Part 5

Now you are not sleeping, as I said when I saw the hollows coming under your eyes, or you wouldn't fail in tact. It isn't like you. I want to buy my turquoises myself. Don't you see how I am luxuriating in the sense of unfamiliar power? It will pass, and then I'll take your gift. Of course--the three words--_of course_; but I can't be always writing them. They look so bathetic. Now I've seemed brutal and ill-tempered, all in one letter. But why will you be faultless and appealing, and why won't you see I am a child of the earth (the street-earth--paving-stones ground up and mixed with champagne) and go home to your birds and trees?

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

You were not interesting last night, and Captain Morton was; therefore I sat out with him. But you should not have turned white and frozen in a corner. That sort of docile remonstrance in you rouses my aunt to a height of righteousness which nature itself cannot endure. I mean my nature. She says you are perfection, and that I don't deserve you. The maxims are unimpeachable; I agree to both. Go, if you like, or stay and be agreeable. I forgot to tell you that I am going to New York to visit Alice May, Captain Morton's cousin. Auntie is angry. Are you angry, too? Is all the world suspicious, and of Othello's complexion? If the primitive passions do rage just as furiously even though we speak Victorian English, tell me, what's the use of development? We are simply more trammeled and less frank. Having blown off the steam of my wrath, I'll condescend to say that the invitation from Alice just reached me, and that I have decided quite suddenly. Again, does it make you angry? Would you rather have me fettered to your wrist by a nice, neat little chain with your monogram on it and a jeweled pad-lock?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Angry because you are going away? My lady, heart of me, you know me better. You are free from everything but my love. It follows you everywhere, poor pensioner. It has nothing to claim, nothing to exact. Give it place in your suite, and be patient with it; for it would hide away rather than break in upon your mood. All your moods are like crystal bubbles, no more to be shivered than one of God's beautiful worlds. I love you; but you are infinitely sacred, infinitely precious to me,--above all, and above measure, free. Go, dearest lady; be happy. Think of me when the thought is an added pleasure, and then--come back to me.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Dear,--O, at moments like this I feel as if I could repay you so royally! You are a knight peerless. Remember, whatever comes between us, that I knew this of you. I shall always think of you with reverence. If you were here, perhaps I should be perverse and willful, and prick your offered hand with some tempestuous thorn; but I do meet you with one half my soul--perhaps with all my real soul. I send you a kiss. Come to the station if you like; but it will be to see the outer me, the worldly one.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

She is gone. There is nothing to do for a week--a month, perhaps--but prowl about this dismal city, looking in the faces of men. At the theatres there is heavy comedy played by buffoons. So I stay away and watch my kind, and wonder what I'm going to do to make a man of myself. Write? What? Worldfuls of thought are creating themselves within me, but as yet they are only star-dust. I doubt if they will be anything more. There is a strange ache in my throat, a strange failing within me. Is it what children call homesickness? I heard little Ethel Wynne, the other day, talking about her first visit from home:

"They put me to bed, and I cried and cried all alone, and I was sick at my stomach, and _I pitied me_."

"Poor Mother Bunch!" said her father. "Homesick!"

And I believe I "pity me," too. I must be a weak sort of a fellow. All the men I meet are absorbed in something--horse--college--games. I am sick for the unknown. Not the camp. I believe the loneliness there would kill me now. O, why talk of it, for the sole use of spending myself on paper! I am sick for her--her! Heavens--whatever that means--how terrible it is to love a woman! Yet it seems so simple. If she loved me--oh, she does love me, but she has her moods. She is compact of fire and air and dew, and her path is like the swallow's. How should I find her?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]

I am taking violin lessons, as you suggest; also French. The verdict, in each case, is that I have been wonderfully well taught. I begin to know you for a genius. How have you managed to do so many things to perfection? The Frenchman, Dr. Pascal, is stirring my brain more than anything has yet succeeded in doing. So far I have felt like a muddy pool in which the stars and gas lamps try to reflect themselves and get only broken gleams in return. He is unsparingly critical of our American civilization, and feels at liberty to say so to me, because I am primeval man, fresh from my woods. He tells me such marvels of the French. According to him, they are the creators of form: form in art, in language, in mechanism. If I could reproduce his thought, it would be to tell you that, as we are the youngest of nations, so, too, are we the crudest. We are eaten up by an infinite complacency. Because we are big, we fancy we blot out the sun whenever we choose to turn our bulk. We submit to a thousand public abuses because we are too drenched in our own fatness to criticise or disturb ourselves. The individual is rampant, and all are enslaved. Consequently, this is not the land of liberty, but of license, overrun by a wild chase of "every man for himself." We worship our wealth, and not what it brings us. We adore display; it tickles us more to scatter money broadcast in blazonry than to live in chaste democracy and erect monuments to our public good. To beauty we are almost totally blind and deaf; and what wonder, when there is no _milieu_! We do not breathe an aesthetic atmosphere. Our public buildings are atrocious, and--and--I could go on for pages, but I spare you. The worst of it is that it may be true. You know how much my opinion is worth. I might as well be a boy of ten for all I can say, judged by experience and comparison; but to me everything in this city is small, disappointing, unbeautiful. Nothing, except the music, fills my ideal of what I thought life would be when I pictured it in my tent. Is life small? Are men pygmies? Or are my judgments naught?

[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]

You are right in distrusting your judgments. I should not trust them, either, because, as you say, you have no standard of comparison. But I think this may truly be said. America is young, and therefore you must not expect of her a full artistic development. She has done some of the greatest moral work imaginable. There her instinct was unspoiled, just as that of youth should be. She came "trailing clouds of glory." But art is not the flower of the moment. Neither is it to be borrowed from other lands; though thus may we obtain the technique which teaches appreciation. A few geniuses seem to be born full-fledged; I doubt if a nation could be. A man, even a genius, has to learn to use his tools. So does a people. The French are form-mad. I don't wonder. Outer beauty is a subtile poison. Once taste it and you never lose the craving. It is a beautiful zeal, but not always the best zeal. I've been a coward and an absentee about life myself, but I'd rather trust some of those vigorous old pirates like Sir Francis Drake, who went about picking up new worlds like huckleberries, than a carpet-knight on tiptoe at the apex of civilization. But don't misunderstand me. My pen ran away. I don't under-value your Frenchman. I only say, Be patient with America. She is so young, poor girl! The only discouraging thing about it is, as he says, that she doesn't know it. If she would learn of her grandams and great-aunts, she would burn her fingers and tear her frock less often. Her lovers must simply be patient and wait till she grows to her task. Perhaps when she really is older and stronger, and has lifted her straw a day, she'll be capable of carrying this burden of government. No, she hasn't solved her problem yet; democracy is the highest form of government, but she does not yet know how to administer it. I find I am not so far out of gear with civilization as I thought, for I have strong ambitions for you. I find I want you to take up the fardel of public life; not to be a pessimistic complainer, standing aside with your hands in your pockets, but a citizen. And if you can do something, too, for art--but after all, I shall be content if you keep your soul clean.

[Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]

Dear laddie,--I have a great deal to say to you, and I am utterly incapable of saying it. So the only resource I have is to be short and trust to your intuitions. You can supply my remorse, and my grief that life is what it is. We are blind instruments of blinder fate. Captain Morton came here soon after I did. You knew that. He says plainly that he came to see me. More than that, he came to see me because he loved me. If there is anything in love, isn't it this power of one creature over another? Are we responsible? Are we true to ourselves if we fight against it? I, at least, could not fight. If my bond to you had been a thousand times more strong, I should have snapped it like twine. I told him I would write you that it is broken. I wish life might be good to you, though I cannot be. And I wish I might never see you again, now, or after my marriage. I don't say, Forgive me. You can't yet, but some time perhaps you will.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Dear lady,--Since your letter reached me, I have written you a great many answers. None of them are worth sending. This is all I tried to say. You are just as much loved as before, and you are free,--perfectly, entirely free. It must be for you exactly as if you had never been bound. And you shall never see me.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

There must be some outlet for this, or I shall be talking to people in the street. They will think I am crazy, and that will be the end of it. So I'll put it all down, madness and all. So Francis Hume came up to town, did he? And lost his love! He was well enough, poor fool, down in the woods; but the Great Ones that plague us for their sport sent him a mirage, and it dazzled him, and he sailed after it. No! no! no! It was not mirage. It was true--a true, true vision. She is real, and sweet, and sound, my lady with the merry laugh and seeking eyes. I had her; I have the vision of her. I wish I did not remember such piercing lines: "My good days are over!" And poor Thekla,--

"Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."

Here's a supposition. Is a woman betrayed more lost than a man's soul when it is rejected and thrown back to live alone? Perhaps there is a difference. But this lonesomeness of the heart! If I died, should I still live and be I, bearing my wormwood with me? A life shattered so early! "You have broken my globe! you have broken my globe!"

They have come back to Boston, he and she. They came together, and I saw them. I watched him go up the steps with her, and heard him laugh when they went in. I sat on a seat in the mall, and watched. He wears a strange significance for me. I suppose I hate him, really; and yet, because she loves him, he holds a new and awful interest. It is really as if _I_ loved him. I think of him with her thoughts; how strong he is, how black those eyes, how white his hands, how round his voice. And every thought poisons me, and I roll in my nettles and sting myself deeper.

... I loved a woman--O God! betrayed! betrayed! Not by her. O God, save her from punishment and remorse! She was deceived. She shall not suffer.

... I do not know what God is. I sat thinking of Him an hour in the dark, last night. All I know is that mankind has made Him. He is the cry raised by their united voices when they wail. He is the uttermost anguish of their hearts. They had to call it something, this wail of terror and grief, and so they called it God. I call it God, too. I lift up my voice with theirs, and cry, God! God!

... I have taken to following them about the town. They went to the theatre last night. I sat in the gallery, and looked down on them. How familiar she seems--how truly mine! Can anybody steal what is mine? After the theatre I slept a little, and dreamed that we were on a shore, a silver strip of sands, with the sea black before us. I dragged her from him, and when I had struck him down, she turned to me, with a glad, low cry, and clung to me, all warm. She was glad! And I have been warm about the heart all day, for the remembrance dwells with me. How beautiful it would be to kill him, if after it was all over she would turn to me and rest here in my arms!

Once I could have lived through this. There would have been horse and hound and battle-axe--sword and lance--all the rest of it. I could have gone away to the wars and worked off some of this horror. And now, like a rat in a trap, I've got to sit still here and go mad.

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume_]

Dear friend,--We have made a wretched botch of it among us, with your poor boy. Zoe has jilted him. We might have guessed it. He has simply disappeared. He left a card here, and quietly changed his lodgings. At the Tremont House, they either don't know where he has gone or refuse to say. I am worried about him. Poor boy! poor boy! he won love everywhere, but he didn't want it. Only hers; and Captain Morton could have conjured her into a black cat any time these three years, if he had chosen. Don't blame me. There's a fate in things; and if you wanted your boy to escape tragedy, you shouldn't have given him that face.

[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]

Dear boy,--Could you come down and see me a bit? I'm having a series of colds, and they keep me in bed and make me melancholy-stupid. Then, when you go back, perhaps I can go with you. Where are you now? From your giving the address of a post-office box, I fancy you have left the Tremont House. When will you come?

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]

Dear father,--I will come soon. I can't quite yet. I am sorry you are not well. I will come soon.

[Sidenote: _To the Unknown Friend_]

The voices of people about me do hurt me so. I won't see a soul I know, but the waiters asking for orders--O they hurt me so! I shall be like a woman, and scream. I can't see my father yet--not yet. I couldn't bear his face, or his voice. They would be so kind. I must be alone. Yet it is awful for crazy people to be alone. They are so beset by dreams--and faces. I don't think they are real, but still there are faces.

... My God! what have I seen to-day! I went walking--fast, fast--and I took the poorest streets, so that I might not meet any one I know. And all the animal-people--hog, rabbit, fox, cat, and the rest--kept coming toward me as I walked; for now there seems to be a sort of mist in the air, and one face flares out of the mist and then another. And it rushed over me suddenly how they must ache and suffer and languish to be so poor and so ignorant and vile. There is a dropping inside my heart, all the time, as if the blood that ought to nourish me were falling and falling and wasting itself in pain. And I began to look into the faces, and it seemed to me as if these people, too, were all of them bleeding. The ground was red and soaked. And then I learned that all this great world is in pain just like my own. I did not seem so much alone then--not quite. They were like me, all of them. I began to see how some might love them; and the more hideous they were, so much the more could one love. _Who was Jesus Christ?_

... I went to the Passion Music, and sat alone in a little crowded corner, afraid of being seen. It crucified my soul. I felt as if the violins were bowing on my brain, sawing the little gray strings that are my nerves. And then it came upon me like an overwhelming sea. This Man--this God-man--loved the whole world and was rejected by it. I loved one; and because she cast me off, I am as I am. True or not--His story--but _is_ it true?

... Yet I cannot stop loving her. I love her to-day more, more, a thousand times more, if that can be. Is it true I have no right to love her? Then I have no right to breathe. I had no right to be born.

[Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_]

Dear Francis,--Won't you come down for a day or two? If not, I think I shall go to you. Write me a word.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_]

Dear father,--Try to be patient with me. I'll come soon, truly soon. I'm not very good company. I'm thinking things out.

[Sidenote: _Telegram to Francis Hume_]

CONCORD, N. H.

Ernest Hume sick here with pneumonia. Come.

[Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Zoe Morton_]

I am glad you got off so well, and that the sun shone at last. Ever so many presents have come since you left. Mrs. Badger sends a Turkish rug, hideous, I think, and abominably dirty. I smelled cholera, and in five minutes sent the thing to be cleansed. Cousin Robert, in his usual forethoughtful way, brought a silver service, unmarked, so that you can exchange it if you like. Do you read the papers? Do you know about Francis Hume? I found out casually from Bellamy Winthrop, who chanced to go up with him in the train. Bellamy is a ferret; that you know. He could get news out of a stone--or Francis. It seems Mr. Hume was very ill, started to come down here, was taken worse in a Concord hotel, and died there before Francis could reach him. The boy took his body and carried it to that awful camp for burial. I desire never to set eyes on the place again. I wrote to him, but he doesn't answer. Good luck to you both. Regards to Captain Morton. I suppose I am to call him Ned? What with the wedding and this last nightmare, my nerves are quite unstrung.

Francis Hume had gone back. It was the spring now, and a visit to the spot at that same time last year reminded me that the grass would have been thick and tall before the door, and that the linden was in bloom. I had found old Pierre in the village, and asked him to row me over; but though his arms were still like whipcords, he declined. He seemed to think the visit an intrusion upon the two who had evidently made something as holy and unapproachable in his own life as the legends of his saints. On the other hand, he was jealously unwilling to trust me there alone; and when I found another man to row me, Pierre came of his own will and took a place in the boat. The day was a heaven of May, the lake untouched. Our oars made its only ripple. It was a strange, still progress. Pierre, dark, silent, a man of thought and experience, brooded all the way, as over vanished things; and the other man evidently held him in too much awe to speak. They landed me without a word. I walked about the spot where the log-cabin had stood, now a blank in the vegetation. I lingered by the Point, to catch the little ripples there; and I visited the spring where the two men used to drink. Pierre had followed me, with the cat-like tread of the woods. He touched my sleeve, and pointed through a forest path.

"There," he said. "That is the grave."

I understood. Ernest Hume had been buried there. I walked in a few steps, and Pierre pointed. A forest of maiden-hair strove and fluttered greenly. This was the grave. There was no stone to mark it; but at that moment it seemed to me very rich in peace to lie down so and to be absorbed into the life of the forest, throwing back no foolish outcry, "Here I lie! Remember."

When Pierre found that I was going back without disturbing even a leaf of his shrine, his heart opened a little to me, and he told me a few facts of the burial. Francis Hume had brought back his father's body, and they two had dug the grave and laid him within it. Francis had never spoken. He looked like the dead. He had no mind. Pierre repeated it: he had no mind.

I could understand. He was beside himself. His soul had been reft away into merciful dulness, somewhere outside his body. When the burial was over, Francis had dismissed him and walked away into the woods. Pierre followed, silently. All that day they walked, Francis unconscious that he was not alone. Then Pierre began to realize that they were going in a great circle, and that they were coming back to the grave. Night fell, and they were still walking, now away from the grave again, but always in a circle. The moon came out, and Pierre, very hungry, yet not daring to lose sight of Francis, approached him and tried to speak; the boy's eyes were wide open, unwinking, luminous. Pierre began to talk of food, and Francis struck out at him, and walked on. Pierre followed. They continued still in the same dull circle, all night long, Francis walking like a cat undeterred by branches and avoiding pitfalls with the cleverness of the insane, and the guide, wearied and stumbling. Just as the latter darkness of night came on, Francis paused, wavered a little, and Pierre caught him as he fell. He drew him upon his shoulder, and toiled back to camp with him. There he laid him upon a couch in the cabin, and poured brandy between his lips. All that day the boy slept, only stirring when Pierre roused him to administer milk or brandy; but at twilight time he moved and opened his eyes. Pierre knew he had "come back." Then the old man placed bread and meat beside him and went silently out. He had much experience, I judged, of the dignity of the soul; much knowledge, gained from lonely living, of her needs. He knew when she must be alone. Yet he watched all night in the grove, his quick ears strained for a movement of the creature within. What came next, Francis Hume only can tell.

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