CHAPTER 4. Narcissus Off Duty
During Princeton's transition period, that is, during Amory's lasttwo years there, while he saw it change and broaden and live up to itsGothic beauty by better means than night parades, certain individualsarrived who stirred it to its plethoric depths. Some of them had beenfreshmen, and wild freshmen, with Amory; some were in the class below;and it was in the beginning of his last year and around small tables atthe Nassau Inn that they began questioning aloud the institutions thatAmory and countless others before him had questioned so long in secret.First, and partly by accident, they struck on certain books, a definitetype of biographical novel that Amory christened "quest" books. In the"quest" book the hero set off in life armed with the best weapons andavowedly intending to use them as such weapons are usually used, to pushtheir possessors ahead as selfishly and blindly as possible, but theheroes of the "quest" books discovered that there might be a moremagnificent use for them. "None Other Gods," "Sinister Street," and "TheResearch Magnificent" were examples of such books; it was the latterof these three that gripped Burne Holiday and made him wonder in thebeginning of senior year how much it was worth while being a diplomaticautocrat around his club on Prospect Avenue and basking in the highlights of class office. It was distinctly through the channels ofaristocracy that Burne found his way. Amory, through Kerry, had had avague drifting acquaintance with him, but not until January of senioryear did their friendship commence.
"Heard the latest?" said Tom, coming in late one drizzly evening withthat triumphant air he always wore after a successful conversationalbout.
"No. Somebody flunked out? Or another ship sunk?"
"Worse than that. About one-third of the junior class are going toresign from their clubs."
"What!"
"Actual fact!"
"Why!"
"Spirit of reform and all that. Burne Holiday is behind it. The clubpresidents are holding a meeting to-night to see if they can find ajoint means of combating it."
"Well, what's the idea of the thing?"
"Oh, clubs injurious to Princeton democracy; cost a lot; draw sociallines, take time; the regular line you get sometimes from disappointedsophomores. Woodrow thought they should be abolished and all that."
"But this is the real thing?"
"Absolutely. I think it'll go through."
"For Pete's sake, tell me more about it."
"Well," began Tom, "it seems that the idea developed simultaneously inseveral heads. I was talking to Burne awhile ago, and he claims thatit's a logical result if an intelligent person thinks long enoughabout the social system. They had a 'discussion crowd' and the point ofabolishing the clubs was brought up by some one--everybody there leapedat it--it had been in each one's mind, more or less, and it just neededa spark to bring it out."
"Fine! I swear I think it'll be most entertaining. How do they feel upat Cap and Gown?"
"Wild, of course. Every one's been sitting and arguing and swearing andgetting mad and getting sentimental and getting brutal. It's the same atall the clubs; I've been the rounds. They get one of the radicals in thecorner and fire questions at him."
"How do the radicals stand up?"
"Oh, moderately well. Burne's a damn good talker, and so obviouslysincere that you can't get anywhere with him. It's so evident thatresigning from his club means so much more to him than preventing itdoes to us that I felt futile when I argued; finally took a positionthat was brilliantly neutral. In fact, I believe Burne thought for awhile that he'd converted me."
"And you say almost a third of the junior class are going to resign?"
"Call it a fourth and be safe."
"Lord--who'd have thought it possible!"
There was a brisk knock at the door, and Burne himself came in. "Hello,Amory--hello, Tom."
Amory rose.
"'Evening, Burne. Don't mind if I seem to rush; I'm going to Renwick's."
Burne turned to him quickly.
"You probably know what I want to talk to Tom about, and it isn't a bitprivate. I wish you'd stay."
"I'd be glad to." Amory sat down again, and as Burne perched on a tableand launched into argument with Tom, he looked at this revolutionarymore carefully than he ever had before. Broad-browed and strong-chinned,with a fineness in the honest gray eyes that were like Kerry's,Burne was a man who gave an immediate impression of bigness andsecurity--stubborn, that was evident, but his stubbornness wore nostolidity, and when he had talked for five minutes Amory knew that thiskeen enthusiasm had in it no quality of dilettantism.
The intense power Amory felt later in Burne Holiday differed from theadmiration he had had for Humbird. This time it began as purely amental interest. With other men of whom he had thought as primarilyfirst-class, he had been attracted first by their personalities, andin Burne he missed that immediate magnetism to which he usuallyswore allegiance. But that night Amory was struck by Burne's intenseearnestness, a quality he was accustomed to associate only with thedread stupidity, and by the great enthusiasm that struck dead chords inhis heart. Burne stood vaguely for a land Amory hoped he was driftingtoward--and it was almost time that land was in sight. Tom and Amory andAlec had reached an impasse; never did they seem to have new experiencesin common, for Tom and Alec had been as blindly busy with theircommittees and boards as Amory had been blindly idling, and the thingsthey had for dissection--college, contemporary personality and thelike--they had hashed and rehashed for many a frugal conversationalmeal.
That night they discussed the clubs until twelve, and, in the main, theyagreed with Burne. To the roommates it did not seem such a vital subjectas it had in the two years before, but the logic of Burne's objectionsto the social system dovetailed so completely with everything they hadthought, that they questioned rather than argued, and envied the sanitythat enabled this man to stand out so against all traditions.
Then Amory branched off and found that Burne was deep in other thingsas well. Economics had interested him and he was turning socialist.Pacifism played in the back of his mind, and he read The Masses andLyoff Tolstoi faithfully.
"How about religion?" Amory asked him.
"Don't know. I'm in a muddle about a lot of things--I've just discoveredthat I've a mind, and I'm starting to read."
"Read what?"
"Everything. I have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things tomake me think. I'm reading the four gospels now, and the 'Varieties ofReligious Experience.'"
"What chiefly started you?"
"Wells, I guess, and Tolstoi, and a man named Edward Carpenter. I'vebeen reading for over a year now--on a few lines, on what I consider theessential lines."
"Poetry?"
"Well, frankly, not what you call poetry, or for your reasons--you twowrite, of course, and look at things differently. Whitman is the manthat attracts me."
"Whitman?"
"Yes; he's a definite ethical force."
"Well, I'm ashamed to say that I'm a blank on the subject of Whitman.How about you, Tom?"
Tom nodded sheepishly.
"Well," continued Burne, "you may strike a few poems that are tiresome,but I mean the mass of his work. He's tremendous--like Tolstoi. Theyboth look things in the face, and, somehow, different as they are, standfor somewhat the same things."
"You have me stumped, Burne," Amory admitted. "I've read 'Anna Karenina'and the 'Kreutzer Sonata' of course, but Tolstoi is mostly in theoriginal Russian as far as I'm concerned."
"He's the greatest man in hundreds of years," cried Burneenthusiastically. "Did you ever see a picture of that shaggy old head ofhis?"
They talked until three, from biology to organized religion, and whenAmory crept shivering into bed it was with his mind aglow with ideasand a sense of shock that some one else had discovered the path he mighthave followed. Burne Holiday was so evidently developing--and Amoryhad considered that he was doing the same. He had fallen into a deepcynicism over what had crossed his path, plotted the imperfectability ofman and read Shaw and Chesterton enough
to keep his mind from the edgesof decadence--now suddenly all his mental processes of the last year anda half seemed stale and futile--a petty consummation of himself... andlike a sombre background lay that incident of the spring before, thatfilled half his nights with a dreary terror and made him unable to pray.He was not even a Catholic, yet that was the only ghost of a code thathe had, the gaudy, ritualistic, paradoxical Catholicism whose prophetwas Chesterton, whose claqueurs were such reformed rakes of literatureas Huysmans and Bourget, whose American sponsor was Ralph Adams Cram,with his adulation of thirteenth-century cathedrals--a Catholicism whichAmory found convenient and ready-made, without priest or sacraments orsacrifice.
He could not sleep, so he turned on his reading-lamp and, taking downthe "Kreutzer Sonata," searched it carefully for the germs of Burne'senthusiasm. Being Burne was suddenly so much realler than being clever.Yet he sighed... here were other possible clay feet.
He thought back through two years, of Burne as a hurried, nervousfreshman, quite submerged in his brother's personality. Then heremembered an incident of sophomore year, in which Burne had beensuspected of the leading role.
Dean Hollister had been heard by a large group arguing with ataxi-driver, who had driven him from the junction. In the course of thealtercation the dean remarked that he "might as well buy the taxicab."He paid and walked off, but next morning he entered his private officeto find the taxicab itself in the space usually occupied by his desk,bearing a sign which read "Property of Dean Hollister. Bought and Paidfor."... It took two expert mechanics half a day to dissemble it intoits minutest parts and remove it, which only goes to prove the rareenergy of sophomore humor under efficient leadership.
Then again, that very fall, Burne had caused a sensation. A certainPhyllis Styles, an intercollegiate prom-trotter, had failed to get heryearly invitation to the Harvard-Princeton game.
Jesse Ferrenby had brought her to a smaller game a few weeks before,and had pressed Burne into service--to the ruination of the latter'smisogyny.
"Are you coming to the Harvard game?" Burne had asked indiscreetly,merely to make conversation.
"If you ask me," cried Phyllis quickly.
"Of course I do," said Burne feebly. He was unversed in the arts ofPhyllis, and was sure that this was merely a vapid form of kidding.Before an hour had passed he knew that he was indeed involved. Phyllishad pinned him down and served him up, informed him the train she wasarriving by, and depressed him thoroughly. Aside from loathing Phyllis,he had particularly wanted to stag that game and entertain some Harvardfriends.
"She'll see," he informed a delegation who arrived in his room to joshhim. "This will be the last game she ever persuades any young innocentto take her to!"
"But, Burne--why did you _invite_ her if you didn't want her?"
"Burne, you _know_ you're secretly mad about her--that's the _real_trouble."
"What can _you_ do, Burne? What can _you_ do against Phyllis?"
But Burne only shook his head and muttered threats which consistedlargely of the phrase: "She'll see, she'll see!"
The blithesome Phyllis bore her twenty-five summers gayly from thetrain, but on the platform a ghastly sight met her eyes. There wereBurne and Fred Sloane arrayed to the last dot like the lurid figureson college posters. They had bought flaring suits with huge peg-toptrousers and gigantic padded shoulders. On their heads were rakishcollege hats, pinned up in front and sporting bright orange-and-blackbands, while from their celluloid collars blossomed flaming orange ties.They wore black arm-bands with orange "P's," and carried canesflying Princeton pennants, the effect completed by socks and peepinghandkerchiefs in the same color motifs. On a clanking chain they led alarge, angry tom-cat, painted to represent a tiger.
A good half of the station crowd was already staring at them, tornbetween horrified pity and riotous mirth, and as Phyllis, with hersvelte jaw dropping, approached, the pair bent over and emitted acollege cheer in loud, far-carrying voices, thoughtfully adding thename "Phyllis" to the end. She was vociferously greeted and escortedenthusiastically across the campus, followed by half a hundred villageurchins--to the stifled laughter of hundreds of alumni and visitors,half of whom had no idea that this was a practical joke, but thoughtthat Burne and Fred were two varsity sports showing their girl acollegiate time.
Phyllis's feelings as she was paraded by the Harvard and Princetonstands, where sat dozens of her former devotees, can be imagined. Shetried to walk a little ahead, she tried to walk a little behind--butthey stayed close, that there should be no doubt whom she was with,talking in loud voices of their friends on the football team, until shecould almost hear her acquaintances whispering:
"Phyllis Styles must be _awfully hard up_ to have to come with _thosetwo_."
That had been Burne, dynamically humorous, fundamentally serious. Fromthat root had blossomed the energy that he was now trying to orient withprogress....
So the weeks passed and March came and the clay feet that Amory lookedfor failed to appear. About a hundred juniors and seniors resignedfrom their clubs in a final fury of righteousness, and the clubs inhelplessness turned upon Burne their finest weapon: ridicule. Every onewho knew him liked him--but what he stood for (and he began to stand formore all the time) came under the lash of many tongues, until a frailerman than he would have been snowed under.
"Don't you mind losing prestige?" asked Amory one night. They had takento exchanging calls several times a week.
"Of course I don't. What's prestige, at best?"
"Some people say that you're just a rather original politician."
He roared with laughter.
"That's what Fred Sloane told me to-day. I suppose I have it coming."
One afternoon they dipped into a subject that had interested Amory fora long time--the matter of the bearing of physical attributes on a man'smake-up. Burne had gone into the biology of this, and then:
"Of course health counts--a healthy man has twice the chance of beinggood," he said.
"I don't agree with you--I don't believe in 'muscular Christianity.'"
"I do--I believe Christ had great physical vigor."
"Oh, no," Amory protested. "He worked too hard for that. I imagine thatwhen he died he was a broken-down man--and the great saints haven't beenstrong."
"Half of them have."
"Well, even granting that, I don't think health has anything to do withgoodness; of course, it's valuable to a great saint to be able to standenormous strains, but this fad of popular preachers rising on theirtoes in simulated virility, bellowing that calisthenics will save theworld--no, Burne, I can't go that."
"Well, let's waive it--we won't get anywhere, and besides I haven'tquite made up my mind about it myself. Now, here's something I _do_know--personal appearance has a lot to do with it."
"Coloring?" Amory asked eagerly.
"Yes."
"That's what Tom and I figured," Amory agreed. "We took the year-booksfor the last ten years and looked at the pictures of the senior council.I know you don't think much of that august body, but it does representsuccess here in a general way. Well, I suppose only about thirty-fiveper cent of every class here are blonds, are really light--yet_two-thirds_ of every senior council are light. We looked at picturesof ten years of them, mind you; that means that out of every _fifteen_light-haired men in the senior class _one_ is on the senior council, andof the dark-haired men it's only one in _fifty_."
"It's true," Burne agreed. "The light-haired man _is_ a higher type,generally speaking. I worked the thing out with the Presidents ofthe United States once, and found that way over half of them werelight-haired--yet think of the preponderant number of brunettes in therace."
"People unconsciously admit it," said Amory. "You'll notice a blondperson is _expected_ to talk. If a blond girl doesn't talk we call her a'doll'; if a light-haired man is silent he's considered stupid. Yetthe world is full of 'dark silent men' and 'languorous brunettes' whohaven't a brain in their heads, but somehow are never accused of thedearth."<
br />
"And the large mouth and broad chin and rather big nose undoubtedly makethe superior face."
"I'm not so sure." Amory was all for classical features.
"Oh, yes--I'll show you," and Burne pulled out of his desk aphotographic collection of heavily bearded, shaggy celebrities--Tolstoi,Whitman, Carpenter, and others.
"Aren't they wonderful?"
Amory tried politely to appreciate them, and gave up laughingly.
"Burne, I think they're the ugliest-looking crowd I ever came across.They look like an old man's home."
"Oh, Amory, look at that forehead on Emerson; look at Tolstoi's eyes."His tone was reproachful.
Amory shook his head.
"No! Call them remarkable-looking or anything you want--but ugly theycertainly are."
Unabashed, Burne ran his hand lovingly across the spacious foreheads,and piling up the pictures put them back in his desk.
Walking at night was one of his favorite pursuits, and one night hepersuaded Amory to accompany him.
"I hate the dark," Amory objected. "I didn't use to--except when I wasparticularly imaginative, but now, I really do--I'm a regular fool aboutit."
"That's useless, you know."
"Quite possibly."
"We'll go east," Burne suggested, "and down that string of roads throughthe woods."
"Doesn't sound very appealing to me," admitted Amory reluctantly, "butlet's go."
They set off at a good gait, and for an hour swung along in a briskargument until the lights of Princeton were luminous white blots behindthem.
"Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid," said Burneearnestly. "And this very walking at night is one of the things I wasafraid about. I'm going to tell you why I can walk anywhere now and notbe afraid."
"Go on," Amory urged eagerly. They were striding toward the woods,Burne's nervous, enthusiastic voice warming to his subject.
"I used to come out here alone at night, oh, three months ago, and Ialways stopped at that cross-road we just passed. There were the woodslooming up ahead, just as they do now, there were dogs howling andthe shadows and no human sound. Of course, I peopled the woods witheverything ghastly, just like you do; don't you?"
"I do," Amory admitted.
"Well, I began analyzing it--my imagination persisted in stickinghorrors into the dark--so I stuck my imagination into the dark instead,and let it look out at me--I let it play stray dog or escaped convictor ghost, and then saw myself coming along the road. That made it allright--as it always makes everything all right to project yourselfcompletely into another's place. I knew that if I were the dog or theconvict or the ghost I wouldn't be a menace to Burne Holiday any morethan he was a menace to me. Then I thought of my watch. I'd better goback and leave it and then essay the woods. No; I decided, it'sbetter on the whole that I should lose a watch than that I should turnback--and I did go into them--not only followed the road through them,but walked into them until I wasn't frightened any more--did it untilone night I sat down and dozed off in there; then I knew I was throughbeing afraid of the dark."
"Lordy," Amory breathed. "I couldn't have done that. I'd have come outhalf-way, and the first time an automobile passed and made the darkthicker when its lamps disappeared, I'd have come in."
"Well," Burne said suddenly, after a few moments' silence, "we'rehalf-way through, let's turn back."
On the return he launched into a discussion of will.
"It's the whole thing," he asserted. "It's the one dividing line betweengood and evil. I've never met a man who led a rotten life and didn'thave a weak will."
"How about great criminals?"
"They're usually insane. If not, they're weak. There is no such thing asa strong, sane criminal."
"Burne, I disagree with you altogether; how about the superman?"
"Well?"
"He's evil, I think, yet he's strong and sane."
"I've never met him. I'll bet, though, that he's stupid or insane."
"I've met him over and over and he's neither. That's why I think you'rewrong."
"I'm sure I'm not--and so I don't believe in imprisonment except for theinsane."
On this point Amory could not agree. It seemed to him that lifeand history were rife with the strong criminal, keen, but oftenself-deluding; in politics and business one found him and among theold statesmen and kings and generals; but Burne never agreed and theircourses began to split on that point.
Burne was drawing farther and farther away from the world about him. Heresigned the vice-presidency of the senior class and took to reading andwalking as almost his only pursuits. He voluntarily attended graduatelectures in philosophy and biology, and sat in all of them with a ratherpathetically intent look in his eyes, as if waiting for something thelecturer would never quite come to. Sometimes Amory would see him squirmin his seat; and his face would light up; he was on fire to debate apoint.
He grew more abstracted on the street and was even accused of becominga snob, but Amory knew it was nothing of the sort, and once when Burnepassed him four feet off, absolutely unseeingly, his mind a thousandmiles away, Amory almost choked with the romantic joy of watching him.Burne seemed to be climbing heights where others would be forever unableto get a foothold.
"I tell you," Amory declared to Tom, "he's the first contemporary I'veever met whom I'll admit is my superior in mental capacity."
"It's a bad time to admit it--people are beginning to think he's odd."
"He's way over their heads--you know you think so yourself when youtalk to him--Good Lord, Tom, you _used_ to stand out against 'people.'Success has completely conventionalized you."
Tom grew rather annoyed.
"What's he trying to do--be excessively holy?"
"No! not like anybody you've ever seen. Never enters the PhiladelphianSociety. He has no faith in that rot. He doesn't believe that publicswimming-pools and a kind word in time will right the wrongs of theworld; moreover, he takes a drink whenever he feels like it."
"He certainly is getting in wrong."
"Have you talked to him lately?"
"No."
"Then you haven't any conception of him."
The argument ended nowhere, but Amory noticed more than ever how thesentiment toward Burne had changed on the campus.
"It's odd," Amory said to Tom one night when they had grown moreamicable on the subject, "that the people who violently disapprove ofBurne's radicalism are distinctly the Pharisee class--I mean they're thebest-educated men in college--the editors of the papers, like yourselfand Ferrenby, the younger professors.... The illiterate athletes likeLangueduc think he's getting eccentric, but they just say, 'Good oldBurne has got some queer ideas in his head,' and pass on--the Phariseeclass--Gee! they ridicule him unmercifully."
The next morning he met Burne hurrying along McCosh walk after arecitation.
"Whither bound, Tsar?"
"Over to the Prince office to see Ferrenby," he waved a copy of themorning's Princetonian at Amory. "He wrote this editorial."
"Going to flay him alive?"
"No--but he's got me all balled up. Either I've misjudged him or he'ssuddenly become the world's worst radical."
Burne hurried on, and it was several days before Amory heard an accountof the ensuing conversation. Burne had come into the editor's sanctumdisplaying the paper cheerfully.
"Hello, Jesse."
"Hello there, Savonarola."
"I just read your editorial."
"Good boy--didn't know you stooped that low."
"Jesse, you startled me."
"How so?"
"Aren't you afraid the faculty'll get after you if you pull thisirreligious stuff?"
"What?"
"Like this morning."
"What the devil--that editorial was on the coaching system."
"Yes, but that quotation--"
Jesse sat up.
"What quotation?"
"You know: 'He who is not with me is against me.'"
"Well--what
about it?"
Jesse was puzzled but not alarmed.
"Well, you say here--let me see." Burne opened the paper and read:"'_He who is not with me is against me_, as that gentleman said whowas notoriously capable of only coarse distinctions and puerilegeneralities.'"
"What of it?" Ferrenby began to look alarmed. "Oliver Cromwell said it,didn't he? or was it Washington, or one of the saints? Good Lord, I'veforgotten."
Burne roared with laughter.
"Oh, Jesse, oh, good, kind Jesse."
"Who said it, for Pete's sake?"
"Well," said Burne, recovering his voice, "St. Matthew attributes it toChrist."
"My God!" cried Jesse, and collapsed backward into the waste-basket.
*****
AMORY WRITES A POEM
The weeks tore by. Amory wandered occasionally to New York on the chanceof finding a new shining green auto-bus, that its stick-of-candyglamour might penetrate his disposition. One day he ventured into astock-company revival of a play whose name was faintly familiar. Thecurtain rose--he watched casually as a girl entered. A few phrases rangin his ear and touched a faint chord of memory. Where--? When--?
Then he seemed to hear a voice whispering beside him, a very soft,vibrant voice: "Oh, I'm such a poor little fool; _do_ tell me when I dowrong."
The solution came in a flash and he had a quick, glad memory ofIsabelle.
He found a blank space on his programme, and began to scribble rapidly:
"Here in the figured dark I watch once more, There, with the curtain, roll the years away; Two years of years--there was an idle day Of ours, when happy endings didn't bore Our unfermented souls; I could adore Your eager face beside me, wide-eyed, gay, Smiling a repertoire while the poor play Reached me as a faint ripple reaches shore.
"Yawning and wondering an evening through, I watch alone... and chatterings, of course, Spoil the one scene which, somehow, _did_ have charms; You wept a bit, and I grew sad for you Right here! Where Mr. X defends divorce And What's-Her-Name falls fainting in his arms."
*****
STILL CALM
"Ghosts are such dumb things," said Alec, "they're slow-witted. I canalways outguess a ghost."
"How?" asked Tom.
"Well, it depends where. Take a bedroom, for example. If you use _any_discretion a ghost can never get you in a bedroom."
"Go on, s'pose you think there's maybe a ghost in your bedroom--whatmeasures do you take on getting home at night?" demanded Amory,interested.
"Take a stick" answered Alec, with ponderous reverence, "one about thelength of a broom-handle. Now, the first thing to do is to get the room_cleared_--to do this you rush with your eyes closed into your studyand turn on the lights--next, approaching the closet, carefully run thestick in the door three or four times. Then, if nothing happens, you canlook in. _Always, always_ run the stick in viciously first--_never_ lookfirst!"
"Of course, that's the ancient Celtic school," said Tom gravely.
"Yes--but they usually pray first. Anyway, you use this method to clearthe closets and also for behind all doors--"
"And the bed," Amory suggested.
"Oh, Amory, no!" cried Alec in horror. "That isn't the way--the bedrequires different tactics--let the bed alone, as you value yourreason--if there is a ghost in the room and that's only about a third ofthe time, it is _almost always_ under the bed."
"Well" Amory began.
Alec waved him into silence.
"Of _course_ you never look. You stand in the middle of the floor andbefore he knows what you're going to do make a sudden leap for thebed--never walk near the bed; to a ghost your ankle is your mostvulnerable part--once in bed, you're safe; he may lie around under thebed all night, but you're safe as daylight. If you still have doubtspull the blanket over your head."
"All that's very interesting, Tom."
"Isn't it?" Alec beamed proudly. "All my own, too--the Sir Oliver Lodgeof the new world."
Amory was enjoying college immensely again. The sense of going forwardin a direct, determined line had come back; youth was stirring andshaking out a few new feathers. He had even stored enough surplus energyto sally into a new pose.
"What's the idea of all this 'distracted' stuff, Amory?" asked Alec oneday, and then as Amory pretended to be cramped over his book in a daze:"Oh, don't try to act Burne, the mystic, to me."
Amory looked up innocently.
"What?"
"What?" mimicked Alec. "Are you trying to read yourself into a rhapsodywith--let's see the book."
He snatched it; regarded it derisively.
"Well?" said Amory a little stiffly.
"'The Life of St. Teresa,'" read Alec aloud. "Oh, my gosh!"
"Say, Alec."
"What?"
"Does it bother you?"
"Does what bother me?"
"My acting dazed and all that?"
"Why, no--of course it doesn't _bother_ me."
"Well, then, don't spoil it. If I enjoy going around telling peopleguilelessly that I think I'm a genius, let me do it."
"You're getting a reputation for being eccentric," said Alec, laughing,"if that's what you mean."
Amory finally prevailed, and Alec agreed to accept his face value in thepresence of others if he was allowed rest periods when they were alone;so Amory "ran it out" at a great rate, bringing the most eccentriccharacters to dinner, wild-eyed grad students, preceptors with strangetheories of God and government, to the cynical amazement of thesupercilious Cottage Club.
As February became slashed by sun and moved cheerfully into March,Amory went several times to spend week-ends with Monsignor; once hetook Burne, with great success, for he took equal pride and delight indisplaying them to each other. Monsignor took him several times to seeThornton Hancock, and once or twice to the house of a Mrs. Lawrence, atype of Rome-haunting American whom Amory liked immediately.
Then one day came a letter from Monsignor, which appended an interestingP. S.:
"Do you know," it ran, "that your third cousin, Clara Page, widowed six months and very poor, is living in Philadelphia? I don't think you've ever met her, but I wish, as a favor to me, you'd go to see her. To my mind, she's rather a remarkable woman, and just about your age."
Amory sighed and decided to go, as a favor....
*****
CLARA
She was immemorial.... Amory wasn't good enough for Clara, Clara ofripply golden hair, but then no man was. Her goodness was above theprosy morals of the husband-seeker, apart from the dull literature offemale virtue.
Sorrow lay lightly around her, and when Amory found her in Philadelphiahe thought her steely blue eyes held only happiness; a latent strength,a realism, was brought to its fullest development by the facts thatshe was compelled to face. She was alone in the world, with two smallchildren, little money, and, worst of all, a host of friends. He sawher that winter in Philadelphia entertaining a houseful of men for anevening, when he knew she had not a servant in the house except thelittle colored girl guarding the babies overhead. He saw one of thegreatest libertines in that city, a man who was habitually drunk andnotorious at home and abroad, sitting opposite her for an evening,discussing _girls' boarding-schools_ with a sort of innocent excitement.What a twist Clara had to her mind! She could make fascinating andalmost brilliant conversation out of the thinnest air that ever floatedthrough a drawing-room.
The idea that the girl was poverty-stricken had appealed to Amory'ssense of situation. He arrived in Philadelphia expecting to be toldthat 921 Ark Street was in a miserable lane of hovels. He was evendisappointed when it proved to be nothing of the sort. It was an oldhouse that had been in her husband's family for years. An elderly aunt,who objected to having it sold, had put ten years' taxes with alawyer and pranced off to Honolulu, leaving Clara to struggle with theheating-problem as best she could. So no wild-haired woman with a hungrybaby at her breast and a sad Amelia-like look greeted
him. Instead,Amory would have thought from his reception that she had not a care inthe world.
A calm virility and a dreamy humor, marked contrasts to herlevel-headedness--into these moods she slipped sometimes as a refuge.She could do the most prosy things (though she was wise enough neverto stultify herself with such "household arts" as _knitting_ and_embroidery_), yet immediately afterward pick up a book and let herimagination rove as a formless cloud with the wind. Deepest of all inher personality was the golden radiance that she diffused around her.As an open fire in a dark room throws romance and pathos into the quietfaces at its edge, so she cast her lights and shadows around the roomsthat held her, until she made of her prosy old uncle a man of quaint andmeditative charm, metamorphosed the stray telegraph boy into a Puck-likecreature of delightful originality. At first this quality of herssomehow irritated Amory. He considered his own uniqueness sufficient,and it rather embarrassed him when she tried to read new interests intohim for the benefit of what other adorers were present. He felt as ifa polite but insistent stage-manager were attempting to make him give anew interpretation of a part he had conned for years.
But Clara talking, Clara telling a slender tale of a hatpin and aninebriated man and herself.... People tried afterward to repeat heranecdotes but for the life of them they could make them sound likenothing whatever. They gave her a sort of innocent attention and thebest smiles many of them had smiled for long; there were few tears inClara, but people smiled misty-eyed at her.
Very occasionally Amory stayed for little half-hours after the rest ofthe court had gone, and they would have bread and jam and tea late inthe afternoon or "maple-sugar lunches," as she called them, at night.
"You _are_ remarkable, aren't you!" Amory was becoming trite from wherehe perched in the centre of the dining-room table one six o'clock.
"Not a bit," she answered. She was searching out napkins in thesideboard. "I'm really most humdrum and commonplace. One of those peoplewho have no interest in anything but their children."
"Tell that to somebody else," scoffed Amory. "You know you're perfectlyeffulgent." He asked her the one thing that he knew might embarrass her.It was the remark that the first bore made to Adam.
"Tell me about yourself." And she gave the answer that Adam must havegiven.
"There's nothing to tell."
But eventually Adam probably told the bore all the things he thoughtabout at night when the locusts sang in the sandy grass, and he musthave remarked patronizingly how _different_ he was from Eve, forgettinghow different she was from him... at any rate, Clara told Amory muchabout herself that evening. She had had a harried life from sixteen on,and her education had stopped sharply with her leisure. Browsing in herlibrary, Amory found a tattered gray book out of which fell a yellowsheet that he impudently opened. It was a poem that she had writtenat school about a gray convent wall on a gray day, and a girl withher cloak blown by the wind sitting atop of it and thinking about themany-colored world. As a rule such sentiment bored him, but this wasdone with so much simplicity and atmosphere, that it brought a pictureof Clara to his mind, of Clara on such a cool, gray day with her keenblue eyes staring out, trying to see her tragedies come marching overthe gardens outside. He envied that poem. How he would have loved tohave come along and seen her on the wall and talked nonsense or romanceto her, perched above him in the air. He began to be frightfully jealousof everything about Clara: of her past, of her babies, of the men andwomen who flocked to drink deep of her cool kindness and rest theirtired minds as at an absorbing play.
"_Nobody_ seems to bore you," he objected.
"About half the world do," she admitted, "but I think that's a prettygood average, don't you?" and she turned to find something in Browningthat bore on the subject. She was the only person he ever met whocould look up passages and quotations to show him in the middle ofthe conversation, and yet not be irritating to distraction. She did itconstantly, with such a serious enthusiasm that he grew fond of watchingher golden hair bent over a book, brow wrinkled ever so little athunting her sentence.
Through early March he took to going to Philadelphia for week-ends.Almost always there was some one else there and she seemed not anxiousto see him alone, for many occasions presented themselves when a wordfrom her would have given him another delicious half-hour of adoration.But he fell gradually in love and began to speculate wildly on marriage.Though this design flowed through his brain even to his lips, stillhe knew afterward that the desire had not been deeply rooted. Once hedreamt that it had come true and woke up in a cold panic, for in hisdream she had been a silly, flaxen Clara, with the gold gone out of herhair and platitudes falling insipidly from her changeling tongue. Butshe was the first fine woman he ever knew and one of the few good peoplewho ever interested him. She made her goodness such an asset. Amoryhad decided that most good people either dragged theirs after them as aliability, or else distorted it to artificial geniality, and of coursethere were the ever-present prig and Pharisee--(but Amory never included_them_ as being among the saved).
*****
ST. CECILIA
"Over her gray and velvet dress, Under her molten, beaten hair, Color of rose in mock distress Flushes and fades and makes her fair; Fills the air from her to him With light and languor and little sighs, Just so subtly he scarcely knows... Laughing lightning, color of rose."
"Do you like me?"
"Of course I do," said Clara seriously.
"Why?"
"Well, we have some qualities in common. Things that are spontaneous ineach of us--or were originally."
"You're implying that I haven't used myself very well?"
Clara hesitated.
"Well, I can't judge. A man, of course, has to go through a lot more,and I've been sheltered."
"Oh, don't stall, please, Clara," Amory interrupted; "but do talk aboutme a little, won't you?"
"Surely, I'd adore to." She didn't smile.
"That's sweet of you. First answer some questions. Am I painfullyconceited?"
"Well--no, you have tremendous vanity, but it'll amuse the people whonotice its preponderance."
"I see."
"You're really humble at heart. You sink to the third hell of depressionwhen you think you've been slighted. In fact, you haven't muchself-respect."
"Centre of target twice, Clara. How do you do it? You never let me say aword."
"Of course not--I can never judge a man while he's talking. But I'm notthrough; the reason you have so little real self-confidence, even thoughyou gravely announce to the occasional philistine that you think you'rea genius, is that you've attributed all sorts of atrocious faults toyourself and are trying to live up to them. For instance, you're alwayssaying that you are a slave to high-balls."
"But I am, potentially."
"And you say you're a weak character, that you've no will."
"Not a bit of will--I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to myhatred of boredom, to most of my desires--"
"You are not!" She brought one little fist down onto the other."You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, yourimagination."
"You certainly interest me. If this isn't boring you, go on."
"I notice that when you want to stay over an extra day from college yougo about it in a sure way. You never decide at first while the merits ofgoing or staying are fairly clear in your mind. You let your imaginationshinny on the side of your desires for a few hours, and then you decide.Naturally your imagination, after a little freedom, thinks up a millionreasons why you should stay, so your decision when it comes isn't true.It's biassed."
"Yes," objected Amory, "but isn't it lack of will-power to let myimagination shinny on the wrong side?"
"My dear boy, there's your big mistake. This has nothing to do withwill-power; that's a crazy, useless word, anyway; you lack judgment--thejudgment to decide at once when you know your imagination will play youfalse, given half a chance."
"Well, I'll be darned!"
exclaimed Amory in surprise, "that's the lastthing I expected."
Clara didn't gloat. She changed the subject immediately. But she hadstarted him thinking and he believed she was partly right. He felt likea factory-owner who after accusing a clerk of dishonesty finds that hisown son, in the office, is changing the books once a week. His poor,mistreated will that he had been holding up to the scorn of himself andhis friends, stood before him innocent, and his judgment walked off toprison with the unconfinable imp, imagination, dancing in mocking gleebeside him. Clara's was the only advice he ever asked without dictatingthe answer himself--except, perhaps, in his talks with Monsignor Darcy.
How he loved to do any sort of thing with Clara! Shopping with her was arare, epicurean dream. In every store where she had ever traded she waswhispered about as the beautiful Mrs. Page.
"I'll bet she won't stay single long."
"Well, don't scream it out. She ain't lookin' for no advice."
"_Ain't_ she beautiful!"
(Enter a floor-walker--silence till he moves forward, smirking.)
"Society person, ain't she?"
"Yeah, but poor now, I guess; so they say."
"Gee! girls, _ain't_ she some kid!"
And Clara beamed on all alike. Amory believed that tradespeople gave herdiscounts, sometimes to her knowledge and sometimes without it. He knewshe dressed very well, had always the best of everything in the house,and was inevitably waited upon by the head floor-walker at the veryleast.
Sometimes they would go to church together on Sunday and he would walkbeside her and revel in her cheeks moist from the soft water in the newair. She was very devout, always had been, and God knows what heightsshe attained and what strength she drew down to herself when she kneltand bent her golden hair into the stained-glass light.
"St. Cecelia," he cried aloud one day, quite involuntarily, and thepeople turned and peered, and the priest paused in his sermon and Claraand Amory turned to fiery red.
That was the last Sunday they had, for he spoiled it all that night. Hecouldn't help it.
They were walking through the March twilight where it was as warm asJune, and the joy of youth filled his soul so that he felt he mustspeak.
"I think," he said and his voice trembled, "that if I lost faith in youI'd lose faith in God."
She looked at him with such a startled face that he asked her thematter.
"Nothing," she said slowly, "only this: five men have said that to mebefore, and it frightens me."
"Oh, Clara, is that your fate!"
She did not answer.
"I suppose love to you is--" he began.
She turned like a flash.
"I have never been in love."
They walked along, and he realized slowly how much she had told him...never in love.... She seemed suddenly a daughter of light alone. Hisentity dropped out of her plane and he longed only to touch her dresswith almost the realization that Joseph must have had of Mary's eternalsignificance. But quite mechanically he heard himself saying:
"And I love you--any latent greatness that I've got is... oh, I can'ttalk, but Clara, if I come back in two years in a position to marryyou--"
She shook her head.
"No," she said; "I'd never marry again. I've got my two children and Iwant myself for them. I like you--I like all clever men, you more thanany--but you know me well enough to know that I'd never marry a cleverman--" She broke off suddenly.
"Amory."
"What?"
"You're not in love with me. You never wanted to marry me, did you?"
"It was the twilight," he said wonderingly. "I didn't feel as though Iwere speaking aloud. But I love you--or adore you--or worship you--"
"There you go--running through your catalogue of emotions in fiveseconds."
He smiled unwillingly.
"Don't make me out such a light-weight, Clara; you _are_ depressingsometimes."
"You're not a light-weight, of all things," she said intently, takinghis arm and opening wide her eyes--he could see their kindliness in thefading dusk. "A light-weight is an eternal nay."
"There's so much spring in the air--there's so much lazy sweetness inyour heart."
She dropped his arm.
"You're all fine now, and I feel glorious. Give me a cigarette. You'venever seen me smoke, have you? Well, I do, about once a month."
And then that wonderful girl and Amory raced to the corner like two madchildren gone wild with pale-blue twilight.
"I'm going to the country for to-morrow," she announced, as she stoodpanting, safe beyond the flare of the corner lamp-post. "These days aretoo magnificent to miss, though perhaps I feel them more in the city."
"Oh, Clara!" Amory said; "what a devil you could have been if the Lordhad just bent your soul a little the other way!"
"Maybe," she answered; "but I think not. I'm never really wild and neverhave been. That little outburst was pure spring."
"And you are, too," said he.
They were walking along now.
"No--you're wrong again, how can a person of your own self-reputedbrains be so constantly wrong about me? I'm the opposite of everythingspring ever stood for. It's unfortunate, if I happen to look like whatpleased some soppy old Greek sculptor, but I assure you that if itweren't for my face I'd be a quiet nun in the convent without"--thenshe broke into a run and her raised voice floated back to him as hefollowed--"my precious babies, which I must go back and see."
She was the only girl he ever knew with whom he could understand howanother man might be preferred. Often Amory met wives whom he had knownas debutantes, and looking intently at them imagined that he foundsomething in their faces which said:
"Oh, if I could only have gotten _you!_" Oh, the enormous conceit of theman!
But that night seemed a night of stars and singing and Clara's brightsoul still gleamed on the ways they had trod.
"Golden, golden is the air--" he chanted to the little pools of water.... "Golden is the air, golden notes from golden mandolins, goldenfrets of golden violins, fair, oh, wearily fair.... Skeins from braidedbasket, mortals may not hold; oh, what young extravagant God, who wouldknow or ask it?... who could give such gold..."
*****
AMORY IS RESENTFUL
Slowly and inevitably, yet with a sudden surge at the last, while Amorytalked and dreamed, war rolled swiftly up the beach and washed the sandswhere Princeton played. Every night the gymnasium echoed as platoonafter platoon swept over the floor and shuffled out the basket-ballmarkings. When Amory went to Washington the next week-end he caught someof the spirit of crisis which changed to repulsion in the Pullman carcoming back, for the berths across from him were occupied by stinkingaliens--Greeks, he guessed, or Russians. He thought how much easierpatriotism had been to a homogeneous race, how much easier it would havebeen to fight as the Colonies fought, or as the Confederacy fought. Andhe did no sleeping that night, but listened to the aliens guffaw andsnore while they filled the car with the heavy scent of latest America.
In Princeton every one bantered in public and told themselves privatelythat their deaths at least would be heroic. The literary students readRupert Brooke passionately; the lounge-lizards worried over whether thegovernment would permit the English-cut uniform for officers; a few ofthe hopelessly lazy wrote to the obscure branches of the War Department,seeking an easy commission and a soft berth.
Then, after a week, Amory saw Burne and knew at once that argument wouldbe futile--Burne had come out as a pacifist. The socialist magazines,a great smattering of Tolstoi, and his own intense longing for a causethat would bring out whatever strength lay in him, had finally decidedhim to preach peace as a subjective ideal.
"When the German army entered Belgium," he began, "if the inhabitantshad gone peaceably about their business, the German army would have beendisorganized in--"
"I know," Amory interrupted, "I've heard it all. But I'm not going totalk propaganda with you. There's a chance that you're right--but evenso we're hundre
ds of years before the time when non-resistance can touchus as a reality."
"But, Amory, listen--"
"Burne, we'd just argue--"
"Very well."
"Just one thing--I don't ask you to think of your family or friends,because I know they don't count a picayune with you beside your senseof duty--but, Burne, how do you know that the magazines you read andthe societies you join and these idealists you meet aren't just plain_German?_"
"Some of them are, of course."
"How do you know they aren't _all_ pro-German--just a lot of weakones--with German-Jewish names."
"That's the chance, of course," he said slowly. "How much or how littleI'm taking this stand because of propaganda I've heard, I don't know;naturally I think that it's my most innermost conviction--it seems apath spread before me just now."
Amory's heart sank.
"But think of the cheapness of it--no one's really going to martyr youfor being a pacifist--it's just going to throw you in with the worst--"
"I doubt it," he interrupted.
"Well, it all smells of Bohemian New York to me."
"I know what you mean, and that's why I'm not sure I'll agitate."
"You're one man, Burne--going to talk to people who won't listen--withall God's given you."
"That's what Stephen must have thought many years ago. But he preachedhis sermon and they killed him. He probably thought as he was dying whata waste it all was. But you see, I've always felt that Stephen's deathwas the thing that occurred to Paul on the road to Damascus, and senthim to preach the word of Christ all over the world."
"Go on."
"That's all--this is my particular duty. Even if right now I'm just apawn--just sacrificed. God! Amory--you don't think I like the Germans!"
"Well, I can't say anything else--I get to the end of all the logicabout non-resistance, and there, like an excluded middle, stands thehuge spectre of man as he is and always will be. And this spectre standsright beside the one logical necessity of Tolstoi's, and the otherlogical necessity of Nietzsche's--" Amory broke off suddenly. "When areyou going?"
"I'm going next week."
"I'll see you, of course."
As he walked away it seemed to Amory that the look in his face borea great resemblance to that in Kerry's when he had said good-by underBlair Arch two years before. Amory wondered unhappily why he could nevergo into anything with the primal honesty of those two.
"Burne's a fanatic," he said to Tom, "and he's dead wrong and, I'minclined to think, just an unconscious pawn in the hands of anarchisticpublishers and German-paid rag wavers--but he haunts me--just leavingeverything worth while--"
Burne left in a quietly dramatic manner a week later. He sold all hispossessions and came down to the room to say good-by, with a batteredold bicycle, on which he intended to ride to his home in Pennsylvania.
"Peter the Hermit bidding farewell to Cardinal Richelieu," suggestedAlec, who was lounging in the window-seat as Burne and Amory shookhands.
But Amory was not in a mood for that, and as he saw Burne's long legspropel his ridiculous bicycle out of sight beyond Alexander Hall,he knew he was going to have a bad week. Not that he doubted thewar--Germany stood for everything repugnant to him; for materialism andthe direction of tremendous licentious force; it was just that Burne'sface stayed in his memory and he was sick of the hysteria he wasbeginning to hear.
"What on earth is the use of suddenly running down Goethe," he declaredto Alec and Tom. "Why write books to prove he started the war--or thatthat stupid, overestimated Schiller is a demon in disguise?"
"Have you ever read anything of theirs?" asked Tom shrewdly.
"No," Amory admitted.
"Neither have I," he said laughing.
"People will shout," said Alec quietly, "but Goethe's on his same oldshelf in the library--to bore any one that wants to read him!"
Amory subsided, and the subject dropped.
"What are you going to do, Amory?"
"Infantry or aviation, I can't make up my mind--I hate mechanics, butthen of course aviation's the thing for me--"
"I feel as Amory does," said Tom. "Infantry or aviation--aviation soundslike the romantic side of the war, of course--like cavalry used to be,you know; but like Amory I don't know a horse-power from a piston-rod."
Somehow Amory's dissatisfaction with his lack of enthusiasm culminatedin an attempt to put the blame for the whole war on the ancestors of hisgeneration... all the people who cheered for Germany in 1870.... Allthe materialists rampant, all the idolizers of German science andefficiency. So he sat one day in an English lecture and heard "LocksleyHall" quoted and fell into a brown study with contempt for Tennyson andall he stood for--for he took him as a representative of the Victorians.
Victorians, Victorians, who never learned to weep Who sowed the bitter harvest that your children go to reap--
scribbled Amory in his note-book. The lecturer was saying somethingabout Tennyson's solidity and fifty heads were bent to take notes. Amoryturned over to a fresh page and began scrawling again.
"They shuddered when they found what Mr. Darwin was about, They shuddered when the waltz came in and Newman hurried out--"
But the waltz came in much earlier; he crossed that out.
"And entitled A Song in the Time of Order," came the professor's voice,droning far away. "Time of Order"--Good Lord! Everything crammed inthe box and the Victorians sitting on the lid smiling serenely.... WithBrowning in his Italian villa crying bravely: "All's for the best."Amory scribbled again.
"You knelt up in the temple and he bent to hear you pray, You thanked him for your 'glorious gains'--reproached him for 'Cathay.'"
Why could he never get more than a couplet at a time? Now he neededsomething to rhyme with:
"You would keep Him straight with science, tho He had gone wrong before..."
Well, anyway....
"You met your children in your home--'I've fixed it up!' you cried, Took your fifty years of Europe, and then virtuously--died."
"That was to a great extent Tennyson's idea," came the lecturer's voice."Swinburne's Song in the Time of Order might well have been Tennyson'stitle. He idealized order against chaos, against waste."
At last Amory had it. He turned over another page and scrawledvigorously for the twenty minutes that was left of the hour. Then hewalked up to the desk and deposited a page torn out of his note-book.
"Here's a poem to the Victorians, sir," he said coldly.
The professor picked it up curiously while Amory backed rapidly throughthe door.
Here is what he had written:
"Songs in the time of order You left for us to sing, Proofs with excluded middles, Answers to life in rhyme, Keys of the prison warder And ancient bells to ring, Time was the end of riddles, We were the end of time...
Here were domestic oceans And a sky that we might reach, Guns and a guarded border, Gantlets--but not to fling, Thousands of old emotions And a platitude for each, Songs in the time of order-- And tongues, that we might sing."
*****
THE END OF MANY THINGS
Early April slipped by in a haze--a haze of long evenings on the clubveranda with the graphophone playing "Poor Butterfly" inside... for"Poor Butterfly" had been the song of that last year. The war seemedscarcely to touch them and it might have been one of the senior springsof the past, except for the drilling every other afternoon, yet Amoryrealized poignantly that this was the last spring under the old regime.
"This is the great protest against the superman," said Amory.
"I suppose so," Alec agreed.
"He's absolutely irreconcilable with any Utopia. As long as he occurs,there's trouble and all the latent evil that makes a crowd list and swaywhen he talks."
"And of course all that he is is a gifted man without a moral sense."
"That's all. I think the worst thing to contemplate is
this--it'sall happened before, how soon will it happen again? Fifty years afterWaterloo Napoleon was as much a hero to English school childrenas Wellington. How do we know our grandchildren won't idolize VonHindenburg the same way?"
"What brings it about?"
"Time, damn it, and the historian. If we could only learn to lookon evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony ormagnificence."
"God! Haven't we raked the universe over the coals for four years?"
Then the night came that was to be the last. Tom and Amory, bound in themorning for different training-camps, paced the shadowy walks as usualand seemed still to see around them the faces of the men they knew.
"The grass is full of ghosts to-night."
"The whole campus is alive with them."
They paused by Little and watched the moon rise, to make silver of theslate roof of Dodd and blue the rustling trees.
"You know," whispered Tom, "what we feel now is the sense of all thegorgeous youth that has rioted through here in two hundred years."
A last burst of singing flooded up from Blair Arch--broken voices forsome long parting.
"And what we leave here is more than this class; it's the whole heritageof youth. We're just one generation--we're breaking all the links thatseemed to bind us here to top-booted and high-stocked generations. We'vewalked arm and arm with Burr and Light-Horse Harry Lee through halfthese deep-blue nights."
"That's what they are," Tom tangented off, "deep blue--a bit of colorwould spoil them, make them exotic. Spires, against a sky that'sa promise of dawn, and blue light on the slate roofs--it hurts...rather--"
"Good-by, Aaron Burr," Amory called toward deserted Nassau Hall, "youand I knew strange corners of life."
His voice echoed in the stillness.
"The torches are out," whispered Tom. "Ah, Messalina, the long shadowsare building minarets on the stadium--"
For an instant the voices of freshman year surged around them and thenthey looked at each other with faint tears in their eyes.
"Damn!"
"Damn!"
The last light fades and drifts across the land--the low, long land, thesunny land of spires; the ghosts of evening tune again their lyres andwander singing in a plaintive band down the long corridors of trees;pale fires echo the night from tower top to tower: Oh, sleep thatdreams, and dream that never tires, press from the petals of the lotusflower something of this to keep, the essence of an hour.
No more to wait the twilight of the moon in this sequestered vale ofstar and spire, for one eternal morning of desire passes to time andearthy afternoon. Here, Heraclitus, did you find in fire and shiftingthings the prophecy you hurled down the dead years; this midnightmy desire will see, shadowed among the embers, furled in flame, thesplendor and the sadness of the world.
This Side of Paradise Page 4
