"I have perpetrated certain jingles," Pope returned. "I had not
comprehended until to-day they are the only children I shall leave
behind me. Eh, and what would you make of them, my dear, could
ingenuity contrive a torture dire enough to force you into reading
them! . . . Misguided people have paid me for contriving these
jingles. So that I have money enough to buy you from your father just
as I would purchase one of his heifers. Yes, at the very least I have
money, and I have earned it. I will send your big-thewed adorer--I
believe that Hughes is the name?--L500 of it this afternoon. That sum,
I gather, will be sufficient to remove your father's objection to your
marriage with Mr. Hughes."
Pope could not but admire himself tremendously. Moreover, in such
matters no woman is blind. Tears came into Sarah's huge brown eyes.
This tenderhearted girl was not thinking of John Hughes now. Pope
noted the fact with the pettiest exultation. "Oh, you--you are good."
Sarah Drew spoke as with difficulty.
"No adjective, my dear, was ever applied with less discrimination. It
is merely that you have rendered no inconsiderable service to
posterity, and merit a reward."
"Oh, and indeed, indeed, I was always fond of you----" The girl sobbed
this.
She would have added more, no doubt, since compassion is garrulous, had
not Pope's scratched hand dismissed a display of emotion as not
entirely in consonance with the rules of the game.
"My dear, therein you have signally honored me. There remains only to
offer you my appreciation of your benevolence toward a sickly monster,
and to entreat for my late intrusion--however unintentional--that
forgiveness which you would not deny, I think, to any other impertinent
insect."
"Oh, but we have no words to thank you, sir----!" Thus Hughes began.
"Then don't attempt it, my good fellow. For phrase-spinning, as I can
assure you, is the most profitless of all pursuits." Whereupon Pope
bowed low, wheeled, walked away. Yes, he was wounded past sufferance;
it seemed to him he must die of it. Life was a farce, and Destiny an
overseer who hiccoughed mandates. Well, all that even Destiny could
find to gloat over, he reflected, was the tranquil figure of a smallish
gentleman switching at the grass-blades with his cane as he sauntered
under darkening skies.
For a storm was coming on, and the first big drops of it were
splattering the terrace when Mr. Pope entered Lord Harcourt's mansion.
Pope went straight to his own rooms. As he came in there was a vivid
flash of lightning, followed instantaneously by a crashing, splitting
noise, like that of universes ripped asunder. He did not honor the
high uproar with attention. This dwarf was not afraid of anything
except the commission of an error in taste.
Then, too, there were letters for him, laid ready on the writing-table.
Nothing of much importance he found there.--Here, though, was a rather
diverting letter from Eustace Budgell, that poor fool, abjectly
thanking Mr. Pope for his advice concerning how best to answer the
atrocious calumnies on Budgell then appearing in _The Grub-Street
Journal_,--and reposing, drolly enough, next the proof-sheets of an
anonymous letter Pope had prepared for the forthcoming issue of that
publication, wherein he sprightlily told how Budgell had poisoned Dr.
Tindal, after forging his will. For even if Budgell had not in point
of fact been guilty of these particular peccadilloes, he had quite
certainly committed the crime of speaking lightly of Mr. Pope, as "a
little envious animal," some seven years ago; and it was for this grave
indiscretion that Pope was dexterously goading the man into insanity,
and eventually drove him to suicide. . . .
The storm made the room dark and reading difficult. Still, this was an
even more amusing letter, from the all-powerful Duchess of Marlborough.
In as civil terms as her sick rage could muster, the frightened woman
offered Mr. Pope L1,000 to suppress his verbal portrait of her, in the
character of Atossa, from his _Moral Essays_; and Pope straightway
decided to accept the bribe, and afterward to print his verses
unchanged. For the hag, as he reflected, very greatly needed to be
taught that in this world there was at least one person who did not
quail before her tantrums. There would be, moreover, even an
elementary justice in thus robbing her who had robbed England at large.
And, besides, her name was Sarah. . . .
Pope lighted four candles and set them before the long French mirror.
He stood appraising his many curious deformities while the storm raged.
He stood sidelong, peering over his left shoulder, in order to see the
outline of his crooked back. Nowhere in England, he reflected, was
there a person more pitiable and more repellent outwardly.
"And, oh, it would be droll," Pope said, aloud, "if our exteriors were
ever altogether parodies. But time keeps a diary in our faces, and
writes a monstrously plain hand. Now, if you take the first letter of
Mr. Alexander Pope's Christian name, and the first and last letters of
his surname, you have A. P. E.," Pope quoted, genially. "I begin to
think that Dennis was right. What conceivable woman would not prefer a
well-set man of five-and-twenty to such a withered abortion? And what
does it matter, after all, that a hunchback has dared to desire a
shapely brown-haired woman?"
Pope came more near to the mirror. "Make answer, you who have dared to
imagine that a goddess was ever drawn to descend into womanhood except
by kisses, brawn and a clean heart."
Another peal of thunder bellowed. The storm was growing furious. "Yet
I have had a marvelous dream. Now I awaken. I must go on in the old
round. As long as my wits preserve their agility I must be able to
amuse, to flatter and, at need, to intimidate the patrons of that ape
in the mirror, so that they will not dare refuse me the market-value of
my antics. And Sarah Drew has declined an alliance such as this in
favor of a fresh-colored complexion and a pair of straight shoulders!"
Pope thought a while. "And a clean heart! She bargained royally,
giving love for nothing less than love. The man is rustic, illiterate;
he never heard of Aristotle, he would be at a loss to distinguish
between a trochee and a Titian, and if you mentioned Boileau to him
would probably imagine you were talking of cookery. But he loves her.
He would forfeit eternity to save her a toothache. And, chief of all,
she can make this robust baby happy, and she alone can make him happy.
And so, she gives, gives royally--she gives, God bless her!"
Rain, sullen rain, was battering the window. "And you--you hunchback
in the mirror, you maker of neat rhymes--pray, what had you to offer?
A coach-and-six, of course, and pin-money and furbelows and in the end
a mausoleum with unimpeachable Latin on it! And--_paté sur paté_--an
unswerving devotion which she would share on almost equal terms with
the Collected Works of Alexander Pope. And so she chose--chose brawn
and a clean heart."
The dwarf turned, staggered, fell upon his bed. "God, make a man of
me, make me a good brave man. I loved her--oh, such as I am, You know
that I loved her! You know that I desire her happiness above all
things. Ah, no, for You know that I do not at bottom. I want to hurt,
to wound all living creatures, because they know how to be happy, and I
do not know how. Ah, God, and why did You decree that I should never
be an obtuse and comely animal such as this John Hughes is? I am so
tired of being 'the great Mr. Pope,' and I want only the common joys of
life."
The hunchback wept. It would be too curious to anatomize the writhings
of his proud little spirit.
Now some one tapped upon the door. It was John Gay. He was bidden to
enter, and, complying, found Mr. Pope yawning over the latest of
Tonson's publications.
Gay's face was singularly portentous. "My friend," Gay blurted out, "I
bring news which will horrify you. Believe me, I would never have
mustered the pluck to bring it did I not love you. I cannot let you
hear it first in public and unprepared, as, otherwise, you would have
to do."
"Do I not know you have the kindest heart in all the world? Why, so
outrageous are your amiable defects that they would be the public
derision of your enemies if you had any," Pope returned.
The other poet evinced an awkward comminglement of consternation and
pity. "It appears that when this storm arose--why, Mistress Drew was
with a young man of the neighborhood--a John Hewet----" Gay was
speaking with unaccustomed rapidity.
"Hughes, I think," Pope interrupted, equably.
"Perhaps--I am not sure. They sought shelter under a haycock. You
will remember that first crash of thunder, as if the heavens were in
demolishment? My friend, the reapers who had been laboring in the
fields--who had been driven to such protection as the trees or hedges
afforded----"
"Get on!" a shrill voice cried; "for God's love, man, get on!" Mr.
Pope had risen. This pallid shaken wisp was not in appearance the
great Mr. Pope whose ingenuity had enabled Homeric warriors to excel in
the genteel.
"They first saw a little smoke. . . . They found this Hughes with one
arm about the neck of Mistress Drew, and the other held over her face,
as if to screen her from the lightning. They were both"--and here Gay
hesitated. "They were both dead," he amended.
Pope turned abruptly. Nakedness is of necessity uncouth, he held,
whether it be the body or the soul that is unveiled. Mr. Pope went
toward a window which he opened, and he stood thus looking out for a
brief while.
"So she is dead," he said. "It is very strange. So many rare
felicities of curve and color, so much of purity and kindliness and
valor and mirth, extinguished as one snuffs a candle! Well! I am
sorry she is dead, for the child had a talent for living and got such
joy out of it. . . . Hers was a lovely happy life, but it was sterile.
Already nothing remains of her but dead flesh which must be huddled out
of sight. I shall not perish thus entirely, I believe. Men will
remember me. Truly a mighty foundation for pride! when the utmost I
can hope for is but to be read in one island, and to be thrown aside at
the end of one age. Indeed, I am not even sure of that much. I print,
and print, and print. And when I collect my verses into books, I am
altogether uncertain whether to took upon myself as a man building a
monument, or burying the dead. It sometimes seems to me that each
publication is but a solemn funeral of many wasted years. For I have
given all to the verse-making. Granted that the sacrifice avails to
rescue my name from oblivion, what will it profit me when I am dead and
care no more for men's opinions than Sarah Drew cares now for what I
say of her? But then she never cared. She loved John Hughes. And she
was right."
He made an end of speaking, still peering out of the window with
considerate narrowed eyes.
The storm was over. In the beech-tree opposite a wren was raising
optimistic outcry. The sun had won his way through a black-bellied
shred of cloud; upon the terrace below, a dripping Venus and a Perseus
were glistening as with white fire. Past these, drenched gardens, the
natural wildness of which was judiciously restrained with walks, ponds,
grottoes, statuary and other rural elegancies, displayed the
intermingled brilliancies of diamonds and emeralds, and glittered as
with pearls and rubies where tempest-battered roses were reviving in
assertiveness.
"I think the storm is over," Mr. Pope remarked. "It is strange how
violent are these convulsions of nature. . . . But nature is a
treacherous blowsy jade, who respects nobody. A gentleman can but
shrug under her onslaughts, and henceforward civilly avoid them. It is
a consolation to reflect that they pass quickly."
He turned as in defiance. "Yes, yes! It hurts. But I envy them.
Yes, even I, that ugly spiteful hornet of a man! 'the great Mr. Pope,'
who will be dining with the proudest people in England within the hour
and gloating over their deference! For they presume to make a little
free with God occasionally, John, but never with me. And _I_ envy
these dead young fools. . . . You see, they loved each other, John. I
left them, not an hour ago, the happiest of living creatures. I looked
back once. I pretended to have dropped my handkerchief. I imagine
they were talking of their wedding-clothes, for this broad-shouldered
Hughes was matching poppies and field-flowers to her complexion. It
was a scene out of Theocritus. I think Heaven was so well pleased by
the tableau that Heaven hastily resumed possession of its enactors in
order to prevent any after-happenings from belittling that perfect
instant."
"Egad, and matrimony might easily have proved an anti-climax," Gay
considered.
"Yes; oh, it is only Love that is blind, and not the lover necessarily.
I know. I suppose I always knew at the bottom of my heart. This
hamadryad was destined in the outcome to dwindle into a village
housewife, she would have taken a lively interest in the number of eggs
the hens were laying, she would even have assured her children,
precisely in the way her father spoke of John Hughes, that young people
ordinarily have foolish fancies which their rational elders agree to
disregard. But as it is, no Eastern queen--not Semele herself--left
earth more nobly--"
Pope broke off short. He produced his notebook, which he never went
without, and wrote frowningly, with many erasures. "H'm, yes," he
said; and he read aloud:
"When Eastern lovers feed the funeral fire,
On the same pile the faithful fair expire;
Here pitying heaven that virtue mutual found,
And blasted both that it might neither wound.
Hearts so sincere the Almighty saw well pleased,
Sent His own lightning and the victims seized."
Then Pope made a grimace. "No; the analogy is trim enough, but the
lines lack fervor. It is deplorable how much easier it is to express
any emotion other than that of which one is actually conscious." Pope
had torn the paper half-through before he reflected that it would help
to fill a printed page. He put it in his pocket. "But, come now, I am
writing to Lady Mary this afternoon. You know how she loves oddities.
Between us--with prose as the medium, of course, since verse should,
after all, confine itself to the commemoration of heroes and royal
persons--I believe we might make of this occurrence a neat and moving
_pastorelle_--I should say, pastoral, of course, but my wits are
wool-gathering."
Mr. Gay had the kindest heart in the universe. Yet he, also, had
dreamed of the perfected phrase, so worded that to alter a syllable of
its wording would be little short of sacrilege. Eyes kindling, he took
up a pen. "Yes, yes, I understand. Egad, it is an admirable subject.
But, then, I don't believe I ever saw these lovers----?"
"John was a well-set man of about five-and-twenty," replied Mr. Pope;
"and Sarah was a brown woman of eighteen years, three months and
fourteen days."
Then these two dipped their pens and set about a moving composition,
which has to-day its proper rating among Mr. Pope's Complete Works.