e a
sense of happiness in people; that was the darkest problem of all.
Children had the secret of it; they could amuse themselves under the
most unpropitious circumstances, and invent games of most surpassing
interest out of the most grotesque materials. Then came the age when
the sexual relations brought in a fierce and intenser joy; but the
romance of courtship and the early days of marriage once over, it
seemed that most people settled down on very dull lines, and made such
comfort as they could get the only object of their existence. What was
it that thus tended to empty life of joy? Was it the presence of
anxiety, the failure of vitality, the dull conditions of monotonous
labour undertaken for others' gain and not for oneself? Looking back
at his own life, Hugh could not discern that his routine work had ever
deprived him of zest and interest. It was rather indeed the other way.
The suspension of other interests that his life had involved, had sent
him back with renewed delight to the occupations and interests of
leisure; he had been, he thought, perhaps unusually fortunate in
receiving his liberty from mechanical work at a time when his interests
were active and his zest undimmed. But how was one to guard the
quality of joy, how could it be stimulated and increased, if it began
in the course of nature to flag? It was clear that life could not have
for every one, nor at all times for any one, that quality of eager and
active delight, that uplifting of the heart and mind alike, which
sometimes surprised one, when one felt an intensity of gladness and
gratitude at being simply oneself, and at standing just at that point
in life, surrounded and enriched by exactly the very things one most
loved and desired--the feeling that must have darted into Sinbad's mind
when he saw that the very sand of the valley in which he lay consisted
of precious gems. Probably most people had some moments, oftenest
perhaps in youth, of this full-flushed, conscious happiness. And then
again most people had considerable tracts of quiet contentment, times
when their work prospered and their recreations amused. But how was
one to meet the hours when one was neither happy nor contented; when
the mind flapped wearily like a loosened sail in a calm, when there was
no savour in the banquet, when one went heavily? It was of no use then
to summon joy to one's assistance, to call spirits from the vast deep,
if they did not obey one's call.