CHAPTER VI.
PAN’S BROTHER AND THE NYMPH.
ADAM returned to his room attempting to pucker his lips for a careless whistle which failed to materialize. He had evolved a rude but logical philosophy of his own for every phase of life; but what philosophy ever fooled the maker thereof, with its sophistries?
The beef-eaters were snoring so ominously that Adam was constrained to think of two volcanoes threatening immediate eruptions.
“Poor old boys!” he said to himself. There was no particular reason for this, save that he felt he must pity something, and self-pity he abhorred. He was trying not to think of the one companion that always drew his emotions out of his reluctant heart and gave them expression—his violin.
Standing in the middle of the floor, without a light in the room, he reasoned with himself. He said to his inner being that doubtless Wainsworth loved her more than he did anyway; that he, Adam, having carried away a boyish memory, which he had haloed with romanticism for seven years, could not call his emotions love. Moreover, he had as yet only seen her in the dark, and might not be at all attracted by her true self in the daylight. Naturally, also, Wainsworth had as much right in the premises as any man on earth, and no man could expect a girl to remember a mere homely lad for seven years and know that he loved her, or that he thought he did, and so reciprocate the affection and calmly await his return. Clearly he was an absurd creature, for he had fostered some silly notion in his heart, or brain, that Garde was feeling toward him, all these years, as he felt toward her. It was fortunate he had found everything out so soon. The thing to do now was to think of something else.
All the while he was thus philosophizing, he had a perfect subconsciousness that told him the violin would win—that soon or late it would drag his feelings out of him, in its own incomparable tones. He only paused there arguing the matter because he hated to give in without a fight. That violin always won. It must not be permitted to arrogate to itself an absolute mastery over his moods.
Presently, beginning to admit that he would yet have to tuck the instrument under his chin, whether or no, he worked out a compromise. He would not play it, or sound it, or fondle it in the town. If it wanted to voice things and would do it—well, he would carry it out into the woods.
Feeling that he had, in a measure, conquered, Rust stole silently across the apartment to the corner in which he had placed the violin with his own loving hands, lifted the case without making a sound and crept out as if he had been a thief, pressing the box somewhat rigidly against his heart.
He reached the street without difficulty. The town was asleep. A dog barking, a mile away, and then a foolish cock, crowing because he had waked, were the only sounds breaking over all Boston. The last thin rind of the moon had just risen. In the light it cast, the houses and shadows seemed but a mystic painting, in deep purple, blacks and grays. Silently as Adam could walk, these houses caught up the echo of his footfalls, and whispered it on, from one to another, as if it had been a pass-word to motionless sentinels.
He came to the Common, discerning Beacon Hill, dimly visible, off to the right. With grass under foot he walked more rapidly. Past the watch-house and the powder-house, in the center of the Common, he strode, on to Fox Hill and then to the Roxbury Flats, stretching wide and far, to the west of the town.
Being now far from all the houses, alone in an area of silence, Adam modified his gait. He even stood perfectly still, listening, for what he could not have heard, gazing far away, at scenes and forms that had no existence. Night and solitude wrought upon him to make him again the boy who had lived that free, natural existence with the Indians. His tongue could not utter, his imagination could not conceive, anything concrete or tangible out of the melancholy ecstasy which the night aroused in his being and which seemed to demand some outward response from his spirit. He felt as if inspiration, to say something, or to do something, were about to be born in his breast, but always it eluded him, always it was just beyond him and all he could do, as his thought pursued it, was to dwell upon the sublimity breathing across the bosom of Nature and so fairly into his face.
He had come away without his hat. Bareheaded, at times with his eyes closed, the better to appreciate the earth in its slumber, he fairly wantoned in the coolness, the sweetness and the beauty of the hour. Thus it was past three o’clock in the morning when at length he came to the woods.
Man might build a palace of gold and brilliants, or Nature grow an edifice of leaves all resplendent with purples, reds, yellows and emeralds, but, when night spread her mantle, these gems of color and radiance might as well be of ebon. It is the sun that gilds, that burnishes, that lays on the tints of the mighty canvas; and when he goes, all color, all glitter and all beauty, save of form, have ceased to be.
Adam saw the trees standing dark and still, their great black limbs outstretched like arms, with upturned hands, suppliant for alms of weather. There was something brotherly in the trees, toward the Indians, Adam thought, and therefore they were his big brothers also. He had even seen the trees retreating backward to the West, as the Red men had done, falling before the march of the great white family.
If Nature has aught of awe in her dark hours, she keeps it in the woods. The silence, disturbed by the mystical murmuring of leaves, the reaching forth of the undergrowth, to feel the passer-by in the depth of shadows, the tangled roots that hold the wariest feet until some small animal—like a child of the forest—can scamper away to safety, all these things make such a place seem sentient, breathing with a life which man knows not of, but feels, when alone in its midst.
To Adam all these things betokened welcome. His mood became one of peculiar exultation, almost, but not quite, cheer. As a discouraged child might say, “I don’t care, my mother loves me, anyway, whether anybody else does or not,” so Adam’s spirit was feeling, “If there is no one else to love me, at least I am loved by the trees.”
With this little joy at his heart, he penetrated yet a bit further into the absolute darkness, and sitting down upon a log, which had given his shins a hearty welcome, he removed his violin from its case and felt it over with fond hands and put its smooth cheek against his own cheek, before he would go on to the further ecstasy which his musical embrace became when he played to tell of his moods.
“Now something jolly, my Mistress,” he said to the instrument, as if he had doubts of the violin’s intentions. “Don’t be doleful.”
Like a fencer, getting in a sharp attack, to surprise the adversary at the outset, he jumped the bow on to the strings with a brisk, debonair movement that struck out sparks of music, light and low as if they were played for fairies. It was a sally which soon changed for something more sober. It might have seemed that the fencer found a foe worthy his steel and took a calmer method in the sword-play. Then a moment later it would have appeared that Adam was on the defensive.
As a matter of fact, it was next to impossible for Rust to play bright, lively snatches of melody, this night, try as he might. The long notes, with the quality of a wail in them, got in between the staccato sparkles. When Adam thought of the Indians, their minor compositions transmitted themselves through his fingers into sound, before he was aware. He had braced himself stiffly on philosophy all the way to this forest-theater, but to little avail. He presently stopped playing altogether.
“If he loves her and she loves him,” he told himself, resolutely, “why, then, it is much better that two should be happy than that all three should finally be made miserable by some other arrangement, which a man like me, in his selfishness, might hope to make. It’s a man’s duty, under such circumstances, to dance at the wedding and be a jolly chap, and——hunt around for another girl.”
He attacked the violin again, when it was apparently off guard, and rattled off a cheerful ditty before the instrument could catch its breath, so to speak. Then a single note taunted him with a memory, and the violin nearly sobbed, for a second, till the jig could recover its balance. The strings next caught at a laggard phrase and suddenly bore in a relentless contemplation of the future and its barren promise. The brighter tones died away again. So went the battle.
Trying his best to compel the violin to laugh and accept the situation, while the instrument strove to sigh, Adam played an odd composition of alternating sadness and careless jollity, the outpouring being the absolute speech of his soul.
He played on and on. Inasmuch as his philosophy was as right as any human reasoning is likely to be, Adam’s more cheerful nature won. But the victory was not decided, no more than it was permanent. Yet he was at last the master of the situation.
Heedless of the time as he had been, in his complete absorption, Rust had not observed the coming of morning. Nevertheless the sun was up, and between the branches of the trees it had flung a topaz spot of color at his feet—a largess of light and warmth. Without thinking about it, or paying any attention to it, Adam had fixed his eyes on this patch of gold.
Suddenly his senses became aware that the spot had been blotted out of existence. He looked up and beheld a vision of loveliness—as fair a nymph as ever enjoyed a background of trees.
It was Garde.