Part 7

“Do you think, mother,” she will say, “that an angel could sing sweeter than that thrush?”

“You seem very sure, Margaret, that I am going to heaven,” the old mother will sometimes say, with one of her arch old smiles; “but do you know that I stole two peppermints yesterday?”

“You did!” says Margaret.

“I did indeed!” answers the mother, “and they have been on my conscience ever since.”

“Really, mother! I don’t know what to say,” answers Margaret. “I had no idea that you are so wicked.”

Many such little games the two play together, as the days go by; and often at bedtime, as Margaret tucks her mother into bed, she asks her:

“Are you comfortable, dear? Do you really think you would be much more comfortable in heaven?”

Or sometimes she will draw aside the window-curtains and say:

“Look at the stars, mother.... Don’t you think we get the best view of them down here?”

So it is that Margaret persuades her mother to delay her journey a little while.

WHAT’S IN A NAME

When Juliet made her immortal remark concerning the unimportance of names, she was very evidently labouring under great excitement; and it is pertinent to remark too that, being a woman, she came of a sex accustomed from time immemorial to change its name. Besides, in spite of her exclamation: “O Romeo, Romeo--wherefore art thou Romeo?” it is clear from the context that she was really thinking of her lover’s surname, rather than his Christian name:

“Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

In fact, like any woman in love, she had already forgotten her own surname, and desired, above all things in the world, to write her name, and work it in stitchery as: _Juliet Montague_. There is little doubt that in the seclusion of her chamber, she had already dipped her seldom-used quill into her ink-horn, and written it over thus many times:

_Juliet Montague_ _Juliet Montague_ _Juliet Montague_ ....... ....... .......

And, if I be wrong in this, of this I am quite sure--that for Romeo, at all events, there was only one name by which to call a woman, the name of Juliet. Indeed, I would venture almost to say that true love knows its affinity by no other sign so surely as the first sound of the destined name. You remember how in Paradise, Rossetti heard the lovers

“Saying each to each Their heart-remembered names.”

“Their souls were in their names!” says George Meredith, when Richard cried out the name of “Lucy,” and Lucy the name of “Richard.” Their souls--and their inexorable futures!

So was it with Dante when he first saw her who was called “‘Beatrice’ by those who knew not wherefore.” And so, I believe, it is with every man and woman. In fact, I should hardly count it a fancy if it were told me that in our cradles some spirit whispers into the still sensitive porcelain of our ears the name to which our lives shall answer as to the master-word of some dead magician.

We do not know the name--till we hear it, and, meanwhile, may have many mistaken fancies about it. Some beautiful girl of our acquaintance may be so full of charm for us as to cause us so to fall in love with her that we imagine hers to be the destined name. But, after a while that prescience in our ears saves us from the illusion. The ear does not give back that fairy chime when we hear her name, which it can give only to the sound of the name of names. Often our ears seem on the point of vibrating, as a woman tells us her name for the first name, but, after all--it was a false alarm of beauty, and we still go on seeking for the sound that alone can ring true. It may be that, in despair of ever hearing it, we content ourselves with another name; but that is a dangerous course, for one never knows when the fairy name may be spoken in our ears, calling us irresistibly to follow.

Thus I have known of men who were quite sure that their fate-name was Ann, tired out with waiting to hear it, marry another of the name of Mary--and then on their honeymoon, at last hear the name of Ann calling in their ears, with cruel unpunctuality. If only Ann had appeared and spoken her mystic name a month before--how different all would have been! And one could give others examples of other names heard too late.

One of the strangest stories of the kind is that of a friend of mine, which I propose to tell. From a mere boy the name of Irene had for him a prophetic beauty. Whenever he saw a beautiful face he felt certain that the only name worthy of it must be--Irene. He said to himself that he would marry no woman whose name was not Irene, and, that if a little girl-child should come to them she must be called Irene. It will not in any way spoil my story to say that he is long since happily married to a wife whose name is--not Irene, and that his offspring consisting only of three boys, he has had no opportunity to make use of his name beautiful. But this is merely a parenthesis. Long before life brought him to these conclusions, he dreamed of, and even deliberately sought, his Irene. Strange as it may sound nowadays, among all his researches he never came upon a girl whose name was Irene; nor did any gentle accident ever bring a single Irene into his orbit. Every other woman’s name in the appendix to the dictionary he seemed, at one time or another, to encounter--but Irene never!

You can hardly wonder that this negation of Irenes in his experience tended to deepen his original superstition; and make him more certain than ever that life was thus sifting out for him the other names one by one, till at last no other name was left but--Irene.

Meanwhile, he carried ever in his heart a picture of what the girl answering to the name of Irene would be like. The name to him suggested a combination of tall lithe grace, exquisite refinement, blonde hair in coiled masses of gold, blue eyes domestically kind, a gift for arranging flowers--and a hundred other ideal characteristics which may best be symbolised by an Easter lily.

An Easter lily--with a light upon it seeming to fall from some hidden window in heaven: in fact a creature exquisitely blended of celestial purity and skillful house-wifery.

How much more the name Irene meant to him I need not say--because I cannot; for the name of every man’s love is as we have quoted before, as that of Dante’s Beatrice. She is called Jane or Elizabeth or Kate--or Irene--by those who know not wherefore. Only one man in the world knows why Jane is called Jane, only one man knows why Irene is called Irene.

The least superstitious must admit it strange that, with all his eager listening for his predestined name, even, one might say, with all his experimental pursuit of it, he never met it till at last.... Well, I am anticipating. Being a man of leisure, he visited many countries, seeking his name; there was not a country of Europe in which he had not sought it, and even in Asia he had pursued it like a rare butterfly.

Common materialistic friends of his maintained that it was quite a common name. “If it be so common,” he said, “how is it that in all my wanderings I have never yet met a woman with that name?”

At last a friend suggested that he had not tried America!

“America!” he exclaimed, “America! wonderful country I know--but is it likely that in so new a world, a world so busy making its own beautiful names, that I shall find this rare old name of an ancient world? Surely I might as well expect to dig up a Roman coin in some back garden in Omaha!”

“Never mind!” said the friend of my friend. “Try America.”

So it was that my friend came at last to America, seeking his beautiful name.

Being a man of some public significance, he was asked, upon landing, what his business was in The Land of Promises; and, being a man of simple mind, he answered that he came seeking a woman of the name of--Irene. The assembled reporters shook their heads, and looked at him, as though he was crazy. No such name had ever been heard of in America. Of course, he was crazy; and so the papers had a day’s fun with the eccentric Englishman, and then his numerous excellent introductions started him upon that most generous pilgrimage in the world--the pilgrimage of the American Continent.

His introductions, I say, were excellent. I wonder if that was the reason why, though the best and most beautiful homes of America were thus thrown open to him, visiting here and visiting there, he never once heard the name he was journeying to hear.

At length three months had gone by, and no name remotely resembling the name he loved had sounded in his ears. He was indeed planning to sail back to Europe in a few days, when in a great Western town--I may as well say Chicago--a circumstance occurred which changed his intention.

No one who has visited America can fail to have been struck by the number and quality of the beautiful homes, so generously thrown open to him, and by the singular purity of atmosphere which pervades them; a purity so entirely free from priggishness--no negative purity, but a purity which one might call elemental, a purity, so to say, of joyous power, a purity as full of laughter and strength as a racing upland breeze. One has sometimes heard that there is no American home. To one sojourner in America at least this means the strangest of misrepresentations; for, on the contrary, one might almost go so far as to say that in no other country in the world is there such a genuine home-life as in America. And I venture to think that in no American city is this home-life to be found in fairer development than in Chicago. In such a home, one never-to-be-forgotten evening, my friend found himself a guest. Those who talk of American bad taste, of American ignorance of, or disregard for, the beautiful things of life should be taken to see that home. The gracious order of it, the unobtrusive richness, the organic beauty of it, as distinct from a conscious æstheticism, immediately impressed a nature very sensitive to such conditions; and the moment my friend met the only daughter of the household he knew at once from whom all this harmony proceeded. His host and hostess were charming simple people, the polo-playing son-and-heir was a delightful fellow; but it was evident that the harmony did not proceed from them.

No! it very evidently came from this tall, lithe girl, with that heavy crown of gold upon her head, those kind blue domestic eyes, and that supernal light upon her exquisitely blonde features. As my friend looked at her, sitting by her side at the dinner-table, he felt that here at last was the woman he had been seeking so long, for, in every particular she answered to the dream of his long-sought Irene. In her father’s introduction to him, however, he had not quite caught her name; so he sat through dinner in a fever of attention, hoping every moment to hear it pronounced again. But by one of those exceptions to the usual which do occur, no occasion for the direct use of her name occurred throughout the dinner, and he being as yet so new an acquaintance, and afraid besides lest he should hear the wrong name, had not courage to ask it. However, after dinner, it being a summer night, coffee was served on the veranda, and here he found both his courage and his opportunity. There was a sentimental crescent moon in the sky, and the veranda was filled with romantic lights and shadows. Miss Stanbery and my friend had found themselves a little away from the rest. She had seemed hardly less drawn to him than he to her, and at last he felt that, without violating the proprieties of a guest, he might ask her Christian name.

She bent her beautiful head, with a lovely shyness, and answered that her name was--

“Ireen.”

“Ireen?” said my friend, leaning toward her beauty in the twilight.

“It is a beautiful name.”

To himself he was saying how strangely like, and yet how strangely unlike, it was to the name of which she seemed the ideal embodiment.

“Ireen,” he said over to himself, and the drums of his ears almost chimed back--but alas! failed quite to chime.

“Ireen? Ireen?” he said over and over to himself, trying to make the name sound right, and, when he found it impossible, he looked again at her young loveliness, and wondered to himself if her name was not near enough to the name he loved.

But in the end his superstition prevailed, and reluctantly he bade good-bye to Ireen Stanbery, and took train for New York, and boarded his liner, and sailed back to Europe sad at heart.

A year went by, and having given up all hopes of finding his Irene, he married, as I have said, a lady of the name of----, and was very happy--that is as happy as a man or woman can be who has married the wrong name.

He had been married about three years, when he chanced one evening to be dining in London with an American gentleman.

They compared notes on America.

“Do you know the Stanberys of Chicago?” asked my friend, among other questions.

“O yes! aren’t they delightful people? And what a beautiful girl Irene is--she was married six months ago by the way.”

“What name did you call her?” asked my friend.

“Irene.”

“Irene! Why I thought they called her _Ireen_!”

“So they do--but didn’t you know that that is the American way of pronouncing ‘Irene’?”

“Indeed, I didn’t,” gasped my friend, and in his soul he said “O that I had known!”

The moral of which is that it is very hard to lose one’s love through a mispronunciation.

REVISITING THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON

Sid Norton could not recall a time when he had not been in love. From his earliest boyhood, falling in love had been a habit with him; and his heart, if he might be said to retain possession of an organ that was always being lost to some new face, was a sort of sentimental graveyard, a veritable necropolis of dead love-affairs--dead, but unforgotten; for, incorrigible lover as Sid was, his memory would sometimes go flitting from grave to grave, like a butterfly, philandering even with the past.

In spite of these excursions, and in defiance of the apparent paradox of the statement, Sid Norton found himself in love--for the first and last time. This he said of himself gravely, not only in private to the lady who was credited with this marvel but also in public to his intimate friends. He said it, and there was no doubt that he meant it.

Now Rosamund Lowther was an exceedingly clever young woman, an adept in the management of the emotional male, and easily Sid Norton’s match in experienced flirtation. The friends of both watched the progress of their sudden volcanic attachment with cynical expectancy, and when, after six months of a trance-like courtship, during which it might be said that the infatuated pair had never taken their eyes off each other, Sid Norton suddenly sailed for Europe, you can imagine the sensation and comment it caused. Neither vouchsafed any explanation; their engagement remained intact, at all events there was no formal bulletin to the contrary; and the thing was a piquant mystery to all but the two concerned. For them it was their whimsical secret.

One late summer afternoon a week or two before, the two enamoured ones had been seated side by side in the old orchard of the Lowther country home. Both were very evidently happy, but Sid’s face was absolutely idiotic with bliss. The something so “utter” in Sid’s look touched Rosamund’s elfish sense of humour, and, though she was just as much in love herself, she could not refrain from a gay little teasing laugh.

“Is he so happy, little boy?” she said, lifting up his chin, and looking whimsically into his face.

Sid’s answer was silent and long, and when it was ended, Rosamund continued, holding his face at arm’s length, and looking into it with quizzical seriousness.

“But, aren’t you just a little frightened sometimes?”

“Frightened?”

“Yes! when you think that--it’s for _life_!”

“Ah! thank God,” answered Sid rapturously.

“No, but think--for life! No more pretty flirtations, no more butterfly by-paths--only me--_me_--till the end. Be honest--doesn’t that make cold shivers run up and down your back?”

“You angel,” exclaimed the abject one, attempting to answer her as before.

“No, no; listen to me. I am serious. Do you realise that you are in a cage, my cage, for life--that escape is impossible--that it will be in vain to beat on the bars--that only I have the key--that you are there for better or for worse--that you are there, I repeat, for life--that there is no help for it--nothing to do but make the best of it--do you realise that?”

The sense of certitude, of absolute possession, which Rosamund, comedian as she was, infused into her voice, was irresistible, and Sid laughed, laughed for joy that the girl he loved had such attractive brains as well.

“What a delightful fancy!” he exclaimed.

“Fancy, do you call it? Try and escape, my boy, and you will see how much of a fancy it is.”

“Divine, adorable fact, of course, I mean. O Rosamund, how glad I am that it is true. Let us take the key and throw it into the river. I never want to be free again as long as I live!”

“No use if you did!” with a saucy toss of the confident little head.

“My poor boy,” she went on presently, in a caressing motherly tone, “I really can’t help being rather sorry for you, you who have been so used to your freedom; you such a wicked, wicked wanderer. How will you ever endure it? Tell me the truth now--man to man, as they say--right at the bottom of your heart, aren’t you just a tiny bit wistful sometimes for the old freedom?”

“Never,” answered Sid, with portentous sincerity.

“Never! Quite sure? Don’t you ever feel a little homesick for some one of your old loves, and wonder what it would be like to see her again?”

Sid shook his head with emphasis.

Rosamund, and for that matter, all Sid’s world, was well acquainted with the main lines of his amatorious history, and knew something of the various divinities who had figured in it. Besides, Sid, a promising young lawyer, with known literary leanings, had put his heart on record beyond withdrawal by the publication of a volume of verse entitled “The Nine Muses.” The volume consisted of love-verses addressed to various ladies to whom Sid had from time to time, or simultaneously, been devoted; and though, of course, they figured under fanciful names, their identities were no secret to the learned gossips of Sid’s circle. This book had been a thorn in Sid’s side since he had met and loved Rosamund, a thorn which she sometimes amused herself by using to his discomfiture. She had the volume with her this afternoon, and as she turned to it, with malicious merriment in her eye, Sid knew that she meditated some of her merciless raillery.

“I do wish, Rosamund, you would let me forget that wretched book. I wish it were at the bottom of the sea. I’ll have the whole edition destroyed. I will, to-morrow....”

“O that would be sacrilege!” interrupted Rosamund, mockingly; “besides, I should still have my copy.”

“I will manage to get it from you,” retorted Sid, making a clutch at his printed past.

“Even if you should,” answered Rosamund, retaining possession of the book, “I should still remember some of the poems by heart. They are so beautiful.... This, for instance, to ‘Myrtilla’....”

“Do be quiet, Rosamund....”

“No, I insist, ... I don’t think you know how beautiful they are yourself. Listen:

I know a little starlit spring-- Last night I leaned upon the brink, And to the dimpled surface pressed My hallowed lips to drink.

And now the sun is up, and I Am with a dream athirst; O was it good to drink that spring, Or was the spring accurst?

Accurst, that he who drinks therein Shall long, even as I, To drink again, yet never drink Again until he die.

“Truly now,” Rosamund continued, “doesn’t hearing that make you a bit thirsty again for your little starlit spring? It is not too late. I am sure that if you were to go back to her, she would let you drink all you want.... I happen to know that she isn’t married yet?”

Sid sat dumb under the raillery, with set, gloomy face. Turning over a page or two, Rosamund began again.

“Here is one of my favourites,” she said, ignoring Sid’s silence. “It is to Meriel:

Was there a moon in the sky, Was there a wind in the tree, I only remember that you and I Sat somewhere with you and me.

I only remember the joy--the joy-- And the ache of going away: O little girl, here’s a little boy Will love you till Judgment Day.”

As she finished reading this, Rosamund let the book close in her lap, and her mood seemed suddenly to have changed to a thoughtful seriousness. She repeated, as if to herself, the last two lines.

“O little girl, here’s a little boy Will love you till Judgment Day--”

she said over slowly, as though weighing every word; and there was something in her voice that might have suggested that in playfully pressing this thorn into Sid’s side, she had unexpectedly pricked herself. Sid sat on in the same attitude of patient gloom. Presently, observing her silence, he turned to her.

“Are you finished?” he said.

“Yes!” she answered. “Yes!” with a certain aloofness in her voice, which Sid, with the painful sensitiveness of a lover, did not miss.

“Is there anything the matter?” he asked.

“No,” she answered, speaking slowly, and with the same serious quietness of tone, as though she were thinking hard. “No! but I’ve got an idea. That last poem has set me thinking....”

“Curse the poem,” exclaimed Sid desperately, seizing hold of the volume.

“You can take it,” said Rosamund, to his surprise, “I don’t think I want to see it again either.”

“But surely, you are not allowing it to trouble you. It is all past and gone, and one cannot have reached thirty without some experiences. Even you, dear....”

“O yes, I know, but there’s a peculiarly deep ring about those last two lines, Sid--

O little girl, here’s a little boy Will love you till Judgment day--

whatever you may say, you meant them pretty badly, Sid,” she added, turning upon him eyes whose recent mirth was replaced by a questioning gravity.

“Of course I meant them at the time, or thought I meant them. Besides, poetry always exaggerates,” answered Sid, writhing with explanation.

“No, Sid, don’t belittle your old feelings. That doesn’t help. Rather the reverse,” and then once more she repeated the lines musingly as if to herself. Then she turned to Sid with a sudden decision of manner, as if her mind was made up.

“Sid, that was a very deep feeling. How do you know that it is not still alive?”

Sid made the usual despairing protestations. Rosamund regarded them but little.

“I wonder,” she continued, “if you really know your own mind. I wonder. You think you love me now, but then you thought you loved her then--till Judgment Day. Sid! Now see, I’m going to tell you my idea....”

Sid looked at her expectantly, waiting with anxious eyes. Then, with something of a return to her gayer manner, she went on:

“You remember what we were saying just now about your cage. Well, I’m going to let you out for a month or two.”

She waved aside a remonstrant ejaculation from Sid.

“Yes! and you are to spend the last breath of freedom in finding out if there is still any truth left in these old impassioned statements. That is, you will go to Myrtilla, and see if you still want to drink of that ‘little starlit spring,’ and you will go to Meriel and see, well ... about Judgment Day! And, while you are on pilgrimage, there are one or two other ‘muses’ it might be well to make quite sure about.”

Sid interrupted with impatient incredulity, not believing her serious. But the more he expostulated, the firmer she became.