II. THE BELLS OF FOLLY
Miranda ran into the meadow laughing. The grassy slope shelved down into the valley, where the wood lay black and still. Daffodils nodded and cowslips bowed as she passed upon her way. A lark got up and rose singing to heaven. She sped out of the shadow and into the sunlight, and the sound of her young laughter floated down the valley; echoes joined it there, and the little ravine gurgled with merriment. Miranda stopped, with her chin in the air, and listened. Was it all the echo of her own delight, or was it something more? The peal of her mockery died into the sombre copse, and out of it, fresh and clear, a voice trilled merrily on its upward way. Miranda stood and waited.
He came up the bank of wild flowers, his face bright with the love of life and laughter, and at the sight of her he paused. The two faced each other for a while in silence, and then a smile ran round Miranda’s lips, and the young man’s eyes sparkled with merriment.
“I took your laughter for a signal,” said he, making his beaming salutations; “but I reckoned little upon so charming an assignation.”
“It was but a signal of the spring, Sir,” says she, with a dainty bow.
“Nay,” he replied; “I make no such distinctions between the seasons. I laugh the whole year through; it is the manner of the wise. You will perceive my jocund humour, fair mistress. Believe me, ‘tis not the whim of an hour contrived by the guiles of a spring morning; but a very settled disposition of the mind. I am broad-based upon gaiety.”
“Ah! to be gay!” cried Miranda; “to be gay is to live.”
“Life is at our feet,” said the merry youth. “I take an infinite pleasure in its complexities. Believe me, nothing should matter, save the twinkling of an eye or the dimpling of a cheek.”
“You are right,” said Miranda, smiling. “How can one have enough of laughter?”
“We are of one mind,” he answered pleasantly. “Let us go into our corner and be merry together.”
“Why not?” says Miranda. “Why not?”
“There are ten thousand pleasures in this silly world,” he went on; “and, for myself, I have not yet exhausted the tenth part of them. Count my years, then, and make three-score-and-ten the dividend, and what remains? Pack them into the hours never so neatly, and you will not exhaust the store. And that is why I am a spendthrift of pleasures. I eke not out my delights. I would burn twenty in a straw hat out of sheer caprice, and toss a dozen to the ducks upon the lake for pity.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Miranda.
“Time—” he continued, with fine scorn. “Time has discovered us a conspiracy of the ages to enthrone this Melancholy. But we are no traitors to our rightful king, you and I; and we will clap a crown upon the head of Laughter, and lay the usurper by the heels in his proper dungeon.”
“He were better there,” replied Miranda, thoughtfully.
“There is never a care,” he resumed, “upon which we may not trample, not a trouble which we may not forget. What a fool is he who would nurse his sorrow and not bury it in the deepest grave!”
“What a fool!” murmured Miranda, dreamily.
“Should one lose a friend, a fig for friendship!” quoth he. “Does one cast a lover, a snap for a hundred lovers! What has been remains, and what is shall be.”
Miranda said nothing.
“Subtract love from life,” said the young man, “and life remains. I would have the world know that love is a pleasant cipher, an amiable and entertaining mood, and that life is left when love is lost. There is no Love. It were more truly writ in the plural and spelled with a small letter.”
Miranda turned upon him swiftly. “Fie! fie!” said she, and the light flashed in her eyes. “I know nothing of this Love, but I dare swear there be things that matter. Take these from life, and what will rest over? Is there not Sorrow, and is there not Pain? Is there not Remorse, and is there not the thing called Sin? I know nothing of these; I am too young to the world. But there they stand, Sir, importuning at our doors with outstretched arms, and one has only to lift the latch to let them in. You would deny the very pulse of human nature when you ignore these evils. You would forswear the very weaknesses which have composed for you your sentiments.”
In the excitement of her retort Miranda’s face flushed and grew bright. Wide-eyed, the young man stared at her and forgot to laugh, and when she had done his head dropped and he sighed.
“Ah,” she said, “you sigh. You yourself have felt and suffered. You have belied yourself! You sigh. There are facts in life even for sighs.”
“’Tis true,” he answered softly, “yet I sighed for pleasure.”
“What pleasure?” she asked curiously.
“Or it may be hope,” he added.
He looked at her, and his gaze was mild and wistful. She regarded him in perplexity, and then a wild flush took her in the cheek and throat.
“Pooh! pooh!” she cried, and turned off, plucking at the hawthorn bush. The white may smelled rank, but strange and soothing; the petals shivered and fell. Miranda’s heart beat on, wondering. Something clapped at its doors again and again. Would she open? What was this impatient visitor that pleaded so for entrance? She had so little knowledge; she was but newly arrived upon the world. Her emotions were still strangers to her; she was a pilgrim still among her new sensations. Ought she to open? Nay, to stay so and wonder was surely pleasantest. One day she would throw wide the doors and look. But now it was sweet to feel that hand upon the knocker, that clutching at the latch, and lie trembling within in feigned insecurity. She turned and faced him. Straightway the clamour ceased, and in her heart was silence. She looked him coldly in the face.
“You smile for love?” she asked.
“Yes, dear,” said he, “and for the thought of you.”
“Oh, you take me too lightly,” she broke out. “You do not guess what a solemn thing this Love may be. You flutter into a thousand follies on the scantest reflection. You will dance, and you will play, and you will jingle-jangle through your holiday world without a thought for anything but pirouettes and jigs and whirligigs of laughter. The most sonorous of sacred sorrows may sound in your ears, and wake no echo but a jape within your heart. And you would put me upon that dead plane of ribald merriment with yourself? I will laugh with you. Yes; I will go beg of you for jests in my jocund seasons. I am willing to shriek over your whimsicalities at my own pleasure. In my serene, unthinking moments I will be content to exchange humours with you, and to vow life were void and dull were not such as you at my beck. But when I have opened my chamber and fastened the door upon myself my soul and I shall be alone together; and I will weep, and pity, and repent, and ache out my heart with sorrow in which you can have no lot. I am young, but I have an inkling of what the world may mean.”
“The world,” said he, “means happiness.”
“The world,” she retorted, “means tears, and bitter wringing of the hands. Have I not heard of Death? And have I not seen Pain? You think me gay, yet how long shall I keep this gaiety in my heart? I go round upon the wheel. It turns and changes. What shall befall to-morrow that I should not weep to-day? You would pluck me with no greater consideration than you would pick a flower from its stalk wherewith to deck your coat. Should it wither or fall adust, another will serve until the coming of the wine. Look you, you will sigh and weep for love, and your sighs will be smiles, and your tears will be laughter. Forthright your heart is singing like a lark. Yours! yours is the shallowest of paltry passions.”
“I would do much for you,” said he.
“Give up your dimples,” cried Miranda, “and so to the churchyard with a wry face.”
“Even that,” he answered, nodding.
“Pah!” said she, “you will not contain your face lugubriously for five minutes by the clock. Though you shall remember to be sober for two sentences, at the third you will be whistling, and the fourth will find you holding your sides.”
He moved a step towards her.
“And if I should die for you?” he asked pleadingly.
Miranda gasped. She contemplated his face with uncertainty. His eyes shone with the dew of tears; his hands trembled; it was the corner of his mouth betrayed him. Miranda burst into laughter.
“You!” she cried. “You! Why, you would forget my coffin as it passed, and the colour of my face ere my back was upon you. See here,” she said; “I will give you to the hedge for misery; but I swear you will take the lane as jauntily as an hour since. Get you gone, my merry man, and come again to dispute with me in an idle humour. Fie! fie! to think on you and Death in the same company!”
He sighed and turned away.
“You have the smallest heart of any maid I know,” he said, shaking his head.
“The better for my laughter,” laughed Miranda.
He moved across the meadow, his head hanging, his eyes downcast, his stick dragging among the daisies. Miranda stared after him, her lips parted in amusement. He climbed the stile, and, stopping on the topmost step, turned to her again.
“I have at least one solace,” he called across the meadow. “I shall forget your fickle face by night.”
Miranda’s laughter touched the skies and ceased. Her face fell thoughtful; she sighed and shrugged her dainty shoulders.
