So, fine sweetheart! I am going back with you to your city. We are not to be separated for a single day: perhaps not until the hour when you stand up before your people and swear to cleave to me only. I read that service yesterday, alone in the woods. Gods! how great it is! and yet not great enough. I would not have it "till death." It should cover the abyss—and hell. Do you remember to think with every breath you draw how a man loves you? how he would fain have you his breath, that he might draw you into his very veins? Ah, what words are there for the telling? How poverty-stricken are we that there should be no way to make you mine save by swearing oaths! If I could give you my blood—but even that is less dear to me than one instant in your presence. If I could sacrifice the dearest thing I have—yet that would not be life itself; it would be you. Sacrifice you to love, to prove I love you! What wisdom were in that?
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Dear,—Step back before it is too late. Do not come with us. No good lies that way. Why should you leave your happy island for the grimy streets? There is strange irony, too, in your setting off with us, such wayworn travelers. So might a spangled troup of weary players entice a sleepy child that had only known the lambs and birds, and lain on fragrant hay, to take some part in their ghastly mummery. What should be his fate? footsore, bewildered, to fall beside a wayside ditch, and gasp his breath out in the dusty fern. Go back! I'll none of you. I won't take the responsibility of your shining soul. Stay here, and write the story of your island. Tell the weary old world what the leaves whisper and how the flower-buds open. And folks will smile the vacuous smile of ignorant criticism, and say, "O, yes, we all knew it before!" Then perhaps your Virginia will come, and you may die in each other's arms. For you haven't the fortunate palm, my boy; you haven't the look of luck. They that make us have ordained you to grief, and I would for forty shillings that your slaughter came not through me. I will go to town. You shall send me your manuscripts, I will find a publisher, and we will write each other letters—so friendly, so friendly—and when you die with Virginia I will come to the woods and sit by your grave, and sing you little songs in remembrance of the love that was not to be mine. So fare you well; and I wish you only forgetfulness.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
Farewell! I stop in my packing to laugh. I've begun to sing the word, to whistle little tunes to its rhythm. Aye, mistress, we will fare well, but we fare together! It has just occurred to me that my packing is very queer indeed: violin, gun, my few dearest books, and almost no clothes. For my father says camp clothes, however new, won't wear the air of town, and my tailor must be my first friend. Farewell, indeed! Can you toss a bridegroom a two-syllabled word over your shoulder, and turn him back at the door of the church? What is a church like? Is it true the aisles are forest vistas? So the books say. O, the great race of men, to have put nature into wood and stone!
Francis Hume to Ernest Hume
The Tremont House, Boston.
I am here, exactly where you told me to go, though Mrs. Montrose asked me very cordially, again and again, to make my home with her. In front of the hotel is a noisy, rattling street, full of madness, clamor, and delight. (I said this to Zoe, and she laughed herself faint. "Intoxicated by a Boston street!" said she. "Wait till you see Paris.") At the side of the hotel is a yard full of graves, with little stones, row upon row. O, so many graves! I realize what multitudes of men have died, and how old the world must be. I thought of it last night, and it bore upon me so, grave upon grave—and all the unnumbered dead of all the wars—and I rose to look from my window into the busy, lighted night, and think of men. How they seethe here in crowds. How they hurry up and down, each in his little world, king of that alone, and alien to his brother. It is so strange. I think I should die of loneliness if I had not brought my own with me. But does any one sleep? There is no air!
O father, why are you not here! We went to the theatre to see a woman—I told you we were going. I never so longed for speech. If only I might describe her, even half worthily! I send you a package of photographs, all I can find, but they stammer and halt as I do. First, she is tall, very tall, I think, and there is in her a strange mingling of angularity and the divinest grace. She seems to have members like another, but the most perfect genius and harmony in the use of them. Her hand is gracious, large; it has not that subtile outline of Zoe's, but she uses it as an instrument potent for beauty. Her head is not set proudly, her shoulders are not like the pine-tree, and Mrs. Montrose tells me her clothes are wrinkled and sometimes frayed at the seams. But her face! All the Graces strove for mastery, and threw their gifts at her in a blind contention, so that none of them agree. They simply strive together like a company of angels, ill-assorted, and give you the effect of a lovely surprise. Her brows are full of pathos. Between them there is ever a little irregular frown; and her eyes look out beneath, imploring, piteous, saying, "I have lost my way. Will somebody tell me where to go?" And her mouth! O, the merriest mouth, made for joy, made for light words and blithest laughter! Her hair is dancing yellow, and she herself dances, her spirit most of all. I have felt joy, but I never saw it until now. Zoe laughs at me, and opens her eyes because I have begun to talk of good and bad, of beauty and ugliness. She says I am too apt. It is true that I have done little but study faces since I came. Many are like animals. Some I love; some I hate at once. I have seen three persons who are deformed, with humps on their backs. They have a strange old look, with a queer brightness in the eyes; and when I catch that look on those who are straight and well, I wonder if they are deformed in the soul. But whoever else is to be shrunk from, my player-lady is all-worthy. As I saw her fleet about the stage, buoyant in joy and then maddened by grief unspeakable, I did not see her alone. I caught glimpses of Shakespeare's women, for she had a trace of them all: Portia, full-winged for justice; Juliet, passion-doomed; Imogen, your love of loves; but most of all Beatrice, the iris-spirit, and Ophelia, piteously undone. Then I remembered, "A star danced," and hot tears burned my eyes. Father, how do we live when we feel so much? And the world, so great, so piercing in its beauty—how it presses upon us! Yet I suppose there must be a certain habit of inner control; for though it is beautiful to Zoe, she does not ache as I do. No, she laughs. I must get the habit of laughter. But you see I have been up all night, thinking of this woman and the world she opens to me; of her and the woman I love. Of Zoe I think always, father; but you know I couldn't write that. No man could, could he?
... I have been to church. It is strangely disappointing. Of the church itself it is not necessary to speak. It seems there are no great cathedrals here; I had not realized that. The music was fine, but faint; I found I had expected not a quartette but a chorus, a multitude praising God. Then the clergyman spoke. It was very vague and very long. It seemed to me unnecessary for him to have written anything, when he might have read Emerson or Ruskin. I forgot him, after a time, and began to think of Lone Mountain and the rhythm of the wind over the firs. The sermon was something about St. John's visions and the church. It seemed to me belittling, as if a primer should be written to explain the gods. But perhaps I have to get the habit of church-going also.
I have been introduced to dozens of people. Dozens? let me say hundreds. They are very kind. You ask me to speak frankly of civilized life. Frankly then, these people we meet in battalions I do not like. That is, I might like them individually if they appeared under a different system; but society seems to me an intricate sort of game which anybody could play, but which is very puzzling to the onlooker and not in the least worth learning. For example, their conversation: a great deal of it is mere personality, and they only speak of a certain set. That may be a truism. I have apparently said that they do not talk of the people they do not know because they only talk of the people they know. But I find there are such different ways of talking. People seem to be in groups, and each group is labeled. I am in the smart set! I fancy some of them consider the persons who play and sing and write books (that is unless they don't do it particularly well) as a class of beings made for their amusement; and if it is necessary to speak of scientists or diplomats, they do it with a certain languid interest, and then put them aside in a drawer. There is a great deal of philanthropy, but it is not what I thought about love of man, when I read the old stories of the saints and those greater than saints who came to redeem. It does not look like love; for love draws one nearer, clasps its arms about one; is it not so? This is a kind of business appointed for certain days in the week, just as one attends church on Sunday. They "go down" to obscure streets and visit, and they even make reports afterwards; but it is something like the German lessons three times a week or the piano practice every day. But who am I to blame them? I have walked through the poorer streets. I have looked boldly into the faces there, and, father, I hate them. I would not touch them for worlds, those deformed, dirty, ugly, loathsome creatures. They are so unbeautiful! And there surely can be no need of that. They might at least have the beauty of cleanliness and of lovely thoughts. Apparently I cannot get the habit of philanthropy, however well I may do with church-going. For how can we help being repulsed by what is repulsive? As well expect the bees to seek carrion instead of roses. But what do the books mean when they talk about love of men? The more men need love, the less one can love them. Write me, father. I feel as if I should know a different side of you through your letters.