_a_
The house stands on the height of a mountain. I am aware of the
mountain more than of the house. The room in which I am, in which we
are, has a door that opens on a narrow hall: and at the hall’s end
there is another room. That is the whole of the house. Along the room’s
length there are three French windows giving upon a roofless porch: and
the slope of the mountain starts down from the porch.
Our room is lighted by a single lamp that burns on the end wall away
from the wall with the door. (I feel that the hall is dark and that the
other room is dark and that the mountain is dark, and that the night
holding the world is dark save for our lighted room.) The walls of our
room are unpainted pine, the rafters break and cast into wild shapes
the shadow of the lamp. The long wall opposite the windows is broken
by no window, the lamp’s shadows do not fall there, its wood is white.
All about is the night, for the house stands on the very mountain
crest. Night has invaded even the hall, even the other room. And all
about is silence. The mountain sinks in silence beyond our senses. And
our senses like prisoned birds live in this shut room where alone there
is not blackness and silence.
We are I and Mildred, lovely in a gown of green that shimmers on her
body like an emerald molten by the white flame of her flesh. We are
I and Mildred and Mildred’s father, and both my parents, and Philip
LaMotte and Doctor Isaac Stein. We are seven: brightly at ease and
talking in this silent night upon a mountain top so high that the air
about us moves not toward earth but the spaces; so high that these
silences are bathed in a celestial prescience free from the marring
noises of men. And straight from our room with its solitary lamp
weaving deep shadows in the ceiling’s softness, the slope bears down
dense into a depth too vast for the penetration even of our thoughts.
Mildred is touching a guitar, and she sings:
“As ye came from holy land
Of Walsinghame,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came?
How should I know your true love
That have met many a one
As I came from the holy land,
That have come, that have gone?
She is neither white nor brown,
But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath her form divine
In the earth or the air.
I have loved her all my youth,
But now am old as you see:
Love likes not the falling fruit,
Nor the withered tree.
Know that love is a careless child,
And forgets the promise past:
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.
His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair,
And is lost with a toy....”
Singing her mediæval tune, she is one with it, and one with the silver
strings that leap from her songful fingers.
I watch Mildred, and Philip LaMotte by my side watches her: Philip
LaMotte and I watch each other watching Mildred sing. We three are
closest to the other room. At the room’s end away from us, beneath the
lamp, sit my parents chatting with Doctor Stein. Close to the central
window Mildred’s father plays a game of solitaire.
Doctor Stein sits low in an easy chair with his hands clasped on his
knees and listens smiling to the comfortable converse of my mother. My
father leans back: he is enjoying his cigar, and his attention is equal
between the heavy rings of smoke that he blows high, and the pleasant
words of his wife. Mr. Fayn touches a pensive finger to his brow
between each upturn of a card. He is very serious, and unmindful of the
talk and of the music.
Mildred sings and ceases: her smile wreathes a balance between us.
She sings again. Doctor Stein’s eyes twinkle at the complacence of my
mother’s words. My father’s eyes glaze a bit as if the warm lull of the
room rocked him toward sleep. Mr. Fayn mixes his cards noiselessly, and
lays them out in silence: his feet tap in a toy excitement as the game
goes on.
We are at peace and warm: Mildred like a green fountain, sends verdure
and dance quietly down the room. Philip and I, knowing each other,
quaff her loveliness. We have enough: we are tortured by no passion.
From her fingers, from her throat, love jets a cool source into our
lives. And beyond our eager youth sits the maturity of the others:
ironic in Doctor Stein, complacent in my mother, dully sensual in my
father, childishly earnest in Mr. Fayn.
Mother sends a word, from time to time:
“Mildred, that is a pretty tune. What is it?...” and waits for no
answer, remembering some nothing to tell the Doctor. Father frowns,
turned desultorily in our direction: but a thick puff of smoke clouds
out the frown and he is once more at ease in his flat nirvana.
Mildred sings:
“The winds all silent are,
And Phœbus in his chair
Ensaffroning sea and air
Makes vanish every star:
Night like a drunkard reels
Beyond the hills to shun his flaming wheels:
The fields with flowers are deck’d in every hue,
The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue;
Here is a pleasant place--
And nothing wanting is, save She, alas!”
“But here the place is better than your song’s. For She is here.”
Mildred laughs at my words.
“What has this place to do with the song? That is dawn. This is night.”
“Perhaps the dawn is coming,” Philip says.
“It is less rare than she. And she is already here.”
“Yes,” he goes on. “Dawn must come where She is.”
“Dawn,” I say, “will be wonderful up here.”
“It will be perpendicular.... Shot up like a flaming arrow from below.”
“And we will watch it fly up toward us, till it kindles the house!”
Mildred claps her hands, letting her guitar lie in her lap.
“But,” Philip says, “what will become of the night?”
“The night is the black deep wine in which we have drunk.”
“Day will drink of it, and drink it up, and be drunk.” Mildred laughs
at Philip.
“Day will dance,” says Philip, “on the mountain top.”
“Mildred,” I turn to her, “you ought to know. For you are like the day
standing upon the tip of the night, and peering down on us.”
“Oh, you two, with your fanciful prose! I have to take refuge in music
... matter-of-fact music.”
She touches her guitar.
“Philip,” I say, “don’t you think we can catch the dawn soon up here?”
He is silent, not knowing.
“John, don’t be foolish,” comes my mother’s voice. “How do you expect
to see the dawn at midnight?”
“But the mountain is so high.”
“What difference does that make? Eh, Doctor Stein, what do you think of
the foolish ideas of my boy?”
“If you went high enough,” smiles Doctor Stein, “above the earth, you
could catch dawn at sunset.”
My mother tosses her head, tossing the discomfort of the thought away.
Mildred’s laughter peals: “Oh, I shan’t be satisfied till I’ve seen
that.”
“We are high up,” ponders Philip.
“I have won!” shouts Mr. Fayn. “Come, look. It’s all clear. Look!”
“But we believe you, Fayn.” My father languidly blows a ring toward the
rafters.
“And even if we aren’t so high,” says Mildred, “perhaps we are high
enough to catch the dawn at midnight.”
“We are very high,” says Philip.
“Well,” cries Mildred, “why does no one look? It’s midnight now.
Instead of arguing, instead of theorizing, why does not someone look?”
She tosses her head up and down.
“Oh, you’re all too comfortable, here, to budge,” she taunts.
“And you, what about you?” says my mother savagely, while she lights a
cigarette.
Mildred turns toward me. I arise from my chair.
“I will look for you, Mildred.”
All of them are seated: all of them are laughing at my words, for even
as I hear them, my voice is solemn. What nonsense is this? I accept as
real and right this comfortable group of laughing persons, dear to me,
who mock from the bright assurance of their world matriced in black, my
gesture as I rise to seek the dawn at midnight.
“Look at him,” cries mother. “He’s really going to look. Doctor Stein,
what _will_ we do with my boy?”
My father sneers in his kindliest way, and Mildred’s laughter like a
precious stone says nothing to me. But I am up from my chair.... And I
am near the window.
“Will you know,” says Philip, “how to look for it?”