CHAPTER IX. NIGHT: IT IS BAD LUCK TO SING BEFORE BREAKFAST
There was a lace of faint mists along the creek and beyond, when John and Helen reached their bench (of course they went back there), and broken roundelays were croaking from a bayou up the stream, where rakish frogs held carnival in resentment of the lonesomeness. The air was still and close. Hundreds of fire-flies coquetted with the darkness amongst the trees across the water, glinting from unexpected spots, shading their little lanterns for a second to glow again from other shadows. The sky was a wonderful olive green; a lazy cloud drifted in it and lapped itself athwart the moon.
“The dead painters design the skies for us each day and night, I think,” Helen said, as she dropped a little scarf from her shoulders and leaned back on the bench. “It must be the only way to keep them happy and busy 'up there.' They let them take turns, and those not on duty, probably float around and criticise.”
“They've given a good man his turn to-night,” said John; “some quiet colorist, a poetic, friendly soul, no Turner—though I think I've seen a Turner sunset or two in Plattville.”
“It was a sculptor's sunset this evening. Did you see it?—great massy clouds piled heap on heap, almost with violence. I'm sure it was Michelangelo. The judge didn't think it meant Michelangelo; he thought it meant rain.”
“Michelangelo gets a chance rather often, doesn't he, considering the number of art people there must be over there? I believe I've seen a good many sunsets of his, and a few dawns, too; the dawns not for a long time—I used to see them more frequently toward the close of senior year, when we sat up all night talking, knowing we'd lose one another soon, and trying to hold on as long as we could.”
She turned to him with a little frown. “Why have you never let Tom Meredith know you were living so near him, less than a hundred miles, when he has always liked and admired you above all the rest of mankind? I know that he has tried time and again to hear of you, but the other men wrote that they knew nothing—that it was thought you had gone abroad. I had heard of you, and so must he have seen your name in the Rouen papers—about the 'White-Caps,' and in politics—but he would never dream of connecting the Plattville Mr. Harkless with his Mr. Harkless, though I did, just a little, and rather vaguely. I knew, of course, when you came into the lecture. But why haven't you written to my cousin?”
“Rouen seems a long way from here,” he answered quietly. “I've only been there once—half a day on business. Except that, I've never been further away than Amo or Gainesville, for a convention or to make a speech, since I came here.”
“Wicked!” she exclaimed, “To shut yourself up like this! I said it was fine to drop out of the world; but why have you cut off your old friends from you? Why haven't you had a relapse, now and then, and come over to hear Ysaye play and Melba sing, or to see Mansfield or Henry Irving, when we have had them? And do you think you've been quite fair to Tom? What right had you to assume that he had forgotten you?”
“Oh, I didn't exactly mean forgotten,” he said, pulling a blade of grass to and fro between his fingers, staring at it absently. “It's only that I have dropped out of the world, you know. I kept track of every one, saw most of my friends, or corresponded, now and then, for a year or so after I left college; but people don't miss you much after a while. They rather expected me to do a lot of things, in a way, you know, and I wasn't doing them. I was glad to get away. I always had an itch for newspaper work, and I went on a New York paper. Maybe it was the wrong paper; at least, I wasn't fit for it. There was something in the side of life I saw, too, not only on the paper, that made me heart-sick; and then the rush and fight and scramble to be first, to beat the other man. Probably I am too squeamish. I saw classmates and college friends diving into it, bound to come out ahead, dear old, honest, frank fellows, who had been so happy-go-lucky and kind and gay, growing too busy to meet and be good to any man who couldn't be good to them, asking (more delicately) the eternal question, 'What does it get me?' You might think I bad-met with unkindness; but it was not so; it was the other way more than I deserved. But the cruel competition, the thousands fighting for places, the multitude scrambling for each ginger-bread baton, the cold faces on the streets—perhaps it's all right and good; of course it has to be—but I wanted to get out of it, though I didn't want to come here. That was chance. A new man bought the paper I was working for, and its policy changed. Many of the same men still wrote for it, facing cheerfully about and advocating a tricky theory, vehement champions of a set of personal schemers and waxy images.”