The Day of His Youth

by Alice Brown

Later: O, I am glad I came, if only for this one thing—a little cat, a little mangled cat, gaunt, wounded, dying. I killed her—mercifully.

Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume

Dear friend,—Only a word, to save my honor: for we lunch and tea and dine with the world to-day. Your barbarian is more than perfect. He has become a social sovereign, sweeping all before him; and he doesn't even know it. He stands there in a circle of pretty girls and strenuous spinsters, looks at them gravely with those great soft eyes, answers their questions, and walks away in absolute unconsciousness. He says people are so kind. On the contrary, they are enraptured with his beauty and his miraculous truth-telling. And I begin to think Zoe may really be in love with him. If nobody interferes with them, perhaps they'll make a model Darby and Joan.

Ernest Hume to Francis Hume

Dear son,—So you don't love the poor! Well, don't force it. They are not invariably beautiful. Don't trouble about them until you have found out why they haven't Greek profiles, as a rule, and why they sometimes fail in expressing their lovely thoughts. Why did the cat appeal to you? Yet she wasn't beautiful. Something had maimed her. That might be the case with two-legged creatures also. I have been thinking about you a lot. In fact, for the last twenty years there hasn't been anything else for me to think about, except what is gone. And that is a chapter by itself. But I want to tell you this: if you are in a tight place of any sort, moral or financial, come to me, and I shall be grateful. I'm older, and I have lived in the world. I don't want to be a prig and hamper you with moral maxims; but if you need me, I want to be there. Moreover, I want you to grapple alone with life. That's the only way. To catch systematically at another swimmer is to weaken yourself and perhaps go down,—as I did, though not for the same reason. I went down because I never was a strong swimmer in the beginning, and then I didn't go in for training. Enough of metaphor. I've a sort of legacy, though, to give you. I was thinking last night what a shame it is that we never have a fair show with temptation, because a temptation is a thing that's never recognized until you see its back: like the hill-wives. But this you may remember; if something seems particularly enticing to you, and you say, "It wouldn't do for all the world to take this, but it will do for me," draw back. That is mirage. If you begin to shield yourself behind what the great souls have done, that, too, is mirage. The great souls are never so little as in forsaking law for license. Do not despise what convention has decreed, unless you know it to be trivial and false. The general consensus of mankind really means something. A hot-headed and hot-hearted youngling in revolt against harness is pretty sure to get a galled back—and nothing else. Pin yourself to law; only make sure that the law is the highest possible. So much for Polonius. Now, your legacy; and now I have to write things almost too sacred to be written, and that never could be said. I have always talked to you about your mother, because you have a right to know her; but her loss is so fresh, that every word still hurts. She was probably the most rounded, the purest, the most crystalline nature ever made. Her perfection could never have been exceeded. Perhaps Imogen only was her equal. Have you ever thought what it must have been to such a woman to conceive and bear a child? She loved me. Our life was as perfect as her desert. Now I know the thoughts—all she could tell even me—of that girl-mother every day of all the weeks before your birth. There is no word—at least from me—fine enough to describe the course of that holy rapture. There is in a woman's love a certain joy in the pain which is borne for love's sake, a certain ecstasy of renunciation which no man ever feels. That once I saw it pictured. I veil my face. She was not only divinely happy because you were coming; she became divinely holy. Her child seemed to be a sacrifice to present to God,—her God was very living, very near her,—and she had resolved that he should be a perfect gift. She heard the most beautiful music, and clothed herself in the finest fabrics. She had her room hung with angelic faces, where her eyes could open first upon them in the morning. Those are the pictures that hang in our cabin. I could never tell you why I chose them. Mona Lisa was banished, though she loved her, too. But she said, "He shall have the simplicity of God; he shall not bear the beauty of the world." She read the most wonderful books then, the simplest, the most exalted. I have tried to remember her choice among them, and it seems to me now that she chose always what had the wisdom of truth and love, and that she shrank from the sparkling and clever. I cannot tell you all her thoughts about you, nor all her hopes. For, indeed, the confidences were mine, and near as you are to me, she is nearer. Perhaps I could never have told you if you had not begun to see what it is to love a woman. But the substance of it all seems to be this: she loved you before she saw you; she worshiped the very thought of your coming. She seemed to feel that she was not a passive instrument chosen to bring you into the world. (You see I speak personally now of the Unknowable. It is because she did so. To her, all the powers that fashion and rule were blended in One, and He was warm and living, and she loved Him. Yet her idea was not anthropomorphic. It was colossal. This was and is incomprehensible to me; but I am trying now to enter her habit of mind.) A passive instrument, did I write? She was, in a way, your creator. The vital spark came from her God through love and her, and she would not hamper it by any earthly clogs of groveling inheritance. Well—her watching upon her arms was over. She saw her son. And then she gave him to me to finish her work, and died. Now the knowledge of her great love and expectation seems to belong to you, and I have only this to say: If you feel yourself getting a little dusty in life, think what should be expected of one who was so loved, so waited for. You are of royal stock; for you were born of a woman so perfect that sometimes I wonder now if I have not imagined her. But I have not. She was real. We do not guess out things so beautiful. God—It—Nature—makes them, and then we describe them in verse or music, and people say we create. Don't speak to me of this; only make use of it when the time comes.

There isn't much to tell you about camp. I do many of the same old things. Perhaps I shall go to you; for sometimes I think you will not want to come back. Pierre misses you.

To the Unknown Friend

I hate vulgarity! Mrs. Montrose seems to be a very good woman, but she is vulgar. Why, when women are middle-aged and portly, do they feel at liberty to make rude personal speeches? She said to me yesterday:—

"If you want to marry Zoe, marry her soon." I was angry; I could only look at her. She laughed, but she did flush. "Don't glare at me, Ingomar," said she. "I'm speaking for your good. It isn't well for you to marry her, but somehow you're the kind of a child I want to see pleased. So keep on the spot. Captain Morton has come back, and he knows Zoe has had some money left her. Be on the spot!" I walked away without a word. Since then I have hardly seen Zoe. It is insulting to go near her. As if I did not trust her! As if I would be "on the spot!"

Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume