AN INDICTMENT OF SPRING
"Marry! an odd adventure!" I said to myself, as I stepped along in the
spring morning air; for, being a pilgrim, I was involuntarily in a
mediaeval frame of mind, and "Marry! an odd adventure!" came to my lips
as though I had been one of that famous company that once started from
the Tabard on a day in spring.
It had been the spring, it will be remembered, that had prompted them
to go on pilgrimage; and me, too, the spring was filling with strange,
undefinable longings, and though I flattered myself that I had set out
in pursuance of a definitely taken resolve, I had really no more
freedom in the matter than the children who followed at the heels of
the mad piper.
A mad piper, indeed, this spring, with his wonderful lying music,--ever
lying, yet ever convincing, for when was Spring known to keep his word?
Yet year after year we give eager belief to his promises. He may have
consistently broken them for fifty years, yet this year he will keep
them. This year the dream will come true, the ship come home. This
year the very dead we have loved shall come back to us again: for
Spring can even lie like that. There is nothing he will not promise
the poor hungry human heart, with his innocent-looking daisies and
those practised liars the birds. Why, one branch of hawthorn against
the sky promises more than all the summers of time can pay, and a pond
ablaze with yellow lilies awakens such answering splendours and
enchantments in mortal bosoms,--blazons, it would seem, so august a
message from the hidden heart of the world,--that ever afterwards, for
one who has looked upon it, the most fortunate human existence must
seem a disappointment.
So I, too, with the rest of the world, was following in the wake of the
magical music. The lie it was drawing me by is perhaps Spring's oldest,
commonest lie,--the lying promise of the Perfect Woman, the Quite
Impossible She. Who has not dreamed of her,--who that can dream at
all? I suppose that the dreams of our modern youth are entirely
commercial. In the morning of life they are rapt by intoxicating
visions of some great haberdashery business, beckoned to by the
voluptuous enticements of the legal profession, or maybe the Holy Grail
they forswear all else to seek is a snug editorial chair. These quests
and dreams were not for me. Since I was man I have had but one
dream,--namely, Woman. Alas! till this my thirtieth year I have found
only women. No! that is disloyal, disloyal to my First Love; for this
is sadly true,--that we always find the Golden Girl in our first love,
and lose her in our second.
I wonder if the reader would care to hear about my First Love, of whom
I am naturally thinking a good deal this morning, under the
demoralising influences of the fresh air, blue sky, and various birds
and flowers. More potent intoxicants these than any that need licenses
for their purveyance, responsible--see the poets--for no end of human
foolishness.
I was about to tell the story of my First Love, but on second thoughts
I decide not. It will keep, and I feel hungry, and yonder seems a
dingle where I can lie and open my knapsack, eat, drink, and doze among
the sun-flecked shadows.