The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes) Page 33

  THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS

  "Our distinguished alumnus," after being duly presented as such, hadwith vivacity delivered much the usual sort of Commencement Address.Yet John Charteris was in reality a trifle fagged.

  The afternoon train had been vexatiously late. The little novelist hadfound it tedious to interchange inanities with the committee awaitinghim at the Pullman steps. Nor had it amused him to huddle intoevening-dress, and hasten through a perfunctory supper in order toreassure his audience at half-past eight precisely as to theunmitigated delight of which he was now conscious.

  Nevertheless, he alluded with enthusiasm to the arena of life, to thedependence of America's destiny upon the younger generation, to theenviable part King's College had without exception played in history,and he depicted to Fairhaven the many glories of Fairhaven--past,present and approaching--in superlatives that would hardly have seemedinadequate if applied to Paradise. His oration, in short, was of apiece with the amiable bombast that the college students and Fairhavenat large were accustomed to applaud at every Finals--the sort oflinguistic debauch that John Charteris himself remembered to haveapplauded as an undergraduate more years ago than he cared toacknowledge.

  Pauline Romeyne had sat beside him then--yonder, upon the fourth benchfrom the front, where now another boy with painstakingly plastered hairwas clapping hands. There was a girl on the right of this boy, too.There naturally would be. Mr. Charteris as he sat down was wonderingif Pauline was within reach of his voice? and if she were, what washer surname nowadays?

  Then presently the exercises were concluded, and the released auditorsarose with an outwelling noise of multitudinous chatter, of shufflingfeet, of rustling programs. Many of Mr. Charteris' audience, though,were contending against the general human outflow and pushing towardthe platform, for Fairhaven was proud of John Charteris now that hiscolorful tales had risen, from the semi-oblivion of being cherishedmerely by people who cared seriously for beautiful things, to thedistinction of being purchasable in railway stations; so that, inconsequence, Fairhaven wished both to congratulate him and to renewacquaintanceship.

  He, standing there, alert and quizzical, found it odd to note howunfamiliar beaming faces climbed out of the hurly-burly of retreatingbacks, to say, "Don't you remember me? I'm so-and-so." These were thepeople whom he had lived among once, and some of these had once beenpeople whom he loved. Now there was hardly any one whom at a glance hewould have recognized.

  Nobody guessed as much. He was adjudged to be delightful, cordial,"and not a bit stuck-up, not spoiled at all, you know." To appear thiswas the talisman with which he banteringly encountered the universe.

  But John Charteris, as has been said, was in reality a trifle fagged.When everybody had removed to the Gymnasium, where the dancing was tobe, and he had been delightful there, too, for a whole half-hour, hegrasped with avidity at his first chance to slip away, and did so undercover of a riotous two-step.

  He went out upon the Campus.

  He found this lawn untenanted, unless you chose to count the marblefigure of Lord Penniston, made aerial and fantastic by the moonlight,standing as it it were on guard over the College. Mr. Charteris choseto count him. Whimsically, Mr. Charteris reflected that this batterednobleman's was the one familiar face he had exhumed in all Fairhaven.And what a deal of mirth and folly, too, the old fellow must havewitnessed during his two hundred and odd years of sentry-duty! Onwarm, clear nights like this, in particular, when by ordinary therewere only couples on the Campus, each couple discreetly remote from anyof the others. Then Penniston would be aware of most portentous pauses(which a delectable and lazy conference of leaves made eloquent)because of many unfinished sentences. "Oh, YOU know what I mean,dear!" one would say as a last resort. And she-why, bless her heart!of course, she always did. . . . Heigho, youth's was a pleasantlunacy. . . .

  Thus Charteris reflected, growing drowsy. She said, "You spoke verywell to-night. Is it too late for congratulations?"

  Turning, Mr. Charteris remarked, "As you are perfectly aware, all thatI vented was just a deal of skimble-scamble stuff, a verbal syllabub ofbalderdash. No, upon reflection, I think I should rather describe itas a conglomeration of piffle, patriotism and pyrotechnics. Well,Madam Do-as-you-would-be-done-by, what would you have? You must givepeople what they want."

  It was characteristic that he faced Pauline Romeyne--or was it stillRomeyne? he wondered--precisely as if it had been fifteen minutes,rather than as many years, since they had last spoken together.

  "Must one?" she asked. "Oh, yes, I know you have always thought that,but I do not quite see the necessity of it."

  She sat upon the bench beside Lord Penniston's square marble pedestal."And all the while you spoke I was thinking of those Saturday nightswhen your name was up for an oration or a debate before the Eclectics,and you would stay away and pay the fine rather than brave an audience."

  "The tooth of Time," he reminded her, "has since then written wrinkleson my azure brow. The years slip away fugacious, and Time that bringsforth her children only to devour them grins most hellishly, for Timechanges all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation ofirony,--and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle? Youwouldn't have me put on exhibition as a _lusus naturae_?"

  "Oh, but I wish you had not altered so entirely!" Pauline sighed.

  "At least, you haven't," he declared. "Of course, I would be compelledto say so, anyhow. But in this happy instance courtesy and veracitycome skipping arm-in-arm from my elated lips." And, indeed, it seemedto him that Pauline was marvelously little altered. "I wonder now," hesaid, and cocked his head, "I wonder now whose wife I am talking to?"

  "No, Jack, I never married," she said quietly.

  "It is selfish of me," he said, in the same tone, "but I am glad ofthat."

  And so they sat a while, each thinking.

  "I wonder," said Pauline, with that small plaintive voice whichCharteris so poignantly remembered, "whether it is always like this?Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death ALWAYS provide some obstacle toprevent what all of us have known in youth was possible from evercoming true?"

  And again there was a pause which a delectable and lazy conference ofleaves made eloquent.

  "I suppose it is because they know that if it ever did come true, wewould be gods like them." The ordinary associates of John Charteris,most certainly, would not have suspected him to be the speaker. "Sothey contrive the obstacle, or else they send false dreams--out of thegates of horn--and make the path smooth, very smooth, so that twodreamers may not be hindered on their way to the divorce-courts."

  "Yes, they are jealous gods! oh, and ironical gods also! They grantthe Dream, and chuckle while they grant it, I think, because they knowthat later they will be bringing their playthings face to face--eachmarried, fat, inclined to optimism, very careful of decorum, andperfectly indifferent to each other. And then they get theirfore-planned mirth, these Overlords of Life and Death. 'We gave you,'they chuckle, 'the loveliest and greatest thing infinity contains. Andyou bartered it because of a clerkship or a lying maxim or perhaps afinger-ring.' I suppose that they must laugh a great deal."

  "Eh, what? But then you never married?" For masculinity in argumentstarts with the word it has found distasteful.

  "Why, no."

  "Nor I." And his tone implied that the two facts conjoined proved much.

  "Miss Willoughby----?" she inquired.

  Now, how in heaven's name, could a cloistered Fairhaven have surmisedhis intention of proposing on the first convenient opportunity tohandsome, well-to-do Anne Willoughby? He shrugged his wonder off."Oh, people will talk, you know. Let any man once find a woman has atongue in her head, and the stage-direction is always 'Enter Rumor,painted full of tongues.'"

  Pauline did not appear to have remarked his protest. "Yes,--in the endyou will marry her. And her money will help, just as you havecontrived to make everything else help, toward making John Charteriscomfortable
. She is not very clever, but she will always worship you,and so you two will not prove uncongenial. That is your real tragedy,if I could make you comprehend."

  "So I am going to develop into a pig," he said, with relish,--"alovable, contented, unambitious porcine, who is alike indifferent tothe Tariff, the importance of Equal Suffrage and the market-price ofhams, for all that he really cares about is to have his sty ascomfortable as may be possible. That is exactly what I am going todevelop into,--now, isn't it?" And John Charteris, sitting, as was hishabitual fashion, with one foot tucked under him, laughed cheerily.Oh, just to be alive (he thought) was ample cause for rejoicing! andhow deliciously her eyes, alert with slumbering fires, were peeringthrough the moon-made shadows of her brows!

  "Well----! something of the sort." Pauline was smiling, butrestrainedly, and much as a woman does in condoning the naughtiness ofher child. "And, oh, if only----"

  "Why, precisely. 'If only!' quotha. Why, there you word the key-note,you touch the cornerstone, you ruthlessly illuminate the mainspring, ofan intractable unfeeling universe. For instance, if only

  You were the Empress of Ayre and Skye, And I were Ahkond of Kong, We could dine every day on apple-pie, And peddle potatoes, and sleep in a sty, And people would say when we came to die, 'They _never_ did anything wrong.'

  But, as it is, our epitaphs will probably be nothing of the sort. Sothat there lurks, you see, much virtue in this 'if only.'"

  Impervious to nonsense, she asked, "And have I not earned the right tolament that you are changed?"

  "I haven't robbed more than six churches up to date," he grumbled."What would you have?"

  The answer came, downright, and, as he knew, entirely truthful: "Iwould have had you do all that you might have done."

  But he must needs refine. "Why, no--you would have made me do it,wrung out the last drop. You would have bullied me and shamed me intobeing all that I might have been. I see that now." He spoke as if inwonder, with quickening speech. "Pauline, I haven't been entirely notworth while. Oh, yes, I know! I know I haven't written five-acttragedies which would be immortal, as you probably expected me to do.My books are not quite the books I was to write when you and I wereyoung. But I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous littletales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil thepettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is notthe actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where theDream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possiblecomes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and havenot ever entered, and have not ever forgotten. So people like mylittle tales. . . . Do they induce delusions? Oh, well, you must givepeople what they want, and literature is a vast bazaar where customerscome to purchase everything except mirrors."

  She said soberly, "You need not make a jest of it. It is notridiculous that you write of beautiful and joyous things because therewas a time when living was really all one wonderful adventure, and youremember it."

  "But, oh, my dear, my dear! such glum discussions are so sadlyout-of-place on such a night as this," he lamented. "For it is a nightof pearl-like radiancies and velvet shadows and delicate odors and bigfriendly stars that promise not to gossip, whatever happens. It is anight that hungers, and all its undistinguishable little sounds arevoicing the night's hunger for masks and mandolins, for rope-laddersand balconies and serenades. It is a night . . . a night wherein Igratefully remember so many beautiful sad things that neverhappened . . . to John Charteris, yet surely happened once upon a timeto me . . ."

  "I think that I know what it is to remember--better than you do, Jack.But what do you remember?"

  "In faith, my dear, the most Bedlamitish occurrences! It is a nightthat breeds deplorable insanities, I warn you. For I seem to rememberhow I sat somewhere, under a peach-tree, in clear autumn weather, andwas content; but the importance had all gone out of things; and evenyou did not seem very important, hardly worth lying to, as I spokelightly of my wasted love for you, half in hatred, and--yes, still halfin adoration. For you were there, of course. And I remember how Icame to you, in a sinister and brightly lighted place, where ahorrible, staring frail old man lay dead at your feet; and you hadmurdered him; and heaven did not care, and we were old, and all ourlives seemed just to end in futile tangle-work. And, again, I rememberhow we stood alone, with visible death crawling lazily toward us, as abig sullen sea rose higher and higher; and we little tinseled creatureswaited, helpless, trapped and yearning. . . . There is a boat in thatpicture; I suppose it was deeply laden with pirates coming to slit ourthroats from ear to ear. I have forgotten that part, but I rememberthe tiny spot of courtplaster just above your painted lips. . . . Suchare the jumbled pictures. They are bred of brain-fag, no doubt; yet,whatever be their lineage," said Charteris, happily, "they render glumdiscussion and platitudinous moralizing quite out of the question. So,let's pretend, Pauline, that we are not a bit more worldly-wise thanthose youngsters who are frisking yonder in the Gymnasium--for, upon myword, I dispute if we have ever done anything to suggest that we are.Don't let's be cowed a moment longer by those bits of paper withfigures on them which our too-credulous fellow-idiots consider to bethe only almanacs. Let's have back yesterday, let's tweak the nose ofTime intrepidly." Then Charteris caroled:

  "For Yesterday! for Yesterday! I cry a reward for a Yesterday Now lost or stolen or gone astray, With all the laughter of Yesterday!"

  "And how slight a loss was laughter," she murmured--still with thevague and gentle eyes of a day-dreamer--"as set against all that wenever earned in youth, and so will never earn."

  He inadequately answered "Bosh!" and later, "Do you remember----?" hebegan.

  Yes, she remembered that, it developed. And "Do you remember----?" shein turn was asking later. It was to seem to him in retrospection thatneither for the next half-hour began a sentence without this formula.It was as if they sought to use it as a master-word wherewith toreanimate the happinesses and sorrows of their common past, and as ifthey found the charm was potent to awaken the thin, powerless ghosts ofemotions that were once despotic. For it was as if frail shadows andhalf-caught echoes were all they could evoke, it seemed to Charteris;and yet these shadows trooped with a wild grace, and the echoesthrilled him with the sweet and piercing surprise of a bird's call atmidnight or of a bugle heard in prison.

  Then twelve o'clock was heralded by the College bell, and Pauline aroseas though this equable deep-throated interruption of the music's levityhad been a signal. John Charteris saw her clearly now; and she wasbeautiful.

  "I must go. You will not ever quite forget me, Jack. Such is my sorrycomfort." It seemed to Charteris that she smiled as in mockery, andyet it was a very tender sort of derision. "Yes, you have made yourbooks. You have done what you most desired to do. You have got allfrom life that you have asked of life. Oh, yes, you have got much fromlife. One prize, though, Jack, you missed."

  He, too, had risen, quiet and perfectly sure of himself. "I haven'tmissed it. For you love me."

  This widened her eyes. "Did I not always love you, Jack? Yes, evenwhen you went away forever, and there were no letters, and the dayswere long. Yes, even knowing you, I loved you, John Charteris."

  "Oh, I was wrong, all wrong," he cried; "and yet there is something tobe said upon the other side, as always. . . ." Now Charteris was stillfor a while. The little man's chin was uplifted so that it was towardthe stars he looked rather than at Pauline Romeyne, and when he spokehe seemed to meditate aloud. "I was born, I think, with the desire tomake beautiful books--brave books that would preserve the glories ofthe Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people,and re-awaken joy and magnanimity." Here he laughed, a littleruefully. "No, I do not think I can explain this obsession to any onewho has never suffered from it. But I have never in my life permittedanything to stand in the way of my fulfilling this desire to serve theDream by re-creating it for others with picked words, and th
at has costme something. Yes, the Dream is an exacting master. My books, such asthey are, have been made what they are at the dear price of neverpermitting myself to care seriously for anything else. I might notdare to dissipate my energies by taking any part in the drama I wasattempting to re-write, because I must so jealously conserve all theforce that was in me for the perfection of my lovelier version. Thatmay not be the best way of making books, but it is the only one thatwas possible for me. I had so little natural talent, you see," saidCharteris, wistfully, "and I was anxious to do so much with it. So Ihad always to be careful. It has been rather lonely, my dear. Now,looking back, it seems to me that the part I have played in all otherpeople's lives has been the role of a tourist who enters a cafechantant, a fortress, or a cathedral, with much the same forlorn senseof detachment, and observes what there is to see that may be worthremembering, and takes a note or two, perhaps, and then leaves theplace forever. Yes, that is how I served the Dream and that is how Igot my books. They are very beautiful books, I think, but they cost mefifteen years of human living and human intimacy, and they are hardlyworth so much."

  He turned to her, and his voice changed. "Oh, I was wrong, all wrong,and chance is kindlier than I deserve. For I have wandered afterunprofitable gods, like a man blundering through a day of mist and fog,and I win home now in its golden sunset. I have laughed very much, mydear, but I was never happy until to-night. The Dream, as I now know,is not best served by making parodies of it, and it does not greatlymatter after all whether a book be an epic or a directory. What reallymatters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which wecan share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple,generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovelyof all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.My dear, if I were worthy to kneel and kiss the dust you tread in Iwould do it. As it happens, I am not worthy. Pauline, there was atime when you and I were young together, when we aspired, when lifepassed as if it were to the measures of a noble music--aheart-wringing, an obdurate, an intolerable music, it might be, butalways a lofty music. One strutted, no doubt--it was because one knewoneself to be indomitable. Eh, it is true I have won all I asked oflife, very horribly true. All that I asked, poor fool! oh, I am wearyof loneliness, and I know now that all the phantoms I have raised areonly colorless shadows which belie the Dream, and they are hateful tome. I want just to recapture that old time we know of, and we twoalone. I want to know the Dream again, Pauline,--the Dream which I hadlost, had half forgotten, and have so pitifully parodied. I want toknow the Dream again, Pauline, and you alone can help me."

  "Oh, if I could! if even I could now, my dear!" Pauline Romeyne lefthim upon a sudden, crying this. And "So!" said Mr. Charteris.

  He had been deeply shaken and very much in earnest; but he was neverthe man to give for any lengthy while too slack a rein to emotion; andso he now sat down upon the bench and lighted a cigarette and smiled.Yet he fully recognized himself to be the most enviable of men and aninhabitant of the most glorious world imaginable--a world wherein hevery assuredly meant to marry Pauline Romeyne say, in the ensuingSeptember. Yes, that would fit in well enough, although, of course, hewould have to cancel the engagement to lecture in Milwaukee. . . . Howlucky, too, it was that he had never actually committed himself withAnne Willoughby! for while money was an excellent thing to have, howinfinitely less desirable it was to live perked up in golden sorrowthan to feed flocks upon the Grampian Hills, where Freedom from themountain height cried, "I go on forever, a prince can make a beltedknight, and let who will be clever. . . ."

  "--and besides, you'll catch your death of cold," lamented RudolphMusgrave, who was now shaking Mr. Charteris' shoulder.

  "Eh, what? Oh, yes, I daresay I was napping," the other mumbled. Hestood and stretched himself luxuriously. "Well, anyhow, don't be suchan unmitigated grandmother. You see, I have a bit of rather importantbusiness to attend to. Which way is Miss Romeyne?"

  "Pauline Romeyne? why, but she married old General Ashmeade, you know.She was the gray-haired woman in purple who carried out her squallingbrat when Taylor was introducing you, if you remember. She told me,while the General was getting the horses around, how sorry she was tomiss your address, but they live three miles out, and Mrs. Ashmeade issimply a slave to the children. . . . Why, what in the world have youbeen dreaming about?"

  "Eh, what? Oh, yes, I daresay I was only napping," Mr. Charterisobserved. He was aware that within they were still playing a riotoustwo-step.

  _BALLAD OF PLAGIARY_

  "_Freres et matres, vous qui cultivez_"--PAUL VERVILLE.

  Hey, my masters, lords and brothers, ye that till the fields of rhyme, Are ye deaf ye will not hearken to the clamor of your time?

  Still ye blot and change and polish--vary, heighten and transpose-- Old sonorous metres marching grandly to their tranquil close.

  Ye have toiled and ye have fretted; ye attain perfected speech: Ye have nothing new to utter and but platitudes to preach.

  And your rhymes are all of loving, as within the old days when Love was lord of the ascendant in the horoscopes of men.

  Still ye make of love the utmost end and scope of all your art; And, more blind than he you write of, note not what a modest part

  Loving now may claim in living, when we have scant time to spare, Who are plundering the sea-depths, taking tribute of the air,--

  Whilst the sun makes pictures for us; since to-day, for good or ill, Earth and sky and sea are harnessed, and the lightnings work our will.

  Hey, my masters, all these love-songs by dust-hidden mouths were sung That ye mimic and re-echo with an artful-artless tongue,--

  Sung by poets close to nature, free to touch her garments' hem Whom to-day ye know not truly; for ye only copy them.

  Them ye copy--copy always, with your backs turned to the sun, Caring not what man is doing, noting that which man has done.

  _We are talking over telephones, as Shakespeare could not talk;_ _We are riding out in motor-cars where Homer had to walk;_

  _And pictures Dante labored on of mediaeval Hell_ _The nearest cinematograph paints quicker, and as well._

  But ye copy, copy always;--and ye marvel when ye find This new beauty, that new meaning,--while a model stands behind,

  Waiting, young and fair as ever, till some singer turn and trace Something of the deathless wonder of life lived in any place.

  Hey, my masters, turn from piddling to the turmoil and the strife! Cease from sonneting, my brothers; let us fashion songs from life.

  _Thus I wrote ere Percie passed me. . . . Then did I epitomize_ _All life's beauty in one poem, and make haste to eulogize_ _Quite the fairest thing life boasts of, for I wrote of Percie's eyes._

  EXPLICIT DECAS POETARUM