THE LEGEND OF HEBE, OR THE HEAVENLY HOUSEMAID
Yes, I blush to admit it, my First Love was a housemaid. So was she
known on this dull earth of ours, but in heaven--in the heaven of my
imagination, at all events--she was, of course, a goddess. How she
managed to keep her disguise I never could understand. To me she was so
obviously dea certe. The nimbus was so apparent. Yet no one seemed to
see it but me. I have heard her scolded as though she were any
ordinary earthly housemaid, and I have seen the butcher's boy trying to
flirt with her without a touch of reverence.
Maybe I understood because I saw her in that early hour of the morning
when even the stony Memnon sings, in that mystical light of the young
day when divine exiled things, condemned to rough bondage through the
noon, are for a short magical hour their own celestial selves, their
unearthly glory as yet unhidden by any earthly disguise.
Neither fairies nor fauns, dryads nor nymphs of the forest pools, have
really passed away from the world. You have only to get up early
enough to meet them in the meadows. They rarely venture abroad after
six. All day long they hide in uncouth enchanted forms. They change
maybe to a field of turnips, and I have seen a farmer priding himself
on a flock of sheep that I knew were really a most merry company of
dryads and fauns in disguise. I had but to make the sign of the cross,
sprinkle some holy water upon them, and call them by their sweet secret
names, and the whole rout had been off to the woods, with mad gambol
and song, before the eyes of the astonished farmer.
It was so with Hebe. She was really a little gold-haired blue-eyed
dryad, whose true home was a wild white cherry-tree that grew in some
scattered woodland behind the old country-house of my boyhood. In
spring-time how that naughty tree used to flash its silver nakedness of
blossom for miles across the furze and scattered birches!
I might have known it was Hebe.
Alas! it no longer bares its bosom with so dazzling a prodigality, for
it is many a day since it was uprooted. The little dryad long since
fled away weeping,--fled away, said evil tongues, fled away to the town.
Well do I remember our last meeting. Returning home one evening, I met
her at the lodge-gate hurrying away. Our loves had been discovered,
and my mother had shuddered to think that so pagan a thing had lived so
long in a Christian house. I vowed--ah! what did I not vow?--and then
we stole sadly together to comfort our aching hearts under cover of the
woodland. For the last time the wild cherry-tree bloomed,--wonderful
blossom, glittering with tears, and gloriously radiant with stormy
lights of wild passion and wilder hopes.
My faith lived valiantly till the next spring. It was Hebe who was
faithless. The cherry-tree was dead, for its dryad had gone,--fled,
said evil tongues, fled away to the town!
But as yet, in the time to which my thoughts return, our sweet secret
mornings were known only to ourselves. It was my custom then to rise
early, to read Latin authors,--thanks to Hebe, still unread. I used to
light my fire and make tea for myself, till one rapturous morning I
discovered that Hebe was fond of rising early too, and that she would
like to light my fire and make my tea. After a time she began to
sweeten it for me. And then she would sit on my knee, and we would
translate Catullus together,--into English kisses; for she was
curiously interested in the learned tongue.
How lovely she used to look with the morning sun turning her hair to
golden mist, and dancing in the blue deeps of her eyes; and once when
by chance she had forgotten to fasten her gown, I caught glimpses of a
bosom that was like two happy handfuls of wonderful white cherries...
She wore a marvellous little printed gown. And here I may say that I
have never to this day understood objections which were afterwards
raised against my early attachment to print. The only legitimate
attachment to print stuff, I was told, was to print stuff in the form
of blouse, tennis, or boating costume. Yet, thought I, I would rather
smuggle one of those little print gowns into my berth than all the
silks a sea-faring friend of mine takes the trouble to smuggle from far
Cathay. However, every one to his taste; for me,
No silken madam, by your leave,
Though wondrous, wondrous she be,
Can lure this heart--upon my sleeve--
From little pink-print Hebe.
For I found beneath that pretty print such a heart as seldom beats
beneath your satin, warm and wild as a bird's. I used to put my ear to
it sometimes to listen if it beat right. Ah, reader, it was like
putting your ear to the gate of heaven.
And once I made a song for her, which ran like this:--
There grew twin apples high on a bough
Within an orchard fair;
The tree was all of gold, I vow,
And the apples of silver were.
And whoso kisseth those apples high,
Who kisseth once is a king,
Who kisseth twice shall never die,
Who kisseth thrice--oh, were it I!--
May ask for anything.
Hebe blushed, and for answer whispered something too sweet to tell.
"Dear little head sunning over with curls," were I to meet you now,
what would happen? Ah! to meet you now were too painfully to measure
the remnant of my youth.