"But I must be hurrying home now," the girl said, "for it is high time
I were back in the hayfields."
"Fair shepherdess," he implored, "for heaven's sake, let us not cut
short the _pastorelle_ thus abruptly."
"And what manner of beast may that be, pray?"
"'Tis a conventional form of verse, my dear, which we at present
strikingly illustrate. The plan of a _pastorelle_ is simplicity's
self: a gentleman, which I may fairly claim to be, in some fair rural
scene--such as this--comes suddenly upon a rustic maiden of surpassing
beauty. He naturally falls in love with her, and they say all manner
of fine things to each other."
She considered him for a while before speaking. It thrilled him to see
the odd tenderness that was in her face. "You always think of saying
and writing fine things, do you not, sir?"
"My dear," he answered, gravely, "I believe that I was undoubtedly
guilty of such folly until you came. I wish I could make you
understand how your coming has changed everything."
"You can tell me some other time," the girl gaily declared, and was
about to leave him.
His hand detained her very gently. "Faith, but I fear not, for already
my old hallucinations seem to me incredible. Why, yesterday I thought
it the most desirable of human lots to be a great poet"--the gentleman
laughed in self-mockery. "I positively did. I labored every day
toward becoming one. I lived among books, esteemed that I was doing
something of genuine importance as I gravely tinkered with alliteration
and metaphor and antithesis and judicious paraphrases of the ancients.
I put up with life solely because it afforded material for
versification; and, in reality, believed the destruction of Troy was
providentially ordained lest Homer lack subject matter for an epic.
And as for loving, I thought people fell in love in order to exchange
witty rhymes."
His hand detained her, very gently. . . . Indeed, it seemed to him he
could never tire of noting her excellencies. Perhaps it was that
splendid light poise of her head he chiefly loved; he thought so at
least, just now. Or was it the wonder of her walk, which made all
other women he had ever known appear to mince and hobble, like rusty
toys? Something there was assuredly about this slim brown girl which
recalled an untamed and harmless woodland creature; and it was that, he
knew, which most poignantly moved him, even though he could not name
it. Perhaps it was her bright kind eyes, which seemed to mirror the
tranquillity of forests. . . .
"You gentry are always talking of love," she marveled.
"Oh," he said, with acerbity, "oh, I don't doubt that any number of
beef-gorging squires and leering, long-legged Oxford dandies----" He
broke off here, and laughed contemptuously. "Well, you are beautiful,
and they have eyes as keen as mine. And I do not blame you, my dear,
for believing my designs to be no more commendable than theirs--no, not
at all."
But his mood was spoiled, and his tetchy vanity hurt, by the thought of
stout well-set fellows having wooed this girl; and he permitted her to
go without protest.
Yet he sat alone for a while upon the fallen tree-trunk, humming a
contented little tune. Never in his life had he been happier. He did
not venture to suppose that any creature so adorable could love such a
sickly hunchback, such a gargoyle of a man, as he was; but that Sarah
was fond of him, he knew. There would be no trouble in arranging with
her father for their marriage, most certainly; and he meant to attend
to that matter this very morning, and within ten minutes. So Mr.
Alexander Pope was meanwhile arranging in his mind a suitable wording
for his declaration of marital aspirations.
Thus John Gay found him presently and roused him from phrase-spinning.
"And what shall we do this morning, Alexander?" Gay was always
demanding, like a spoiled child, to be amused.
Pope told him what his own plans were, speaking quite simply, but with
his countenance radiant. Gay took off his hat and wiped his forehead,
for the day was warm. He did not say anything at all.
"Well----?" Mr. Pope asked, after a pause.
Mr. Gay was dubious. "I had never thought that you would marry," he
said. "And--why, hang it, Alexander! to grow enamored of a milkmaid is
well enough for the hero of a poem, but in a poet it hints at
injudicious composition."
Mr. Pope gesticulated with thin hands and seemed upon the verge of
eloquence. Then he spoke unanswerably. "But I love her," he said.
John Gay's reply was a subdued whistle. He, in common with the other
guests of Lord Harcourt, at Nuneham Courtney, had wondered what would
be the outcome of Mr. Alexander Pope's intimacy with Sarah Drew. A
month earlier the poet had sprained his ankle upon Amshot Heath, and
this young woman had found him lying there, entirely helpless, as she
returned from her evening milking. Being hale of person, she had
managed to get the little hunchback to her home unaided. And since
then Pope had often been seen with her.
This much was common knowledge. That Mr. Pope proposed to marry the
heroine of his misadventure afforded a fair mark for raillery, no
doubt, but Gay, in common with the run of educated England in 1718, did
not aspire to be facetious at Pope's expense. The luxury was too
costly. Offend the dwarf in any fashion, and were you the proudest
duke at Court or the most inconsiderable rhymester in Petticoat Lane,
it made no difference; there was no crime too heinous for "the great
Mr. Pope's" next verses to charge you with, and, worst of all, there
was no misdoing so out of character that his adroit malignancy could
not make it seem plausible.
Now, after another pause, Pope said, "I must be going now. Will you
not wish me luck?"
"Why, Alexander--why, hang it!" was Mr. Gay's observation, "I believe
that you are human after all, and not just a book in breeches."
He thereby voiced a commentary patently uncalled-for, as Mr. Pope
afterward reflected. Mr. Pope was then treading toward the home of old
Frederick Drew. It was a gray morning in late July.
"I love her," Pope had said. The fact was undeniable; yet an
expression of it necessarily halts. Pope knew, as every man must do
who dares conserve his energies to annotate the drama of life rather
than play a part in it, the nature of that loneliness which this
conservation breeds. Such persons may hope to win a posthumous esteem
in the library, but it is at the bleak cost of making life a wistful
transaction with foreigners. In such enforced aloofness Sarah Drew had
come to him--strong, beautiful, young, good and vital, all that he was
not--and had serenely befriended "the great Mr. Pope," whom she viewed
as a queer decrepit little gentleman of whom within a week she was
unfeignedly fond.
"I love her," Pope had said. Eh, yes, no doubt; and what, he fiercely
demanded of himself, was he--a crippled scribbler, a bungling artisan
of phrases--that he should dare to love this splendid and deep-bosomed
goddess? Something of youth awoke, possessing him--something of that
high ardor which, as he cloudily remembered now, had once controlled a
boy who dreamed in Windsor Forest and with the lightest of hearts
planned to achieve the impossible. For what is more difficult of
attainment than to achieve the perfected phrase, so worded that to
alter a syllable of its wording would be little short of sacrilege?
"What whimwhams!" decreed the great Mr. Pope, aloud. "Verse-making is
at best only the affair of idle men who write in their closets and of
idle men who read there. And as for him who polishes phrases, whatever
be his fate in poetry, it is ten to one but he must give up all the
reasonable aims of life for it."
No, he would have no more of loneliness. Henceforward Alexander Pope
would be human--like the others. To write perfectly was much; but it
was not everything. Living was capable of furnishing even more than
the raw material of a couplet. It might, for instance, yield content.
For instance, if you loved, and married, and begot, and died, with the
seriousness of a person who believes he is performing an action of real
importance, and conceded that the perfection of any art, whether it be
that of verse-making or of rope-dancing, is at best a by-product of
life's conduct; at worst, you probably would not be lonely. No; you
would be at one with all other fat-witted people, and there was no
greater blessing conceivable.
Pope muttered, and produced his notebook, and wrote tentatively.
Wrote Mr. Pope:
The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No powers of body or of soul to share
But what his nature and his state can bear.
"His state!" yes, undeniably, two sibilants collided here. "His
wit?"--no, that would be flat-footed awkwardness in the management of
your vowel-sounds; the lengthened "a" was almost requisite. . . . Pope
was fretting over the imbroglio when he absent-mindedly glanced up to
perceive that his Sarah, not irrevocably offended, was being embraced
by a certain John Hughes--who was a stalwart, florid personable
individual, no doubt, but, after all, only an unlettered farmer.
The dwarf gave a hard, wringing motion of his hands. The diamond-Lord
Bolingbroke's gift--which ornamented Pope's left hand cut into the
flesh of his little finger, so cruel was the gesture; and this little
finger was bleeding as Pope tripped forward, smiling. A gentleman does
not incommode the public by obtruding the ugliness of a personal wound.
"Do I intrude?" he queried. "Ah, well! I also have dwelt in Arcadia."
It was bitter to comprehend that he had never done so.
The lovers were visibly annoyed; yet, if an interruption of their
pleasant commerce was decreed to be, it could not possibly have sprung,
as they soon found, from a more sympathetic source.
These were not subtle persons. Pope had the truth from them within ten
minutes. They loved each other; but John Hughes was penniless, and old
Frederick Drew was, in consequence, obdurate.
"And, besides, he thinks you mean to marry her!" said John Hughes.
"My dear man, he pardonably forgets that the utmost reach of my designs
in common reason would be to have her as my kept mistress for a month
or two," drawled Mr. Pope. "As concerns yourself, my good fellow, the
case is somewhat different. Why, it is a veritable romance--an affair
of Daphne and Corydon--although, to be unpardonably candid, the plot of
your romance, my young Arcadians, is not the most original conceivable.
I think that the denouement need not baffle our imaginations."
The dwarf went toward Sarah Drew. The chary sunlight had found the
gold in her hair, and its glint was brightly visible to him. "My
dear--" he said. His thin long fingers touched her capable hand. It
was a sort of caress--half-timid. "My dear, I owe my life to you. My
body is at most a flimsy abortion such as a night's exposure would have
made more tranquil than it is just now. Yes, it was you who found a
caricature of the sort of man that Mr. Hughes here is, disabled,
helpless, and--for reasons which doubtless seemed to you
sufficient--contrived that this unsightly parody continue in existence.
I am not lovable, my dear. I am only a hunchback, as you can see. My
aspirations and my sickly imaginings merit only the derision of a
candid clean-souled being such as you are." His finger-tips touched
the back of her hand again. "I think there was never a maker of
enduring verse who did not at one period or another long to exchange an
assured immortality for a sturdier pair of shoulders. I think--I think
that I am prone to speak at random," Pope said, with his half-drowsy
smile. "Yet, none the less, an honest man, as our kinsmen in Adam
average, is bound to pay his equitable debts."