I am in danger, I see, of being included among the whimsical fellows,
which I so little desire that I have got me into my writing-chair to
combat the charge, but, having sat for an unconscionable time with pen
poised, I am come agitatedly to the fear that there may be something in
it.
So long a time has elapsed, you must know, since I abated of the ardours
of self-inquiry that I revert in vain (through many rusty doors) for the
beginning of this change in me, if changed I am; I seem ever to see this
same man until I am back in those wonderful months which were half of
my life, when, indeed, I know that I was otherwise than I am now; no
whimsical fellow then, for that was one of the possibilities I put to
myself while seeking for the explanation of things, and found to be
inadmissible. Having failed in those days to discover why I was driven
from the garden, I suppose I ceased to be enamoured of myself, as of
some dull puzzle, and then perhaps the whimsicalities began to collect
unnoticed.
It is a painful thought to me to-night, that he could wake up glorious
once, this man in the elbow-chair by the fire, who is humorously known
at the club as a “confirmed spinster.” I remember him well when his
years told four and twenty; on my soul the proudest subaltern of my
acquaintance, and with the most reason to be proud. There was nothing he
might not do in the future, having already done the biggest thing, this
toddler up club-steps to-day.
Not, indeed, that I am a knave; I am tolerably kind, I believe, and most
inoffensive, a gentleman, I trust, even in the eyes of the ladies who
smile at me as we converse; they are an ever-increasing number, or so it
seems to me to-night. Ah, ladies, I forget when I first began to notice
that smile and to be made uneasy by it. I think I understand it now, and
in some vague way it hurts me. I find that I watch for it nowadays, but
I hope I am still your loyal, obedient servant.
You will scarcely credit it, but I have just remembered that I once had
a fascinating smile of my own. What has become of my smile? I swear I
have not noticed that it was gone till now; I am like one who revisiting
his school feels suddenly for his old knife. I first heard of my smile
from another boy, whose sisters had considered all the smiles they knew
and placed mine on top. My friend was scornful, and I bribed him to
mention the plebiscite to no one, but secretly I was elated and amazed.
I feel lost to-night without my smiles. I rose a moment ago to look for
it in my mirror.
I like to believe that she has it now. I think she may have some other
forgotten trifles of mine with it that make the difference between that
man and this. I remember her speaking of my smile, telling me it was my
one adornment, and taking it from me, so to speak, for a moment to let
me see how she looked in it; she delighted to make sport of me when she
was in a wayward mood, and to show me all my ungainly tricks of voice
and gesture, exaggerated and glorified in her entrancing self, like a
star calling to the earth: “See, I will show you how you hobble round,”
and always there was a challenge to me in her eyes to stop her if I
dared, and upon them, when she was most audacious, lay a sweet mist.
They all came to her court, as is the business of young fellows, to
tell her what love is, and she listened with a noble frankness, having,
indeed, the friendliest face for all engaged in this pursuit that can
ever have sat on woman. I have heard ladies call her coquette, not
understanding that she shone softly upon all who entered the lists
because, with the rarest intuition, she foresaw that they must go away
broken men and already sympathised with their dear wounds. All wounds
incurred for love were dear to her; at every true utterance about love
she exulted with grave approval, or it might be a with a little “ah!” or
“oh!” like one drinking deliciously. Nothing could have been more fair,
for she was for the first comer who could hit the target, which was her
heart.
She adored all beautiful things in their every curve and fragrance, so
that they became part of her. Day by day, she gathered beauty; had she
had no heart (she who was the bosom of womanhood) her thoughts would
still have been as lilies, because the good is the beautiful.
And they all forgave her; I never knew of one who did not forgive her;
I think had there been one it would have proved that there was a flaw in
her. Perhaps, when good-bye came she was weeping because all the pretty
things were said and done with, or she was making doleful confessions
about herself, so impulsive and generous and confidential, and so devoid
of humour, that they compelled even a tragic swain to laugh. She made a
looking-glass of his face to seek wofully in it whether she was at all
to blame, and when his arms went out for her, and she stepped back so
that they fell empty, she mourned, with dear sympathy, his lack of
skill to seize her. For what her soft eyes said was that she was always
waiting tremulously to be won. They all forgave her, because there was
nothing to forgive, or very little, just the little that makes a dear
girl dearer, and often afterward, I believe, they have laughed fondly
when thinking of her, like boys brought back. You ladies who are
everything to your husbands save a girl from the dream of youth, have
you never known that double-chinned industrious man laugh suddenly in
a reverie and start up, as if he fancied he were being hailed from
far-away?
I hear her hailing me now. She was so light-hearted that her laugh is
what comes first across the years; so high-spirited that she would have
wept like Mary of Scots because she could not lie on the bare plains
like the men. I hear her, but it is only as an echo; I see her, but it
is as a light among distant trees, and the middle-aged man can draw no
nearer; she was only for the boys. There was a month when I could have
shown her to you in all her bravery, but then the veil fell, and from
that moment I understood her not. For long I watched her, but she was
never clear to me again, and for long she hovered round me, like a dear
heart willing to give me a thousand chances to regain her love. She was
so picturesque that she was the last word of art, but she was as young
as if she were the first woman. The world must have rung with gallant
deeds and grown lovely thoughts for numberless centuries before she
could be; she was the child of all the brave and wistful imaginings of
men. She was as mysterious as night when it fell for the first time upon
the earth. She was the thing we call romance, which lives in the little
hut beyond the blue haze of the pine-woods.
No one could have looked less elfish. She was all on a noble scale,
her attributes were so generous, her manner unconquerably gracious, her
movements indolently active, her face so candid that you must swear her
every thought lived always in the open. Yet, with it all, she was a wild
thing, alert, suspicious of the lasso, nosing it in every man's hand,
more curious about it than about aught else in the world; her quivering
delight was to see it cast for her, her game to elude it; so mettlesome
was she that she loved it to be cast fair that she might escape as it
was closing round her; she scorned, however her heart might be beating,
to run from her pursuers; she took only the one step backward, which
still left her near them but always out of reach; her head on high now,
but her face as friendly, her manner as gracious as before, she is yours
for the catching. That was ever the unspoken compact between her and the
huntsmen.
It may be but an old trick come back to me with these memories, but
again I clasp my hands to my brows in amaze at the thought that all this
was for me could I retain her love. For I won it, wonder of the gods,
but I won it. I found myself with one foot across the magic circle
wherein she moved, and which none but I had entered; and so, I think, I
saw her in revelation, not as the wild thing they had all conceived
her, but as she really was. I saw no tameless creature, nothing wild
or strange. I saw my sweet love placid as a young cow browsing. As I
brushed aside the haze and she was truly seen for the first time, she
raised her head, like one caught, and gazed at me with meek affrighted
eyes. I told her what had been revealed to me as I looked upon her, and
she trembled, knowing she was at last found, and fain would she have
fled away, but that her fear was less than her gladness. She came to me
slowly; no incomprehensible thing to me now, but transparent as a pool,
and so restful to look upon that she was a bath to the eyes, like banks
of moss.
Because I knew the maid, she was mine. Every maid, I say, is for him
who can know her. The others had but followed the glamour in which she
walked, but I had pierced it and found the woman. I could anticipate her
every thought and gesture, I could have flashed and rippled and mocked
for her, and melted for her and been dear disdain for her. She would
forget this and be suddenly conscious of it as she began to speak, when
she gave me a look with a shy smile in it which meant that she knew I
was already waiting at the end of what she had to say. I call this the
blush of the eye. She had a look and a voice that were for me alone; her
very finger-tips were charged with caresses for me. And I loved even her
naughtinesses, as when she stamped her foot at me, which she could
not do without also gnashing her teeth, like a child trying to look
fearsome. How pretty was that gnashing of her teeth! All her tormentings
of me turned suddenly into sweetnesses, and who could torment like this
exquisite fury, wondering in sudden flame why she could give herself to
anyone, while I wondered only why she could give herself to me. It may
be that I wondered over-much. Perhaps that was why I lost her.
It was in the full of the moon that she was most restive, but I brought
her back, and at first she could have bit my hand, but then she came
willingly. Never, I thought, shall she be wholly tamed, but he who knows
her will always be able to bring her back.
I am not that man, for mystery of mysteries, I lost her. I know not how
it was, though in the twilight of my life that then began I groped for
reasons until I wearied of myself; all I know is that she had ceased to
love me; I had won her love, but I could not keep it. The discovery came
to me slowly, as if I were a most dull-witted man; at first I knew only
that I no longer understood her as of old. I found myself wondering what
she had meant by this and that; I did not see that when she began to
puzzle me she was already lost to me. It was as if, unknowing, I had
strayed outside the magic circle.
When I did understand I tried to cheat myself into the belief that there
was no change, and the dear heart bleeding for me assisted in that poor
pretence. She sought to glide to me with swimming eyes as before, but it
showed only that this caressing movement was still within her compass,
but never again for me. With the hands she had pressed to her breast she
touched mine, but no longer could they convey the message. The current
was broken, and soon we had to desist miserably from our pretences.
She could tell no more than I why she had ceased to love me; she was
scarcely less anxious than I that I should make her love me again, and,
as I have said, she waited with a wonderful tolerance while I strove
futilely to discover in what I was lacking and to remedy it. And when,
at last, she had to leave me, it was with compassionate cries and little
backward flights.
The failure was mine alone, but I think I should not have been so
altered by it had I known what was the defect in me through which I let
her love escape. This puzzle has done me more harm than the loss of her.
Nevertheless, you must know (if I am to speak honestly to you) that I do
not repent me those dallyings in enchanted fields. It may not have been
so always, for I remember a black night when a poor lieutenant lay down
in an oarless boat and let it drift toward the weir. But his distant
moans do not greatly pain me now; rather am I elated to find (as the
waters bring him nearer) that this boy is I, for it is something to
know that, once upon a time, a woman could draw blood from me as from
another.
I saw her again, years afterward, when she was a married woman playing
with her children. She stamped her foot at a naughty one, and I saw the
gleam of her teeth as she gnashed them in the dear pretty way I can't
forget; and then a boy and girl, fighting for her shoulders, brought
the whole group joyously to the ground. She picked herself up in the old
leisurely manner, lazily active, and looked around her benignantly,
like a cow: our dear wild one safely tethered at last with a rope of
children. I meant to make her my devoirs, but, as I stepped forward, the
old wound broke out afresh, and I had to turn away. They were but a
few poor drops, which fell because I found that she was even a little
sweeter than I had thought.