule. so in childhood we were taught that women shouldn’t smoke—that good women didn’t smoke. we grew up unaccustomed to see women smoking. therefore when we encountered an occasional individual who did smoke, she was considered immoral. but why immoral? what is there immoral about placing a cigarette between one’s lips, lighting it, and inhaling and exhaling the smoke? injurious it may be, but we’re not discussing that phase of the subject. a man may thus injure himself with impunity, but if a woman does so she is immoral. now isn’t that illogical?”
“logic plays a small part in our lives,” said shonto. “we’re not on very friendly terms with logic. logic means thinking and shaking off the old ideas that are handed down to us from the ancients, and we’re too lazy to do that. logic calls for reasoning, and why reason when our beliefs and our behaviour have been regulated for us for seventeen or eighteen hundred years? why think for ourselves, when the ancients went to so much trouble to prescribe for us our taboos and our religious beliefs and our standard of morals? why think, in short? it’s such hard work. and it has a tendency to uproot old beliefs in which we are quite comfortable. we might feel the urge to clean house if we sat down and thought a little, and[148] everybody knows how upsetting is house-cleaning day!”
“and isn’t there any hope for us, doctor shonto? will nothing make us think?”
shonto’s dull eyes brightened. “yes, we’re beginning to think. the great war did that much for us here in america, anyway. i really believe there is a serious attempt being made to-day to think. people are at least trying to think. they are at least reading more thoughtful books than ever before, and, thank god, we have a few men who are capable of writing thoughtful books! there’s a whisper going along the line, a faint and timorous suggestion that maybe all is not as it should be on this earth—that maybe we are selling our heritage for a mess of pottage—that perhaps we are trampling life’s riches under our feet, like swine trampling into the mud nuggets of gold as they rush to the swill trough.
“but as yet only the people who have been trying for some time to think are absorbing the books which will help them to think. these books are beyond the masses. the authors of many of them are slaves to style and big-sounding words. the newspapers are the unthinking man’s school—and what a farce, what a seedbed of corruption they are! reporters and editors must remain loyal to the policies of their papers, regardless of their own opinions. they who could help us to think are forbidden to do so on the penalty of losing their jobs.
“and the children of this country, and doubtless every other so-called civilized country, must depend[149] upon the schools to learn to think. and every thinking teacher who takes the rostrum is fired for his attempt to break down the walls of superstition and slash the hedges of tradition. but for all that, the youth of this country at least are gradually—no, pretty swiftly—breaking away. the world-old conflict between age and youth is at its hottest now. in the past thirty years the world has made revolutionary discoveries which are daily changing our lives and methods of thinking. all this came about after age had settled down to an acceptance of life without any changes. at forty or fifty one does not readily change his views. the sutures of his skull are closed, and it is difficult for him to learn new ideas. he is beyond the plastic period, and his head is as hard as his arteries. he is entirely unable to accept the electron theory in the place of ‘in six days the lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.’ simply because he never heard of the electron theory at the age when his brain was capable of accepting a new idea. it’s too late for him—he’s hopeless. but he’s dying off! to-morrow he won’t be running the world. his sons and his daughters will be in the saddle.
“and they have come upon the earth and grown to young manhood and young womanhood while these radical changes were taking place. they are able to consider, even accept, the findings of modern science because they are presented to them while their brains are still in the receptive period of life. what seems most plausible to them they accept, and they naturally will laugh at the old traditions, superstitions, taboos,[150] and beliefs that have come down to us from the days of savagery, and which were ingrained in the lives of their parents when they were of a receptive age. fifty years, i think, will show many a mossy institution crumbled to ashes. the aged of to-day will be gone, without having been able to force their lifelong beliefs on youth. then youth will become old age, and if we have progressed at all, the coming generation will refuse to accept what their fathers and mothers believed in and made the ruling factor in their lives. so the conflict between age and youth, between conservatism and change, between receptive minds and locked minds, goes on to the end of time.”
“my stars!” cried charmian. “you’re more pessimistic about it—more hopeless—than i am, even!”
“i hadn’t finished,” said shonto dreamily. “that will be the result unless men learn to think. they have brains, why don’t they think? because they have been relieved of the necessity for thinking by the ancient spellbinders whom we still worship to-day. that’s why they don’t think. man is naturally lazy—more so mentally than any other way. if others have done his thinking for him, he should worry! it gives him time to pursue the things that he likes—money, pleasure, love, self-aggrandizement.”
“well, i understand all that. but it doesn’t help.”
“we’re going to make him think in spite of himself,” said shonto. “we’re going to give him a quicker brain, so that he will be compelled to think willy-nilly. his brain is good, but it needs exercise. and he has not been obliged to exercise it. hence it has become[151] slothful. considering the progress that our few thinkers have made, the brain of the average man is far below normal. we must bring it up to normal so that it will exercise itself and grow whether he wants it to or not. then he’ll shed his stupidity and open his eyes, and maybe something will go bust in the wheels of the system that rules us. we’re going to feed him the extract of the thyroid glands of sheep, sharpen his intellect, put the zip of life into him. then he’ll think, and he’ll probably get mad. but we are only at the beginning of this great study of the glands and their secretions, and what they may do for man.
“the thyroid is the gland of energy. it controls the growth of certain organs and tissues of brain and sex. the internal secretions of our thyroid glands, mind you, are not necessary to life. if these secretions are inadequate, we may go on living, but we shall be below normal mentally, and our level of energy will remain low. but when more thyroid is introduced into the system our vital chemical reactions will speed up. it has been proved and accepted without qualification by men of science that the more thyroid a person has the more energetic will he be. our dull people are, in many cases, only victims of an insufficiency of thyroid. one’s memory is affected by his thyroid glands. and without memory, who can learn? judgment depends on memory, doesn’t it? it requires memory, the association of experiences. quick thinking calls for thyroid glands that are normal. do you know, charmian, that many criminals are only the victims of their glands—and that science can probably correct this in time by[152] supplying the unfortunates with the gland secretions which they lack? do you realize that it is, even now, an established scientific fact that idiocy can be cured by feeding the subject the extract of the thyroid glands of sheep? and—and— well, i simply have great hopes for the race if science eventually finds it possible to quicken the thinking apparatus by the introduction of gland extracts.”
“has anything been accomplished along that line?” she asked. “have you accomplished anything?”
“i have,” he told her. “i am convinced that we are on the right track.”
“tell me of some case,” she begged.
he seemed to be searching his mind. “the greater part of the cases that i have handled,” he said at last, “were concerned with subjects whose maladies i cannot discuss with you because of their delicate nature. in brief, subjects who were troubled with the problems of sex. and such cases as i have had that called for the introduction of thyroxin are still in the experimental stage. only time will tell whether we are right or not.”
“but can’t you notice results?”
“oh, yes—in many cases. but whether or not the results will be permanent no one can say at present.”
“for a little,” she said thoughtfully, “i imagined you were about to tell me something, but you’re still reticent and i shan’t press you. well, here we are, all alone together, on the outskirts of nowhere, and between us we have solved many riddles of the race. and i have been immoral and smoked a cigarette, if i[153] wasn’t immoral in the first place in coming here with you. but it seemed that in no other way could i find the valley of arcana—and here i am. i wonder if we’re to begin crawling to victory to-morrow?”
“i don’t like those clouds that we saw at sunset,” he remarked. “but they’re all gone now. the sky’s as clear as ever.”
charmian gaped, placed a slim hand over her distorted mouth, and patted the aperture, ending with a burst of air that was wrenched out of her until her jaw muscles seemed to creak.
“pardon me,” she laughed. “i couldn’t help it—i’m about all in. that means the blankets for mine. good night, doctor.
“how you have interested me,” she sighed, as she rose to her feet and stretched her arms and torso as unreservedly as a young panther would. “you have worked so much—have accomplished so much. you make me feel like a baseball fan in the grandstand, yelling his head off over the good work of some famous player in the field. i hate fans. they’re so willing to get entertainment from the achievements of others. they dote on baseball, know all the players by name and their records from a to z. they never miss a game, never fail to bloat their blood vessels by shouting their approval. yet not one of them can toss a rubber ball twenty feet in air and be sure of catching it!
“i’m not picking on baseball fans in particular. i just used them as a handy example. all of us in this world but the thinkers are fans. we’re wild about the conveniences that electricity has brought to us, but not[154] one out of a hundred of us could splice a broken electric wire. we rave over a famous lecturer or writer, but how many of us try to become lecturers or writers? can you imagine a man—i know him—who never misses a professional billiard game, knows all the professional players, all the niceties of their work, but never takes a billiard cue in hand?
“most of us are fans—we admire and worship and gloat over the success of the few, particularly if it is designed for our entertainment, but never make an effort at being anything ourselves. oh, i’m sick of shouting from the grandstand, doctor! i want to do something. i want to be one of the few who make the world go round for the others!”
“leave the grandstand, then,” said the doctor softly, “and come down on the diamond with me.”
charmian caught her breath at the suddenness of it. she had not suspected that she was leading herself into a trap. and she had given herself to andy! she had let him fondle her, had told him that she loved him, with her lips pressed to his.
“i—i haven’t finished thinking about it,” she said hurriedly, and hastened off to her blankets.
for an hour she lay looking up at the black sky and the tracery of pine branches against it, thinking, thinking, groping patiently but fruitlessly.
next morning at an early hour they climbed the hill again, crossed the wooded plateau, came upon the thinning trees and the encroaching brush. that afternoon they left all traces of the forest behind them, and faced a desolate sweep of chaparral, stretching away as far[155] as the eye could see, hemmed in on the south by snowy peaks barely outlined against the paleness of the sky. and somewhere in the midst of that seemingly unbroken sea of hoary grey and antique gold the undiscovered valley of arcana lay in hiding.
