"I cannot help that. And he will have forgotten it in five minutes. Children are as volatile as—as——"
"As lovers," said Madame Valtesi, who was smoking a cigarette in a chair by the window. "And forget as soon."
"Every one forgets," Esmé Amarinth said, with a gracious smile that illuminated his large features with slow completeness. "It is only when we have learned to love forgetfulness that we have learned the art of living. I wish people would forget me; but somehow they never do. Long after I have completely forgotten them they remember me. Then I have to pretend that I remember them, and that is so fatiguing."
"Esmé," said Mrs. Windsor, "do sing us your song of the passer-by. That is all about remembering and forgetting, and all that sort of thing. So sweet. I remember it made me cry when I heard it—or was it laugh? Which did you mean it to do?"
"I did not mean it to do anything. The poet who means much is little of a poet. I will sing you the song; but it is dreadfully direct in expression. I wrote it one night at Oxford when I was supremely drunk. I remember I wept as I wrote, great, wonderful tears. Yes, I will sing it. It is full of the sorrow, the white burnished sorrow of youth. How divine the melancholies of youth are! With age comes folly, and with folly comes the appalling merriment of experience. Experienced men are always merry. They see things as they really are. How terrible! until we can see things as they really are not we never truly live."
He went slowly to the piano, sat down, and played a plaintive, fleeting air—an air that was like a wandering moonbeam, the veritable phantom of a melody. Then he sang this song, in a low and almost toneless voice, uttering the notes rather than vocalising them.
THE SONG OF THE PASSER-BY.
Passing, passing—ah! sad heart, sing;
But you cannot keep me beyond to-day,
For I am a wayward bird on the wing—
A wayward waif, who will never stay.
The ivory morn, and the primrose eve,
And the twilight, whispering late and low,
They kiss the hem of the spell I weave;
They tremble, and ask me where I go.
Passing, passing—ah! sweet soul, sigh;
But you cannot keep me beyond to-night,
For I am a wilful wanderer by—
A wilful waif on a fanciful flight.
The shadowy moon, and the crimson star,
And the wind that steals from the Western wave,
They watch the ways where my wild wings are;
They murmur and marvel what I crave.
Passing, passing—ah! passion glow;
But you cannot light me a lasting flame,
By which I may linger, linger and know
My spark and yours from one furnace came.
You whisper and weep, and your words are tears,
And your tears are words I remember yet;
But the flame dies down with the dying years,
And nothing lives that forgets to forget.
Passing, passing—ah! whither? Why?
Does the heart know why? Can the soul say where?
I pass, but I pause to catch ev'ry cry,
To watch ev'ry face, be it foul or fair.
I must hear all the notes of the nightingales—
Do they sing to a God or to graven things—
And not till the last faint flute-note fails
Will I stay my flight, will I fold my wings.
When the last chord died away, Mrs. Windsor's voice was heard saying—
"I remember now, it made me cry. How dismal it is."