III

Ask me now what of the night and what of the day, for I am the watchman

who is fixing his eyes upon life and finding it good. Again I knew

there were events in the wind. This morning my father, too, was uneasy,

and when we had finished our work, we went out together to the grove

near the landing, each with a book; but we did not read. He watched the

lake, and I tried not to listen for the dip of oars. At last it

came,--O happy sound!--and when I started up, I found his glance upon

me.

"Yes, they are coming," he said sadly, bitterly. "It seems we both

expected it."

I could not answer, for I do not understand him. Why should it be a

grief to him more than to me, this seeing men and women who talk and

laugh, with whom one could say all one thought without being

misunderstood, and who can bring us such news of the world? But I had

not time to say these things, for they were coming, two boatloads of

them; and I ran down to the landing to meet them. She was in the first

boat, her hair covered now, but kissed by the sun wherever he could

reach it. With her was an older woman, the brown-eyed young one, and

the same young men. The boat touched the landing, and I helped the

other women ashore; but she put her fingers on the shoulder of a man in

the boat and stepped past me. Why? why? my heart cried out to her. Does

she hate me for last night? Am I so different from her people because I

live in the woods? In the moment I hesitated, thinking it over, they

all got on shore, and were standing about my father and talking to him.

Then I found he had known them, years ago.

"You have changed," the older woman was saying. "You are sadder, but

not so bitter."

"That must be because of my son," he said. And he turned to me, and

named me to them, and I heard their names. She is Zoe Montrose, the

older woman is her aunt, and the two men her cousins; the others, all

young, all laughing, and looking and moving about like birds, are

friends.

"Do you mean to say you have brought him up in this wilderness?" asked

Mrs. Montrose in a whisper I heard. "He is perfect." And then she

added, after a quick glance at my face, "Quite perfect, for he can

blush."

My father turned aside as if he had no stomach for soft speeches, and

asked them to sit on the bank, because it was pleasanter out of doors.

And though Mrs. Montrose said plainly that she wished to see how we

lived, he only smiled and led her to a seat under a tree. No one can

withstand my father. It seems to me, now that I see him with other

people, that he is far finer, more courteous, more commanding than any

of them.

"Bring us the wine, Francis," he said to me, and I went in to find he

had set it out on a salver in a beautiful decanter I had never seen,

and that there were glasses and bits of bread all ready, as if he had

expected guests. I brought it out, and then went back for the little

glasses; and my father served them all. She held her glass in her hand,

and I feared she would not drink; but suddenly, behind the others, she

lifted the glass, bowed to me, and a quick smile ran over her face. And

then she set it to her lips, still looking at me. It was I who took the

glasses away, and hers, which had not been emptied, I left inside my

tent. (O, you know, my friend, my other self, what these things are to

me! only you! only you!)

"This is Homeric," said Mrs. Montrose. "Bread and wine. The flesh is

happily absent."

"Did you expect the blood of 'muttons, beefs, or goats'?" asked my

father. "Sacrifice may come later."

Then followed a great deal of talk; but I have not been used to hearing

so many people speaking at once, and I could scarcely follow, and

cannot at all remember it. But while I sat fearing every instant that

they would go, my heart bounded again, for Mrs. Montrose asked us both

to row over to their camp and lunch with them. My father at once

refused, sternly I thought, but he added, without looking at me,--

"I cannot answer for my son."

"O, yes, I will go," I cried. I must have been very eager, for they all

laughed; all except my father, and he replied, "So be it."

They said good-by to him, and fluttered down to the wharf; and I pushed

off my boat with the rest.

"Good-by!" I called to him, but he only waved his hand and turned away.

[Sidenote: _From Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Certainly I meant every word I said. The moment I saw what you had

written for that stupid game, I knew you had a marvelous facility of

expression. No doubt your father has nourished it by making you write

so many reams of criticism; but it is evident that you had a gift in

the beginning, the golden gift in the hand. And so, as I am one who

thinks no fortune happier than that of the artisan trained to hammer

out a phrase, what is more natural than that I should long for you to

ascend from prentice to workman? Therefore write me,--"every day i' the

hour," if you will,--and by all means drop the letters in the hollow

tree. Here in this forest is the happy reverse of the world-shield; let

conventions also be turned topsy-turvy, and letter-carriers be eschewed

for a box of living oak and a cushion of crumbling mould. I will be

your playmate, your comrade; not your friend. I hate the word between

men and women. It is a mantle for mawkish sentiment, the kind that

stalks about solemnly like a Puritan at a play, seeing all and

affecting his own superiority. But, an you will, be my comrade only;

let the Forest of Arden spring up again greenly, and let us play at

simplicity and outspoken joy; all for the sake of developing your

style! But, first of all, I do not like your reason for asking me to

write to you; you cannot see me alone, forsooth! and you have a

thousand questions which the others give us no time to ask and answer.

Nonsense, doubled and trebled! You know enough of me. Be content to

take me as I seem, and not as I am in the world's eyes and in my own;

then you will the longer think me worthy to walk your Arden Forest. Not

that I have anything to conceal. I am no more very bad than very good;

but it is the tragic consequence of living in this world that

(especially if we be men! you, sir, I mean you!) we idealize and then

weigh--admire, laud to the skies, and then shove under the lens--only

to find that all flesh is dust, and differeth not, except so much as

sea-sand and mountain-loam. So be content to know this only about me:

that I am five years your senior (a quarter-century, ye gods!), that I

am poor and once was ambitious; that I earned my bread, as governess

and intermittent literary hack, until a year ago, when a tiny fortune

was left me by a relative whom the immortals loved not, since he lived

so long; that I have written three novels, moderately successful, and

am burning to find out whether I can write a play; and, last of all,

that my aunt invited me down here to spend this summer in what she

calls communion with nature. There! the chapter is closed. Be

egotistical, you; but suffer me to talk about things seen and heard,

not of those pertaining to the particle Me. Tell me everything you

will, and without restraint. I may not criticise your style, though I

shall watch to see it develop into something fine.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Your letter! no, mine, as nothing has ever been mine since I was born,

for it was conceived for me and moulded for my eyes only. The words you

have said to me, even in those long hours on the lake, under the rose

of sunset, are tantalizingly lost, though I try to recall them as I lie

at night looking at the sky from my bed; I know their sense, their

sound, yet something sweetly personal is gone, like a fragrance

escaped. This is mine: transcript of your beautiful soul upon a page

less white. But though we talk all day on the lake and half the night

by camp-fires under the moon, what can I say to you on this cold paper

and with this dull pen? Ah, but the thoughts I send you! The winged

invisible messengers that go speeding between us in those silent hours

when my father sleeps, and I lie in my tent watching the solemn top of

the great pine, and over it the stars! Those messages will never be

told; earth has no speech for them. They are beyond the scope of music.

Yet there must be speech for them somewhere. They are like the

overtones we cannot hear unless our ears are delicately attuned; and if

you, in your tent, were lying in an ecstasy of waiting for them as I in

a rapture of sending, then would you not hear? But the thought is too

great, too terrible. That would be as if we were gods, to taste no more

of earthly chills and languors. Do you know what has happened to me

since I saw you first? I have grown blind to the rest of this little

world. My father's voice sounds far-off and hollow; even his face is

strange, as if half hidden by a mist. I do not see the others at your

camp, even though they and all their ways ought to be deliciously new

to me, like another language. Only when some one touches your hand, or

gives you a flower, or treats you familiarly! Then a sudden passion of

hatred for the whole world shakes me to the centre, and I long to seize

you in my arms, and speed away with you, along the lake and over the

hills. I am, in my own eyes, what I have always supposed savages to be;

perhaps I am a savage. But there is one agony you might spare me: the

story of your life before you came here. Twenty wasted years, and I did

not know you! Spring after spring and snow upon snow, when, like an

earth-born beast, I was living here in content, rowing, skating,

talking with the birds, and you, not fifty miles away, had risen like a

star and were gleaming there in that inaccessible heaven. That this

should be so, that I must accept it, is terrible to me; but to hear the

story of it is like a foretaste of death. It fascinates, it draws me,

and yet it kills. That you should say "we" over and over again, when

you talk of the music you have heard, the books you have read, is more

than I can bear. But I would not have you cease. I must know all, all;

and yet it tortures.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Frankly, I don't at all like the tone of your letter. I like it as

little as I approve your fashion of treating me "before folks." You

glower upon me; half as if I were daughter of the sun and you his

priest, and half Circassian slave. I don't like it! I came here to

these solitudes for rest and mental peace. My mind is lying fallow.

Should it waken to any immediate fertility, I don't want to expend it

on you, either in antiphonal sentiment or in staving off heroics. To

speak brutally, I want it for the publisher and mine own after-glory.

If this plain statement of the case doesn't blight the peach-blossoms

of your fancy, I don't know what will. Write me about your life here,

the life of the woods and lake. You know enough bird-lore never learned

from books to write a thousand St. Francis sermons. Even the fish have

told you secrets. I fancy they think you some strange, fresh-water

whale not to be accounted for. Tell me about them; and drop this

mawkish sentiment caught from books.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

I have read your last letter, but I only half understand you, and I

must wholly disobey. For I have learned the meaning of all things

created, the sky and the earth, the stars that are the habitations of

loving angels, and the worm who seeks his mate. I love you! It is that

for which I have lived my twenty years. At last, without warning, my

life has flowered, and the fragrance of the blossom intoxicates me, its

color blinds. At first I only knew the earth was changed, and that I

could never be the same; but I did not translate the knowledge. All the

poets had not told me enough; Shakespeare had not prepared me. But last

night--do I ever sleep now?--when I lay thinking, thinking, and always

of you, my soul spoke and said to me, "So great a thing must be

eternal. This longing is like a Beethoven Sonata; it will live and

live, growing in glory and color, through the ages, even if it live in

your soul alone." And I woke to the sense of it all, and spoke aloud:

"It is love!" It is like having a treasure given me to be all my own;

for now I have a word for happy use, and I can say over and over, "I

love you," and so tell you all. I can whisper "Beloved" in the brief

pauses when the others are with us and I have only the chance of a word

in your ear. But let me see you next alone. Let me look into your eyes,

and demand whether your soul also has had revelation of the truth.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

I ask myself whether this had to come to you so soon, and whether I

could have prevented it. I am afraid not. You were bound to fancy the

first woman you met, and that woman chanced to be Zoe Montrose. I know

exactly how it was. I have yellow hair, and the sun shone on it. There

is always a reason, if one could follow it far enough. It might have

been Clara. She was with me in the boat, if you remember; only the sun

struck her hair at a different angle, and you never discovered how red

it is in the hollows, how like leaf mould without. _Bismillah!_ the

gods have selected me for your enlightenment, and their will be done. I

am glad for you in one particular only. I am a worldly woman, filled

from the crown to the toe topful of earthly wisdom; but I am not of

those sentimental sirens who, in the strictest good-breeding, turn men

into beasts by dallying with their worship, and then leaving them high

and dry on the rock of disillusionment. I am honest, and I will sweep

away your cobwebs in the beginning. My dear, there is no such thing as

love as you conceive it. What you and the other poets have seen is a

will-o'-the-wisp, created, heaven knows why, save that we may learn

hard lessons and that the world may be peopled. You feel for me an

ecstasy of devotion. You think it will be eternal; that you were made

for me and I for you, and that our two souls will sail forever on in

each other's company, chanting pretty trifles by the way. God bless and

save you! this is the very hyperbole of the poets, and of poets under

forty at that. What dominates you is a fever of the blood, an attendant

delirium or the mind solely depending on your youth and my passable

prettiness. I wish you might have been saved; but it had to happen. I

wish, too, that the attack might leave you lightly; but that, also,

owing to your unfortunate temperament, is impossible. I can only show

my real liking for you by acting sedately, and sitting by your bedside

until you rise up sane again and put your hand to the world's work. Do

you want this emotion you call love translated to you by a woman who

has studied her kind as you study the birds? You say it is, it must be

(O, most pitiful cry of the finite after infinity!) eternal. It is

nothing of the sort. It is prosaically and sordidly of this earth,

especially in the case of men. I grant you that many women do

subordinate their lives to what they call a great passion (poor Amelia

crying over George's picture! O sad, true travesty of the worship we so

exalt!), but it is because they have fewer interests, and because

tradition has glorified feminine faithfulness and society built its

temples on woman's chastity. But men! I know them. Do not expect me to

own, for a moment, that any man is going to worship any woman all his

life long with the fervor he shows in pursuing the game. Many are kind,

some are tender, even to gray hairs and the grave; but that particular

form of idolatry which you offer me like a jewel in a case,--it turns

to paste in less than ten years, and I will have none of it. But why,

you ask, set myself outside the pale of human kind? It is a joy, though

fleeting, and if others prize it, even briefly, why not I? I know

myself too well. I am, in many ways, a hard woman. My heart is bedded

in a crust of flint, and no daw shall peck at it. But if that armor

were worn away, if I did sink my traditions to become all-womanly, if I

pinned life and soul and faith and breath to a man--O, I shudder to

think of seeing that morning-glow fade into the light of common day. It

is such women as I who break their hearts; not your sentimental miss

who goes puling about, prating love and religion, and confiding in her

pastor. I have laughed long at what I call sentiment, but I am more

sentimental than the sentimentalist. I own the awful power of one soul

over its opposite; but it is a power to which I will not give way. Now,

in plain words, what should be the outcome of love? Marriage. And

marriage; what of that? It is a welding of two souls, say you, before

an altar where a sacred fire is ever after to be kept burning.

According to my idea, gathered from observation, it is a business

partnership gilded by certain pretty fictions which no one pretends to

observe. For six months, a year, five years, the husband worships his

wife with an ideality which ought to turn beggar-maids to queens and

queens to angels. Then, plainly, he gets used to her. She is a very

good woman, but her like has been seen before, and may be again. His

nature has a dozen sides to be satisfied; he is ambitious, he loves

art, or money, or his dirty fellow-men. All very well, you say; without

such bent, souls would be cramped and torpid. Ah, but meantime the

altar-fire dies down! If she loves him truly,--

"And if, ah woe! she loves alone,"

she tends it with her poor, weak hands; but no longer are the

ministrants two. The little observances of love are forgotten, or they

degenerate into a meaningless form more pitiful than silence. You

grant, I suppose, that there is a higher life to be sought, one of

aspiration, or holy companionship in great deeds and truer speech,--but

as I live by bread, I doubt whether husbands and wives can keep that

track together. You are a young Galahad with Lancelot's heart. I

believe in you, I care mightily for you in a certain way; but you are a

man, and none of the weaknesses of mankind are foreign to you. I am a

woman, and, hard as my heart may be, it is made to be broken. Therefore

say no more to me about this foolish fever of your youth. Believe me,

it is a malady incident to the time. It will pass, in this present

form, sometime to be renewed. You will love other women, and one day

the unexpressive she will appear who has never once peeped into these

worldly text-books. Hand in hand, she and you will learn the lesson

together. It may be bitter, it may not. There are those, I believe,

whom the gods forget; but I have no faith in myself escaping their

thrusts.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Why would you not let me talk to you yesterday, without waiting to

depend on this poverty-stricken expedient? I have not had an instant

alone with you. But I love you! I love you! Who shall prevent me from

saying that! You may refuse to hear it, you may leave my letters

unread; yet all the trees of the forest shall whisper it with gossiping

tongues. But no more of this now. Your letter has made me feel

imperatively that a demand has been made upon me: the demand of proving

myself a man, and worthy, if any man can be, of the inestimable

treasure of your heart. So it becomes me to be calm, and reply to what

you say, not with mad protest, but with just consideration. I am a man,

and no weakness of mankind is foreign to me. I grant it. (Though my

heart throbs within me to swear such fealty as you have never yet

dreamed. But let that pass. My life shall show.) Well, and suppose the

first glow of new acquaintanceship does fade. Let it go. Might not

something finer usurp its place, as the flower is more than leaf or

bud? If it be possible that this great rapture should vanish (O, I know

better than you, with all your worldly lore! It is perennial,

ever-returning like the spring, though snows may intervene), do you

think my tenderness would allow one sweet observance to fade? What

infinite loving must grow of a daily life together, what fine

consideration, what pride in each other's achievement, what mutual joy!

I have talked long enough on paper. Take me, and let me serve you all

my life, guard you, cherish you, and prove the truth.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Tenderness and constancy! that, my child, is friendship--it is not

love. And I can gather a very good article of friendship from many a

wayside bush without going over hot ploughshares to seek it. Listen,

and I will tell you exactly how I learned to interpret the later course

of passion. I lived and breathed it side by side and heart to heart

with a woman once. I will not tell you her name; she is living, and

some time you may know her. I had a friend, and I loved her. She

married a man who worshiped her, who was intoxicated by her as you are

by me. He was her slave, if I may say that of one who took more than he

bestowed; but though he absorbed her life and narrowed it in certain

ways, he made her divinely happy. So it went on for years, until

suddenly, through some new combination of circumstances, they were

separated for a time, and he woke up. O telltale phrase in the life of

a man! You don't know how much it means now, but you will know. She was

dazed, confounded. Not that he was unkind to her; he was a gentleman,

though a gentleman grown indifferent. About that time he drifted into

friendship with another woman, led thereto, he would have said, by

their kindred tastes. Nothing vicious here, nothing to distress the

taste of law-abiding citizens; but a tragedy of the soul. I wonder if I

can paint it for you. Here was a passionately devoted wife, taught by

every act and word and look of years to depend for happiness on one

living creature: to turn to him, as to the sun, for life and

nourishment. Suddenly the sun was withdrawn, the light went out; she

was expected to see by candle. Do not imagine that she betrayed him to

me; we are not like that. I knew because she was so dear to me, and I

had lived beside her and learned her thoughts. I felt the tragedy as it

was enacted, day by day. I saw her poor face sodden with weeping. I

suppose she reproached him at first, wildly, in woman's way. I suppose

that because I knew him to be angry and bored. But when she saw little

winning attentions which had once been hers given to another, I think

it began to dawn upon her that they had never meant anything from the

first. They were subjective, if I may put it so: a part of the man's

nature, the trophy of any one who knew the password. Then the whole

woman hardened. She reproached him no more. If he showered on her some

of the unspent coin of his affection, she took it graciously, not

treasuring it even in thought; because she dared not build again a

house upon the sand. Her individuality grew mightily meantime. She

became a creature of a wonderful strength and depth of thought; but her

heart is dead within her. Sometimes I can see that she is even amused,

in a pathetic way, at finding how lightly his indifference can pass

over her. Now this was a good man, as men go. He would have scorned a

sin larger than this romantic peccadillo,--but he was a man! He had

waked up and found himself bored. And so would you! So far as I have

been able to unravel it, what we call love is only a compound of

selfishness and vanity. The lover gives so long as the return amuses

him. He buys with his devotion a counter-devotion calculated to make

him supremely happy; but when the story grows old, he yawns and goes

elsewhere, either to smoke, run for office, write a book, or worship

another woman. Never imagine that I decry men and exalt my own poor

kind. Woman is the more constant only because she has been taught,

through nature and inheritance, to give once and forever; and God made

man to be gregarious.

I have told you my friend's secret. Now I will tell you mine. There is

a man in the world--not you--who holds for me the fascination we are

accustomed to call love. God knows, it is an earth-born attraction, for

he is one who loves himself far more than he even professes to love me,

and there is not one higher aspiration of my soul to which he would

minister. He would tire of me, and he would break my heart. Therefore I

will have none of him, though a mighty hand seems ever dragging me

toward him, and though that part of me which is in love with the

intoxications of life bids me make one throw for happiness and then die

in despair. And neither will I have aught of you, though you seem to me

a young St. Michael with lance of honor and shield of strength.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

I do not know why, but for some reason your letter has not killed my

hope. Perhaps it would have done so, but I took it into the woods, the

deeper woods, where I have begun to go of late to be wholly alone. For

now even the tents by day-light seem to me like multitudes of eyes, and

my father, also, breaks in on my dream. So I carried it to the woods

where the light flickered and the shadows of little leaves played upon

their larger mates. They seemed to me like the phantasmagoria of being.

I had not begun to think of such things till I saw you. Life has grown

infinitely sad, as well as infinitely beautiful. It has a haze: the

haze of twilight. Well, the letter! It jarred upon me; that is a matter

of course. It removed you from me, immeasurably, with its hints of a

knowledge which I may never attain. When shall I be your equal, even in

the wisdom of this world? You have known so many people; I only one.

That of itself makes me sad. And then when I came to the inexplicable

fact that there was one you might love, I felt within me a savage pain,

a rising of hot blood, such as I never knew. What was it? Has it a

name? Does it mean a futile passion because life, destiny, have treated

us so brutally, setting you there and me here, so that your loves grew

away from me, and the tendrils of your nature twined another way? And

thus I sat suffering. But soon the wood drew me into her arms. I have

never thought much about beauty; it has always been about me. But of

late it has spoken with a new voice. O the quivering of the blue

sky-patches, the duskiness of shade! The tree-trunks were black from

the morning rain, and everything set upon a stem waved and fluttered,

though so slightly that it was rhythm and not motion. The faint shadow

on the tiarella leaf seemed to me divine; the maiden-hair rustled

greenly, and far off, in other arches, the thrush smote softly on his

silver bells. And you were the soul of it. I should not have been

surprised to see you there in some dim vista, with the sun upon your

hair. But I shall never be surprised again at seeing you. You are in my

world now; and my world cannot move without you. O, but I wish you were

not so wise! I would you had never learned this strange and intricate

game they call society. What profit is in it for you, but what infinite

pain is there in it to me! These are the ironies of Those Who are above

us. (That is my father's phrase; he talks of Them sometimes, in the

night when he cannot sleep, and walks up and down the cabin as if he

wished it were a world for width. The ironies of the immortal gods! I

begin to understand my father a little now. I thought I understood him

before.) We two, you and I, should have been born like twin birds in a

nest, and gone singing away to the south. (Yet O my bird of the shining

wing, O my bird! I would not have you other than you are.) We should

have grown together, twin plants, from the sweet black earth, to twine

and blossom and die. But it was not so to be; and therein I see what

they call the hardships of life, and against such will I take my lance

and shield, and ride forth. I will watch beside my arms, and draw down

holiness from heaven, to be worthy to fight for you, and wear your

favor. Not worthy of winning you--O, mistake me not in that! No heart

was ever humbler than mine before its lady. Yet, as I am a man, my

reward must come. I will win the world's delight, and I will wear her

in the eye of the world: I, her plain and humble squire, whose only

pride is to keep unsmirched for her fair sake. I have not your wisdom,

but I begin to believe that I have a will to conquer; and it shall be

bent upon my quest as if the world,--aye, and the sun!--were made for

that. But tell me, you who know the lore of men, when we really begin

to live, do we always ache so at the heart?

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

My child,--Your questions are delicious. What you felt on reading my

letter? Yes, Sir Innocence, it hath a name: Jealousy. 'Tis a very

legitimate passion, so I think, but it hath earned in the world a bad

repute. You white-armored child! this meeting a soul so dense to its

own emotions is like cooling drink in a desert. You complain because I

am your senior and a trifle world-worn, and you do not know that you

are complaining. You wish we had been born at the same minute. Pretty!

poetic! but in plain prose, "I would you were not my elder!" And so

would I; for if I were set back those five years, it would give me just

five years more to hack away at my plays. I will not say how your

moonings and mouthings would affect me; possibly then I might be caught

by such pretty sweets. The last question of all: Does the world feel

immortal pain at its heart? Frankly, yes. Nobody can be really happy

except imbeciles and children; and not they, if they chance to be

underfed. But be of good cheer. Only women ache all their lives long,

every day of every year. They are an unintelligent lot, not to have

learned self-protection. They wear their souls outside; and not being

in the least original, they have not yet invented a thoroughly

satisfactory coat of mail. For you, belonging to the lords of the

earth, there will, after a time, be immunity. You will break your

heart. (O, how infinitely wearisome to reflect that you have determined

to break it about me!) Then you will waken to a vapid interest in work,

discover your own nice talent for manipulating words, put all your past

woes into verse, and by the time your reputation is made, you won't

despise a good cigar and a club dinner. Nature has provided you as she

has the lobster. Never fear; your claws will grow, though they may be

often nipped. It is plain that you are to suffer, but I don't very much

pity you. Unless you take to drink or any other unhygienic habit, you

are sure to get something out of life. If you riddle your nerves, I

won't answer for you. But, at the present moment, one thing must be

done. Your letters must simply cease to be drenched with the night-dew

of flimsy sentiment. Wring it out, and send them dry. Otherwise you get

no answers. Do you hear, you gentle barbarian?

And I don't like your style overmuch. It isn't improving as I hoped.

You don't want to drag out long, saccharine sentences, dripping with

sugar as they crawl. Tell something! Let it be real,--or let it not be

at all.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

O the irony stamped on those four little letters! Real! And my whole

heart in it, a man's whole heart. That means something. But I obey you.

Last night I dreamed all night long, one picture after another. First

came this: I stood upon a dusty way, and multitudes of people were

passing. They looked like you and like my father, but they were sad.

They were bowed down, and many of them carried great brown bundles on

their backs, bundles of wood, it seemed to me, or withered grass. Then

I, too, grew very sad and heavy because every one else seemed so; but

suddenly my eye fell on a great light, and I wondered that I had not

seen it before, and that none of them saw it. There, in the midst, by

the roadside, stood the Apollo, warm, rosy, afire with life. His mantle

was purple touched with rose: such color as we see in the east before

the sun comes, and in the west after he is gone. His hair was long, and

ran down his back in a great tawny river,--darker than yours,--and he

stretched out his arm fearlessly holding the bow. Yet no one saw him

but me. I fancied, even in my dream, that the arrow he would shoot

might teach them a happier way to travel; but no one even knew he was

there, or heard the twanging of the string or saw the cleaving of the

arrow's flight. Then I sank down into darkness like a gulf, and only

rose again to the splendor of another dream. The world seemed very

large, larger than it does when you stand on the peak of Lone Mountain,

with not a shade to cover you. There were many people, in an agony of

terror and pain, as Pierre was the night after I found him wounded and

delirious from his fight with the bears. The people were old, and poor,

and shabby, but still they looked like you, and their agony was

dreadful to behold. They were all gazing upward, and I, too, turned my

eyes to see, and lo! the heavens were all burning and brazen, and I saw

that the heat was greater than I could endure. The sorrow and fear of

those about me grew more terrible; they wept and wrung their

hands,--still like Pierre, when he imagined he was again pursued. One

thought came over me; and it seemed to me more awful than anything I

saw. The trees! the sweet, faithful trees in all their newest green.

They would be burned too. There would be no more sunrise or sunset.

This was the last day of all, and not only should we burn, but so, too,

would the little tender leaves. I dropped on my face, and kept saying

softly--for it seemed as if One heard as much as if I cried

aloud--"Mighty One, save the trees, only save the trees!" I did not

know to whom I spoke, but I kept on saying it into the hot earth; and

presently I heard a great shout from the throats of all the people. I

rose slowly to my knees, to my feet, and everybody was laughing and

throwing their arms about in joy. Still they were looking up, and I

looked, too; and there, in the midst of the burning sky, was one little

cool, clear patch of blue, as large as a maple leaf, and it was

spreading fast. A fresh wind sprang up and blew from the west; and as

the blue spread, little white clouds arose and danced over it. Even

before we could get used to so great a bliss, the heaven was all blue

and fleecy-winged, and the happy trees rustled greenly.

Again I dropped adown that darkling sea of death in life, and rose up

again to find myself in a boat, floating, floating, on the wavelike

ripples of a larger lake. So I knew it was the sea. I was near the

shore, but yet not going in; and as I turned my eyes that way, I saw a

height overhung with sky so blue! I have never seen such sky. But

beneath and built upon the height was something more radiant than the

sky itself: a temple with a wilderness of columns and vistas of

columned shade within. The temple was of marble, mellowed and creamy,

and rosy also, from some inner light, it seemed to me: something that

glowed perennially and generated beauty as it glowed. And as I looked,

wonder-stricken and alive with pure delight, one of the columns melted

into air, and in the larger space it gave, stood you, my lady, clothed

in white falling in folds more wonderful than the whorling of a bud

within its sheath. You held a cup, and reached it to me with a smile

divinely kind. I rose and plunged; the water closed over me, and sleep

enwrapped me over.

And then again I rose, and I knew I was in Paradise; for it was a sunny

forest of newly-budded trees, and I heard strange music and knew you

would be with me soon and that all would be infinitely well with us

forever. I sank back into measureless peace, the perfect patience of

waiting. As I lay there, one came toward me, and although I could not

see his face, I knew, this is an angel! He asked me some

question,--what, I cannot tell; but I was in love with my pleasure of

mind, and told him what was only half true. (You know they were talking

of truth and lies at the camp the other night, and I was puzzled. Now I

know what it is to tell a half-truth.) But as I spoke, the leaves of

the trees withered and fell, and the birds left their contented harmony

and began screaming in discord. The angel was gone, and I knew that

heaven was destroyed, and I had done it. I woke, grasping my arms so

tightly with either hand that the pressure hurt. I was sobbing for

breath. But I was alive, and my heaven lay yet before me.

Have I done well? Here have I written you page upon page, only to earn

a letter in return, when I long to fill these sheets with hot

protestations, with petitions for your gentle ruth. At first it was

enough to love you. At first? for the instant of recognizing my royal

destiny; but now I would have all. Love me! love me! my heart cries and

cries, for unless you know me for your own, what shall hinder me from

losing you in this whirling progress of the days. You will go away; I

heard them talking about it this morning. What am I to do then, I ask

you? What am I to do? Mateless, solitary, left in the nest I was so

long in building, while you fly south, the sun upon your shining wings.

_What am I to do?_

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Your last letter pleased me very well, all save its note of melancholy.

Byronism is out of fashion. It isn't vendible, or it won't be in a few

years, mark my words. In the time that is coming, men-children will

rise up in literature and slash and slay and troll out hearty songs,

born in the childhood of the race, and tell us of the love of woman,

and the joy of martial blows. No more splitting of psychological hairs!

The reaction is coming, and I thank the gods who make for us to mar.

Moreover, you were hysterical at the end. Reform it altogether. No

woman of any sense of humor was ever won by tears in the man who should

be fighting for her. Take Tristram of Brittany for your model, not some

laddie who should be in petticoats. Else you will never win fair lady.

I speak generally, for it is understood from the start that this

specific fair lady is not to be won at all. Woo her you may, so you do

it amusingly, robustly, with no whining like a hungry dog. She has

little heart for "crumbling the hounds their messes." Now to business.

I lay my commands upon you. A visitor is coming to camp: a man. While

he is here, I shall have no time either to write or read, and I shall

not visit the hollow tree. Moreover, you, as you be loyal and true, are

to treat him fairly and kindly. If you hate my tendance of him as a

stranger and a guest, you are to be only the more courteous. In short,

as a knight peerless, you are to suffer manfully and in silence. For in

silence lies the only true dignity left us by the chances of life. You

see I own at once that you will suffer. That is inevitable; but I ask

you to take the screw like a gentleman. There is no better word yet

made.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

I am forbidden to write her. I must speak to some one, to something. He

came three days ago. He is tall, black-eyed, with a laugh that rings.

When I hear that laugh, I cannot even moisten my dry tongue. I have

learned the meaning of hate. Yesterday she ran to the spring to bring

him a glass of water. (He lay lazily and let her.) I followed.

"Is that the man you said you might love?" I whispered.

It looked as if the whisper burned her cheek. She turned red to the

roots of her yellow hair. She could not look at me.

"Sir Knight," she said at last, "in the world we do not ask such

things."

So I knew.

As to my manner, I think I have obeyed her. At least, I have been

silent. But if this is to be my portion, death must come soon. For all

my body is under the sway of this great trouble. I cannot eat. My hands

seem helpless, they are so cold. My throat is choked. When have I

slept? I think my father knows, and, though I cannot speak to him,

understands, if a man for whom life is over can ever understand one at

the beginning. Yet how can he? how can he? For my mother loved him, and

gave herself to him. There is in all the world no sorrow like this of

mine. To stand by and see another man help her into the boat and row

away! To see him pin a flower in her hair with those daring hands! And

I would have died to do it. Yet last night, as I stormed through the

forest like the north wind that hates the clinging leaves, blind in the

darkness, blind from within,--and only through some forest instinct

keeping myself from crashing into tree and bush,--a moment of calm

enwrapped me as quickly as if a gossamer veil had fallen from above. I

seemed to see the meaning of things, the true meaning and value. That

he should give her a flower, should take her hand, should win her

smile--nay, the touch of her cheek, her lips--words I can scarcely

write, even here,--what are these perishable gifts? Gauds of time! Did

some poet say that, or have I made the phrase? The foolish broidery on

the web of life, to wear and wear with years! But what lies behind to

engender the token--ah, that is the eternal! I cannot penetrate her

heart to see the living thoughts that thus denote themselves; but I

know my own. I challenge time itself to match them with a brood more

great. My love, my faith in her, my sacrifice, these are giants,

springing into sudden Titanic birth, and Homer's heroes are pygmies to

them. So the night calmed me, and I thanked God (did I ever write that

word before? Did I ever really think it?) that my soul was born. But in

the morning the mood had passed. I knew still what I had learned, but I

could not feel it. My father, my dear father! He sits all day with

Homer open on his knee, and does not read. Once after the others had

been here, and he saw me wince when she and the man went laughing off

together, he said to me, almost as if he were afraid to say it:--

"Don't overestimate the little familiarities of social life." He said

it, but I could not answer.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Well--child! (You are nothing more--nothing!) Our guest has gone. Now

let us hope you will straightway begin to get back your color. You look

like the travesty of Hope Deferred. Dress you for Pierrot, and you'd

serve well for the ghost of youthful folly. But you have behaved

excellently. Socially speaking, you have watched beside your arms.

Consider yourself knighted. Shall I tell you a secret? The Forest of

Arden is not a proper trysting-place for folk who have met in the town;

at least, if one of them has been learning the sweet directness of the

woods. For I, whom this man somewhat enchains and always did,--when I

saw him among the trees, I knew he was very worldly and a trifle fat!

And he does not swim well. And he slept o' mornings, and I could not

help thinking of you wandering--albeit like a zany whose bauble is

hid--in the dewy brake. Understand plainly, you are at this moment dear

to me. The thought of you is sweet as Endymion to Diana; yet I who am

no Dian, but a poor _fin de siecle_ spinster, her being distorted by

culture, would withdraw from you were you here, as the chaste huntress

from Actaeon. I like you; but I mean nothing by the saying, nothing,

nothing! Nay, and I said "I love," it would be but lightly, as if we

were both in a little play: a play which nobody wrote, and no man saw

acted, and which the actors themselves will speedily forget. Think of

the thistle-downiest thing you ever saw, the most fleeting: the glow

that rises in the sunset sky and flees before the sight. That is what I

mean when I say you are dear to me. Do not make me repent having said

it.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

June was it, June, sweet mistress of the changing year,

(She of the brow serene, unpressed by cypress fear,

Nor darkened under bitter bud and leaf

By earth's old travail and the gray world's grief,--

Delighted by her changeful diadem

And fringed with roses round her mantle hem,)

Who laid thy hand in mine,

And said, with voice divine,

Like low-toned winds that wander to and fro

Searching out reedy pipes wherein to blow:

"This is your sacrament.

Drink ye, and be content.

This is life's flowering.

Now are ye queen and king."

O thought too poor and pale!

O words that wanly fail

For godlike Love's divine expressing,

And all the rhythm of his sweet confessing,

Whose full-voiced cry should be

Harmonious ecstasy.

Now are ye rulers of the upper air;

And though men surge below, not one shall dare

To scale the summit of your mystic height,

Nor breathe your breath, nor face your burning light.

The seed shall break for you, the seasons pass,

And you, serene, shall view as in a glass

The moving pageant of the happy year,

Fleeting from naked twig and garment sere,

To wrap itself in snows, to dream and dream

On budding boughs, and all the elusive gleam

Of happy rivers kissed

By sweet, bewildering mist.

And so to dream again, and rise in power

To the full glory of a new birth-hour.

The earth is thine, the starry spaces even,

The hour is thine, and maketh its own heaven--

I to write a marriage song, I! Shall mortal man hymn worthily his own

love? Yet here is the initial note, the first faint stammering.

Remember this, my love, my lady, my soul,--if I had known what your

consent would be, I could never have waited for it all these years,

here in the still woods. I should have died of hunger. Think of it! one

only can bring bread for me, one only give me to drink. Be merciful to

me, my bread-giver! One word--not on paper! One minute--let me see you

alone!

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Do not write verse until you fail to express yourself in prose. Verse

should glide full-winged over the surface of the waters where the

spirit of God lies sleeping. It should deal carelessly with poor things

like prepositions and pronouns. They are but the spray-bubbles beaten

back by its wings. Your smaller words are staffs falling as regularly

and heavily as a tread on a board walk. Your phrases march; they do not

fly. You will say that these lines were written under a pressure of

strong emotion; but that's no reason. So might a prosy divine put forth

his religion as an excuse for prosing. Have your emotion, but keep it

to yourself if you can express it no better than this. It is neither

"_magnifique_," nor is it--literature. Nor does your prose entirely

please me. Look how it is tinged with its own sweetness. Everything is

superlative. You are not content to say a thing in one way; you must

say it in three, and then overload it with metaphor till the

understanding balks at it. You write like this:--

"The night burned clear, illumined by a million stars. Memory was with

me, and love; they, the divine. I was restless; I could not sleep. I

came out of my chamber, impatient, praying for dawn."

Your images hunt in couples, and it won't do, save in the Psalms.

Simplicity, simplicity! that must be our aim. That makes a sentence

read as if it had stood immemorially, as if it formed an integral part

of the Creator's speech when He overlooked His work and found it good.

(You see I fall into your trick of repeated images. Indeed, it is one

of the queer coincidences of fate that our phrasing should be much

alike.) This same simplicity it is which shall make Ruskin a monument

of white, like an angel with carven wings, when Sartor Resartus lies

howling, with none so poor to patch him. Ah! and by the way--very much

by the way--don't be feverish again. Don't take my idle words of last

time for more than they are worth. I told you they meant nothing. When

will you believe?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Their nothing is my all. You have declared it. The words lie in my

hand. Discourse to a man upon rhetoric, when your own letter says, "You

are dear to me"! We will talk this out. We will, I say. If not alone,

before them all. Come into the woods with me to-night at nine, and with

only the dark for witness you shall swear to me love--or denial.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Was it a week ago we spoke together there by the rock, and have you

changed me so? I told you that night I half thought--I was very sure--I

cared, and then I seemed to lose my power of mocking you. Our places

are changed. You do not know it, but I no longer command; I am

beginning, the real I that sits within me, to obey. Your ways are so

sweet, so tender, your truth so single, your chivalry so great! I am

learning to lean on your fair service as it were an arm. O, but if I am

to love you, make me good! I wish I were what you would have me be. I

am not! I am not! How soon will you learn it? They talk about a

maiden's mind, a fair white page; mine is all tracked with ugly marks.

I am blonde, young, pretty, but I am haggard and yellow within. Not

bad, you know, dear; but not the she you should have loved. Full of

worldliness, cynicism, incapacity for being deceived; there's not a

spontaneous thing about me. Yet, peradventure, my only hope is that I

see your beauty and love it. No more of this, so long as we two live.

Love me while you can, and believe it is my unhappiness that I have

lived too much.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

My lady,--It was a perverse mood that conceived your letter. And if you

had no perversity, no pretty whims, where should we all be? On a dead

level of discontent. I love the sweet humility of it. Not that I would

have you keep to that; it would never befit my sovereign lady. But for

an idle moment of a summer's day, 'tis like fooling in masquerade. Why,

you are queen of me, and queen of my great heart! (Aye, I do swear with

the biggest oaths I know that 'tis a great heart; for otherwise were to

do you some despite. Did you not create it? "Let there be love," said

you, and straightway my heart was born.) Do people always take it so

seriously when other people say they are going to marry? What was that

unguarded speech of Mrs. Montrose's:--

"Zoe, Zoe, why didn't you let that boy alone?"

O, I heard it, but I forgive her! She wots not of our kingdom. What

should a woman with false hair and fat hands know about the divine

foreknowledge of a heart in finding its mate? And my father? Why is he

sadder every day? He has not lost me. He had gained you; and he owns

you are sweet and blithe and fair beyond compare.

Later: What do you think has happened? I am to go back with you, and my

father himself proposed it! I could wake all the echoes in the hills

with joy. I shall never walk any more. I shall run and dance. What will

your world think of that,--your world of men and women? Even that my

father takes it sadly does not move me overmuch, though I wish he saw

the joy of being. (How full it is, O, how full! And you have brought me

the cup. I will drink carefully, sweetheart, though so greedily. I will

not spill a drop.) He said to me, "You must know something of life

before you make new ties and take responsibilities. So you must go out

into the world. Mrs. Montrose is a good woman. She will be your teacher

in social walks, and she will introduce you to some men I knew long

ago. I can't give you definite plans. You wouldn't follow them if I

did." When I asked him if he would go, too, he said, "No, not yet." It

was best for me to cut loose from him for a time.

_So_, fine sweetheart! I am going back with you to your city. We are

not to be separated for a single day: perhaps not until the hour when

you stand up before your people and swear to cleave to me only. I read

that service yesterday, alone in the woods. Gods! how great it is! and

yet not great enough. I would not have it "till death." It should cover

the abyss--and hell. Do you remember to think with every breath you

draw how a man loves you? how he would fain have you _his_ breath,

that he might draw you into his very veins? Ah, what words are there

for the telling? How poverty-stricken are we that there should be no

way to make you mine save by swearing oaths! If I could give you my

blood--but even that is less dear to me than one instant in your

presence. If I could sacrifice the dearest thing I have--yet that would

not be life itself; it would be you. Sacrifice you to love, to prove I

love you! What wisdom were in that?

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Dear,--Step back before it is too late. Do not come with us. No good

lies that way. Why should you leave your happy island for the grimy

streets? There is strange irony, too, in your setting off with us, such

wayworn travelers. So might a spangled troup of weary players entice a

sleepy child that had only known the lambs and birds, and lain on

fragrant hay, to take some part in their ghastly mummery. What should

be his fate? footsore, bewildered, to fall beside a wayside ditch, and

gasp his breath out in the dusty fern. Go back! I'll none of you. I

won't take the responsibility of your shining soul. Stay here, and

write the story of your island. Tell the weary old world what the

leaves whisper and how the flower-buds open. And folks will smile the

vacuous smile of ignorant criticism, and say, "O, yes, we all knew it

before!" Then perhaps your Virginia will come, and you may die in each

other's arms. For you haven't the fortunate palm, my boy; you haven't

the look of luck. They that make us have ordained you to grief, and I

would for forty shillings that your slaughter came not through me. I

will go to town. You shall send me your manuscripts, I will find a

publisher, and we will write each other letters--so friendly, so

friendly--and when you die with Virginia I will come to the woods and

sit by your grave, and sing you little songs in remembrance of the love

that was not to be mine. So fare you well; and I wish you only

forgetfulness.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Farewell! I stop in my packing to laugh. I've begun to sing the word,

to whistle little tunes to its rhythm. Aye, mistress, we will fare

well, but we fare together! It has just occurred to me that my packing

is very queer indeed: violin, gun, my few dearest books, and almost no

clothes. For my father says camp clothes, however new, won't wear the

air of town, and my tailor must be my first friend. Farewell, indeed!

Can you toss a bridegroom a two-syllabled word over your shoulder, and

turn him back at the door of the church? What is a church like? Is it

true the aisles are forest vistas? So the books say. O, the great race

of men, to have put nature into wood and stone!

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]