The Day of His Youth Part 3

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]

THE TREMONT HOUSE, BOSTON.

I am here, exactly where you told me to go, though Mrs. Montrose asked me very cordially, again and again, to make my home with her. In front of the hotel is a noisy, rattling street, full of madness, clamor, and delight. (I said this to Zoe, and she laughed herself faint.

"Intoxicated by a Boston street!" said she. "Wait till you see Paris.") At the side of the hotel is a yard full of graves, with little stones, row upon row. O, so many graves! I realize what mult.i.tudes of men have died, and how old the world must be. I thought of it last night, and it bore upon me so, grave upon grave--and all the unnumbered dead of all the wars--and I rose to look from my window into the busy, lighted night, and think of men. How they seethe here in crowds. How they hurry up and down, each in his little world, king of that alone, and alien to his brother. It is so strange. I think I should die of loneliness if I had not brought my own with me. But does any one sleep? There is no air!

O father, why are you not here! We went to the theatre to see a woman--I told you we were going. I never so longed for speech. If only I might describe her, even half worthily! I send you a package of photographs, all I can find, but they stammer and halt as I do. First, she is tall, very tall, I think, and there is in her a strange mingling of angularity and the divinest grace. She seems to have members like another, but the most perfect genius and harmony in the use of them.

Her hand is gracious, large; it has not that subtile outline of Zoe's, but she uses it as an instrument potent for beauty. Her head is not set proudly, her shoulders are not like the pine-tree, and Mrs. Montrose tells me her clothes are wrinkled and sometimes frayed at the seams.

But her face! All the Graces strove for mastery, and threw their gifts at her in a blind contention, so that none of them agree. They simply strive together like a company of angels, ill-a.s.sorted, and give you the effect of a lovely surprise. Her brows are full of pathos. Between them there is ever a little irregular frown; and her eyes look out beneath, imploring, piteous, saying, "I have lost my way. Will somebody tell me where to go?" And her mouth! O, the merriest mouth, made for joy, made for light words and blithest laughter! Her hair is dancing yellow, and she herself dances, her spirit most of all. I have felt joy, but I never saw it until now. Zoe laughs at me, and opens her eyes because I have begun to talk of good and bad, of beauty and ugliness.

She says I am too apt. It is true that I have done little but study faces since I came. Many are like animals. Some I love; some I hate at once. I have seen three persons who are deformed, with humps on their backs. They have a strange old look, with a queer brightness in the eyes; and when I catch that look on those who are straight and well, I wonder if they are deformed in the soul. But whoever else is to be shrunk from, my player-lady is all-worthy. As I saw her fleet about the stage, buoyant in joy and then maddened by grief unspeakable, I did not see her alone. I caught glimpses of Shakespeare's women, for she had a trace of them all: Portia, full-winged for justice; Juliet, pa.s.sion-doomed; Imogen, your love of loves; but most of all Beatrice, the iris-spirit, and Ophelia, piteously undone. Then I remembered, "A star danced," and hot tears burned my eyes. Father, how do we live when we feel so much? And the world, so great, so piercing in its beauty--how it presses upon us! Yet I suppose there must be a certain habit of inner control; for though it is beautiful to Zoe, she does not ache as I do. No, she laughs. I must get the habit of laughter. But you see I have been up all night, thinking of this woman and the world she opens to me; of her and the woman I love. Of Zoe I think always, father; but you know I couldn't write that. No man could, could he?

... I have been to church. It is strangely disappointing. Of the church itself it is not necessary to speak. It seems there are no great cathedrals here; I had not realized that. The music was fine, but faint; I found I had expected not a quartette but a chorus, a mult.i.tude praising G.o.d. Then the clergyman spoke. It was very vague and very long. It seemed to me unnecessary for him to have written anything, when he might have read Emerson or Ruskin. I forgot him, after a time, and began to think of Lone Mountain and the rhythm of the wind over the firs. The sermon was something about St. John's visions and the church.

It seemed to me belittling, as if a primer should be written to explain the G.o.ds. But perhaps I have to get the habit of church-going also.

I have been introduced to dozens of people. Dozens? let me say hundreds. They are very kind. You ask me to speak frankly of civilized life. Frankly then, these people we meet in battalions I do not like.

That is, I might like them individually if they appeared under a different system; but society seems to me an intricate sort of game which anybody could play, but which is very puzzling to the onlooker and not in the least worth learning. For example, their conversation: a great deal of it is mere personality, and they only speak of a certain set. That may be a truism. I have apparently said that they do not talk of the people they do not know because they only talk of the people they know. But I find there are such different ways of talking. People seem to be in groups, and each group is labeled. I am in the smart set!

I fancy some of them consider the persons who play and sing and write books (that is unless they don't do it particularly well) as a cla.s.s of beings made for their amus.e.m.e.nt; and if it is necessary to speak of scientists or diplomats, they do it with a certain languid interest, and then put them aside in a drawer. There is a great deal of philanthropy, but it is not what I thought about love of man, when I read the old stories of the saints and those greater than saints who came to redeem. It does not look like love; for love draws one nearer, clasps its arms about one; is it not so? This is a kind of business appointed for certain days in the week, just as one attends church on Sunday. They "go down" to obscure streets and visit, and they even make reports afterwards; but it is something like the German lessons three times a week or the piano practice every day. But who am I to blame them? I have walked through the poorer streets. I have looked boldly into the faces there, and, father, I hate them. I would not touch them for worlds, those deformed, dirty, ugly, loathsome creatures. They are so unbeautiful! And there surely can be no need of that. They might at least have the beauty of cleanliness and of lovely thoughts. Apparently I cannot get the habit of philanthropy, however well I may do with church-going. For how can we help being repulsed by what is repulsive?

As well expect the bees to seek carrion instead of roses. But what do the books mean when they talk about love of men? The more men need love, the less one can love them. Write me, father. I feel as if I should know a different side of you through your letters.

Later: O, I am glad I came, if only for this one thing--a little cat, a little mangled cat, gaunt, wounded, dying. I killed her--mercifully.

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume_]

Dear friend,--Only a word, to save my honor: for we lunch and tea and dine with the world to-day. Your barbarian is more than perfect. He has become a social sovereign, sweeping all before him; and he doesn't even know it. He stands there in a circle of pretty girls and strenuous spinsters, looks at them gravely with those great soft eyes, answers their questions, and walks away in absolute unconsciousness. He says people are so kind. On the contrary, they are enraptured with his beauty and his miraculous truth-telling. And I begin to think Zoe may really be in love with him. If n.o.body interferes with them, perhaps they'll make a model Darby and Joan.

[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]

Dear son,--So you don't love the poor! Well, don't force it. They are not invariably beautiful. Don't trouble about them until you have found out why they haven't Greek profiles, as a rule, and why they sometimes fail in expressing their lovely thoughts. Why did the cat appeal to you? Yet she wasn't beautiful. Something had maimed her. That might be the case with two-legged creatures also. I have been thinking about you a lot. In fact, for the last twenty years there hasn't been anything else for me to think about, except what is gone. And that is a chapter by itself. But I want to tell you this: if you are in a tight place of any sort, moral or financial, come to me, and I shall be grateful. I'm older, and I have lived in the world. I don't want to be a prig and hamper you with moral maxims; but if you need me, I want to be there.

Moreover, I want you to grapple alone with life. That's the only way.

To catch systematically at another swimmer is to weaken yourself and perhaps go down,--as I did, though not for the same reason. I went down because I never was a strong swimmer in the beginning, and then I didn't go in for training. Enough of metaphor. I've a sort of legacy, though, to give you. I was thinking last night what a shame it is that we never have a fair show with temptation, because a temptation is a thing that's never recognized until you see its back: like the hill-wives. But this you may remember; if something seems particularly enticing to you, and you say, "It wouldn't do for all the world to take this, but it will do for me," draw back. That is mirage. If you begin to s.h.i.+eld yourself behind what the great souls have done, that, too, is mirage. The great souls are never so little as in forsaking law for license. Do not despise what convention has decreed, unless you know it to be trivial and false. The general consensus of mankind really means something. A hot-headed and hot-hearted youngling in revolt against harness is pretty sure to get a galled back--and nothing else. Pin yourself to law; only make sure that the law is the highest possible.

So much for Polonius. Now, your legacy; and now I have to write things almost too sacred to be written, and that never could be said. I have always talked to you about your mother, because you have a right to know her; but her loss is so fresh, that every word still hurts. She was probably the most rounded, the purest, the most crystalline nature ever made. Her perfection could never have been exceeded. Perhaps Imogen only was her equal. Have you ever thought what it must have been to such a woman to conceive and bear a child? She loved me. Our life was as perfect as her desert. Now I know the thoughts--all she could tell even me--of that girl-mother every day of all the weeks before your birth. There is no word--at least from me--fine enough to describe the course of that holy rapture. There is in a woman's love a certain joy in the pain which is borne for love's sake, a certain ecstasy of renunciation which no man ever feels. That once I saw it pictured. I veil my face. She was not only divinely happy because you were coming; she became divinely holy. Her child seemed to be a sacrifice to present to G.o.d,--her G.o.d was very living, very near her,--and she had resolved that he should be a perfect gift. She heard the most beautiful music, and clothed herself in the finest fabrics. She had her room hung with angelic faces, where her eyes could open first upon them in the morning. Those are the pictures that hang in our cabin. I could never tell you why I chose them. Mona Lisa was banished, though she loved her, too. But she said, "He shall have the simplicity of G.o.d; he shall not bear the beauty of the world." She read the most wonderful books then, the simplest, the most exalted. I have tried to remember her choice among them, and it seems to me now that she chose always what had the wisdom of truth and love, and that she shrank from the sparkling and clever. I cannot tell you all her thoughts about you, nor all her hopes. For, indeed, the confidences were mine, and near as you are to me, she is nearer. Perhaps I could never have told you if you had not begun to see what it is to love a woman. But the substance of it all seems to be this: she loved you before she saw you; she wors.h.i.+ped the very thought of your coming. She seemed to feel that she was not a pa.s.sive instrument chosen to bring you into the world. (You see I speak personally now of the Unknowable. It is because she did so.

To her, all the powers that fas.h.i.+on and rule were blended in One, and He was warm and living, and she loved Him. Yet her idea was not anthropomorphic. It was colossal. This was and is incomprehensible to me; but I am trying now to enter her habit of mind.) A pa.s.sive instrument, did I write? She was, in a way, your creator. The vital spark came from her G.o.d through love and her, and she would not hamper it by any earthly clogs of groveling inheritance. Well--her watching upon her arms was over. She saw her son. And then she gave him to me to finish her work, and died. Now the knowledge of her great love and expectation seems to belong to you, and I have only this to say: If you feel yourself getting a little dusty in life, think what should be expected of one who was so loved, so waited for. You are of royal stock; for you were born of a woman so perfect that sometimes I wonder now if I have not imagined her. But I have not. She was real. We do not guess out things so beautiful. G.o.d--It--Nature--makes them, and then we describe them in verse or music, and people say we create. Don't speak to me of this; only make use of it when the time comes.

There isn't much to tell you about camp. I do many of the same old things. Perhaps I shall go to you; for sometimes I think you will not want to come back. Pierre misses you.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

I hate vulgarity! Mrs. Montrose seems to be a very good woman, but she _is_ vulgar. Why, when women are middle-aged and portly, do they feel at liberty to make rude personal speeches? She said to me yesterday:--

"If you want to marry Zoe, marry her soon." I was angry; I could only look at her. She laughed, but she did flush. "Don't glare at me, Ingomar," said she. "I'm speaking for your good. It isn't well for you to marry her, but somehow you're the kind of a child I want to see pleased. So keep on the spot. Captain Morton has come back, and he knows Zoe has had some money left her. Be on the spot!" I walked away without a word. Since then I have hardly seen Zoe. It is insulting to go near her. As if I did not trust her! As if I would be "on the spot!"

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

I can't wait to tell you! so this goes round to you by messenger. You couldn't guess it out in a lifetime. I am rich, truly rich! Uncle Obed has died. He was a miser, G.o.d bless him! and he's left it all to me.

Did you ever hear of anything so absurd? Now I can buy myself elegant leisure, as if it were something to be found at the shops. I can give myself time to write my plays. I can even bring them out. Of course, though I lead the horse to water I can't make him drink; and though I were Midas I can't force the public to listen. Stay! is it impossible?

Go to! there shall be souvenir nights, and the newspapers shall be fully primed. Actresses shall pose as injured wives, and scandals shall be described in flaming headlines. All print is open to us. We are rich, rich! I'm quite delirious with it.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Love,--You bewilder me. I didn't know you cared. Money? I didn't know you wanted it. I believe we have a great deal. My father told me I need not stint. Don't use yours. Please don't use it. Marry me to-morrow, and take mine.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Don't use it? Why, I _want_ to use it! You might as well ask a new-crowned king to go and make a visit in central Africa, and pick up all the gold he could carry. Be patient. I'll come to Africa by and by.

But just now I want to take mine ease in the opulence of my mind. I'm having a new dress made of a queer dull green and blue, and I'll buy a set of turquoises, G.o.d wot, and present them to myself from my dearest friend. Uncle Obed lived and died in South America. I won't wear mourning--I won't! I won't! Perhaps green and blue are mourning there.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Dearest lady,--Will you write me--just a word, only a word? You see I could not get a whisper from you last night, and you were so brilliant and sparkling, like a s.h.i.+ning gem. Call me a baby, if you like. I don't mind. Only say you love me. Just the three words, dear? And will you take these little blue stones? I can see how they would look against your skin; I held them near a pinkish rose, and then I saw you in my mind and I threw the rose aside. Dear, the three words? I feel very humble, very much of a beggar. Will you?

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Now you are not sleeping, as I said when I saw the hollows coming under your eyes, or you wouldn't fail in tact. It isn't like you. I want to buy my turquoises myself. Don't you see how I am luxuriating in the sense of unfamiliar power? It will pa.s.s, and then I'll take your gift.

Of course--the three words--_of course_; but I can't be always writing them. They look so bathetic. Now I've seemed brutal and ill-tempered, all in one letter. But why will you be faultless and appealing, and why won't you see I am a child of the earth (the street-earth--paving-stones ground up and mixed with champagne) and go home to your birds and trees?

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

You were not interesting last night, and Captain Morton was; therefore I sat out with him. But you should not have turned white and frozen in a corner. That sort of docile remonstrance in you rouses my aunt to a height of righteousness which nature itself cannot endure. I mean my nature. She says you are perfection, and that I don't deserve you. The maxims are unimpeachable; I agree to both. Go, if you like, or stay and be agreeable. I forgot to tell you that I am going to New York to visit Alice May, Captain Morton's cousin. Auntie is angry. Are you angry, too? Is all the world suspicious, and of Oth.e.l.lo's complexion? If the primitive pa.s.sions do rage just as furiously even though we speak Victorian English, tell me, what's the use of development? We are simply more trammeled and less frank. Having blown off the steam of my wrath, I'll condescend to say that the invitation from Alice just reached me, and that I have decided quite suddenly. Again, does it make you angry? Would you rather have me fettered to your wrist by a nice, neat little chain with your monogram on it and a jeweled pad-lock?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Angry because you are going away? My lady, heart of me, you know me better. You are free from everything but my love. It follows you everywhere, poor pensioner. It has nothing to claim, nothing to exact.

Give it place in your suite, and be patient with it; for it would hide away rather than break in upon your mood. All your moods are like crystal bubbles, no more to be s.h.i.+vered than one of G.o.d's beautiful worlds. I love you; but you are infinitely sacred, infinitely precious to me,--above all, and above measure, free. Go, dearest lady; be happy.

Think of me when the thought is an added pleasure, and then--come back to me.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Dear,--O, at moments like this I feel as if I could repay you so royally! You are a knight peerless. Remember, whatever comes between us, that I knew this of you. I shall always think of you with reverence. If you were here, perhaps I should be perverse and willful, and p.r.i.c.k your offered hand with some tempestuous thorn; but I do meet you with one half my soul--perhaps with all my real soul. I send you a kiss. Come to the station if you like; but it will be to see the outer me, the worldly one.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

She is gone. There is nothing to do for a week--a month, perhaps--but prowl about this dismal city, looking in the faces of men. At the theatres there is heavy comedy played by buffoons. So I stay away and watch my kind, and wonder what I'm going to do to make a man of myself.

Write? What? Worldfuls of thought are creating themselves within me, but as yet they are only star-dust. I doubt if they will be anything more. There is a strange ache in my throat, a strange failing within me. Is it what children call homesickness? I heard little Ethel Wynne, the other day, talking about her first visit from home:

"They put me to bed, and I cried and cried all alone, and I was sick at my stomach, and _I pitied me_."

"Poor Mother Bunch!" said her father. "Homesick!"

And I believe I "pity me," too. I must be a weak sort of a fellow. All the men I meet are absorbed in something--horse--college--games. I am sick for the unknown. Not the camp. I believe the loneliness there would kill me now. O, why talk of it, for the sole use of spending myself on paper! I am sick for her--her! Heavens--whatever that means--how terrible it is to love a woman! Yet it seems so simple. If she loved me--oh, she does love me, but she has her moods. She is compact of fire and air and dew, and her path is like the swallow's.

How should I find her?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]

I am taking violin lessons, as you suggest; also French. The verdict, in each case, is that I have been wonderfully well taught. I begin to know you for a genius. How have you managed to do so many things to perfection? The Frenchman, Dr. Pascal, is stirring my brain more than anything has yet succeeded in doing. So far I have felt like a muddy pool in which the stars and gas lamps try to reflect themselves and get only broken gleams in return. He is unsparingly critical of our American civilization, and feels at liberty to say so to me, because I am primeval man, fresh from my woods. He tells me such marvels of the French. According to him, they are the creators of form: form in art, in language, in mechanism. If I could reproduce his thought, it would be to tell you that, as we are the youngest of nations, so, too, are we the crudest. We are eaten up by an infinite complacency. Because we are big, we fancy we blot out the sun whenever we choose to turn our bulk.

We submit to a thousand public abuses because we are too drenched in our own fatness to criticise or disturb ourselves. The individual is rampant, and all are enslaved. Consequently, this is not the land of liberty, but of license, overrun by a wild chase of "every man for himself." We wors.h.i.+p our wealth, and not what it brings us. We adore display; it tickles us more to scatter money broadcast in blazonry than to live in chaste democracy and erect monuments to our public good. To beauty we are almost totally blind and deaf; and what wonder, when there is no _milieu_! We do not breathe an aesthetic atmosphere.

Our public buildings are atrocious, and--and--I could go on for pages, but I spare you. The worst of it is that it may be true. You know how much my opinion is worth. I might as well be a boy of ten for all I can say, judged by experience and comparison; but to me everything in this city is small, disappointing, unbeautiful. Nothing, except the music, fills my ideal of what I thought life would be when I pictured it in my tent. Is life small? Are men pygmies? Or are my judgments naught?

[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]