CHAPTER VI.
PAN’S BROTHER AND THE NYMPH.
Adam returned to his room attempting to pucker his lips for a careless whistle which failed to materialize. He had evolved a rude but logical philosophy of his own for every phase of life; but what philosophy ever fooled the maker thereof, with its sophistries?
The beef-eaters were snoring so ominously that Adam was constrained to think of two volcanoes threatening immediate eruptions.
“Poor old boys!” he said to himself. There was no particular reason for this, save that he felt he must pity something, and self-pity he abhorred. He was trying not to think of the one companion that always drew his emotions out of his reluctant heart and gave them expression—his violin.
Standing in the middle of the floor, without a light in the room, he reasoned with himself. He said to his inner being that doubtless Wainsworth loved her more than he did anyway; that he, Adam, having carried away a boyish memory, which he had haloed with romanticism for seven years, could not call his emotions love. Moreover, he had as yet only seen her in the dark, and might not be at all attracted by her true self in the daylight. Naturally, also, Wainsworth had as much right in the premises as any man on earth, and no man could expect a girl to remember a mere homely lad for seven years and know that he loved her, or that he thought he did, and so reciprocate the affection and calmly await his return. Clearly he was an absurd creature, for he had fostered some silly notion in his heart, or brain, that Garde was feeling toward him, all these years, as he felt toward her. It was fortunate he had found everything out so soon. The thing to do now was to think of something else.
All the while he was thus philosophizing, he had a perfect subconsciousness that told him the violin would win—that soon or late it would drag his feelings out of him, in its own incomparable tones. He only paused there arguing the matter because he hated to give in without a fight. That violin always won. It must not be permitted to arrogate to itself an absolute mastery over his moods.
Presently, beginning to admit that he would yet have to tuck the instrument under his chin, whether or no, he worked out a compromise. He would not play it, or sound it, or fondle it in the town. If it wanted to voice things and would do it—well, he would carry it out into the woods.
Feeling that he had, in a measure, conquered, Rust stole silently across the apartment to the corner in which he had placed the violin with his own loving hands, lifted the case without making a sound and crept out as if he had been a thief, pressing the box somewhat rigidly against his heart.
He reached the street without difficulty. The town was asleep. A dog barking, a mile away, and then a foolish cock, crowing because he had waked, were the only sounds breaking over all Boston. The last thin rind of the moon had just risen. In the light it cast, the houses and shadows seemed but a mystic painting, in deep purple, blacks and grays. Silently as Adam could walk, these houses caught up the echo of his footfalls, and whispered it on, from one to another, as if it had been a pass-word to motionless sentinels.
He came to the Common, discerning Beacon Hill, dimly visible, off to the right. With grass under foot he walked more rapidly. Past the watch-house and the powder-house, in the center of the Common, he strode, on to Fox Hill and then to the Roxbury Flats, stretching wide and far, to the west of the town.