I am here, exactly where you told me to go, though Mrs. Montrose asked
me very cordially, again and again, to make my home with her. In front
of the hotel is a noisy, rattling street, full of madness, clamor, and
delight. (I said this to Zoe, and she laughed herself faint.
"Intoxicated by a Boston street!" said she. "Wait till you see Paris.")
At the side of the hotel is a yard full of graves, with little stones,
row upon row. O, so many graves! I realize what multitudes of men have
died, and how old the world must be. I thought of it last night, and it
bore upon me so, grave upon grave--and all the unnumbered dead of all
the wars--and I rose to look from my window into the busy, lighted
night, and think of men. How they seethe here in crowds. How they hurry
up and down, each in his little world, king of that alone, and alien to
his brother. It is so strange. I think I should die of loneliness if I
had not brought my own with me. But does any one sleep? There is no
air!
O father, why are you not here! We went to the theatre to see a
woman--I told you we were going. I never so longed for speech. If only
I might describe her, even half worthily! I send you a package of
photographs, all I can find, but they stammer and halt as I do. First,
she is tall, very tall, I think, and there is in her a strange mingling
of angularity and the divinest grace. She seems to have members like
another, but the most perfect genius and harmony in the use of them.
Her hand is gracious, large; it has not that subtile outline of Zoe's,
but she uses it as an instrument potent for beauty. Her head is not set
proudly, her shoulders are not like the pine-tree, and Mrs. Montrose
tells me her clothes are wrinkled and sometimes frayed at the seams.
But her face! All the Graces strove for mastery, and threw their gifts
at her in a blind contention, so that none of them agree. They simply
strive together like a company of angels, ill-assorted, and give you
the effect of a lovely surprise. Her brows are full of pathos. Between
them there is ever a little irregular frown; and her eyes look out
beneath, imploring, piteous, saying, "I have lost my way. Will somebody
tell me where to go?" And her mouth! O, the merriest mouth, made for
joy, made for light words and blithest laughter! Her hair is dancing
yellow, and she herself dances, her spirit most of all. I have felt
joy, but I never saw it until now. Zoe laughs at me, and opens her eyes
because I have begun to talk of good and bad, of beauty and ugliness.
She says I am too apt. It is true that I have done little but study
faces since I came. Many are like animals. Some I love; some I hate at
once. I have seen three persons who are deformed, with humps on their
backs. They have a strange old look, with a queer brightness in the
eyes; and when I catch that look on those who are straight and well, I
wonder if they are deformed in the soul. But whoever else is to be
shrunk from, my player-lady is all-worthy. As I saw her fleet about the
stage, buoyant in joy and then maddened by grief unspeakable, I did not
see her alone. I caught glimpses of Shakespeare's women, for she had a
trace of them all: Portia, full-winged for justice; Juliet,
passion-doomed; Imogen, your love of loves; but most of all Beatrice,
the iris-spirit, and Ophelia, piteously undone. Then I remembered, "A
star danced," and hot tears burned my eyes. Father, how do we live when
we feel so much? And the world, so great, so piercing in its
beauty--how it presses upon us! Yet I suppose there must be a certain
habit of inner control; for though it is beautiful to Zoe, she does not
ache as I do. No, she laughs. I must get the habit of laughter. But you
see I have been up all night, thinking of this woman and the world she
opens to me; of her and the woman I love. Of Zoe I think always,
father; but you know I couldn't write that. No man could, could he?
... I have been to church. It is strangely disappointing. Of the church
itself it is not necessary to speak. It seems there are no great
cathedrals here; I had not realized that. The music was fine, but
faint; I found I had expected not a quartette but a chorus, a multitude
praising God. Then the clergyman spoke. It was very vague and very
long. It seemed to me unnecessary for him to have written anything,
when he might have read Emerson or Ruskin. I forgot him, after a time,
and began to think of Lone Mountain and the rhythm of the wind over the
firs. The sermon was something about St. John's visions and the church.
It seemed to me belittling, as if a primer should be written to explain
the gods. But perhaps I have to get the habit of church-going also.
I have been introduced to dozens of people. Dozens? let me say
hundreds. They are very kind. You ask me to speak frankly of civilized
life. Frankly then, these people we meet in battalions I do not like.
That is, I might like them individually if they appeared under a
different system; but society seems to me an intricate sort of game
which anybody could play, but which is very puzzling to the onlooker
and not in the least worth learning. For example, their conversation: a
great deal of it is mere personality, and they only speak of a certain
set. That may be a truism. I have apparently said that they do not talk
of the people they do not know because they only talk of the people
they know. But I find there are such different ways of talking. People
seem to be in groups, and each group is labeled. I am in the smart set!
I fancy some of them consider the persons who play and sing and write
books (that is unless they don't do it particularly well) as a class of
beings made for their amusement; and if it is necessary to speak of
scientists or diplomats, they do it with a certain languid interest,
and then put them aside in a drawer. There is a great deal of
philanthropy, but it is not what I thought about love of man, when I
read the old stories of the saints and those greater than saints who
came to redeem. It does not look like love; for love draws one nearer,
clasps its arms about one; is it not so? This is a kind of business
appointed for certain days in the week, just as one attends church on
Sunday. They "go down" to obscure streets and visit, and they even make
reports afterwards; but it is something like the German lessons three
times a week or the piano practice every day. But who am I to blame
them? I have walked through the poorer streets. I have looked boldly
into the faces there, and, father, I hate them. I would not touch them
for worlds, those deformed, dirty, ugly, loathsome creatures. They are
so unbeautiful! And there surely can be no need of that. They might at
least have the beauty of cleanliness and of lovely thoughts. Apparently
I cannot get the habit of philanthropy, however well I may do with
church-going. For how can we help being repulsed by what is repulsive?
As well expect the bees to seek carrion instead of roses. But what do
the books mean when they talk about love of men? The more men need
love, the less one can love them. Write me, father. I feel as if I
should know a different side of you through your letters.
Later: O, I am glad I came, if only for this one thing--a little cat, a
little mangled cat, gaunt, wounded, dying. I killed her--mercifully.
[Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume_]
Dear friend,--Only a word, to save my honor: for we lunch and tea and
dine with the world to-day. Your barbarian is more than perfect. He has
become a social sovereign, sweeping all before him; and he doesn't even
know it. He stands there in a circle of pretty girls and strenuous
spinsters, looks at them gravely with those great soft eyes, answers
their questions, and walks away in absolute unconsciousness. He says
people are so kind. On the contrary, they are enraptured with his
beauty and his miraculous truth-telling. And I begin to think Zoe may
really be in love with him. If nobody interferes with them, perhaps
they'll make a model Darby and Joan.
[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]
Dear son,--So you don't love the poor! Well, don't force it. They are
not invariably beautiful. Don't trouble about them until you have found
out why they haven't Greek profiles, as a rule, and why they sometimes
fail in expressing their lovely thoughts. Why did the cat appeal to
you? Yet she wasn't beautiful. Something had maimed her. That might be
the case with two-legged creatures also. I have been thinking about you
a lot. In fact, for the last twenty years there hasn't been anything
else for me to think about, except what is gone. And that is a chapter
by itself. But I want to tell you this: if you are in a tight place of
any sort, moral or financial, come to me, and I shall be grateful. I'm
older, and I have lived in the world. I don't want to be a prig and
hamper you with moral maxims; but if you need me, I want to be there.
Moreover, I want you to grapple alone with life. That's the only way.
To catch systematically at another swimmer is to weaken yourself and
perhaps go down,--as I did, though not for the same reason. I went down
because I never was a strong swimmer in the beginning, and then I
didn't go in for training. Enough of metaphor. I've a sort of legacy,
though, to give you. I was thinking last night what a shame it is that
we never have a fair show with temptation, because a temptation is a
thing that's never recognized until you see its back: like the
hill-wives. But this you may remember; if something seems particularly
enticing to you, and you say, "It wouldn't do for all the world to take
this, but it will do for me," draw back. That is mirage. If you begin
to shield yourself behind what the great souls have done, that, too, is
mirage. The great souls are never so little as in forsaking law for
license. Do not despise what convention has decreed, unless you know it
to be trivial and false. The general consensus of mankind really means
something. A hot-headed and hot-hearted youngling in revolt against
harness is pretty sure to get a galled back--and nothing else. Pin
yourself to law; only make sure that the law is the highest possible.
So much for Polonius. Now, your legacy; and now I have to write things
almost too sacred to be written, and that never could be said. I have
always talked to you about your mother, because you have a right to
know her; but her loss is so fresh, that every word still hurts. She
was probably the most rounded, the purest, the most crystalline nature
ever made. Her perfection could never have been exceeded. Perhaps
Imogen only was her equal. Have you ever thought what it must have been
to such a woman to conceive and bear a child? She loved me. Our life
was as perfect as her desert. Now I know the thoughts--all she could
tell even me--of that girl-mother every day of all the weeks before
your birth. There is no word--at least from me--fine enough to describe
the course of that holy rapture. There is in a woman's love a certain
joy in the pain which is borne for love's sake, a certain ecstasy of
renunciation which no man ever feels. That once I saw it pictured. I
veil my face. She was not only divinely happy because you were coming;
she became divinely holy. Her child seemed to be a sacrifice to present
to God,--her God was very living, very near her,--and she had resolved
that he should be a perfect gift. She heard the most beautiful music,
and clothed herself in the finest fabrics. She had her room hung with
angelic faces, where her eyes could open first upon them in the
morning. Those are the pictures that hang in our cabin. I could never
tell you why I chose them. Mona Lisa was banished, though she loved
her, too. But she said, "He shall have the simplicity of God; he shall
not bear the beauty of the world." She read the most wonderful books
then, the simplest, the most exalted. I have tried to remember her
choice among them, and it seems to me now that she chose always what
had the wisdom of truth and love, and that she shrank from the
sparkling and clever. I cannot tell you all her thoughts about you, nor
all her hopes. For, indeed, the confidences were mine, and near as you
are to me, she is nearer. Perhaps I could never have told you if you
had not begun to see what it is to love a woman. But the substance of
it all seems to be this: she loved you before she saw you; she
worshiped the very thought of your coming. She seemed to feel that she
was not a passive instrument chosen to bring you into the world. (You
see I speak personally now of the Unknowable. It is because she did so.
To her, all the powers that fashion and rule were blended in One, and
He was warm and living, and she loved Him. Yet her idea was not
anthropomorphic. It was colossal. This was and is incomprehensible to
me; but I am trying now to enter her habit of mind.) A passive
instrument, did I write? She was, in a way, your creator. The vital
spark came from her God through love and her, and she would not hamper
it by any earthly clogs of groveling inheritance. Well--her watching
upon her arms was over. She saw her son. And then she gave him to me to
finish her work, and died. Now the knowledge of her great love and
expectation seems to belong to you, and I have only this to say: If you
feel yourself getting a little dusty in life, think what should be
expected of one who was so loved, so waited for. You are of royal
stock; for you were born of a woman so perfect that sometimes I wonder
now if I have not imagined her. But I have not. She was real. We do not
guess out things so beautiful. God--It--Nature--makes them, and then we
describe them in verse or music, and people say we create. Don't speak
to me of this; only make use of it when the time comes.
There isn't much to tell you about camp. I do many of the same old
things. Perhaps I shall go to you; for sometimes I think you will not
want to come back. Pierre misses you.
[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]
I hate vulgarity! Mrs. Montrose seems to be a very good woman, but she
_is_ vulgar. Why, when women are middle-aged and portly, do they feel
at liberty to make rude personal speeches? She said to me yesterday:--
"If you want to marry Zoe, marry her soon." I was angry; I could only
look at her. She laughed, but she did flush. "Don't glare at me,
Ingomar," said she. "I'm speaking for your good. It isn't well for you
to marry her, but somehow you're the kind of a child I want to see
pleased. So keep on the spot. Captain Morton has come back, and he
knows Zoe has had some money left her. Be on the spot!" I walked away
without a word. Since then I have hardly seen Zoe. It is insulting to
go near her. As if I did not trust her! As if I would be "on the spot!"
[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
I can't wait to tell you! so this goes round to you by messenger. You
couldn't guess it out in a lifetime. I am rich, truly rich! Uncle Obed
has died. He was a miser, God bless him! and he's left it all to me.
Did you ever hear of anything so absurd? Now I can buy myself elegant
leisure, as if it were something to be found at the shops. I can give
myself time to write my plays. I can even bring them out. Of course,
though I lead the horse to water I can't make him drink; and though I
were Midas I can't force the public to listen. Stay! is it impossible?
Go to! there shall be souvenir nights, and the newspapers shall be
fully primed. Actresses shall pose as injured wives, and scandals shall
be described in flaming headlines. All print is open to us. We are
rich, rich! I'm quite delirious with it.
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]
Love,--You bewilder me. I didn't know you cared. Money? I didn't know
you wanted it. I believe we have a great deal. My father told me I need
not stint. Don't use yours. Please don't use it. Marry me to-morrow,
and take mine.
[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
Don't use it? Why, I _want_ to use it! You might as well ask a
new-crowned king to go and make a visit in central Africa, and pick up
all the gold he could carry. Be patient. I'll come to Africa by and by.
But just now I want to take mine ease in the opulence of my mind. I'm
having a new dress made of a queer dull green and blue, and I'll buy a
set of turquoises, God wot, and present them to myself from my dearest
friend. Uncle Obed lived and died in South America. I won't wear
mourning--I won't! I won't! Perhaps green and blue are mourning there.
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]
Dearest lady,--Will you write me--just a word, only a word? You see I
could not get a whisper from you last night, and you were so brilliant
and sparkling, like a shining gem. Call me a baby, if you like. I don't
mind. Only say you love me. Just the three words, dear? And will you
take these little blue stones? I can see how they would look against
your skin; I held them near a pinkish rose, and then I saw you in my
mind and I threw the rose aside. Dear, the three words? I feel very
humble, very much of a beggar. Will you?
[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
Now you are not sleeping, as I said when I saw the hollows coming under
your eyes, or you wouldn't fail in tact. It isn't like you. I want to
buy my turquoises myself. Don't you see how I am luxuriating in the
sense of unfamiliar power? It will pass, and then I'll take your gift.
Of course--the three words--_of course_; but I can't be always writing
them. They look so bathetic. Now I've seemed brutal and ill-tempered,
all in one letter. But why will you be faultless and appealing, and why
won't you see I am a child of the earth (the street-earth--paving-stones
ground up and mixed with champagne) and go home to your birds and trees?
[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
You were not interesting last night, and Captain Morton was; therefore
I sat out with him. But you should not have turned white and frozen in
a corner. That sort of docile remonstrance in you rouses my aunt to a
height of righteousness which nature itself cannot endure. I mean my
nature. She says you are perfection, and that I don't deserve you. The
maxims are unimpeachable; I agree to both. Go, if you like, or stay and
be agreeable. I forgot to tell you that I am going to New York to visit
Alice May, Captain Morton's cousin. Auntie is angry. Are you angry,
too? Is all the world suspicious, and of Othello's complexion? If the
primitive passions do rage just as furiously even though we speak
Victorian English, tell me, what's the use of development? We are
simply more trammeled and less frank. Having blown off the steam of my
wrath, I'll condescend to say that the invitation from Alice just
reached me, and that I have decided quite suddenly. Again, does it make
you angry? Would you rather have me fettered to your wrist by a nice,
neat little chain with your monogram on it and a jeweled pad-lock?
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]
Angry because you are going away? My lady, heart of me, you know me
better. You are free from everything but my love. It follows you
everywhere, poor pensioner. It has nothing to claim, nothing to exact.
Give it place in your suite, and be patient with it; for it would hide
away rather than break in upon your mood. All your moods are like
crystal bubbles, no more to be shivered than one of God's beautiful
worlds. I love you; but you are infinitely sacred, infinitely precious
to me,--above all, and above measure, free. Go, dearest lady; be happy.
Think of me when the thought is an added pleasure, and then--come back
to me.
[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
Dear,--O, at moments like this I feel as if I could repay you so
royally! You are a knight peerless. Remember, whatever comes between
us, that I knew this of you. I shall always think of you with
reverence. If you were here, perhaps I should be perverse and willful,
and prick your offered hand with some tempestuous thorn; but I do meet
you with one half my soul--perhaps with all my real soul. I send you a
kiss. Come to the station if you like; but it will be to see the outer
me, the worldly one.
[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]
She is gone. There is nothing to do for a week--a month, perhaps--but
prowl about this dismal city, looking in the faces of men. At the
theatres there is heavy comedy played by buffoons. So I stay away and
watch my kind, and wonder what I'm going to do to make a man of myself.
Write? What? Worldfuls of thought are creating themselves within me,
but as yet they are only star-dust. I doubt if they will be anything
more. There is a strange ache in my throat, a strange failing within
me. Is it what children call homesickness? I heard little Ethel Wynne,
the other day, talking about her first visit from home:
"They put me to bed, and I cried and cried all alone, and I was sick at
my stomach, and _I pitied me_."
"Poor Mother Bunch!" said her father. "Homesick!"
And I believe I "pity me," too. I must be a weak sort of a fellow. All
the men I meet are absorbed in something--horse--college--games. I am
sick for the unknown. Not the camp. I believe the loneliness there
would kill me now. O, why talk of it, for the sole use of spending
myself on paper! I am sick for her--her! Heavens--whatever that
means--how terrible it is to love a woman! Yet it seems so simple. If
she loved me--oh, she does love me, but she has her moods. She is
compact of fire and air and dew, and her path is like the swallow's.
How should I find her?
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]
I am taking violin lessons, as you suggest; also French. The verdict,
in each case, is that I have been wonderfully well taught. I begin to
know you for a genius. How have you managed to do so many things to
perfection? The Frenchman, Dr. Pascal, is stirring my brain more than
anything has yet succeeded in doing. So far I have felt like a muddy
pool in which the stars and gas lamps try to reflect themselves and get
only broken gleams in return. He is unsparingly critical of our
American civilization, and feels at liberty to say so to me, because I
am primeval man, fresh from my woods. He tells me such marvels of the
French. According to him, they are the creators of form: form in art,
in language, in mechanism. If I could reproduce his thought, it would
be to tell you that, as we are the youngest of nations, so, too, are we
the crudest. We are eaten up by an infinite complacency. Because we are
big, we fancy we blot out the sun whenever we choose to turn our bulk.
We submit to a thousand public abuses because we are too drenched in
our own fatness to criticise or disturb ourselves. The individual is
rampant, and all are enslaved. Consequently, this is not the land of
liberty, but of license, overrun by a wild chase of "every man for
himself." We worship our wealth, and not what it brings us. We adore
display; it tickles us more to scatter money broadcast in blazonry than
to live in chaste democracy and erect monuments to our public good. To
beauty we are almost totally blind and deaf; and what wonder, when
there is no _milieu_! We do not breathe an aesthetic atmosphere.
Our public buildings are atrocious, and--and--I could go on for pages,
but I spare you. The worst of it is that it may be true. You know how
much my opinion is worth. I might as well be a boy of ten for all I can
say, judged by experience and comparison; but to me everything in this
city is small, disappointing, unbeautiful. Nothing, except the music,
fills my ideal of what I thought life would be when I pictured it in my
tent. Is life small? Are men pygmies? Or are my judgments naught?
[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]
You are right in distrusting your judgments. I should not trust them,
either, because, as you say, you have no standard of comparison. But I
think this may truly be said. America is young, and therefore you must
not expect of her a full artistic development. She has done some of the
greatest moral work imaginable. There her instinct was unspoiled, just
as that of youth should be. She came "trailing clouds of glory." But
art is not the flower of the moment. Neither is it to be borrowed from
other lands; though thus may we obtain the technique which teaches
appreciation. A few geniuses seem to be born full-fledged; I doubt if a
nation could be. A man, even a genius, has to learn to use his tools.
So does a people. The French are form-mad. I don't wonder. Outer beauty
is a subtile poison. Once taste it and you never lose the craving. It
is a beautiful zeal, but not always the best zeal. I've been a coward
and an absentee about life myself, but I'd rather trust some of those
vigorous old pirates like Sir Francis Drake, who went about picking up
new worlds like huckleberries, than a carpet-knight on tiptoe at the
apex of civilization. But don't misunderstand me. My pen ran away. I
don't under-value your Frenchman. I only say, Be patient with America.
She is so young, poor girl! The only discouraging thing about it is, as
he says, that she doesn't know it. If she would learn of her grandams
and great-aunts, she would burn her fingers and tear her frock less
often. Her lovers must simply be patient and wait till she grows to her
task. Perhaps when she really is older and stronger, and has lifted her
straw a day, she'll be capable of carrying this burden of government.
No, she hasn't solved her problem yet; democracy is the highest form of
government, but she does not yet know how to administer it. I find I am
not so far out of gear with civilization as I thought, for I have
strong ambitions for you. I find I want you to take up the fardel of
public life; not to be a pessimistic complainer, standing aside with
your hands in your pockets, but a citizen. And if you can do something,
too, for art--but after all, I shall be content if you keep your soul
clean.
[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
Dear laddie,--I have a great deal to say to you, and I am utterly
incapable of saying it. So the only resource I have is to be short and
trust to your intuitions. You can supply my remorse, and my grief that
life is what it is. We are blind instruments of blinder fate. Captain
Morton came here soon after I did. You knew that. He says plainly that
he came to see me. More than that, he came to see me because he loved
me. If there is anything in love, isn't it this power of one creature
over another? Are we responsible? Are we true to ourselves if we fight
against it? I, at least, could not fight. If my bond to you had been a
thousand times more strong, I should have snapped it like twine. I told
him I would write you that it is broken. I wish life might be good to
you, though I cannot be. And I wish I might never see you again, now,
or after my marriage. I don't say, Forgive me. You can't yet, but some
time perhaps you will.
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]
Dear lady,--Since your letter reached me, I have written you a great many
answers. None of them are worth sending. This is all I tried to say. You
are just as much loved as before, and you are free,--perfectly, entirely
free. It must be for you exactly as if you had never been bound. And you
shall never see me.
[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]
There must be some outlet for this, or I shall be talking to people in
the street. They will think I am crazy, and that will be the end of it.
So I'll put it all down, madness and all. So Francis Hume came up to
town, did he? And lost his love! He was well enough, poor fool, down in
the woods; but the Great Ones that plague us for their sport sent him a
mirage, and it dazzled him, and he sailed after it. No! no! no! It was
not mirage. It was true--a true, true vision. She is real, and sweet,
and sound, my lady with the merry laugh and seeking eyes. I had her; I
have the vision of her. I wish I did not remember such piercing lines:
"My good days are over!" And poor Thekla,--
"Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."
Here's a supposition. Is a woman betrayed more lost than a man's soul
when it is rejected and thrown back to live alone? Perhaps there is a
difference. But this lonesomeness of the heart! If I died, should I
still live and be I, bearing my wormwood with me? A life shattered so
early! "You have broken my globe! you have broken my globe!"
They have come back to Boston, he and she. They came together, and I
saw them. I watched him go up the steps with her, and heard him laugh
when they went in. I sat on a seat in the mall, and watched. He wears a
strange significance for me. I suppose I hate him, really; and yet,
because she loves him, he holds a new and awful interest. It is really
as if _I_ loved him. I think of him with her thoughts; how strong
he is, how black those eyes, how white his hands, how round his voice.
And every thought poisons me, and I roll in my nettles and sting myself
deeper.
... I loved a woman--O God! betrayed! betrayed! Not by her. O God, save
her from punishment and remorse! She was deceived. She shall not
suffer.
... I do not know what God is. I sat thinking of Him an hour in the
dark, last night. All I know is that mankind has made Him. He is the
cry raised by their united voices when they wail. He is the uttermost
anguish of their hearts. They had to call it something, this wail of
terror and grief, and so they called it God. I call it God, too. I lift
up my voice with theirs, and cry, God! God!
... I have taken to following them about the town. They went to the
theatre last night. I sat in the gallery, and looked down on them. How
familiar she seems--how truly mine! Can anybody steal what is mine?
After the theatre I slept a little, and dreamed that we were on a
shore, a silver strip of sands, with the sea black before us. I dragged
her from him, and when I had struck him down, she turned to me, with a
glad, low cry, and clung to me, all warm. She was glad! And I have been
warm about the heart all day, for the remembrance dwells with me. How
beautiful it would be to kill him, if after it was all over she would
turn to me and rest here in my arms!
Once I could have lived through this. There would have been horse and
hound and battle-axe--sword and lance--all the rest of it. I could have
gone away to the wars and worked off some of this horror. And now, like
a rat in a trap, I've got to sit still here and go mad.
[Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume_]
Dear friend,--We have made a wretched botch of it among us, with your
poor boy. Zoe has jilted him. We might have guessed it. He has simply
disappeared. He left a card here, and quietly changed his lodgings. At
the Tremont House, they either don't know where he has gone or refuse
to say. I am worried about him. Poor boy! poor boy! he won love
everywhere, but he didn't want it. Only hers; and Captain Morton could
have conjured her into a black cat any time these three years, if he
had chosen. Don't blame me. There's a fate in things; and if you wanted
your boy to escape tragedy, you shouldn't have given him that face.
[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]
Dear boy,--Could you come down and see me a bit? I'm having a series of
colds, and they keep me in bed and make me melancholy-stupid. Then,
when you go back, perhaps I can go with you. Where are you now? From
your giving the address of a post-office box, I fancy you have left the
Tremont House. When will you come?
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]
Dear father,--I will come soon. I can't quite yet. I am sorry you are
not well. I will come soon.
[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]
The voices of people about me do hurt me so. I won't see a soul I know,
but the waiters asking for orders--O they hurt me so! I shall be like a
woman, and scream. I can't see my father yet--not yet. I couldn't bear
his face, or his voice. They would be so kind. I must be alone. Yet it
is awful for crazy people to be alone. They are so beset by dreams--and
faces. I don't think they are real, but still there are faces.
... My God! what have I seen to-day! I went walking--fast, fast--and I
took the poorest streets, so that I might not meet any one I know. And
all the animal-people--hog, rabbit, fox, cat, and the rest--kept coming
toward me as I walked; for now there seems to be a sort of mist in the
air, and one face flares out of the mist and then another. And it
rushed over me suddenly how they must ache and suffer and languish to
be so poor and so ignorant and vile. There is a dropping inside my
heart, all the time, as if the blood that ought to nourish me were
falling and falling and wasting itself in pain. And I began to look
into the faces, and it seemed to me as if these people, too, were all
of them bleeding. The ground was red and soaked. And then I learned
that all this great world is in pain just like my own. I did not seem
so much alone then--not quite. They were like me, all of them. I began
to see how some might love them; and the more hideous they were, so
much the more could one love. _Who was Jesus Christ?_
... I went to the Passion Music, and sat alone in a little crowded
corner, afraid of being seen. It crucified my soul. I felt as if the
violins were bowing on my brain, sawing the little gray strings that
are my nerves. And then it came upon me like an overwhelming sea. This
Man--this God-man--loved the whole world and was rejected by it. I
loved one; and because she cast me off, I am as I am. True or not--His
story--but _is_ it true?
... Yet I cannot stop loving her. I love her to-day more, more, a
thousand times more, if that can be. Is it true I have no right to love
her? Then I have no right to breathe. I had no right to be born.
[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]
Dear Francis,--Won't you come down for a day or two? If not, I think I
shall go to you. Write me a word.
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]
Dear father,--Try to be patient with me. I'll come soon, truly soon.
I'm not very good company. I'm thinking things out.
[Sidenote: _Telegram to Francis Hume_]