JESSICA TO PHILIP
A letter from my lover, so like him that it is the dearest message I have ever had from him. In this mood you are nearest akin to my heart. For if love fills my mind with a thousand woodland images, it sends you back to the classic groves of the ancients, where the wings of a bird might measure off destiny to a lover in an hexameter of light across his morning, and where the whole world was full of sweet oracles. The truth is we have need of an old Latin deity now. There was a romantic sympathy between the Olympian dynasty of gods and common men, more vital than our ascetic piety. And there are some experiences so essentially pagan that no other gods can afford to bless them!
Indeed, since your departure I have found a sort of occult companionship with you in reading once more some of the old Latin poets. Father is gratified, for he thinks that after all I may sober into a Christian scholarship with the old Roman monks, and to this end he will tolerate even Catullus. But really the wisdom of love has given me a keener appreciation of these sweet classics. Did you ever think how wonderful is the youth, the simplicity, the morning freshness of all their thoughts. It is we moderns who have grown old, pedantic; and when some lyrical experience, such as love, suddenly rejuvenates us, drawing us back into the primal poetic consciousness, then we turn instinctively to these ancients for an interpretation of our hearts,—also because their definition of beauty, which is always the garment Love wears, is better than we can make now. With us “The Beautiful” is often mere cant, or a form of sentimentality, but with them it was a principle, a spirtual faculty that determined all proportions. Thus their very philosophies show a beautiful formality, a Parthenon entrance to life. And from first to last they never left the gay amorous gods of nature out of their thoughts. This is a relief, a tender companionship, that we have lost from our prosaic world. You see Jessica grows “pedantic” also! The poem you sent has awakened in me these reflections. The words of it slipped into my heart as warm as kisses.
But I have anxieties to tell you of. I fear trouble is brewing for us in father’s prayer-closet. You remember the little volume you gave me, The Forest Philosophers of India? Well, he found it last night in the library, where I had inadvertently left it; and recognising the author as the same dragon who threatens the peace and piety of his household, he settled himself vindictively to reading it. The result exceeded my worst fears. If his daughter were about to become the hypnotised victim of an Indian juggler he would not be more alarmed. He holds that all truth is based upon the God idea. And he vows that you have attempted to dissolve truth by detaching it from this divine origin. You speak the truth in other words, but you are accused of blasphemously ignoring its sublime authorship. Nor is that all. Your philosophy must have gripped him hard, for he declares that you have an abnormally clairvoyant mind, and that “no female intelligence” can long withstand the diabolical influence of your heathen suggestions. Really it made my flesh creep! You might have thought he was warning me against a snake charmer. And when I declined to be alarmed, he locked himself up in his closet to fast and pray. This is the worst possible symptom in his case, for he will work himself into a frenzy, and before ever he eats or drinks he will get “called” to take some radical stand against us.
Meanwhile, besides a growing affection for Jack, I take a factitious interest in him because he was your daily companion for several months. I am tempted to ask him many questions that are neither fair nor modest, particularly as he is devoted to you, and quite willing to talk of “Misther Towers.”
“Does he ever sing, Jack?” I began last evening, as we sat alone before the library fire.
“Nope,”—Jack is laconic, but wise far beyond his years in silent sympathy.
“Did he often talk to you?”
“Yes, when we went for a walk.”
“Tell me what about, Jackie.”