A Williams Anthology Part 23

Jane looked at him, with as near a quizzical expression as her very unquizzical nature would permit.

"You know I'd do it if you weren't so stubborn about using a wastebasket instead of that desk," she said.

"Better clean it out, Jane--clean it all out--anything, anything,--"

but she was gone. He took the tract which she had left on his table and carefully tore it in four pieces, and hid them under the mattress.

Then he went to sleep. The professor was in distinctly a rebellious mood.

In the natural course of time, which, when one has numerous queer pains in most unexpected places, is short,--the professor awoke and lay on his back watching a fly walking around the edge of a rosebud.

Pretty soon the fly flew away--then the professor thought of something else--something he had not thought of for some years. Strange how inactivity of the body affects one. The professor raised himself in bed with some effort and drew on his dressing gown and slippers. Then he hobbled across the room, out of the door, and down the hallway towards his study.

At the turn of the narrow corridor the odor of long-hidden dust met him,--and he hobbled faster. His lips were set in a manner that was strange to him, and a fear was in his heart--a fear of the cleanliness which may be akin to G.o.dliness, but to which a pressed flower is as the dust upon the walls. At the door he hesitated, bewildered. On his desk was heaped a pile of papers, in which letters, lecture notes, old pamphlets, were scattered in contemptuous disorder. Jane had just dropped an armful into the fire which blazed with that comfortless instability common to paper fires in the daytime. She had gathered another armful and was advancing toward the hearth, when she saw the apparition in the door-way and stopped. The professor was paler than usual, and his hands shook a little.

"Do you know what you're doing, Jane?" he asked, quietly enough.

"Yes," she answered defiantly, "I do. You've had 'em hanging around long enough."

"You know whose letters they are?"

"Yes," she said. "Why, what--"

The professor, forgetting his rheumatism, had advanced in two strides, and with one blow knocked the papers from her arms, so that they lay scattered on the floor.

There are wrongs committed against the sacredness of sentiment which cannot be put in words. The professor checked the torrent which rose to his lips: Jane would never understand. The only thing which she did comprehend was a strength in her brother of which she had never dreamed--not the strength of the worm which turns, but of the man who had endured because he wished to, and whose endurance was at an end.

"You never had a heart, did you, Jane?" he said finally. "The past is not sacred to you, and the present---well, the present does not count for much when one has no dreams--or visions.... I think, Jane, you had better go."

"Where?" she questioned vaguely. There was no asperity in her voice now, only puzzled helplessness. It was the inevitable surrender of the commonplace in the light of a greater understanding--in the realization of an unknown law to the significance of which some never attain. She had come inadvertently to a marriage feast for which she had no wedding garment; and she was naked and ashamed.

"Anywhere--anywhere; only go," said the professor. His thoughts were far away now.

"I shall not come back, professor--perhaps it is better," she said.

There was a new tone in her voice, and the professor turned sharply.

Jane hesitated. Then he caught sight of a photograph lying among the letters on the floor.

"That, too," he murmured. He stood and looked at it; Jane pa.s.sed out of the room.

Slowly and painfully the professor stooped down and gathered up his wife's letters and his wife's photograph. He sat down in the big plush chair by the fireside and thought for a long time. He was thinking of an old quotation from some Sanskrit poem--"Every yesterday a dream of happiness, every to-morrow a vision of hope--" That was all he could remember, but his mind said it over and over. Well, his yesterdays--the yesterdays of long ago--were dreams of happiness--he had no visions; to-morrow offered him nothing. After a while he took Mary's picture and looked at it. His dreams slowly settled to earth--and he began to adjust his perspective. It was a long, long time since he had even remembered--since the dream had been more than a vague light s.h.i.+ning through the mist. Now he wondered, as he stared at the pictured eyes, so laughingly helpless, at the chin, so characterless, at the pretty mouth from which no word worth listening to had ever proceeded--wondered whether the light was other than a reflection from Youth's glamour. Then he took up the letters and read them one by one. He wondered why they seemed so shallow--why he had never noticed their irresponsible dancing from light to shade, from light affection to unreasonable and trifling fretfulness. The last letter he held in his hand for some time after he had read it. It was written from a summer resort. "You had better not come down," it read, "you would just spoil the delightful little time I am having with Mr.

Sanders--so stay at home with your books like the dear old bore you are. Please send me ..." He remembered how it had hurt. He remembered shortly afterwards how she had been taken ill, and how she had chafed and feared, and how the dark had taken her while she cried in terror.

He remembered--so much. He wished that he had not tried to remember.

It began to grow dark. The professor lifted the bundle of letters and the photograph, and placed them in the fire-place as carefully as if they had been burnt-offerings. Well, they were--to a dead Romance. The charred paper crumbled where he had laid the letters--a few black pieces floated drunkenly up the chimney. The fire had gone out long before. The professor fumbled in his pocket for a match. When he had found it he struck it on the brick hearth, but his hand trembled so that it burnt his fingers and he dropped it. He lit another, carefully, deliberately, and held it to the pile of papers. They caught, the edges blackened and curled; finally the whole ma.s.s blazed viciously. The photograph had fallen to one side and remained unburnt.

He stooped over and placed it on top of the blazing papers; then it, too, burned.

A light flared from the gas jet, and the professor looked up. Jane stood there in her black travelling dress. Her eyes were red with tears.

"Good-bye, professor," she said. "I thought you wouldn't mind if ..."

She hesitated. The professor thought she looked rather pitiful and thin and tired.

"No, Jane," he answered quietly. "You are not to go. I don't suppose you will understand, but my dreams have all gone--and the vision has come. And I need you, Jane."

"Then you forgive me?" she said tremulously. "I did not know ..."

"There is nothing to forgive, Jane. I did not know, either."

Jane broke down and the professor rose and put his arms around her, awkwardly, and kissed her. He had not kissed her in years. They sat down together before the hearth and gazed into the blackened ashes. He held her hand in his. Finally she spoke. She almost understood--

"Shall we have apple dumplings for supper, professor? The kind you used to like?" She was smiling now.

"No, Jane," he said gravely, "we'll have peach preserves."

_Literary Monthly_, 1909.

THE GOOD GREY POET

SONNET

EDWIN PARTRIDGE LEHMAN '10

All men must feel the beauty of a star That rides in the illimitable s.p.a.ce Of heav'n; the beauty of an Helen's face; Or of a woodland water, glimpsed afar, Where haze-empurpled meadows, undefined And slumbrous, intervene; of quiet, cool, Sequester'd glades, where in the level pool The long green rushes dip before the wind.

These all men feel. But three times blessed he Whose eye and ear, of finer fibre spun, Sense the elusive thread of beauty, where The common man hath deemed that none can be.

The beauty of the commonplace is one In substance with the beauty of the rare.

_Literary Monthly_, 1910.

A MINOR POET TO HIMSELF

SONNET

EDWIN PARTRIDGE LEHMAN '10

We lesser poets clothe in garb ornate, In words of dizzy fire, in awkward phrase, In humble thunderings, that only daze, Though meant to rouse in flames of love or hate, The thoughts that those brave souls of stuff divine, Whose words breathe inspiration, have long since In jewelled lines set forth. Where we bear hints Of grape, they bear the ruddy full-pressed wine.

And yet the fire that thrills us is no less, Nor coa.r.s.er, than the fire that they, the great, Have felt. Our pens are feebler; but the play Of deep emotions, the fine stir and stress That mark the soul's rare movements, are, in state, Equal to those of lines that make men pray.

_Literary Monthly_, 1909.