When Mrs. Cultus put the shawl around her daughter’s shoulders and mentioned incidentally that Paul was arranging things for her on deck, Adele had a violent revulsion of feeling. Still thinking of those trashy verses Paul had sent her, she felt little disposition to meet him; then noticed again how stuffy was the air of the state-room; then her mother insisted.
“But those verses, mother!”
“Never mind poetry,” said Mrs. Cultus, laughing. “Think of what you’ve done in that line yourself. You’re just like me. I did it,” and her mother shook all over with amusement.
“What are you laughing at?”—Adele serious.
“Why, my dear, you’ve been singing verses about ‘doves’ and ‘loves,’ and ‘toujours’ and ‘amours’ ever since you began singing lessons. If I believed half of what you’ve sung in public, I would not know what to think. Never mind poetry, verses don’t count. Now go on deck.”
“It was half Frank’s fault, anyhow,” mused Adele, “to read me such stuff when I felt so wretched. Never mind, I’ll have a good crow to pick with Paul when I get him alone.”
Aphrodite also laughed—one of her most bewitching ripples of laughter—when she overheard Adele’s last conclusion, and promptly sent for her accomplished son, Eros.
Eros was a youngster, at least in appearance, but very precocious. Like his father, the ancient Hermes (Mercury), he was very quick in his movements, and affected considerable style in his undress, for a divinity. He even appeared wearing a collar, with the very latest style of neck-tie, a cordon of blue ribbon over his shoulder instead of a belt around his waist; which fact often troubled artists and “fotographers” when they took his “picture.” Being thus ultra, he carried at times a torch, then again bow and arrows, in lieu of a walking stick; and sometimes put the name “Cupid” on his visiting cards, because he said it sounded “cute.” The modern divinities elsewhere, as well as at Olympus, were much divided in their opinions about this Eros-Cupid, “modern-antique.” Some said he was a good boy; others, the most mischievous little urchin that was to be found sporting around the Mount of the Gods; some contended that the mischief he wrought showed him to be a charming little elf with his mother’s dimples and ripples of laughter. Later, some foreigners dubbed him Puck, but he was never so designated at Olympus, never, not even by his mother; only by those who never ate apples, the apples of discord, nor sported with him in the Gardens of Hesperides.
Cupid, himself, however, when among the Romans generally followed their example and called her Venus, which he never did in Greece. The Greeks would have been shocked; they were artistic and saw nothing improper, even under the electric lightning-lights of Olympus; the Romans merely commonplace, practical, useful. It was rumored, however, that the pair of them, Aphrodite and Eros, did work together, as Venus and Cupid even in Greece, on the sly as it were, when Juno was off with her swans, and Diana gone out fishing; beg pardon, it was hunting in those days, fishing came in later.
On this occasion Eros appeared in due time, obedient to his mother’s call. But, marvellous to relate, in appearance quite different from what Aphrodite had expected. He became visible in his most ancient Greek garb, his aspect the Beauty of Youth. He bore a flaming torch which Zeus had given him, the torch with which he had been armed from the beginning of human experience, the torch which was lighted in the Garden of Eden. The most youth-full as well as ancient of all the divinities approached. From remote ages he had been known to exist in some form, not only as an epiphany or an apparition of youthful life and beauty, but more than this, far more: the personification of the principle of union among the disunited elements of the world, drawn together by that “enthusiastic congeniality of spirit” which is the basis of all true love; potent among human kind as the power which operates for that sincere friendship which continues and develops, ever ascending through the domain of mutual respect and regard, into the glorious realm of devotion, self-sacrifice. This, the purity of union among human kind, the purity of marriage, the birth of souls, the realm of Immortal Youth.