The Day of His Youth Part 2

They would be burned too. There would be no more sunrise or sunset.

This was the last day of all, and not only should we burn, but so, too, would the little tender leaves. I dropped on my face, and kept saying softly--for it seemed as if One heard as much as if I cried aloud--"Mighty One, save the trees, only save the trees!" I did not know to whom I spoke, but I kept on saying it into the hot earth; and presently I heard a great shout from the throats of all the people. I rose slowly to my knees, to my feet, and everybody was laughing and throwing their arms about in joy. Still they were looking up, and I looked, too; and there, in the midst of the burning sky, was one little cool, clear patch of blue, as large as a maple leaf, and it was spreading fast. A fresh wind sprang up and blew from the west; and as the blue spread, little white clouds arose and danced over it. Even before we could get used to so great a bliss, the heaven was all blue and fleecy-winged, and the happy trees rustled greenly.

Again I dropped adown that darkling sea of death in life, and rose up again to find myself in a boat, floating, floating, on the wavelike ripples of a larger lake. So I knew it was the sea. I was near the sh.o.r.e, but yet not going in; and as I turned my eyes that way, I saw a height overhung with sky so blue! I have never seen such sky. But beneath and built upon the height was something more radiant than the sky itself: a temple with a wilderness of columns and vistas of columned shade within. The temple was of marble, mellowed and creamy, and rosy also, from some inner light, it seemed to me: something that glowed perennially and generated beauty as it glowed. And as I looked, wonder-stricken and alive with pure delight, one of the columns melted into air, and in the larger s.p.a.ce it gave, stood you, my lady, clothed in white falling in folds more wonderful than the whorling of a bud within its sheath. You held a cup, and reached it to me with a smile divinely kind. I rose and plunged; the water closed over me, and sleep enwrapped me over.

And then again I rose, and I knew I was in Paradise; for it was a sunny forest of newly-budded trees, and I heard strange music and knew you would be with me soon and that all would be infinitely well with us forever. I sank back into measureless peace, the perfect patience of waiting. As I lay there, one came toward me, and although I could not see his face, I knew, this is an angel! He asked me some question,--what, I cannot tell; but I was in love with my pleasure of mind, and told him what was only half true. (You know they were talking of truth and lies at the camp the other night, and I was puzzled. Now I know what it is to tell a half-truth.) But as I spoke, the leaves of the trees withered and fell, and the birds left their contented harmony and began screaming in discord. The angel was gone, and I knew that heaven was destroyed, and I had done it. I woke, grasping my arms so tightly with either hand that the pressure hurt. I was sobbing for breath. But I was alive, and my heaven lay yet before me.

Have I done well? Here have I written you page upon page, only to earn a letter in return, when I long to fill these sheets with hot protestations, with pet.i.tions for your gentle ruth. At first it was enough to love you. At first? for the instant of recognizing my royal destiny; but now I would have all. Love me! love me! my heart cries and cries, for unless you know me for your own, what shall hinder me from losing you in this whirling progress of the days. You will go away; I heard them talking about it this morning. What am I to do then, I ask you? What am I to do? Mateless, solitary, left in the nest I was so long in building, while you fly south, the sun upon your s.h.i.+ning wings.

_What am I to do?_

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Your last letter pleased me very well, all save its note of melancholy.

Byronism is out of fas.h.i.+on. It isn't vendible, or it won't be in a few years, mark my words. In the time that is coming, men-children will rise up in literature and slash and slay and troll out hearty songs, born in the childhood of the race, and tell us of the love of woman, and the joy of martial blows. No more splitting of psychological hairs!

The reaction is coming, and I thank the G.o.ds who make for us to mar.

Moreover, you were hysterical at the end. Reform it altogether. No woman of any sense of humor was ever won by tears in the man who should be fighting for her. Take Tristram of Brittany for your model, not some laddie who should be in petticoats. Else you will never win fair lady.

I speak generally, for it is understood from the start that this specific fair lady is not to be won at all. Woo her you may, so you do it amusingly, robustly, with no whining like a hungry dog. She has little heart for "crumbling the hounds their messes." Now to business.

I lay my commands upon you. A visitor is coming to camp: a man. While he is here, I shall have no time either to write or read, and I shall not visit the hollow tree. Moreover, you, as you be loyal and true, are to treat him fairly and kindly. If you hate my tendance of him as a stranger and a guest, you are to be only the more courteous. In short, as a knight peerless, you are to suffer manfully and in silence. For in silence lies the only true dignity left us by the chances of life. You see I own at once that you will suffer. That is inevitable; but I ask you to take the screw like a gentleman. There is no better word yet made.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

I am forbidden to write her. I must speak to some one, to something. He came three days ago. He is tall, black-eyed, with a laugh that rings.

When I hear that laugh, I cannot even moisten my dry tongue. I have learned the meaning of hate. Yesterday she ran to the spring to bring him a gla.s.s of water. (He lay lazily and let her.) I followed.

"Is that the man you said you might love?" I whispered.

It looked as if the whisper burned her cheek. She turned red to the roots of her yellow hair. She could not look at me.

"Sir Knight," she said at last, "in the world we do not ask such things."

So I knew.

As to my manner, I think I have obeyed her. At least, I have been silent. But if this is to be my portion, death must come soon. For all my body is under the sway of this great trouble. I cannot eat. My hands seem helpless, they are so cold. My throat is choked. When have I slept? I think my father knows, and, though I cannot speak to him, understands, if a man for whom life is over can ever understand one at the beginning. Yet how can he? how can he? For my mother loved him, and gave herself to him. There is in all the world no sorrow like this of mine. To stand by and see another man help her into the boat and row away! To see him pin a flower in her hair with those daring hands! And I would have died to do it. Yet last night, as I stormed through the forest like the north wind that hates the clinging leaves, blind in the darkness, blind from within,--and only through some forest instinct keeping myself from cras.h.i.+ng into tree and bush,--a moment of calm enwrapped me as quickly as if a gossamer veil had fallen from above. I seemed to see the meaning of things, the true meaning and value. That he should give her a flower, should take her hand, should win her smile--nay, the touch of her cheek, her lips--words I can scarcely write, even here,--what are these perishable gifts? Gauds of time! Did some poet say that, or have I made the phrase? The foolish broidery on the web of life, to wear and wear with years! But what lies behind to engender the token--ah, that is the eternal! I cannot penetrate her heart to see the living thoughts that thus denote themselves; but I know my own. I challenge time itself to match them with a brood more great. My love, my faith in her, my sacrifice, these are giants, springing into sudden t.i.tanic birth, and Homer's heroes are pygmies to them. So the night calmed me, and I thanked G.o.d (did I ever write that word before? Did I ever really think it?) that my soul was born. But in the morning the mood had pa.s.sed. I knew still what I had learned, but I could not feel it. My father, my dear father! He sits all day with Homer open on his knee, and does not read. Once after the others had been here, and he saw me wince when she and the man went laughing off together, he said to me, almost as if he were afraid to say it:--

"Don't overestimate the little familiarities of social life." He said it, but I could not answer.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Well--child! (You are nothing more--nothing!) Our guest has gone. Now let us hope you will straightway begin to get back your color. You look like the travesty of Hope Deferred. Dress you for Pierrot, and you'd serve well for the ghost of youthful folly. But you have behaved excellently. Socially speaking, you have watched beside your arms.

Consider yourself knighted. Shall I tell you a secret? The Forest of Arden is not a proper trysting-place for folk who have met in the town; at least, if one of them has been learning the sweet directness of the woods. For I, whom this man somewhat enchains and always did,--when I saw him among the trees, I knew he was very worldly and a trifle fat!

And he does not swim well. And he slept o' mornings, and I could not help thinking of you wandering--albeit like a zany whose bauble is hid--in the dewy brake. Understand plainly, you are at this moment dear to me. The thought of you is sweet as Endymion to Diana; yet I who am no Dian, but a poor _fin de siecle_ spinster, her being distorted by culture, would withdraw from you were you here, as the chaste huntress from Actaeon. I like you; but I mean nothing by the saying, nothing, nothing! Nay, and I said "I love," it would be but lightly, as if we were both in a little play: a play which n.o.body wrote, and no man saw acted, and which the actors themselves will speedily forget. Think of the thistle-downiest thing you ever saw, the most fleeting: the glow that rises in the sunset sky and flees before the sight. That is what I mean when I say you are dear to me. Do not make me repent having said it.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

June was it, June, sweet mistress of the changing year, (She of the brow serene, unpressed by cypress fear, Nor darkened under bitter bud and leaf By earth's old travail and the gray world's grief,-- Delighted by her changeful diadem And fringed with roses round her mantle hem,) Who laid thy hand in mine, And said, with voice divine, Like low-toned winds that wander to and fro Searching out reedy pipes wherein to blow: "This is your sacrament.

Drink ye, and be content.

This is life's flowering.

Now are ye queen and king."

O thought too poor and pale!

O words that wanly fail For G.o.dlike Love's divine expressing, And all the rhythm of his sweet confessing, Whose full-voiced cry should be Harmonious ecstasy.

Now are ye rulers of the upper air; And though men surge below, not one shall dare To scale the summit of your mystic height, Nor breathe your breath, nor face your burning light.

The seed shall break for you, the seasons pa.s.s, And you, serene, shall view as in a gla.s.s The moving pageant of the happy year, Fleeting from naked twig and garment sere, To wrap itself in snows, to dream and dream On budding boughs, and all the elusive gleam Of happy rivers kissed By sweet, bewildering mist.

And so to dream again, and rise in power To the full glory of a new birth-hour.

The earth is thine, the starry s.p.a.ces even, The hour is thine, and maketh its own heaven--

I to write a marriage song, I! Shall mortal man hymn worthily his own love? Yet here is the initial note, the first faint stammering.

Remember this, my love, my lady, my soul,--if I had known what your consent would be, I could never have waited for it all these years, here in the still woods. I should have died of hunger. Think of it! one only can bring bread for me, one only give me to drink. Be merciful to me, my bread-giver! One word--not on paper! One minute--let me see you alone!

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Do not write verse until you fail to express yourself in prose. Verse should glide full-winged over the surface of the waters where the spirit of G.o.d lies sleeping. It should deal carelessly with poor things like prepositions and p.r.o.nouns. They are but the spray-bubbles beaten back by its wings. Your smaller words are staffs falling as regularly and heavily as a tread on a board walk. Your phrases march; they do not fly. You will say that these lines were written under a pressure of strong emotion; but that's no reason. So might a prosy divine put forth his religion as an excuse for prosing. Have your emotion, but keep it to yourself if you can express it no better than this. It is neither "_magnifique_," nor is it--literature. Nor does your prose entirely please me. Look how it is tinged with its own sweetness. Everything is superlative. You are not content to say a thing in one way; you must say it in three, and then overload it with metaphor till the understanding balks at it. You write like this:--

"The night burned clear, illumined by a million stars. Memory was with me, and love; they, the divine. I was restless; I could not sleep. I came out of my chamber, impatient, praying for dawn."

Your images hunt in couples, and it won't do, save in the Psalms.

Simplicity, simplicity! that must be our aim. That makes a sentence read as if it had stood immemorially, as if it formed an integral part of the Creator's speech when He overlooked His work and found it good.

(You see I fall into your trick of repeated images. Indeed, it is one of the queer coincidences of fate that our phrasing should be much alike.) This same simplicity it is which shall make Ruskin a monument of white, like an angel with carven wings, when Sartor Resartus lies howling, with none so poor to patch him. Ah! and by the way--very much by the way--don't be feverish again. Don't take my idle words of last time for more than they are worth. I told you they meant nothing. When will you believe?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Their nothing is my all. You have declared it. The words lie in my hand. Discourse to a man upon rhetoric, when your own letter says, "You are dear to me"! We will talk this out. We will, I say. If not alone, before them all. Come into the woods with me to-night at nine, and with only the dark for witness you shall swear to me love--or denial.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Was it a week ago we spoke together there by the rock, and have you changed me so? I told you that night I half thought--I was very sure--I cared, and then I seemed to lose my power of mocking you. Our places are changed. You do not know it, but I no longer command; I am beginning, the real I that sits within me, to obey. Your ways are so sweet, so tender, your truth so single, your chivalry so great! I am learning to lean on your fair service as it were an arm. O, but if I am to love you, make me good! I wish I were what you would have me be. I am not! I am not! How soon will you learn it? They talk about a maiden's mind, a fair white page; mine is all tracked with ugly marks.

I am blonde, young, pretty, but I am haggard and yellow within. Not bad, you know, dear; but not the she you should have loved. Full of worldliness, cynicism, incapacity for being deceived; there's not a spontaneous thing about me. Yet, peradventure, my only hope is that I see your beauty and love it. No more of this, so long as we two live.

Love me while you can, and believe it is my unhappiness that I have lived too much.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

My lady,--It was a perverse mood that conceived your letter. And if you had no perversity, no pretty whims, where should we all be? On a dead level of discontent. I love the sweet humility of it. Not that I would have you keep to that; it would never befit my sovereign lady. But for an idle moment of a summer's day, 'tis like fooling in masquerade. Why, you are queen of me, and queen of my great heart! (Aye, I do swear with the biggest oaths I know that 'tis a great heart; for otherwise were to do you some despite. Did you not create it? "Let there be love," said you, and straightway my heart was born.) Do people always take it so seriously when other people say they are going to marry? What was that unguarded speech of Mrs. Montrose's:--

"Zoe, Zoe, why didn't you let that boy alone?"

O, I heard it, but I forgive her! She wots not of our kingdom. What should a woman with false hair and fat hands know about the divine foreknowledge of a heart in finding its mate? And my father? Why is he sadder every day? He has not lost me. He had gained you; and he owns you are sweet and blithe and fair beyond compare.

Later: What do you think has happened? I am to go back with you, and my father himself proposed it! I could wake all the echoes in the hills with joy. I shall never walk any more. I shall run and dance. What will your world think of that,--your world of men and women? Even that my father takes it sadly does not move me overmuch, though I wish he saw the joy of being. (How full it is, O, how full! And you have brought me the cup. I will drink carefully, sweetheart, though so greedily. I will not spill a drop.) He said to me, "You must know something of life before you make new ties and take responsibilities. So you must go out into the world. Mrs. Montrose is a good woman. She will be your teacher in social walks, and she will introduce you to some men I knew long ago. I can't give you definite plans. You wouldn't follow them if I did." When I asked him if he would go, too, he said, "No, not yet." It was best for me to cut loose from him for a time.

_So_, fine sweetheart! I am going back with you to your city. We are not to be separated for a single day: perhaps not until the hour when you stand up before your people and swear to cleave to me only. I read that service yesterday, alone in the woods. G.o.ds! how great it is! and yet not great enough. I would not have it "till death." It should cover the abyss--and h.e.l.l. Do you remember to think with every breath you draw how a man loves you? how he would fain have you _his_ breath, that he might draw you into his very veins? Ah, what words are there for the telling? How poverty-stricken are we that there should be no way to make you mine save by swearing oaths! If I could give you my blood--but even that is less dear to me than one instant in your presence. If I could sacrifice the dearest thing I have--yet that would not be life itself; it would be you. Sacrifice you to love, to prove I love you! What wisdom were in that?

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Dear,--Step back before it is too late. Do not come with us. No good lies that way. Why should you leave your happy island for the grimy streets? There is strange irony, too, in your setting off with us, such wayworn travelers. So might a spangled troup of weary players entice a sleepy child that had only known the lambs and birds, and lain on fragrant hay, to take some part in their ghastly mummery. What should be his fate? footsore, bewildered, to fall beside a wayside ditch, and gasp his breath out in the dusty fern. Go back! I'll none of you. I won't take the responsibility of your s.h.i.+ning soul. Stay here, and write the story of your island. Tell the weary old world what the leaves whisper and how the flower-buds open. And folks will smile the vacuous smile of ignorant criticism, and say, "O, yes, we all knew it before!" Then perhaps your Virginia will come, and you may die in each other's arms. For you haven't the fortunate palm, my boy; you haven't the look of luck. They that make us have ordained you to grief, and I would for forty s.h.i.+llings that your slaughter came not through me. I will go to town. You shall send me your ma.n.u.scripts, I will find a publisher, and we will write each other letters--so friendly, so friendly--and when you die with Virginia I will come to the woods and sit by your grave, and sing you little songs in remembrance of the love that was not to be mine. So fare you well; and I wish you only forgetfulness.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Farewell! I stop in my packing to laugh. I've begun to sing the word, to whistle little tunes to its rhythm. Aye, mistress, we will fare well, but we fare together! It has just occurred to me that my packing is very queer indeed: violin, gun, my few dearest books, and almost no clothes. For my father says camp clothes, however new, won't wear the air of town, and my tailor must be my first friend. Farewell, indeed!

Can you toss a bridegroom a two-syllabled word over your shoulder, and turn him back at the door of the church? What is a church like? Is it true the aisles are forest vistas? So the books say. O, the great race of men, to have put nature into wood and stone!