With one of those sudden revulsions to materialism which is liable to overwhelm any man who delves too long at a time in the brutally unconventional issues of life and death, the Senior Surgeon stepped down into the subtle, hyacinth-scented sunshine with every latent human greed in his body clamoring for expression—before it, too, should be hurtled into oblivion. "Eat, you fool, and drink, you fool, and be merry,—you fool,—for to-morrow—even you,—Lendicott R. Faber—may have to die!" brawled and re-brawled through his mind like a ribald phonograph tune.
At the edge of the bottom step a precipitous lilac branch that must have budded and bloomed in a single hour smote him stingingly across his cheek. "Laggard!" taunted the lilac branch.
With the first crunching grit of gravel under his feet, something transcendently naked and unashamed that was neither Brazen Sorrow nor Brazen Pain thrilled across his startled consciousness. Over the rolling, marshy meadow, beyond the succulent willow-hedge that hid the winding river, up from some fluent, slim canoe, out from a chorus of virile young tenor voices, a little passionate Love Song—divinely tender—most incomparably innocent—came stealing palpitantly forth into that inflammable Spring world without a single vestige of accompaniment on it!
Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here,
And Love is Lord of you and me,
There's no bird in brake or brere,
But to his little mate sings he,
"Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here
And Love is Lord of you—and me!"
Wrenched like a sob out of his own lost youth the Senior Surgeon's faltering college memories took up the old refrain.
As I go singing, to my dear,
"Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here,
And Love is Lord of you and me!"
Just for an instant a dozen long-forgotten pictures lanced themselves poignantly into his brain,—dingy, uncontrovertible old recitation rooms where young ideas flashed bright and futile as parade swords,—elm-shaded slopes where lithe young bodies lolled on green velvet grasses to expound their harshest cynicisms! Book-history, book-science, book-economics, book-love,—all the paper passion of all the paper poets swaggering imperiously on boyish lips that would have died a thousand bashful deaths before the threatening imminence of a real girl's kiss! Magic days, with Youth the one glittering, positive treasure on the Tree of Life—and Woman still a mystery!
"Woman a mystery?" Harshly the phrase ripped through the Senior
Surgeon's brain. Croakingly in that instant all the grim gray scientific
years re-overtook him, swamped him, strangled him. "Woman a mystery?
Oh ye Gods! And Youth? Bah! Youth,—a mere tinsel tinkle on a rotting
Christmas tree!"
Furiously with renewed venom he turned and threw his weight again upon the stubbornly resistant crank of his automobile.
Vaguely disturbed by the noise and vibration the White Linen Nurse opened her big, drowsy, blue eyes upon him.