IV. THE MAN OF SENTIMENT
A sound of hurrying feet struck on Miranda’s ear. She turned in time to confront two eager eyes that were bent upon her brightly. He was a little breathless with his haste, and his smooth cheeks were flushed with excitement. Panting, he began, pointing his finger across the waving corn—
“I have watched him go,” said he. “I have long waited for his exit. Time has crept on such tardy legs. I know him well,” he remarked with a pitying smile; “as dull a dog as ever kept tame kennel. You are well rid of the fellow with his meek philosophy and his unblinking eyes. Faith, I would not have him trouble the ears of a maid for all the wealth of Prester John. A clucking barn-door cock, with emotions fit to scratch all day upon a dung-heap, and not skill enough to discern the twinkling of a diamond from the sad yellows of a wheat-ear, wherewith to fill his stomach!”
Miranda stared at him, and burst into tinkling laughter.
“Good,” says he, complacently, “I see you take him at his proper value. Pearls have another destiny than to go for buttons on his sober sides. Such as he should keep company with cold-visaged age. What said the lover? Had he not arguments?”
“Oh, he had arguments to spare,” she laughed. “Life was a deadly fustian-coated thing to him. He pleaded for repose.”
“Repose!” he echoed. “I pray I may die when I come to think on repose with any feeling but distaste. Repose! Oh, yes; let them repose that love it; but they shall not solicit into their stagnation aught that is comely and vivacious. I know well enough what life may be,” he said, wagging his head. “I have sounded all its mysteries. Take me for a pilot. I have tasted the sweet and the bitter”; and he sighed.
Miranda looked at him with pity. He was so young to have this sorrow in his heart. She sighed with him.
“But there are compensations,” he went on presently. “One dies and the light goes out, but there remains still the beautiful world.”
Miranda gazed round the valley.
“Will that suffice?” she asked softly.
“Ah, no!” he cried; “a thousand noes. There is nothing will suffice save death. But life is laid upon us. What may we do? We take our pains and our pleasures; there is no rest. To rest were death in life. I could not sink into the moral worm that withdraws its blind head and wriggles into cover on the passage of a pain. Nay, I take life with my eyes open, though my back be bowed and my body bent, and though the ice encrust my soul. The grace of the day passes, but we are surely the happier even for that ephemeral sweetness.”
‘Yes; surely we are happier,” assented Miranda, wondering at his fine words.
“And even when we think it not, there comes,” said he, “some mitigation to Sorrow. There is the joy of Resignation; there is the delight of Sacrifice; and there is the sweetness of Remembered Pain; and beyond all lies the gladness of Despair.”
Miranda looked puzzled. She gazed at him inquiringly.
“You will think me absurd,” said he; “but I talk out of my knowledge. I speak in sober words, as one upon whose hopes the grave has closed. Sorrow is a fire that refines; pain is a scourge that purifies. You are young, child, and go yet unscathed; but some day maybe—and that in but a little while—you may watch the sky grow black upon you, and feel the foundations of the earth totter, and your whole being will reel and burn and moan aloud to God within you. In such an hour you will remember and believe; and when you are crept into some insecure and windy refuge, trembling till the storm may pass, you will know that the blight of mortality is upon you. And you will finger your scars, and put your hands upon your wounds, realising that out of pain have you purchased knowledge, peace out of suffering, and out of despair hope.”
The tears stood in Miranda’s eyes. She laid a timid hand upon his arm. “Ah, how you have suffered!” she murmured.
He raised his sad gaze to hers and sighed. “I have wept out these eyes for want of such a one as you to succour me. Had but your tenderness and loving kindness been with me, the storm had surely, passed in vain.”
“Is it long gone?” she asked gently.
“Some three months since,” he answered; “and still is my heart sore within me. I dare not fancy how it will all end. The sun rises and I see it not; the air grows warm and I feel it not; the stars blink down upon me and I regard them not. Day passes after day, and night succeeds to night; yet is my long pain still with me, and I heed not the rolling years.”
“’Tis but three months,” she suggested.
“Three months are many years,” he sighed.
Miranda looked at his misty blue eyes, and a thrill of pity pierced her soul.
“But you will be strong,” she said; “you will pluck out the thorns from your heart, and it shall yet blossom again as the rose. You will not bow your head to trouble. I know so little, but surely again in the springtime you will find a fair flush upon your world.”
The young man put out his hand and took hers. He pressed it gently.
“’Tis true,” he said, “for others. They, indeed, may die with the waning moon, and be born again when she shows her new horns. With each fresh week they may start anew into life. Nay, even the hours are the measure of their fortunes. But for me the spring is over and gone; out of the dead heart of the summer shall I snatch aught but withered leaves? And shall I permit my own dead heart to take the dews and sunlight of an unavailing spring? Child, child, you know not, you cannot judge,” and he patted softly on the hand he held between his fingers.
Miranda bent her head, and wept gently. He put his arm upon her shoulder, and looked into her eyes.
“Yes, there are other springs,” said he, “but they are for you, and not for me. And still—and still your sweet voice comforts me, your dear tears console me. There is so much between us I would fain retain.”
Miranda stayed, reluctant, under his touch, and then, gently moving, would have withdrawn herself beyond him. But his hand held her fast; he tightened his clasp; a gulp of tears rolled into his throat.
“Nay,” he murmured; “do not leave me so. Bear with me till this sorrow passes. ‘Twill be gone in a little. See, the sky is clearing, and only on the horizon do the clouds lie black. Come, let me have your hand, and we will talk of what we know is true and beautiful of life and love and the loveliness of life; for in you, dear child, all these are surely implicit.”
The red hung in Miranda’s cheeks, and then went out slowly.
“I love life,” she answered in low tones, “and I love the loveliness of life, but I know not why I love them.”
“Because,” said he, smiling, “you yourself are informed with Love. Think you God made a maid so lovely and not for love? No; your arms were designed for a lover’s necklace; your bosom was conceived for a lover’s pillow; your lips for the sweet resting-place of tired eyes, and you yourself for the delectation of many hapless wooers.”
Miranda blushed, and stirred uncomfortably. Something in his rapturous fancy irked her, and yet it was surely right that one so buried in his distant sorrow should adjudge her thus. She conceived his kindly eyes upon her in a melancholy gaze, as of a brother who would fain reassure her out of his own troubled past. And then, she was sure, they passed away from her and across the valley where the golden mists were scattering, and lit upon the hill-tops somewhere far off, amid the kindly haze, and dwelt alone there with his sacred grief, as in a silent and inaccessible temple. She looked up in some awe, and found them fastened upon her with an ardent wistfulness. Her hand had fallen from his; he reached out, and seized it again.
“We have so much in common,” he murmured. “My dear, the sweetness of those tremulous eyes!”
Miranda sharply pulled her fingers from him.
“Ah, sweet, be not so cruel,” he pleaded; “you were not fashioned for disdain. Let me look. Yes, in those lamps of light I can behold my own face, drowned as in a pool. It shines therefrom, as starlight from a blue sky. Would God——” He ended with a sigh.
“I will bid you good-day, Sir,” says she; “the morning grows late.”
“No, no!” he cried, catching at her hand.
Miranda stopped in wonder.
“And do you love me, then?” he asked in a cooing voice.
Miranda opened her mouth and stared.
“No,” said she, shortly, after a pause.
He sighed musically, and his sigh ran like cold water down Miranda’s back. He sighed again. Miranda turned, and in an instant, ere he was aware, flashed out upon him.
“And do you love me, then?” she mimicked, scorn in her cooing.
“Dear!” said he, and bent to kiss her hand. Miranda laughed.
“You love me, then?” she cried.
He made a motion of his hand, as though to banish an irrelevant thought.
“Why ply so bluntly?” he remarked, with some sad displeasure; “and why blow so coarsely? Love ‘twixt man and maid—forgive me—should be as gentle as the breath of the zephyr, as light as the touch of warm sun upon the rose. There is no need of terms. Heart looks to heart and holds communion silently. Nay, but the fault was mine. I ask your pardon. I put too gross a question to you. Let us rather linger in this delicious incertitude all day. The morning is young; we have the fields before us; let us wander there, and you shall pluck the flowers and idly weave a garland for your head, while I look on and smile, a bird singing in my heart, unquestioned, standing alone within a maze of ways, yet undismayed, knowing this only, that the full glory of love is not to know, and the full flower of life is expectation.”
“You talk great nonsense, sir,” says she.
“Ah, no,” he broke in. “Believe me——” But before the flash in her eyes he paused.
“Ere you put tongue to further follies,” says she, “listen. Out of my ignorance shall I instruct your wisdom. You have too soft a heart for this rude world. I pity you. Your soul is like a flying bird, ever at the rough mercy of the fowler. Boom! goes the gun, and down it falls, winged and whimpering at her feet. Why, she has never so much as to put her finger on the lock, but you will fall fluttering at the mere glint of it. You have whole seas of sentiment within your eyes. Lord! how you would weep! You would drown out this valley in a week, and flood my garden for a fallen sparrow. Tears! Tears are your finery. You bedeck yourself with them, and strut among your acquaintances the proudest wight of all. You cull posies of sentiment by every wayside. Not a day but you will have a fresh desire, own a fresh sorrow, and crown a fresh conquest. Victor and victim! I salute your immortal youth. Other men have died for love, but to you alone has it been vouchsafed to live for it. So, as you may cry and mourn and sigh and go forlorn, touch delicate hands, and interchange the soft felicities of affection, you will walk in a whirl of gaiety to your grave. Sir, you would bury a thousand loves with delirious delight. Oh, you are too fastidious; you exact too much. It were surely wiser to fill your hours more economically with griefs. They will not outlast you. Sorrow abides but for a night. Have you never laughed? Did joy never wear any face for you save that of bereavement? Did ever your pulse flow faster save at the prospect of sepulture? I beseech you to adventure more. Believe me, there are fields of sweet emotion as yet untrodden of your feet. Come, for an experiment, stay a whole week with your heart’s delight; I can foresee for you new and strange sensations. You shall decay beautifully. This rare and lovely sentiment of yours will turn all manner of raw colours. It will shine rank, and smell stale; it will take on all the hues of swift corruption. But think on them, and should they fall and you exhaust the universe, why, there is always the river, and the rain of tears upon self-contemplated suicide. You shall stand over the brink, and pause, and murmur to the trees, and roll your eyes to heaven, and look down with compassion upon your elegant limbs, so soon to toss among the graceless weeds. And I, if you will, shall bear you witness, and copy your fair sentences into some white book, and send them down the ages, engraven above a golden heart. Oh, I will frame you an admirable, a most pitiful epitaph. Nay, but I mistake, for surely it were meeter writ from your own dictation.”
She paused for want of breath, and the young man raised his hand in a manner of deprecation.
“It is enough,” he said, and sighed, “I have mistaken. Forgive me the lack of judgment. Had I regarded sufficiently the tip of your nose, indeed I had not blundered.” Miranda’s fingers went to her face. “I had thought you endowed with the qualities of sympathy. But,” he shrugged his shoulders, “one blunders still. Indeed, one blunders after many blunders. You are too pert and young. You put life to the coarse edge of fact. Believe me, you were better living in ideals. One buys facts by the gross, and at so many pence. The ideal we snatch from the empyrean. You shall go your way, and I mine.” Miranda curtsied. “I bear you no malice for your wanton tongue. Child, you will learn wisdom, and come to regard affection.”
With that, he made her a great bow, and, turning slowly, made off with a heavy appearance of sorrow. At the corner of the hedge he stopped, glanced over his shoulder, raised his hat, and sighed loudly.
Miranda stood watching his receding figure with something between a smile and a frown upon her dainty face.