These papers have, by one of the incredible chances of life, come into my hands. I see no possible wrong in their publication, for now the Humes are dead, father and son; nay, even the name adopted here was not their own. They were two slight bubbles of being, destined to rise, to float for a time, and to be again resolved into the unknown sea. Yet while they lived, they were iridescent; the colors of a far-away sun played upon them, and they sent him back his gleams. To lose them wholly out of life were some pain to those of us who have been privileged to love them through their own written confessions. So here are they given back to the world which in no other way could adequately know them.
Francis Hume to the Unknown Friend[1 ]
I never had a friend! Did any human creature twenty years old ever write that before, unless he did it in a spirit of bitterness because he was out of humor with his world? Yet I can say it, knowing it to be the truth. My father and I are one, the oak and its branch, the fern and its fruitage; but for somebody to be the mirror of my own thoughts, tantalizingly strange, intoxicatingly new, where shall I look? Ah, but I know! I will create him from my own longings. He shall be born of the blood and sinew of my brain and heart. Stand forth, beautiful one, made in the image of my fancy, and I will tell thee all—all I am ashamed to tell my father, and tired of imprisoning in my own soul. What shall I call thee? Friend: that will be enough, all-comprehending and rich in joy. To-day I have needed thee more than ever, though it is only to-day that I learned to recognize the need. All the morning a sweet languor held me, warm, like the sun, and touched with his fervor, so that I felt within me darts of impelling fire. I sat in the woods by the spring, my eyes on the dancing shadows at my feet, not thinking, not willing, yet expectant. I felt as if something were coming, and that I must be ready to meet it when the great moment should strike. Suddenly my heart beat high in snatches of rhythm; my feet stirred, my ears woke to the whir of wings, and my eyes to flickering shade. My whole self was whelmed and suffocated in a wave of sweet delight. And then it was that my heart cried out for another heart to beat beside it and make harmony for the two; then it was that thou, dear one, wast born from my thought. I am not disloyal in seeking companionship. My father is myself. Let me say that over and over. When I tell him my fancies, he smiles sadly, saying they are the buds of youth, born never to flower. To him Nature is goddess and mother; he turns to her for sustenance by day, and lies on her bosom at night. After death he will be content to rest in her arms and become one flesh with her mould. But I—I! O, is it because I am young; and will the days chill out this strange, sweet fever, as they have in him? Two years ago—yes, a year—I had no higher joy than to throw myself, body and soul, into motion: to row, fish, swim, to listen, in a dream of happiness, while my father read old Homer to me in the evening, or we masterfully swept through duets—'cello and violin—that my sleep was too dreamless to repeat to me. And now the very world is changed; help me to understand it, my friend; or, if I am to blame, help me to conquer myself.
[ ][1 ] This title is adopted by the editor that the narrative may be at least approximately clear. The paragraphs headed thus were scribblings on loose sheets: a sort of desultory journal.
II
I have much to tell thee, my friend! and of a nature never before known in these woods and by this water. Last night, at sunset, I stood on the Point waiting for my father to come in from his round about the island, when suddenly a boat shot out from Silver Stream and came on toward me, rowed to the accompaniment of a song I never heard. I stood waiting, for the voices were beautiful, one high and strong (and as I listened, it flashed upon me that my father had said the 'cello is like a woman singing), another, deep and rich. There were two men, as I saw when they neared me, and two women; and all were young. The men—what were they like? I hardly know, except that they made me feel ashamed of my roughness. And the women! One was yellow-haired and pale; she had a fairy build, I think, and her shoulders were like the birch-tree. Her head was bare, and the sun—he had stayed to do it—had turned all the threads to gold. She was so white! white as the tiarella in the spring. When I saw her, I bent forward; they looked my way, and I drew back behind the tree. I had been curious, and I was ashamed; it seemed to me they might stop and say, "Who is this fellow who lives in the woods and stares at people like an owl by night?" But the oars dipped, and the boat and song went on. The song! if I but knew it! It called my feet to dancing. It was like laughter and the play of the young squirrels. I watched for them to go back, and in an hour they did, still singing in jubilant chorus; and after that came my father. As soon as I saw him, I knew something had happened. I have never seen him so sad, so weary. He put his hand on my shoulder, after we had beached the boat and were walking up to the cabin.
"Francis," he said, "our good days are over."
"Why?" I asked.
It appeared to me, for some reason, that they had just begun; perhaps because the night was so fragrant and the stars so near. The world had never seemed so homelike and so warm. I knew how a bird feels in its own soft nest.