thoughts. This question of naturalness as opposed to artificiality is
not immediately pertinent to our problem, nor is the matter of optimism
and pessimism, nor the biologic idea of survival. We should have looked
more to the way of love in the lives of men and women and become
historians of the method and conduct of the force. There would have been
less confusion. So I write, "Be that as it may," and go back to more
immediate considerations. And yet we were not far wrong! The little
flower in the crannied wall could tell what God and man is. This is of
all thoughts the most charged with truth. Let me understand one of your
conclusions, root and all, and all in all, and such is the gracious plan
of oneness in the branching and leafage and uptowering, that I must know
and name the tree. Your winding bypath, could I but follow it to the
end, must bring me to the highway of your thought, every step tell-tale
of the journey's destination. But soon I shall be with you (the fifth
of next month, after all; the arrangements as planned). Then we will
begin to know each other, and we will no longer be tormented by the
irksomeness of writing. Therefore, until easier and more fluent times,
to the heart of the subject straight.
Your love-affairs--how well you have outgrown them and how ably you
criticise them! They have not withstood the test of time, for you bear
them no loyalty. Calfdom and whelpage, vagaries of adolescence, you call
them. You do not show them much respect! For this reason your examples
lose what weight they might have borne. They belong so wholly to the
past, they are mere wraiths of bygone stirrings, they cannot clothe you
with knowledge of love. Cold now, what boots it that you have been
afire? You cannot be taught by what is utterly over.
You are catching what I aim to say, I hope, for I aim to say much. Put
it that instead of a girl whom you idealised, it was a principle--some
scheme of reform which you honoured with all the passion of young hope
and dream, and which knit your alert being into a Laocoon of striving.
Your maturer eyes see this ideal impossible and narrow. In no wise can
it satisfy your bolder reach and larger sympathy. But you do not laugh
at what has been. If you strove for it sincerely at any time, no matter
how remote, you could never again deride it. Because once you loved it
you are eternal keeper of the key to its good. What has been wholly
yours you never quite desert. Nothing has remained to you of your
love-affairs, therefore your recital of them is empty of meaning. If you
were in love to-day, and because of your philosophy you determined to do
battle with your feeling, your experience would be more authoritative.
You have known love, and having known you refuse it. Henceforth, it must
be reason and not feeling. "What is your objection?" you ask. This
merely, that the thing cannot be. Marriage to be marriage must come
through love, through the reddest romance of love, through fire of the
spirit, yes, even through the love of calfdom and whelpage. Else it is a
mockery. Where is the woman of character who would sell the be-all and
end-all of her existence for a neat catalogue of possible advantages?
Where is the man who would frankly and without embellishment dare make
such proposal? You point to yourself. But you have never explained
yourself to Hester, and even to me you are embellishing the matter with
all the might in your persuasive pen.
The ardours of calfdom and whelpage that you smile at I would have you
throb with. You underrate the firstlings of the heart, the rose and
white blossoming, the call upon the senses and the readiness to respond
and to fulfil, to give and to take, to be and make happy--the great
pride and utter abandon which is young love. At fifteen, fortunately for
the development of mind and character, hope is placed where hope must
pine. Love, then, is doomed to be tragic. The youth "attains to be
denied." But he sounds his depth. Thereafter, he knows what to expect of
himself. He has a precedent. After this he will count it a sin to
forget, and to accept the solace of mediocrity. In this lies the value
of the tragedy.
I sometimes think that whatever is youngest is best. It is the young
that, timid and bold, pay greatest reverence to knowledge, receiving
without chill of prejudice and shameful cowardice of quibbling the brave
new thought. Wisdom may be of age, but passion for scholarships,
trail-breaking, and hardy prospecting in the treasure mines of research,
is of young pioneerhood alone. It is a youth who dares be radical, who
dares, in splendid largess, build mistake upon mistake, bleeding his
life out in service. And it is a youth, standing tiptoe upon the earth,
now waiting in unperturbed ease, now searching with unbridled zeal, who
is lover and mystic. "The best is yet to be," says Rabbi Ben Ezra, "the
last of life, for which the first is made." Yes, the last of life will
be good, but only if it is like youth, beating with its pulse and
instinct with its spirit.
The unhappy youth is left on the battle-field but not to die. The
sword-thrusts challenge him to put forth greater strength in fiercer
wars. He learns hard and well.
Indeed, I cannot leave this subject of first love. How do you know it
was not good for you to love as you did? It is strange you should
resolve to love no more because at one time you loved deeply enough
almost to remain in love. It cannot be that you have grown old and that
nature is resolving for you. You tell me of your experiences in order
that I may be convinced that you know whereof you speak and I listen in
wonder. Your conclusions are unwonted.
Then something was amiss, for you have outgrown and forgotten, but how
is it with you in the present when your indifference waits not upon
time? You approach your future wife clothed in indifference as in mail,
and you do violence. How can I show you? I speak as I would to a child
to whom it is necessary to explain that it is bad to abandon an
education. Life is a school, and to me it seems that you are about to
resign long before diploma and degree, so I interpose. I was taught by
first love, and I honour that time beyond any other. I was Ellen's. I
have been lonely. For the mere human need, for the sake of that which to
the lonely is very dear, I have thought of marriage, but I remembered
and I refused to do violence to myself remembering. Long ago my standard
was established. I learned how deeply I could feel, and I refuse to
acknowledge myself bankrupt, I refuse to approach an honourable human
being with less than my all. Until my soul flower out again, until suns
flame about my head as in that dear yoretime, I shall keep teeming with
dreams and make no affront. I who have seen love, dare not live without
love.
I would not give in to fate, Herbert. I would assert my manhood. I would
abide in the strength of the first output, going with the flush of the
first glow into the gloom. I would spurn the calm of compromise and
mediocrity and register a high claim. I would keep the peace with
Romance and fly her colours to the last. You have lived? It is well, and
it might have been better, but do not give over and talk of
stirpiculture. You are not wiser than the laws which made you.
DANE.
XXX
FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE,
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
September 18, 19--.
How abominable I must seem to you, Dane! For certainly a creature is
abominable that lays rough hands on one's dearest possessions. I doubt
if even you realise how deeply you are stirred by my conduct towards
love. My marriage with Hester, considering the quality and degree of the
contracting parties, must appear as terrible to you as the sodomies that
caused God's ancient wrath to destroy cities. You see, I take your side
for the time, see with your eyes, live your thoughts, suffer what you
suffer; and then I become myself again and steel myself to continue in
what I think is the right.
After all, mine is the harder part. There are easier tasks than those of
the illusion-shatterer. That which is established is hard to overthrow.
It has the nine points of possession, and woe to him who attempts its
disestablishment; for it will persist till it be drowned and washed away
in the blood of the reformers and radicals.
Love is a convention. Men and women are attached to it as they are
attached to material things, as a king is attached to his crown or an
old family to its ancestral home. We have all been led to believe that
love is splendid and wonderful, and the greatest thing in the world, and
it pains us to part with it. Faith, we will not part with it. The man
who would bid us put it by is a knave and a fool, a vile, degraded
wretch, who will receive pardon neither in this world nor the next.
This is nothing new. It is the attitude of the established whenever its
conventions are attacked. It was the attitude of the Jew toward Christ,
of the Roman toward the Christian, of the Christian toward the infidel
and the heretic. And it is sincere and natural. All things desire to
endure, and they die hard. Love will die hard, as died the idolatries
of our forefathers, the geocentric theory of the universe, and the
divine right of kings.
So, I say, the rancour and warmth of the established when attacked is
sincere. The world is mastered by the convention of love, and when one
profanes love's Holy of Holies the world is unutterably shocked and
hurt. Love is a thing for lovers only. It must not be approached by the
sacrilegious scientist. Let him keep to his physics and chemistry,
things definite and solid and gross. Love is for ardent speculation, not
laboratory analysis. Love is (as the reverend prior and the learned
bodies told brother Lippo of man's soul):--
"--a fire, smoke ... no, it's not ...
It's vapour done up like a new-born babe--
(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)
It's ... well, what matters talking, it's the soul!"
I thoroughly understand the popular sentimental repugnance to a
scientific discussion of love. Because I dissect love, and weigh and
calculate, it is denied that I am capable of experiencing love. It is
too radiant and glorious a thing for a dull clod like me to know. And
because I cannot experience love and be made mad by it, my fitness to
describe its phenomena is likewise denied. Only the lover may describe
love. And only the lunatic, I suppose, may compose a medical brochure on
insanity.
HERBERT.
XXXI
FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE
LONDON,
October 7, 19--.
It is true that you have a hard task before you, but it is not because
you are fighting convention and shattering illusion; it is because you
are assailing a good. Love has never acquired the prestige of the
established, and the run of marriages are prompted by advantage,
routine, or passion. So you are no innovator, Herbert. The idolatry of
love will not be overthrown by a drawn battle between those of the Faith
and those of the Reformation. Nothing so spectacular awaits us.
I have a friend who has undertaken to translate "Inferno" into English,
keeping to the _terza rima_. "It is like climbing the Matterhorn," he
says gravely. "I get to places where I feel I can go neither forward nor
back. The task is prodigious." And it is. But whom will it concern if
he succeeds in going forward? There are few who will read his book. The
translation is of more importance to the translator than to anyone else.
Yet the professor's _magnum opus_ confers a degree upon us all. Because
a standard is upheld and a man is willing and able to climb a Matterhorn
of thought, we can ourselves stride forward with better courage. The
work will be an output of heroism, and it will ennoble even those who
will not know of it.
I have another friend who ruined his life for love, so says the world
that you think steeped in the idolatry of love. A priest, who by a few
strokes was able to quell in America a strong and bitter movement, a
gifted orator, a man of giant powers, and who was won away at the age of
forty from his career by a mere girl. The girl planned nothing. She
found herself a force in his life almost despite herself. The mere fact
that she lived was enough to wrest this Titan from the arms of the
Church. He told me that she criticised him with the directness of a
simple nature, and that he came to understand her truths better than she
herself. I think she must have loved him at first, but she did not go
to him when all grew calm. I wish it could have been otherwise, and that
she could have brought him a woman's heart.
The priest, as the professor, is a hero. Both made great outputs.
There are few who can live like these. But because there are a few who
can love and work, the game is saved. And because there are a few of
these, we must ever quarrel with the many who are not like them.
"Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the Muse,--
Nothing refuse."
Does this really seem such poor philosophy to you? And when, Herbert,
will you marry?
DANE KEMPTON.
XXXII
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
November 20, 19--.
Hester met me at the station, and we walked through the Arboretum to her
home on the campus. Then followed an evening together in the dormitory
parlour. I have just left her. Her face was tumultuously joyous when I
murmured my "At last!" Her tearful excitement was like Barbara's. You
did not tell me she is so young. You must have made her feel our
closeness, or she may have found a bit of my verse that all expressed
her, and presto, the whole-hearted one is my friend. Her poet is now her
father, brother, comrade,--what she chooses, and all she chooses.
At one time, before we were well out of the Arboretum, our eyes met, and
there was something so sad and mild and strange in the burn of her gaze
that I felt her frank spirit was unveiling itself in an utterness of
speech. But I have become too much spoilt by mere length of living to be
able to remember back and recognise what young eyes mean when they look
like that. From London to Palo Alto is a short trip, if at the end of it
you meet a Hester. Yet I am sad. The mood crept on me the moment we grew
aware that evening had come, and we stopped a little in front of the
arch to observe the night-look of the foot-hills. Lights had begun to
appear in the corridors of the quadrangle, and here and there in a
professor's office, while Roble and Encina looked like lit-up ferries.
There was a spell of mystery and promise in the quiet which was deeper
for being suggestive of the seething student-life just subsided. It was
a silence that seemed to echo with bells and recitations, and babble and
laughter and heartache. I fell into thought. One generation cometh and
another passeth away. There is no respite. March with time and find
death, mayhap, before it has found you. As years ago the flamelet of the
street-lamp, so now these outposts of the colossal embryo of a world
derided me and seemed to point me out and away. The evening grew chill
with "a greeting in which no kindness is."
"Your coming has been announced in every class, and your lecture is on
the bulletin-boards. After that, can you be depressed?"
The light words were spoken low, as if doubtful whether they could be
taken in good part, and they came with something that was like music.
Was it the voice or some inexplicable feeling? I turned in wonder. Her
head was raised, and in the indistinctness I caught that sweet look of
hers which besought me, and which I answered without knowing to what
question.
I owe you a great happiness. Good-night.
DANE KEMPTON.
XXXIII
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
Wednesday.
Last night I delivered my address to the student body. Behold the chapel
crowded to the doors, aisles and window-seats crammed, and faces peering
in from without, those of boys and girls who had perched themselves on
the outer sills. A student audience is at the same time most critical
and the most generous. I spoke on Literature and Democracy.
Hester approved my effort. "How does it feel to be great?" she laughed.
"How does it feel to be cruel?" I retorted. "But think, Mr. Kempton,
when you visited the English classes you were just so much text for us.
It should count us a unit merely to have seen you."
A memory stood up and had its revenge on me. It taunted me for the
half-expressed thought, for the fled insight, for the swelling note that
midmost broke. Praise the artist, and he feels himself betrayer.
Blear-eyed, the poet recalls the poem's sunrise, straightens himself
with the old pride, is held again by the splendour which forecasts the
about-to-be-steadier glory of day, and even with the recalling he
shrinks together before what he knows was a false dawn. There was never
a day. The song's note never sang itself at all.
Hester looked up with that wistfulness which so draws me. Her look said:
"I pity you. I wish you were as happy as I." And a thought leaped out in
answer to her look which would have smote her had it spoken. It was,
"You, too, are awakened by a false dawning." Why is she so sure of
herself and of you? Is she sure? The puny bit of writing had a vigorous
rising. The ragged author was clad in it as in ermine. So the seeming
love makes a strong call, for a while holding the girl intent upon a
splendour of unfolding, her nature roused, her being expectant. But
later, for poet and lover, the failure and the waste! Were it otherwise
with your feeling for your betrothed, the comparison would not hold.
Hester does not think these things, and she is beautiful and happy.
Yours devotedly,
DANE KEMPTON.
XXXIV
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
Saturday.
Her happiness wrung it from me. Before I could intervene, the question
asked itself, "How will it be with you in after years?"
Straight the answer came, "There will be Herbert."
Hester is proud. To-night I saw it in the lift of her chin, in the set
of her neck, in the brilliance of her cheek. She knows herself endowed.
So when she prattled with abandon of all you both meant to be and do,
her form erect before me, her hands eloquent with excitement, her voice
pleading for the right to her very conscious self-esteem, I asked her to
look still further. Further she saw you, and was content.
That was before dinner. Later we were walking. "I have a friend in
Orion," she said. The witchery of starshine played in her eyes and
about her mouth. Where were you, Herbert? This night will never return.
Yet what has been was for you--the more, perhaps, that you seemed away.
So it is with lovers. She thinks you love her.
"I am sorry for your mood," she said. "You are holding yourself to
account these days in a way I know." Then she spoke, and I learned with
new heaviness of spirit that she does know the way of it. You never
thought Hester had much to struggle with?
"I am difficult," she said. And again, "There are times when no power
can hold me." Then she quoted Browning:--
"Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?"
"Are you unhappy, Hester?" I asked.
"Yes, but with no more reason than you for your unhappiness. Since you
have come here, you have renewed your demands upon yourself. You wish to
go to school with the youngest and find you cannot. You suffer because
more seems behind you than before." Her voice rose as if she were
fighting tears. It was different with her, I told her. Nothing was
behind her.
"You test your work and I test my love. When you are sad, it is because
the soul of the song spent itself to gain body--" She did not finish.
Why is she sad? Because the soul of her love is narrower than she hoped?
On our return from our walk she sank on the seat under the '95 oak. "Did
you think I meant I was always unhappy?" she asked. Her words seem
always to say more than her meaning. She imparts something of her own
elaborateness to them. I laughed.
"How could I with the 'Herbert is' in my ears?" Then her love became
voluble. I forgot what I knew of your theories and grew aflame with her
ardour. I anticipated as largely as she. She was again possessed by her
hopes.
There, under the shadow of the quadrangle which her young strides
measured, she spoke of what, with you in her life, the years must be.
Beyond words you are blessed, Herbert. But if she mistakes?
D.K.
XXXV
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
November 27, 19--.
Be outspoken! What will happen I can only surmise, but you must tell her
what she is to you. Set her right.
This is the fourth letter in seven days about Hester. I am endeavouring
to make you acquainted with her. I had no need if you loved her. How she
loves you! Yet she thinks that your calm is depth, your silence prayer.
Her pride protects her, but she strains for the word which does not
come. She has never been quite sure, and I thank God for that. Hester
has been fearing somewhat, and she has been doubting, and it is this
that may save her when the night sets in and the storm breaks over her
head.
You, too, are thankful that her instincts served her true and that she
never quite accepted the gift that seemed to have been proffered?
You have a right to demand the reason for my renewed attack. It is
because I have learned the strength of her love. "You are blessed beyond
words," I said two days ago, but as you reject the blessing, Hester must
know it and you must tell her. Herbert, I am your friend.
DANE KEMPTON.
XXXVI
FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE,
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
November 29, 19--.
What a flutter of letters! And what a fluttery Dane Kempton it is! The
wine of our western sunshine has bitten into your blood and you are
grown over-warm. I am glad that you and Hester have found each other so
quickly and intimately; glad that you are under her charm, as I know her
to be under yours; but I am not glad when you spell yourself into her
and write out your heart's forebodings on her heart. For you are
strangely morbid, and you are certainly guilty of reading your own
doubts and fears into her unspoken and unguessed thoughts.
Believe me, rather than the soul of her love seeming narrower than she
hopes, the truth is she gives her love little thought at all. She is
too busy--and too sensible. Like me, she has not the time. We are
workers, not dreamers; and the minutes are too full for us to lavish
them on an eternal weighing and measuring of heart throbs.
Besides, Hester is too large for that sort of stuff. She is the last
woman in the world to peer down at the scales to see if she is getting
full value. We leave that to the lesser creatures, who spend their
courtship loudly protesting how unutterable, immeasurable, and
inextinguishable is their love, as though, forsooth, each dreaded lest
the other deem it a bad bargain. We do not bargain and chaffer over our
feelings, Hester and I. Surely you mistake, and stir storms in teacups.
"Be outspoken," you say. If my conscience were not clear, I should be
troubled by that. As it is, what have I hidden? What sharp business have
I driven? And who is it that cried "cheated!"? Be outspoken--about what,
pray?
You bid me tell her what she is to me. Which is to bid me tell her what
she already knows, to tell her that she is the Mother Woman; that of all
women she is dearest to me; that of all the walks of life, that one is
pleasantest wherein I may walk with her; that with her I shall find the
supreme expression of myself and the life that is in me; that in all
this I honour her in the finest, loftiest fashion that man can honour
woman. Tell her this, Dane. By all means tell her.