In the Days of My Youth: A Novel
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CHAPTER XXXV.
WEARY AND FAR DISTANT.
Twice already, in accordance with my promise to Dalrymple, I had calledupon Madame de Courcelles, and finding her out each time, had left mycard, and gone away disappointed. From Dalrymple himself, although I hadwritten to him several times, I heard seldom, and always briefly. Hisfirst notes were dated from Berlin, and those succeeding them fromVienna. He seemed restless, bitter, dissatisfied with himself, and withthe world. Naturally unfit for a lounging, idle life, his active nature,now that it had to bear up against the irritation of hope deferred,chafed and fretted for work.
"My sword-arm," he wrote in one of his letters, "is weary of itsholiday. There are times when I long for the smell of gunpowder, and thethunder of battle. I am sick to death of churches and picture-galleries,operas, dilettantism, white-kid-glovism, and all the hollow shows andseemings of society. Sometimes I regret having left the army--at othersI rejoice; for, after all, in these piping times of peace, to be asoldier is to be a mere painted puppet--a thing of pipe-clay and goldbullion--an expensive scarecrow--an elegant Guy Fawkes--a sign, not ofwhat is, but of what has been, and yet may be again. For my part, I carenot to take the livery without the service. Pshaw! will things nevermend! Are the good old times, and the good old international hatreds,gone by for ever? Shall we never again have a thorough, seasonable,wholesome, continental war? This place (Vienna) would be worth fightingfor, if one had the chance. I sometimes amuse myself by planning asiege, when I ride round the fortifications, as is my custom of anafternoon."
In another, after telling me that he had been reading some books oftravel in Egypt and Central America, he said:--
"Next to a military life I think that of a traveller--a genuinetraveller, who turns his back upon railroads and guides--must be themost exciting and the most enviable under heaven. Since reading thesebooks, I dream of the jungle and the desert, and fancy that abuffalo-hunt must be almost as fine sport as a charge of cavalry. Oh,what a weary exile this is! I feel as if the very air were stagnantaround me, and I, like the accursed vessel that carried the ancientmariner,--
As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean.'"
Sometimes, though rarely, he mentioned Madame de Courcelles, and thenvery guardedly: always as "Madame de Courcelles," and never as his wife.
"That morning," he wrote, "comes back to me with all the vagueness of adream--you will know what morning I mean, and why it fills so shadowy apage in the book of my memory. And it might as well have been a dream,for aught of present peace or future hope that it has brought me. Ioften think that I was selfish when I exacted that pledge from her. I donot see of what good it can be to either her or me, or in what sense Ican be said to have gained even the power to protect and serve her.Would that I were rich; or that she and I were poor together, anddwelling far away in some American wild, under the shade of primevaltrees, the world forgetting; by the world forgot! I should enjoy thelife of a Canadian settler--so free, so rational, so manly. How happy wemight be--she with her children, her garden, her books; I with my dogs,my gun, my lands! What a curse it is, this spider's web of civilization,that hems and cramps us in on every side, and from which not all thearmor of common-sense is sufficient to preserve us!"
Sometimes he broke into a strain of forced gayety, more sad, to mythinking, than the bitterest lamentations could have been.
"I wish to Heaven," he said, in one of his later letters--"I wish toHeaven I had no heart, and no brain! I wish I was, like some worthypeople I know, a mere human zoophyte, consisting of nothing but a mouthand a stomach. Only conceive how it must simplify life when once one hassucceeded in making a clean sweep of all those finer emotions whichharass more complicated organisms! Enviable zoophytes, that live only todigest!--who would not be of the brotherhood?"
In another he wrote:--
"I seem to have lived years in the last five or six weeks, and to havegrown suddenly old and cynical. Some French writer (I think it isAlphonse Karr) says, 'Nothing in life is really great and good, exceptwhat is not true. Man's greatest treasures are his illusions.' Alas! myillusions have been dropping from me in showers of late, like witheredleaves in Autumn. The tree will be bare as a gallows ere long, if theserough winds keep on blowing. If only things would amuse me as of old! Ifthere was still excitement in play, and forgetfulness in wine, andnovelty in travel! But there is none--and all things alike are 'flat,stale, and unprofitable,' The truth is, Damon, I want but one thing--andwanting that, lack all."
Here is one more extract, and it shall be the last:--
"You ask me how I pass my days--in truth, wearily enough. I rise withthe dawn, but that is not very early in September; and I ride for acouple of hours before breakfast. After breakfast I play billiards insome public room, consume endless pipes, read the papers, and so on.Later in the day I scowl through a picture-gallery, or a string ofstudios; or take a pull up the river; or start off upon a long, solitaryobjectless walk through miles and miles of forest. Then comesdinner--the inevitable, insufferable, interminable German table-d'hotedinner--and then there is the evening to be got through somehow! Now andthen I drop in at a theatre, but generally take refuge in some plebeianLust Garten or Beer Hall, where amid clouds of tobacco-smoke, one maylisten to the best part-singing and zitter-playing in Europe. And so mydays drag by--who but myself knows how slowly? Truly, Damon, there comesto every one of us, sooner or later, a time when we say of life asChristopher Sly said of the comedy--''Tis an excellent piece of work.Would 'twere done!'"