E'en now, through thee, my worst seems less forlorn....
When Jack, with the agility of a railroad employe, landed on his feet
all right, he stood watching the disappearing train, annoyed,
disappointed, and mystified. He usually found moderate speech sufficient
for daily use, and as he walked back slowly toward his club, all he said
was: "Well, if all women are like Nina, I don't think I altogether
understand them!"
He felt lonely already, and for diversion bethought himself of turning
and going down to the Ideal to inspect the preparations for the race to
be sailed on the following day. There he met Charley Dusenall, and as
the yacht gently rose and fell on the slight swell coming in from the
lake, these two sat watching some of the racing spars floating alongside
and rolling about in the wavelets of the evening breeze, soaking
themselves tough for the coming contest.
"What's the matter with you?" said Charley, noticing how grumpy and
silent Jack was. "The old story, I suppose. Has Her Majesty gone back on
you again?"
Jack grunted assent.
"Only _pro tem._, though?" asked Charley.
"Oh yes, only _pro tem._, of course, but still--"
"I know. Deuced unpleasant. But, after all, what does it matter about a
woman or two when you have got a boat under you that can cut the
eye-teeth out of an equinoctial and make your soul dance the Highland
fling. Bah, chuck the whole thing up. Finish your grog and we'll have
another. Vive le joy, as we say in Paris."
Jack's face grew less long. "That's all very well, but--"
"Rubbish! you want to hug your melancholy to yourself. Rats! whistle it
down the wind. D'you think I don't know? Look at me! D'you think I
haven't been through the whole gamut--from Alpha to Omaha--with all the
hemidemisemiquavers thrown in? Lord, I have quavered whole nights. And I
say that le jew ne vaut pas the candle."
"You are quite Frenchy to-night," said Jack, brightening.
"I always get more or less Parisian after eight o'clock at night. Dull
as a country squire in the morning, though. Woke up awfully English, and
moral to-day. By the way, you had better sleep on board to-night, so as
to be ready in good time to-morrow. And don't be spoiling your nerves
with the blues. I want you to tool her through to-morrow, and get over
your megrims first. Remember this, that--
Womankind more joy discovers
Making fools than keeping lovers."
"Perhaps you are right," smiled Jack, getting up as if to shake himself
clear of his gloom. "And yet--
To be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."
"There isn't much the matter with you," said Charley, as he saw Jack
swing over the water and make a gymnastic tour round a backstay. And
when the second gun was fired the next morning, and the Ideal was
preening her feathers as she swept through a fleet of boats, there was
nothing very sad about Jack. When the huge club topsail, sitting flat as
a board, caused her to careen gently as she zipped through the
preliminary canter, and when in the race she drew out to windward,
eating up into the wind every chance slant, Charley was watching how
Jack's finger-tips gently felt the wheel, and how his eager eye took in
everything, from the luff of the topsail to the ripples on the water or
the furthest cloud, and he whispered in his ear: "What about Her Majesty
just now, old man?"
Jack was too intent on getting up into a favoring breath of air to
answer; but he tossed his head to signify that he was all right, and
fell to marveling that he had not thought of Nina for a full hour.
In spite of the yachting, however, it was difficult to keep from being
lonely at other times, especially at the chambers, because Geoffrey was
out of town, taking his summer vacation, and Jack was forced to fly from
the desolation in the city and pass most of his nights on the Ideal.
This, with the afternoon sailing and a daily bulletin sent to Nina,
addressed to Montreal, served to help him to pass away the time until
the return of Geoffrey, who was greeted, as it were, with open arms.
Their bachelor quarters were very homelike and comfortable. The
sitting-room and library, which they shared together, always seemed a
little lonely when either of them was absent.
Hampstead was pleased to get back to his luxurious arm-chair and
magazines. Jack's unsuspicious and welcoming face gave the place all the
restfulness of home after a period of more or less watchfulness against
detection. They stretched out their legs from the arm-chairs in which
they sat, and smoked and really enjoyed themselves in the old way among
their newspapers and books. After having settled in New York, when he
first came to America, Geoffrey had employed an old friend, on whose
secrecy he could rely, to call at his father's house in Shropshire and
procure for him all his old relics and curiosities. These the friend had
sent out to him. Every one of them recalled some more or less
interesting memory, and as they hung drying in the dust that Mrs. Priest
seldom attempted to remove they were like a tabular index of Geoffrey's
wanderings, on which he could cast his eyes at night and unconsciously
drop back into the past. There were whips, Tartar bridles, Arab pipes
and muskets, and old-fashioned firearms. No less than six cricket bats
proclaimed their nationality, as an offset against the stranger
trophies. There were foils and masks, boxing-gloves, fishing-rods,
snow-shoes, old swords, and any quantity of what Mrs. Priest called
"rotten old truck, only fit for a second-'and shop." Besides all this,
there were hanging shelves, covered with cups and other prizes that
Geoffrey and Jack had won in athletic contests. Even the ceiling was
made to do duty in exhibiting some lances and a central trophy composed
of Zulu assegais and Malay arrows and such things. These, with the large
bookcases of books, and, of course, Mrs. Priest, constituted their
Penates.
Here Geoffrey ensconced himself for several evenings after his return,
immersed in his books until long after Jack had knocked out his last
pipe and turned in. His manner of taking his holidays had been an
episode which was forgotten now if anything arose to divert him,
something for him to smile at, but powerless to distract his attention
from a good article in the Nineteenth Century.
But he did not visit Margaret for three or four days after his return.
When he saw her again, all his better nature came to the fore. He
delighted again in the quiet worship he felt for her now that he could
see more clearly the beauties of temperate life. "Now," he said, as he
stretched himself in his arm-chair one night, after having visited
Margaret earlier in the evening, "now, I will soon get married. With
Margaret, goodness will not only be practicable, but, I can imagine,
even enjoyable." Then, after a while, his mind recurred to his holidays,
which seemed to have been a long time ago. He yawned over the subject,
and thought it was time to go to bed. "Heigh-ho! I have exhausted the
devil and all his works now. He has got nothing more to offer me that I
care to accept. Now I have done with risks and worries. If I can only
get my money affairs straightened out I'll get married in September.
Federal stock is bound to rise, with the new changes in the bank, and
then I'll be all right. I'll just let Lewis have my horse and trap.
He'll give me more than I paid for them. The seven hundred will wipe out
a few things, and then if I can turn myself round again, I'll get
married at once."
For several days after this he saw Margaret; and the more he saw of her
the more he really longed for the life that seemed best. He was tired of
plot and counterplot. As one whose intellect was generally a discerning
one, when not clouded by exciting vagaries, he had had, all his life,
the idea of enjoying goodness for itself--at some time or other. And
entering Margaret's presence seemed like going to a pure spring fountain
from which he came away refreshed. She had the quick brain that could
skim off the best of his thought and whip it up and present it in a
changed and perhaps more pleasing form. Even the look of her hands, the
way she held up cut flowers, and delighted in their faintest odors (to
him quite imperceptible) showed how much keener and more refined her
sensibilities were than his own and made him marvel to find that in some
respects she lived in a world wherein it was a physical impossibility
for him to enter. As the days wore on in which he daily saw her, he
found himself making little sacrifices for her sake, and even practicing
a trifle of self-denial. He did things that he knew would please her,
and afterward he felt all the healthy glow and ability for virtue which
are the essences that gracious deeds distill. "Doing these things makes
me better," he said. "This moral happiness is a thing to be worked up. I
can not cultivate goodness in the abstract. I must have something
tangible--something to understand; and if good deeds pay me back in this
sort of way I may yet become, partly through my deeds, what she would
wish me to be."
Full of all this, while ruminating late one night, he took it into his
head to put it into verse, and he rather liked the simple lines.
TO MARGARET.
I.
My Love! I would Love's true disciple be,
That, 'neath the king of teachers' gracious art,
Refined sense and thought might be to me
The stepping-stones to lead me to thy heart;
That thine own realm of peace I too might share.
Where Nature's smallest things show much design
To teach kind thoughts for all that breathe; and where,
As music's laws compel by rule divine,
Naught but obeying good gives joy and rest;
Where thou can'st note the immaterial scent
Of thought and thing, which we gross men at best
Can hardly know, with senses often lent
To heavy joys that leave us but to long
For that unknown which makes thyself a song.
II.
From gracious deeds exhale the perfumes rare
Of active rest, glad care, and hopeful trust
The soul snuffs these, well pleased, and seems to share,
For once, a joy in concord with the dust.
Thus simple deeds, through Love, make known th' unknown--
That immaterial most substantial gain
Which makes of earth a heaven all its own.
And claims from spirit-land no sweeter reign.
So, while I learn in thine own atmosphere
To live, guard thou with patience all my ways,
For chance compels when weakness rules, and fear
Of self brings blackest night unto my days;
E'en now, through thee, my worst seems less forlorn,
And darkness breaks before the blushing morn.
He wondered that the word "soul" had as yet no synonym to express what
he meant without, as he said, "borrowing the language of superstition."
For this he claimed poetical license. He was amused at the similarity of
his verse to some kind of religious prayer or praise. "Perhaps," he
said, "all loves, when sufficiently refined, have only one
language--whether the aspirations be addressed to Chemosh or Dagon or
Mary or Jahveh, or to the woman who embodies all one knows of good. But
perhaps, more likely, the song that perfect love sings in the heart has
no possible language, but is part of 'the choir invisible whose music is
the gladness of the world,' and to which we have all been trying to put
words, in religions and poems.
"In twenty thousand years from now," he said, smiling, "archaeologists
will be fighting over a discussion as to whether, in these early days,
any superstition still existed. Just before they come to blows over the
matter my sonnets will be found, produced, and deciphered, and there
will be rejoicing on one side to have it proved that at a certain time
Anno Domini (an era supposed to refer to one Abraham or Buddha) man
still claimed that a local god existed called 'Margaret,' who was
evidently worshiped with fervor.
"But certainly," he added, as he read the sonnet for the third time,
"their mistake will not be such a palpable one as that about the Song of
Solomon."