The Sphinx and I sat in our little box at _Romeo and Juliet_. It was the
first time she had seen that fairy-tale of passion upon the stage. I had
seen it played once before--in Paradise. Therefore, I rather trembled to
see it again in an earthly play-house, and as much as possible kept my
eyes from the stage. All I knew of the performance--but how much was
that!--was two lovely voices making love like angels; and when there
were no words, the music told me what was going on. Love speaks so many
languages.
One might as well look. It was as clear as moonlight to the tragic eye
within the heart. The Sphinx was gazing on it all with those eyes that
will never grow old, neither for years nor tears; but though I seemed to
be seeing nothing but an advertisement of Paderewski pianos on the
programme, I saw it--oh, didn't I see it?--all. The house had grown
dark, and the music low and passionate, and for a moment no one was
speaking. Only, deep in the thickets of my heart there sang a tragic
nightingale that, happily, only I could hear; and I said to myself, 'Now
the young fool is climbing the orchard wall! Yes, there go Benvolio and
Mercutio calling him; and now,--"he jests at scars who never felt a
wound"--the other young fool is coming out on to the balcony. God help
them both! They have no eyes--no eyes--or surely they would see the
shadow that sings "Love! Love! Love!" like a fountain in the moonlight,
and then shrinks away to chuckle "Death! Death! Death!" in the
darkness!'
But, soft, what light from yonder window breaks!
The Sphinx turned to me for sympathy--this time it was the soul of
Shakespeare in her eyes.
'Yes!' I whispered, 'it is the Opening of the Eternal Rose, sung by the
Eternal Nightingale!'
She pressed my hand approvingly; and while the lovely voices made their
heavenly love, I slipped out my silver-bound pocket-book of ivory and
pressed within it the rose which had just fallen from my lips.
The worst of a great play is that one is so dull between the acts. Wit
is sacrilege, and sentiment is bathos. Not another rose fell from my
lips during the performance, though that I minded little, as I was the
more able to count the pearls that fell from the Sphinx's eyes.
It took quite half a bottle of champagne to pull us up to our usual
spirits, as we sat at supper at a window where we could see London
spread out beneath us like a huge black velvet flower, dotted with fiery
embroideries, sudden flaring stamens, and rows of ant-like fireflies
moving in slow zig-zag processions along and across its petals.
'How strange it seems,' said the Sphinx, 'to think that for every two of
those moving double-lights, which we know to be the eyes of hansoms, but
which seem up here nothing but gold dots in a very barbaric pattern of
black and gold, there are two human beings, no doubt at this time of
night two lovers, throbbing with the joy of life, and dreaming, heaven
knows what dreams!'
'Yes,' I rejoined;' and to them I'm afraid we are even more impersonal.
From their little Piccadilly coracles our watch-tower in the skies is
merely a radiant facade of glowing windows, and no one of all who glide
by realises that the spirited illumination is every bit due to your
eyes. You have but to close them, and every one will be asking what has
gone wrong with the electric light.'
A little nonsense is a great healer of the heart, and by means of such
nonsense as this we grew merry again. And anon we grew sentimental and
poetic, but--thank heaven! we were no longer tragic.
Presently I had news for the Sphinx. 'The rose-tree that grows in the
garden of my mind,' I said, 'desires to blossom.'
'May it blossom indeed,' she replied; 'for it has been flowerless all
this long evening; and bring me a rose fresh with all the dews of
inspiration--no florist's flower, wired and artificially scented, no
bloom of yesterday's hard-driven brains.'
'I was only thinking,' I said, '_à propos_ of nightingales and roses,
that though all the world has heard the song of the nightingale to the
rose, only the nightingale has heard the answer of the rose. You know
what I mean?'
'Know what you mean! Of course, that's always easy enough,' retorted the
Sphinx, who knows well how to be hard on me.
'I'm so glad,' I ventured to thrust back; 'for lucidity is the first
success of expression: to make others see clearly what we ourselves are
struggling to see, believe with all their hearts what we are just daring
to hope, is--well, the religion of a literary man!'
'Yes! it's a pretty idea,' said the Sphinx, once more pressing the rose
of my thought to her brain; 'and indeed it's more than pretty ...'
'Thank you!' I said humbly.
'Yes, it's _true_--and many a humble little rose will thank you for it.
For, your nightingale is a self-advertising bird. He never sings a song
without an eye on the critics, sitting up there in their stalls among
the stars. He never, or seldom, sings a song for pure love, just
because he must sing it or die. Indeed, he has a great fear of death,
unless--you will guarantee him immortality. But the rose, the trusting
little earth-born rose, that must stay all her life rooted in one spot
till some nightingale comes to choose her--some nightingale whose song
maybe has been inspired and perfected by a hundred other roses, which
are at the moment pot-pourri--ah, the shy bosom-song of the rose ...'