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 leafBy earth's old travail and the gray world's grief,—Delighted by her changeful diademAnd 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 froSearching 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 failFor godlike Love's divine expressing,And all the rhythm of his sweet confessing,Whose full-voiced cry should beHarmonious ecstasy.Now are ye rulers of the upper air;And though men surge below, not one shall dareTo scale the summit of your mystic height,Nor breathe your breath, nor face your burning light.The seed shall break for you, the seasons pass,And you, serene, shall view as in a glassThe moving pageant of the happy year,Fleeting from naked twig and garment sere,To wrap itself in snows, to dream and dreamOn budding boughs, and all the elusive gleamOf happy rivers kissedBy sweet, bewildering mist.And so to dream again, and rise in powerTo the full glory of a new birth-hour.The earth is thine, the starry spaces even,The hour is thine, and maketh its own heaven—
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 leafBy earth's old travail and the gray world's grief,—Delighted by her changeful diademAnd 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 froSearching 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."
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 failFor godlike Love's divine expressing,And all the rhythm of his sweet confessing,Whose full-voiced cry should beHarmonious ecstasy.
O thought too poor and pale!
O words that wanly fail
For godlike 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 dareTo scale the summit of your mystic height,Nor breathe your breath, nor face your burning light.The seed shall break for you, the seasons pass,And you, serene, shall view as in a glassThe moving pageant of the happy year,Fleeting from naked twig and garment sere,To wrap itself in snows, to dream and dreamOn budding boughs, and all the elusive gleamOf happy rivers kissedBy sweet, bewildering mist.And so to dream again, and rise in powerTo the full glory of a new birth-hour.The earth is thine, the starry spaces even,The hour is thine, and maketh its own heaven—
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 pass,
And you, serene, shall view as in a glass
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 spaces 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!
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 God lies sleeping. It should deal carelessly with poor things like prepositions and pronouns. 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?
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.
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.
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. Gods! how great it is! and yet not great enough. I would not have it "till death." It should cover the abyss—and hell. Do you remember to think with every breath you draw how a man loves you? how he would fain have youhisbreath, 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?
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 shining 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 shillings that your slaughter came not through me. I will go to town. You shall send me your manuscripts, 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.
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!
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 multitudes 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-assorted, 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, passion-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 multitude praising God. 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 gods. 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 class of beings made for their amusement; 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.
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 nobody interferes with them, perhaps they'll make a model Darby and Joan.
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 shield 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 God,—her God 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 God; 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 worshiped the very thought of your coming. She seemed to feel that she was not a passive 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 fashion 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 passive instrument, did I write? She was, in a way, your creator. The vital spark came from her God 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. God—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.
To the Unknown Friend
I hate vulgarity! Mrs. Montrose seems to be a very good woman, but sheisvulgar. 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!"
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, God 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.
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.
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Don't use it? Why, Iwantto 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, God 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.
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 shining 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?
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 pass, 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?
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 Othello's complexion? If the primitive passions 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?
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 shivered than one of God'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.
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 prick 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.
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, andI 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?
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 worship 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 nomilieu! We do not breathe an æsthetic 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?
Ernest Hume to Francis Hume
You are right in distrusting your judgments. I should not trust them, either, because, as you say, you have no standard of comparison. But I think this may truly be said. America is young, and therefore you must not expect of her a full artistic development. She has done some of the greatest moral work imaginable. There her instinct was unspoiled, just as that of youth should be. She came "trailing clouds of glory." But art is not the flower of the moment. Neither is it to be borrowed from other lands; though thus may we obtain the technique which teaches appreciation. A few geniuses seem to be born full-fledged; I doubt if a nation could be. A man, even a genius, has to learn to use his tools. So does a people. The French are form-mad. I don't wonder. Outer beauty is a subtile poison. Once taste it and you never lose the craving. It is a beautiful zeal, but not always the best zeal. I've been a coward and an absentee about life myself, but I'd rather trust some of those vigorous old pirates like Sir Francis Drake, who went about picking up new worlds like huckleberries, than a carpet-knight on tiptoe at the apex of civilization. But don't misunderstand me. My pen ran away. I don't under-value your Frenchman. I only say, Be patient with America. She is so young, poor girl! The only discouraging thing about it is, as he says, that she doesn't know it. If she would learn of her grandams and great-aunts, she would burn her fingers and tear her frock less often. Her lovers must simply be patient and wait till she grows to her task. Perhaps when she really is older and stronger, and has lifted her straw a day, she'll be capable of carrying this burden of government. No, she hasn't solved her problem yet; democracy is the highest form of government, but she does not yet know how to administer it. I find I am not so far out of gear with civilization as I thought, for I have strong ambitions for you. I find I want you to take up the fardel of public life; not to be a pessimistic complainer, standing aside with your hands in your pockets, but a citizen. And if you can do something, too, for art—but after all, I shall be content if you keep your soul clean.
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Dear laddie,—I have a great deal to say to you, and I am utterly incapable of saying it. So the only resource I have is to be short and trust to your intuitions. You can supply my remorse, and my grief that life is what it is. We are blind instruments of blinder fate. Captain Morton came here soon after I did. You knew that. He says plainly that he came to see me. More than that, he came to see me because he loved me. If there is anything in love, isn't it this power of one creature over another? Are we responsible? Are we true to ourselves if we fight against it? I, at least, could not fight. If my bond to you had been a thousand times more strong, I should have snapped it like twine. I told him I would write you that it is broken. I wish life might be good to you, though I cannot be. And I wish I might never see you again, now, or after my marriage. I don't say, Forgive me. You can't yet, but some time perhaps you will.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
Dear lady,—Since your letter reached me, I have written you a great many answers. None of them are worth sending. This is all I tried to say. You are just as much loved as before, and you are free,—perfectly, entirely free. It must be for you exactly as if you had never been bound. And you shall never see me.
To the Unknown Friend
There must be some outlet for this, or I shall be talking to people in the street. They will think I am crazy, and that will be the end of it. So I'll put it all down, madness and all. So Francis Hume came up to town, did he? And lost his love! He was well enough, poor fool, down in the woods; but the Great Ones that plague us for their sport sent him a mirage, and it dazzled him, and he sailed after it. No! no! no! It was not mirage. It was true—a true, true vision. She is real, and sweet, and sound, my lady with the merry laugh and seeking eyes. I had her; I have the vision of her. I wish I did not remember such piercing lines: "My good days are over!" And poor Thekla,—
"Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."
"Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."
"Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."
Here's a supposition. Is a woman betrayed more lost than a man's soul when it is rejected and thrown back to live alone? Perhaps there is a difference. But this lonesomeness of the heart! If I died, should I still live and be I, bearing my wormwood with me? A life shattered so early! "You have broken my globe! you have broken my globe!"
They have come back to Boston, he and she. They came together, and I saw them. I watched him go up the steps with her, and heard him laugh when they went in. I sat on a seat in the mall, and watched. He wears a strange significance for me. I suppose I hate him, really; and yet, because she loves him, he holds a new and awful interest. It is really as ifIloved him. I think of him with her thoughts; how strong he is, how black those eyes, how white his hands, how round his voice. And every thought poisons me, and I roll in my nettles and sting myself deeper.
... I loved a woman—O God! betrayed! betrayed! Not by her. O God, save her from punishment and remorse! She was deceived. She shall not suffer.
... I do not know what God is. I sat thinking of Him an hour in the dark, last night. All I know is that mankind has made Him. He is the cry raised by their united voices when they wail. He is the uttermost anguish of their hearts. They had to call it something, this wail of terror and grief, and so they called it God. I call it God, too. I lift up my voice with theirs, and cry, God! God!
... I have taken to following them about the town. They went to the theatre last night. I sat in the gallery, and looked down on them. How familiar she seems—how truly mine! Can anybody steal what is mine? After the theatre I slept a little, and dreamed that we were on a shore, a silver strip of sands, with the sea black before us. I dragged her from him, and when I had struck him down, she turned to me, with a glad, low cry, and clung to me, all warm. She was glad! And I have been warm about the heart all day, for the remembrance dwells with me. How beautiful it would be to kill him, if after it was all over she would turn to me and rest here in my arms!
Once I could have lived through this. There would have been horse and hound and battle-axe—sword and lance—all the rest of it. I could have gone away to the wars and worked off some of this horror. And now, like a rat in a trap, I've got to sit still here and go mad.
Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume
Dear friend,—We have made a wretched botch of it among us, with your poor boy. Zoe has jilted him. We might have guessed it. He has simply disappeared. He left a card here, and quietly changed his lodgings. At the Tremont House, they either don't know where he has gone or refuse to say. I am worried about him. Poor boy! poor boy! he won love everywhere, but he didn't want it. Only hers; and Captain Morton could have conjured her into a black cat any time these three years, if he had chosen. Don't blame me. There's a fate in things; and if you wanted your boy to escape tragedy, you shouldn't have given him that face.
Ernest Hume to Francis Hume
Dear boy,—Could you come down and see me a bit? I'm having a series of colds, and they keep me in bed and make me melancholy-stupid. Then, when you go back, perhaps I can go with you. Where are you now? From your giving the address of a post-office box, I fancy you have left the Tremont House. When will you come?
Francis Hume to Ernest Hume
Dear father,—I will come soon. I can't quite yet. I am sorry you are not well. I will come soon.
To the Unknown Friend
The voices of people about me do hurt me so. I won't see a soul I know, but the waiters asking for orders—O they hurt me so! I shall be like a woman, and scream. I can't see my father yet—not yet. I couldn't bear his face, or his voice. They would be so kind. I must be alone. Yet it is awful for crazy people to be alone. They are so beset by dreams—and faces. I don't think they are real, but still there are faces.
... My God! what have I seen to-day! I went walking—fast, fast—and I took the poorest streets, so that I might not meet any one I know. And all the animal-people—hog, rabbit, fox, cat, and the rest—kept coming toward me as I walked; for now there seems to be a sort of mist in the air, and one face flares out of the mist and then another. And it rushed over me suddenly how they must ache and suffer and languish to be so poor and so ignorant and vile. There is a dropping inside my heart, all the time, as if the blood that ought to nourish me were falling and falling and wasting itself in pain. And I began to look into the faces, and it seemed to me as if these people, too, were all of them bleeding. The ground was red and soaked. And then I learned that all this great world is in pain just like my own. I did not seem so much alone then—not quite. They were like me, all of them. I began to see how some might love them; and the more hideous they were, so much the more could one love.Who was Jesus Christ?
... I went to the Passion Music, and sat alone in a little crowded corner, afraid of being seen. It crucified my soul. I felt as if the violins were bowing on my brain, sawing the little gray strings that are my nerves. And then it came upon me like an overwhelming sea. This Man—this God-man—loved the whole world and was rejected by it. I loved one; and because she cast me off, I am as I am. True or not—His story—butisit true?
... Yet I cannot stop loving her. I love her to-day more, more, a thousand times more, if that can be. Is it true I have no right to love her? Then I have no right to breathe. I had no right to be born.
Ernest Hume to Francis Hume
Dear Francis,—Won't you come down for a day or two? If not, I think I shall go to you. Write me a word.
Francis Hume to Ernest Hume
Dear father,—Try to be patient with me. I'll come soon, truly soon. I'm not very good company. I'm thinking things out.
Telegram to Francis Hume
Concord, N. H.Ernest Hume sick here with pneumonia. Come.
Mrs. Montrose to Zoe Morton
I am glad you got off so well, and that the sun shone at last. Ever so many presents have come since you left. Mrs. Badger sends a Turkish rug, hideous, I think, and abominably dirty. I smelled cholera, and in five minutes sent the thing to be cleansed. Cousin Robert, in his usual forethoughtful way, brought a silver service, unmarked, so that you can exchange it if you like. Do you read the papers? Do you know about Francis Hume? I found out casually from Bellamy Winthrop, who chanced to go up with him in the train. Bellamy is a ferret; that you know. He could get news out of a stone—or Francis. It seems Mr. Hume was very ill, started to come down here, was taken worse in a Concord hotel, and died there before Francis could reach him. The boy took his body and carried it to that awful camp for burial. I desire never to set eyes on the place again. I wrote to him, but he doesn't answer. Good luck to you both. Regards to Captain Morton. I suppose I am to call him Ned? What with the wedding and this last nightmare, my nerves are quite unstrung.
Francis Hume had gone back. It was the spring now, and a visit to the spot at that same time last year reminded me that the grass would have been thick and tall before the door, and that the linden was in bloom. I had found old Pierre in the village, and asked him to row me over; but though his arms were still like whipcords, he declined. He seemed to think the visit an intrusion upon the two who had evidently made something as holy and unapproachable in his own life as the legends of his saints. On the other hand, he was jealously unwilling to trust me there alone; and when I found another man to row me, Pierre came of his own will and took a place in the boat. The day was a heaven of May, the lake untouched. Our oars made its only ripple. It was a strange, still progress. Pierre, dark, silent, a man of thought and experience, brooded all the way, as over vanished things; and the other man evidently held him in too much awe to speak. They landed me without a word. I walked about the spot where the log-cabin had stood, now a blank in the vegetation. I lingered by the Point, to catch the little ripples there; and I visited the spring where the two men used to drink. Pierre had followed me, with the cat-like tread of the woods. He touched my sleeve, and pointed through a forest path.
"There," he said. "That is the grave."
I understood. Ernest Hume had been buried there. I walked in a few steps, and Pierre pointed. A forest of maiden-hair strove and fluttered greenly. This was the grave. There was no stone to mark it; but at that moment it seemed to me very rich in peace to lie down so and to be absorbed into the life of the forest, throwing back no foolish outcry, "Here I lie! Remember."
When Pierre found that I was going back without disturbing even a leaf of his shrine, his heart opened a little to me, and he told me a few facts of the burial. Francis Hume had brought back his father's body, and they two had dug the grave and laid him within it. Francis had never spoken. He looked like the dead. He had no mind. Pierre repeated it: he had no mind.
I could understand. He was beside himself. His soul had been reft away into merciful dulness, somewhere outside his body. When the burial was over, Francis had dismissed him and walked away into the woods. Pierre followed, silently. All that day they walked, Francis unconscious that he was not alone. Then Pierre began to realize that they were going in a great circle, and that they were coming back to the grave. Night fell, and they were still walking, now away from the grave again, but always in a circle. The moon came out, and Pierre, very hungry, yet not daring to lose sight of Francis, approached him and tried to speak; the boy's eyes were wide open, unwinking, luminous. Pierre began to talk of food, and Francis struck out at him, and walked on. Pierre followed. They continued still in the same dull circle, all night long, Francis walking like a cat undeterred by branches and avoiding pitfalls with the cleverness of the insane, and the guide, wearied and stumbling. Just as the latter darkness of night came on, Francis paused, wavered a little, and Pierre caught him as he fell. He drew him upon his shoulder, and toiled back to camp with him. There he laid him upon a couch in the cabin, and poured brandy between his lips. All that day the boy slept, only stirring when Pierre roused him to administer milk or brandy; but at twilight time he moved and opened his eyes. Pierre knew he had "come back." Then the old man placed bread and meat beside him and went silently out. He had much experience, I judged, of the dignity of the soul; much knowledge, gained from lonely living, of her needs. He knew when she must be alone. Yet he watched all night in the grove, his quick ears strained for a movement of the creature within. What came next, Francis Hume only can tell.
It is two o'clock in the morning, and I am writing here in the cabin door-way. I have no light, yet I can see what I am writing. That, I remember, is not what ordinarily happens; but it seems quite natural. I must write in haste, for, as I judge, I have been crazy, and now I am sane; and I must put down something to remember, lest madness should come on again. I must have something to hold to, if I am to fall back into the great confusion and trouble of mind that have been sweeping me down like a sea. For I have learned something. It is most precious, and I must be sure to keep it. There is no doubt that I have killed my father. I was not by to tend him. When his soul was going forth, I let it go alone. I brought upon him the sharpest pangs of his mortality. But even that is well. Can I write what has befallen me, to recall it to my later mind when the vision has faded, as it may? I cling to it. I must try. First, I went down into hell. I do not know much about that. It is confused. And hell is not very important. We dig it for ourselves. Let me remember only the things of God. Then I awoke, and Pierre was feeding me. He went out, and I saw the twilight shaft of light strike across the cabin where it used to fall. But I knew everything was changed. The cabin was not real. Only I was real—and Pierre. My soul—was it my soul?—went out of the cabin, and swept across Lone Mountain to the sea, and over the sea and back again. She saw the great earth swing in space. She knew there are many worlds beside. She felt an awe of the vastness of things, and she began to be healed. Then she came back to me, and I took her in, like a dove with dew upon her wings, and she comforted me. Me? Was it she who went, or I? What is she? I do not know. But I was comforted. Then, as I lay there, vision after vision began to throng upon me, and the cabin walls lifted up, and let me see the world. And I looked upon the great balances wherein we are held, and millions of souls, uncounted souls, in myriads, like little points of light, fleeing home to God. That was it—God. That was what I had sinned and suffered for, to know Him. I saw the souls going toward Him, and an ineffable delight took hold on me because I felt that I was going, too; not my body, not even the Me that stayed in the cabin, though every impulse of me was tending fast that way. I knew a flower's feeling when its fragrance meets the sun. This was love; and immediately I understood everything that it was necessary for me to understand. I comprehended His perfect well-wishing toward us. I knew one blood ran from His heart through ours. I knew how small a thing it is to say "Isuffer." I? What is I? A mote in the whole, an aching nerve in one great plexus. And the whole will some day be nourished, and we shall be healed. I do not know whether I can believe this when I read it by day; but the cabin is thronged with—radiances. I have not learned what to call them, but they are infinitely beautiful, patient, strong, and they uphold me. I cannot think they suffer with me; their wisdom is too great. But they crowd about me silently, forbearingly, divinely. They are incarnate love. I stretch out my hands to them. While they stay, I am almost happy. I do not see them, yet they shed a lustre and the soul perceives it. I have learned—what have I learned? Obedience. I must not strive nor cry. I must serve. What? I do not know. But I must serve, even in the dark and enchained. I am content to grope, with my eyes bandaged. Content? No, this is joy. I have tasted God. I drink no other spring.
I have read this over. It is all wrong, all poor and pale; I have told nothing. Yet the visions—they are in my soul. I throw my arms about them and hold them fast. Perhaps even they must be withdrawn. Perhaps it is a part of my service to lose my way. Even that I accept. I reach my hand for the cup—thirstily. I drink, and to the Unknown God. What is He? I am contented not to know. What am I? It is His will I should not know. Only this: the soul is perfect, indestructible, and she goes to lave herself in Him.
The next morning, said Pierre, Francis made swift preparations for going away. They were few, for he wished to retain nothing belonging to his former life. He took last long looks about the walls, he studied the pictures as if he would learn them by heart, and laid his hand upon one and another of the things that had been dear to him. Then he touched fire to the building, and stood by outside, waiting while it burned. Pierre very plainly understood why he did it, though he could not tell. He seemed to distrust the quality of my intelligence because I asked primitive questions. Was it because Francis feared marauders? Was it some idea of sacrifice to his father's memory? Was it because he felt himself unworthy to retain the precious surroundings of a life to which he had been false? As I became insistent, Pierre grew dumb. The cabin burned, he said. Francis watched it. Then he went away. He never came back.
In the old man's countenance I fancied I could trace, under a veiling patience, the lines of an immortal grief. Francis, I could understand, had been the child of his heart, his one human love. It had taken all the great austerity of the forest to teach him to bear that loss. Yet you could see from his face, as in the faces of so many who suffer with dignity, that he was not destitute of hope.
It has been surprisingly difficult to follow the after-track of Francis Hume. For those who knew him have only to say that he disappeared. But he disappeared merely by settling down at their own door: the back-door where carriages never come. He selected a very poor and sordid street in the city where he had met his loss, and betook himself there to live; not, I believe, with any idea of work among the poor, but because he had probed life to the bottom in his own experience, and he felt constrained to seek a lower depth. He had acquired that passionate abnegation which is the child of grief; not undervaluing the joys of time, he had learned that they were not for him. Now his life became very simple, very humble, in the expectancy of its attitude; for he leaned upon God, and waited until he should be told what to do. There are strange, vivid memories of him among the people with whom he walked. Evidently he gave munificently, yet from such austerity of life, and with such directness of speech and action, that few presumed to bleed him further. In that same dark region remain to-day strange touches of magnificence and beauty; a great picture here, a glowing curtain there, dowered with a richness the present owners may not understand, although they dimly feel it. He had no formulated idea of charity, no recognition of the fact that there are theories of doing good. All that can be discovered about his later life is that he was much beloved, and that he loved much; the latter, from an aching sense of the pain common to all souls, a sense of spiritual kinship. At least, he was spared many of the tawdry temptations of youth; for grief had touched him so near that she had opened his eyes to the foolishness of vain desires. He could watch the fluttering of the garment of happiness without wondering if happiness were really underneath. He had seen the real; thenceforth, for him, there was no illusion. He simply lived, and shared when the inner voice told him to share; and as it afterwards proved, he made his will, and left his fortune to buy great tracts of pine woods for a camping-ground forevermore. But that does not pertain to his story. Sufficient to know that the trust has been very wisely administered, and that hundreds of squalid creatures were last summer turned loose there.
Meantime Zoe Morton was fulfilling to the letter her own cynical prophecy of an unhappy marriage. There is no doubt whatever about the life she led with Captain Morton. He was a frank materialist. Every man has his price, said he; every woman also. The baser breed of vices are as unavoidable as any other part of the earthly scheme. Eat and drink—and die when you must. He was kind enough to Zoe in the manner of a man who would not wantonly hurt his horse or dog; he would have been kinder had she not rebelled. But after the manner of her sex and nature, when they wed with Bottom, she went hysterical-mad. He got tired—and he rode away. Then, after five years of marriage and two of acute invalidism, thus she wrote Francis Hume:—
I send this to the Boston post-office in the hope of finding you. My aunt thinks she saw you in the street the other day; but I did not need that to tell me you were here. I have guessed it for a long time. I have almost felt you knew how I suffer. I am asking an impossible service. Captain Morton is abroad, and he refuses to come home. I am dying, and he will not believe it. I have written him and cabled him; but I have said I was dying for the last three years. Now it is true. Will you go over there and see him?Make him believe it.Make him come to me. I do not know how—but make him. His bankers are Baring Bros. Perhaps they can tell you where he is.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
Dear lady,—I start to-night. It was generous of you to ask me. He shall come.
But Captain Morton was not to be found, either in England or on the Continent; and so there was much delay which must have tried the soul of the messenger beyond endurance. Through one of the foolish ironies of life, the captain ("rather fat," six years before!) had decided, in a futile blindness to his own limitations, to join an exploring party to the interior of Abyssinia. He had always a childish vanity; perhaps that led him to ignore all the habits of his luxurious past and seek healthier living through the means he had despised. Thus to nourish himself for more vices! So does thebon vivantrecuperate at Spas.
Thither, as soon as Francis Hume could get upon his track, he followed him, through danger and delay, through wilderness and night. The difficulties of the journey were a thousandfold enhanced by his ignorance of any definite route; and he made many a maddening detour and experienced tragic loss in the treachery of guides. This, at least, is apparent from some crumpled notes of travel found among his possessions. At length, suddenly, dramatically, he came upon his man. What arguments he used, no one can say. Perhaps Morton had grown sick of his fool's errand, perhaps his heart was really touched, at last; but he did turn about and make all due speed to America. Francis accompanied him only to the fastest steamer route; and then dropped off to take another boat home. His notes keep rigid silence concerning the captain. Did he hate him to the last, or had hatred, like other spawn of evil, sunk, for him, in the unplumbed depths of larger seas? Captain Morton came home and found his wife still living. She died within a week, and there is a strange contradiction in her end. The nurse who was with her says that she moaned for him, like a child, through all those dreary days; and yet when he came into the room she looked at him, turned her face to the wall, and would not speak. It seemed almost as if she had held herself within a bond she loathed, and as if death had really freed her.
Francis returned to Boston on his slow-sailing boat. They were coming up the harbor in the flush of twilight, and the State-house dome stood like a golden beehive against the sky. He had kept very much to himself, said one of the passengers who was strongly drawn to him, and now he stood by the rail, not looking forward with the seeking glance of those whose voyage is done, but musingly into the sea. A little sailboat had been keeping alongside. Two men were in it, and they were plainly drunk. They had a little rough dog, and they were teasing him. The passengers looked on with indignant protest. One or two called out; but the men swore back and bullied him the more. Their last pleasantry was to hold him over the side with a feint of dropping him; and suddenly, in an access of cruelty, they called out that he should swim for it. And then they dropped him. Francis Hume had not followed the entire occurrence; but the passenger who told it happened to glance at him at the moment when the dog was thrown overboard. That he saw. She says he glowed at once with pure anger. His face lighted and flamed; and two seconds after the dog went down, Francis Hume sprang after him. There was an outcry on the instant. A boat was lowered, but some strange clumsiness of execution seemed to overshadow the whole thing; so that Hume had to keep himself afloat for what seemed a long time. In reality, she supposes, it was minutes. That was nothing. Miles of swimming were nothing to a man of his training; but when the boat reached him, he threw the dog into it and himself slipped away. That was all. The event is confused in the minds of everybody present, and no one can wholly account for it. It seemed fatality. He simply went down, and his body was not recovered. The men in the sailboat, shocked into soberness, put about, and left the steamer in all possible haste; and the passenger who told me the story dried the little dog in her shawl and promised him a home. But of this thing every one is convinced. Francis Hume must have gone willingly to his death, but he did not choose it. The sailors of the rescuing boat say that his face showed a strange bewilderment, but no refusal of their efforts; he did not mean to drown. There must have been, said the ship's doctor, some lesion of the heart.
Much as I know of the reality of his life (and it ended not so long ago), it never seems to me to belong to this actual world, this "city by the sea." For me, its mirror lies, strangely enough, in another life of noble ends and uncompleted action: Beauchamp's Career. There is your only parallel, even to the splendid futility of its close. Read this from Meredith's novel, which is, after all, nothing less than vivid biography, and fit it to the end of Francis Hume.
"An old man volunteered the information. 'That's the boy. That boy was in his father's boat out there, with two of his brothers, larking; and he and another, older than him, fell overboard; and just then Commander Beauchamp was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump up and dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in safe: that boy; and he dived again after the other, and was down a long time. Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been rowing himself from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have been hot when he jumped in; either way, he fetched the second up, and sank with him. Down he went.'
"A fisherman said: ... 'Do you hear that voice thundering? That's the great Lord Romfrey. He's been directing the dragging since five o' the evening, and will till he drops or drowns, or up comes the body.'
"'O God, let's find the body!' the woman with the little boy called out.
"'... My lord! my lord!' sobbed the woman, and dropped on her knees.
"'What's this?' the earl said, drawing his hand away from the woman's clutch at it.
"'She's the mother, my lord,' several explained to him.
"'Mother of what?'
"'My boy,' the woman cried, and dragged the urchin to Lord Romfrey's feet, cleaning her boy's face with her apron.
"'It's the boy Commander Beauchamp drowned to save,' said a man.
"All the lights of the ring were turned on the head of the boy.... The boy struck out both arms to get his fists against his eyelids.
"This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp.
"It was not uttered, but it was visible in the blank stare at one another of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after they had examined the insignificant bit of mud-bank life remaining in this world in the place of him."
But those of us who loved Francis Hume do not ask to find his body, even for tender burial. We only pray that in some bright star-passage we may be fortunate, and one day see his soul.