Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in Reginald Clarke's
studio. The spring was now well advanced and had sprinkled the meadows
with flowers, and the bookshelves of the reviewers with fiction. The
latter Ernest turned to good account, but from the flowers no poem
blossomed forth. In writing about other men's books, he almost forgot
that the springtide had brought to him no bouquet of song. Only now and
then, like a rippling of water, disquietude troubled his soul.
The strange personality of the master of the house had enveloped the
lad's thoughts with an impenetrable maze. The day before Jack had come
on a flying visit from Harvard, but even he was unable to free Ernest's
soul from the obsession of Reginald Clarke.
Ernest was lazily stretching himself on a couch, waving the smoke of
his cigarette to Reginald, who was writing at his desk.
"Your friend Jack is delightful," Reginald remarked, looking up from his
papers. "And his ebon-coloured hair contrasts prettily with the gold in
yours. I should imagine that you are temperamental antipodes."
"So we are; but friendship bridges the chasm between."
"How long have you known him?"
"We have been chums ever since our sophomore year."
"What attracted you in him?"
"It is no simple matter to define exactly one's likes and dislikes. Even
a tiny protoplasmic animal appears to be highly complex under the
microscope. How can we hope to analyse, with any degree of certitude,
our souls, especially when, under the influence of feeling, we see as
through a glass darkly."
"It is true that personal feeling colours our spectacles and distorts
the perspective. Still, we should not shrink from self-analysis. We must
learn to see clearly into our own hearts if we would give vitality to
our work. Indiscretion is the better part of literature, and it
behooves us to hound down each delicate elusive shadow of emotion, and
convert it into copy."
"It is because I am so self-analytical that I realise the complexity of
my nature, and am at a loss to define my emotions. Conflicting forces
sway us hither and thither without neutralising each other. Physicology
isn't physics. There were many things to attract me to Jack. He was
subtler, more sympathetic, more feminine, perhaps, than the rest of my
college-mates."
"That I have noticed. In fact, his lashes are those of a girl. You still
care for him very much?"
"It isn't a matter of caring. We are two beings that live one life."
"A sort of psychic Siamese twins?"
"Almost. Why, the matter is very simple. Our hearts root in the same
soil; the same books have nourished us, the same great winds have shaken
our being, and the same sunshine called forth the beautiful blossom of
friendship."
"He struck me, if you will pardon my saying so, as a rather commonplace
companion."
"There is in him a hidden sweetness, and a depth of feeling which only
intimate contact reveals. He is now taking his post-graduate course at
Harvard, and for well-nigh two months we have not met; yet so many
invisible threads of common experience unite us that we could meet after
years and still be near each other."
"You are very young," Reginald replied.
"What do you mean?"
"Ah--never mind."
"So you do not believe that two hearts may ever beat as one?"
"No, that is an auditory delusion. Not even two clocks beat in unison.
There is always a discrepancy, infinitesimal, perhaps, but a discrepancy
nevertheless."
A sharp ring of the bell interrupted the conversation. A moment later a
curly head peeped through the door.
"Hello, Ernest! How are you, old man?" the intruder cried, with a laugh
in his voice. Then, noticing Clarke, he shook hands with the great man
unceremoniously, with the nonchalance of the healthy young animal bred
in the atmosphere of an American college.
His touch seemed to thrill Clarke, who breathed heavily and then stepped
to the window, as if to conceal the flush of vitality on his cheek.
It was a breath of springtide that Jack had brought with him. Youth is a
Prince Charming. To shrivelled veins the pressure of his hand imparts a
spark of animation, and middle age unfolds its petals in his presence,
as a sunflower gazing at late noon once more upon its lord.
"I have come to take Ernest away from you," said Jack. "He looks a
trifle paler than usual, and a day's outing will stir the red corpuscles
in his blood."
"I have no doubt that you will take very good care of him," Reginald
replied.
"Where shall we go?" Ernest asked, absent-mindedly.
But he did not hear the answer, for Reginald's scepticisms had more
deeply impressed him than he cared to confess to himself.