This statement Lady Drogheda afforded the commentary of a grimace.
"Why, look you," Wycherley philosophized, "have you never thought what
a vast deal of loving and painstaking labor must have gone to make the
world we inhabit so beautiful and so complete? For it was not enough
to evolve and set a glaring sun in heaven, to marshal the big stars
about the summer sky, but even in the least frequented meadow every
butterfly must have his pinions jeweled, very carefully, and every
lovely blade of grass be fashioned separately. The hand that yesterday
arranged the Himalayas found time to glaze the wings of a midge! Now,
most of us could design a striking Flood, or even a Last judgment,
since the canvas is so big and the colors used so virulent; but to
paint a snuff-box perfectly you must love the labor for its own sake,
and pursue it without even an underthought of the performance's
ultimate appraisement. People do not often consider the simple fact
that it is enough to bait, and quite superfluous to veneer, a trap;
indeed, those generally acclaimed the best of persons insist this world
is but an antechamber, full of gins and pitfalls, which must be
scurried through with shut eyes. And the more fools they, as all we
poets know! for to enjoy a sunset, or a glass of wine, or even to
admire the charms of a handsome woman, is to render the Artificer of
all at least the tribute of appreciation."
But she said, in a sharp voice: "William, William----!" And he saw
that there was no beach now in Teviot Bay except the dwindling crescent
at its farthest indentation on which they sat.
Yet his watch, on consultation, recorded only five o'clock; and
presently Mr. Wycherley laughed, not very loudly. The two had risen,
and her face was a tiny snowdrift where every touch of rouge and
grease-pencils showed crudely.
"Look now," said Wycherley, "upon what trifles our lives hinge! Last
night I heard you singing, and the song brought back so many things
done long ago, and made me so unhappy that--ridiculous conclusion!--I
forgot to wind my watch. Well! the tide is buffeting at either side of
Carnrick; within the hour this place will be submerged; and, in a
phrase, we are as dead as Hannibal or Hector."
She said, very quiet: "Could you not gain the mainland if you stripped
and swam for it?"
"Why, possibly," the beau conceded. "Meanwhile you would have drowned.
Faith, we had as well make the best of it."
Little Lady Drogheda touched his sleeve, and her hand (as the man
noted) did not shake at all, nor did her delicious piping voice shake
either. "You cannot save me. I know it. I am not frightened. I bid
you save yourself."
"Permit me to assist you to that ledge of rock," Mr. Wycherley
answered, "which is a trifle higher than the beach; and I pray you,
Olivia, do not mar the dignity of these last passages by talking
nonsense."
For he had spied a ledge, not inaccessible, some four feet higher than
the sands, and it offered them at least a respite. And within the
moment they had secured this niggardly concession, intent to die, as
Wycherley observed, like hurt mice upon a pantry-shelf. The business
smacked of disproportion, he considered, although too well-bred to say
as much; for here was a big ruthless league betwixt earth and sea, and
with no loftier end than to crush a fop and a coquette, whose speedier
extinction had been dear at the expense of a shilling's worth of
arsenic!
Then the sun came out, to peep at these trapped, comely people, and
doubtless to get appropriate mirth at the spectacle. He hung low
against the misty sky, a clearly-rounded orb that did not dazzle, but
merely shone with the cold glitter of new snow upon a fair December
day; and for the rest, the rocks, and watery heavens, and all these
treacherous and lapping waves, were very like a crude draught of the
world, dashed off conceivably upon the day before creation.
These arbiters of social London did not speak at all; and the bleak
waters crowded toward them as in a fretful dispute of precedence.
Then the woman said: "Last night Lord Remon asked me to marry him, and
I declined the honor. For this place is too like Bessington--and, I
think, the past month has changed everything----"
"I thought you had forgotten Bessington," he said, "long, long ago."
"I did not ever quite forget--Oh, the garish years," she wailed, "since
then! And how I hated you, William--and yet liked you, too,--because
you were never the boy that I remembered, and people would not let you
be! And how I hated them--the huzzies! For I had to see you almost
every day, and it was never you I saw--Ah, William, come back for just
a little, little while, and be an honest boy for just the moment that
we are dying, and not an elegant fine gentleman!"
"Nay, my dear," the dramatist composedly answered, "an hour of naked
candor is at hand. Life is a masquerade where Death, it would appear,
is master of the ceremonies. Now he sounds his whistle; and we who
went about the world so long as harlequins must unmask, and for all
time put aside our abhorrence of the disheveled. For in sober verity,
this is Death who comes, Olivia,--though I had thought that at his
advent one would be afraid."
Yet apprehension of this gross and unavoidable adventure, so soon to be
endured, thrilled him, and none too lightly. It seemed unfair that
death should draw near thus sensibly, with never a twinge or ache to
herald its arrival. Why, there were fifty years of life in this fine,
nimble body but for any contretemps like that of the deplorable
present! Thus his meditations stumbled.
"Oh, William," Lady Drogheda bewailed, "it is all so big--the incurious
west, and the sea, and these rocks that were old in Noah's youth,--and
we are so little----!"
"Yes," he returned, and took her hand, because their feet were wetted
now; "the trap and its small prey are not commensurate. The stage is
set for a Homeric death-scene, and we two profane an over-ambitious
background. For who are we that Heaven should have rived the world
before time was, to trap us, and should make of the old sea a
fowling-net?" Their eyes encountered, and he said, with a strange gush
of manliness: "Yet Heaven is kind. I am bound even in honor now to
marry Mistress Araminta; and you would marry Remon in the end,
Olivia,--ah, yes! for we are merely moths, my dear, and luxury is a
disastrously brilliant lamp. But here are only you and I and the
master of all ceremony. And yet--I would we were a little worthier,
Olivia!"
"You have written four merry comedies and you were the first gentleman
in England to wear a neckcloth of Flanders lace," she answered, and her
smile was sadder than weeping.
"And you were the first person of quality to eat cheese-cakes in Spring
Garden. There you have our epitaphs, if we in truth have earned an
epitaph who have not ever lived."
"No, we have only laughed--Laugh now, for the last time, and hearten
me, my handsome William! And yet could I but come to God," the woman
said, with a new voice, "and make it clear to Him just how it all fell
out, and beg for one more chance! How heartily I would pray then!"
"And I would cry Amen to all that prayer must of necessity contain," he
answered. "Oh!" said Wycherley, "just for applause and bodily comfort
and the envy of innumerable other fools we two have bartered a great
heritage! I think our corner of the world will lament us for as much
as a week; but I fear lest Heaven may not condescend to set apart the
needful time wherein to frame a suitable chastisement for such poor
imbeciles. Olivia, I have loved you all my life, and I have been
faithful neither to you nor to myself! I love you so that I am not
afraid even now, since you are here, and so entirely that I have
forgotten how to plead my cause convincingly. And I have had practice,
let me tell you. . . . !" Then he shook his head and smiled. "But
candor is not _a la mode_. See, now, to what outmoded and bucolic
frenzies nature brings even us at last."
She answered only, as she motioned seaward, "Look!"
And what Mr. Wycherley saw was a substantial boat rowed by four of Mr.
Minifie's attendants; and in the bow of the vessel sat that wounded
gentleman himself, regarding Wycherley and Lady Drogheda with some
disfavor; and beside the younger man was Mistress Araminta Vining.
It was a perturbed Minifie who broke the silence. "This is very
awkward," he said, "because Araminta and I are eloping. We mean to be
married this same night at Milanor. And deuce take it, Mr. Wycherley!
I can't leave you there to drown, any more than in the circumstances I
can ask you to make one of the party."
"Mr. Wycherley," said his companion, with far more asperity, "the
vanity and obduracy of a cruel father have forced me to the adoption of
this desperate measure. Toward yourself I entertain no ill-feeling,
nor indeed any sentiment at all except the most profound contempt. My
aunt will, of course, accompany us; for yourself, you will do as you
please; but in any event I solemnly protest that I spurn your odious
pretensions, release myself hereby from an enforced and hideous
obligation, and in a phrase would not marry you in order to be Queen of
England."
"Miss Vining, I had hitherto admired you," the beau replied, with
fervor, "but now esteem is changed to adoration."
Then he turned to his Olivia. "Madam, you will pardon the awkward but
unavoidable publicity of my proceeding. I am a ruined man. I owe your
brother-in-law some L1500, and, oddly enough, I mean to pay him. I
must sell Jephcot and Skene Minor, but while life lasts I shall keep
Bessington and all its memories. Meanwhile there is a clergyman
waiting at Milanor. So marry me to-night, Olivia; and we will go back
to Bessington to-morrow."
"To Bessington----!" she said. It was as though she spoke of something
very sacred. Then very musically Lady Drogheda laughed, and to the eye
she was all flippancy. "La, William, I can't bury myself in the
country until the end of time," she said, "and make interminable
custards," she added, "and superintend the poultry," she said, "and for
recreation play short whist with the vicar."
And it seemed to Mr. Wycherley that he had gone divinely mad. "Don't
lie to me, Olivia. You are thinking there are yet a host of heiresses
who would be glad to be a famous beau's wife at however dear a cost.
But don't lie to me. Don't even try to seem the airy and bedizened
woman I have known so long. All that is over now. Death tapped us on
the shoulder, and, if only for a moment, the masks were dropped. And
life is changed now, oh, everything is changed! Then, come, my dear!
let us be wise and very honest. Let us concede it is still possible
for me to find another heiress, and for you to marry Remon; let us
grant it the only outcome of our common-sense! and for all that, laugh,
and fling away the pottage, and be more wise than reason."
She irresolutely said: "I cannot. Matters are altered now. It would
be madness----"
"It would undoubtedly be madness," Mr. Wycherley assented. "But then I
am so tired of being rational! Oh, Olivia," this former arbiter of
taste absurdly babbled, "if I lose you now it is forever! and there is
no health in me save when I am with you. Then alone I wish to do
praiseworthy things, to be all which the boy we know of should have
grown to. . . . See how profoundly shameless I am become when, with
such an audience, I take refuge in the pitiful base argument of my own
weakness! But, my dear, I want you so that nothing else in the world
means anything to me. I want you! and all my life I have wanted you."
"Boy, boy----!" she answered, and her fine hands had come to Wycherley,
as white birds flutter homeward. But even then she had to deliberate
the matter--since the habits of many years are not put aside like
outworn gloves,--and for innumerable centuries, it seemed to him, her
foot tapped on that wetted ledge.
Presently her lashes lifted. "I suppose it would be lacking in
reverence to keep a clergyman waiting longer than was absolutely
necessary?" she hazarded.
A BROWN WOMAN
"_A critical age called for symmetry, and exquisite finish had to be
studied as much as nobility of thought. . . . POPE aimed to take first
place as a writer of polished verse. Any knowledge he gained of the
world, or any suggestion that came to him from his intercourse with
society, was utilized to accomplish his main purpose. To put his
thoughts into choice language was not enough. Each idea had to be put
in its neatest and most epigrammatic form._"
Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
The muse but served to ease some friend, not wife,
To help me through this long disease, my life.
* * * * * *
Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,
He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew;
Destroy his fib or sophistry in vain,
The creature's at his foolish work again,
Throned in the centre of his thin designs,
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!
ALEXANDER POPE.--_Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.
A BROWN WOMAN
"But I must be hurrying home now," the girl said, "for it is high time
I were back in the hayfields."
"Fair shepherdess," he implored, "for heaven's sake, let us not cut
short the _pastorelle_ thus abruptly."
"And what manner of beast may that be, pray?"
"'Tis a conventional form of verse, my dear, which we at present
strikingly illustrate. The plan of a _pastorelle_ is simplicity's
self: a gentleman, which I may fairly claim to be, in some fair rural
scene--such as this--comes suddenly upon a rustic maiden of surpassing
beauty. He naturally falls in love with her, and they say all manner
of fine things to each other."
She considered him for a while before speaking. It thrilled him to see
the odd tenderness that was in her face. "You always think of saying
and writing fine things, do you not, sir?"
"My dear," he answered, gravely, "I believe that I was undoubtedly
guilty of such folly until you came. I wish I could make you
understand how your coming has changed everything."
"You can tell me some other time," the girl gaily declared, and was
about to leave him.
His hand detained her very gently. "Faith, but I fear not, for already
my old hallucinations seem to me incredible. Why, yesterday I thought
it the most desirable of human lots to be a great poet"--the gentleman
laughed in self-mockery. "I positively did. I labored every day
toward becoming one. I lived among books, esteemed that I was doing
something of genuine importance as I gravely tinkered with alliteration
and metaphor and antithesis and judicious paraphrases of the ancients.
I put up with life solely because it afforded material for
versification; and, in reality, believed the destruction of Troy was
providentially ordained lest Homer lack subject matter for an epic.
And as for loving, I thought people fell in love in order to exchange
witty rhymes."
His hand detained her, very gently. . . . Indeed, it seemed to him he
could never tire of noting her excellencies. Perhaps it was that
splendid light poise of her head he chiefly loved; he thought so at
least, just now. Or was it the wonder of her walk, which made all
other women he had ever known appear to mince and hobble, like rusty
toys? Something there was assuredly about this slim brown girl which
recalled an untamed and harmless woodland creature; and it was that, he
knew, which most poignantly moved him, even though he could not name
it. Perhaps it was her bright kind eyes, which seemed to mirror the
tranquillity of forests. . . .
"You gentry are always talking of love," she marveled.
"Oh," he said, with acerbity, "oh, I don't doubt that any number of
beef-gorging squires and leering, long-legged Oxford dandies----" He
broke off here, and laughed contemptuously. "Well, you are beautiful,
and they have eyes as keen as mine. And I do not blame you, my dear,
for believing my designs to be no more commendable than theirs--no, not
at all."
But his mood was spoiled, and his tetchy vanity hurt, by the thought of
stout well-set fellows having wooed this girl; and he permitted her to
go without protest.
Yet he sat alone for a while upon the fallen tree-trunk, humming a
contented little tune. Never in his life had he been happier. He did
not venture to suppose that any creature so adorable could love such a
sickly hunchback, such a gargoyle of a man, as he was; but that Sarah
was fond of him, he knew. There would be no trouble in arranging with
her father for their marriage, most certainly; and he meant to attend
to that matter this very morning, and within ten minutes. So Mr.
Alexander Pope was meanwhile arranging in his mind a suitable wording
for his declaration of marital aspirations.
Thus John Gay found him presently and roused him from phrase-spinning.
"And what shall we do this morning, Alexander?" Gay was always
demanding, like a spoiled child, to be amused.
Pope told him what his own plans were, speaking quite simply, but with
his countenance radiant. Gay took off his hat and wiped his forehead,
for the day was warm. He did not say anything at all.
"Well----?" Mr. Pope asked, after a pause.
Mr. Gay was dubious. "I had never thought that you would marry," he
said. "And--why, hang it, Alexander! to grow enamored of a milkmaid is
well enough for the hero of a poem, but in a poet it hints at
injudicious composition."
Mr. Pope gesticulated with thin hands and seemed upon the verge of
eloquence. Then he spoke unanswerably. "But I love her," he said.
John Gay's reply was a subdued whistle. He, in common with the other
guests of Lord Harcourt, at Nuneham Courtney, had wondered what would
be the outcome of Mr. Alexander Pope's intimacy with Sarah Drew. A
month earlier the poet had sprained his ankle upon Amshot Heath, and
this young woman had found him lying there, entirely helpless, as she
returned from her evening milking. Being hale of person, she had
managed to get the little hunchback to her home unaided. And since
then Pope had often been seen with her.
This much was common knowledge. That Mr. Pope proposed to marry the
heroine of his misadventure afforded a fair mark for raillery, no
doubt, but Gay, in common with the run of educated England in 1718, did
not aspire to be facetious at Pope's expense. The luxury was too
costly. Offend the dwarf in any fashion, and were you the proudest
duke at Court or the most inconsiderable rhymester in Petticoat Lane,
it made no difference; there was no crime too heinous for "the great
Mr. Pope's" next verses to charge you with, and, worst of all, there
was no misdoing so out of character that his adroit malignancy could
not make it seem plausible.
Now, after another pause, Pope said, "I must be going now. Will you
not wish me luck?"
"Why, Alexander--why, hang it!" was Mr. Gay's observation, "I believe
that you are human after all, and not just a book in breeches."
He thereby voiced a commentary patently uncalled-for, as Mr. Pope
afterward reflected. Mr. Pope was then treading toward the home of old
Frederick Drew. It was a gray morning in late July.
"I love her," Pope had said. The fact was undeniable; yet an
expression of it necessarily halts. Pope knew, as every man must do
who dares conserve his energies to annotate the drama of life rather
than play a part in it, the nature of that loneliness which this
conservation breeds. Such persons may hope to win a posthumous esteem
in the library, but it is at the bleak cost of making life a wistful
transaction with foreigners. In such enforced aloofness Sarah Drew had
come to him--strong, beautiful, young, good and vital, all that he was
not--and had serenely befriended "the great Mr. Pope," whom she viewed
as a queer decrepit little gentleman of whom within a week she was
unfeignedly fond.
"I love her," Pope had said. Eh, yes, no doubt; and what, he fiercely
demanded of himself, was he--a crippled scribbler, a bungling artisan
of phrases--that he should dare to love this splendid and deep-bosomed
goddess? Something of youth awoke, possessing him--something of that
high ardor which, as he cloudily remembered now, had once controlled a
boy who dreamed in Windsor Forest and with the lightest of hearts
planned to achieve the impossible. For what is more difficult of
attainment than to achieve the perfected phrase, so worded that to
alter a syllable of its wording would be little short of sacrilege?
"What whimwhams!" decreed the great Mr. Pope, aloud. "Verse-making is
at best only the affair of idle men who write in their closets and of
idle men who read there. And as for him who polishes phrases, whatever
be his fate in poetry, it is ten to one but he must give up all the
reasonable aims of life for it."
No, he would have no more of loneliness. Henceforward Alexander Pope
would be human--like the others. To write perfectly was much; but it
was not everything. Living was capable of furnishing even more than
the raw material of a couplet. It might, for instance, yield content.
For instance, if you loved, and married, and begot, and died, with the
seriousness of a person who believes he is performing an action of real
importance, and conceded that the perfection of any art, whether it be
that of verse-making or of rope-dancing, is at best a by-product of
life's conduct; at worst, you probably would not be lonely. No; you
would be at one with all other fat-witted people, and there was no
greater blessing conceivable.
Pope muttered, and produced his notebook, and wrote tentatively.
Wrote Mr. Pope:
The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No powers of body or of soul to share
But what his nature and his state can bear.
"His state!" yes, undeniably, two sibilants collided here. "His
wit?"--no, that would be flat-footed awkwardness in the management of
your vowel-sounds; the lengthened "a" was almost requisite. . . . Pope
was fretting over the imbroglio when he absent-mindedly glanced up to
perceive that his Sarah, not irrevocably offended, was being embraced
by a certain John Hughes--who was a stalwart, florid personable
individual, no doubt, but, after all, only an unlettered farmer.
The dwarf gave a hard, wringing motion of his hands. The diamond-Lord
Bolingbroke's gift--which ornamented Pope's left hand cut into the
flesh of his little finger, so cruel was the gesture; and this little
finger was bleeding as Pope tripped forward, smiling. A gentleman does
not incommode the public by obtruding the ugliness of a personal wound.
"Do I intrude?" he queried. "Ah, well! I also have dwelt in Arcadia."
It was bitter to comprehend that he had never done so.
The lovers were visibly annoyed; yet, if an interruption of their
pleasant commerce was decreed to be, it could not possibly have sprung,
as they soon found, from a more sympathetic source.
These were not subtle persons. Pope had the truth from them within ten
minutes. They loved each other; but John Hughes was penniless, and old
Frederick Drew was, in consequence, obdurate.
"And, besides, he thinks you mean to marry her!" said John Hughes.
"My dear man, he pardonably forgets that the utmost reach of my designs
in common reason would be to have her as my kept mistress for a month
or two," drawled Mr. Pope. "As concerns yourself, my good fellow, the
case is somewhat different. Why, it is a veritable romance--an affair
of Daphne and Corydon--although, to be unpardonably candid, the plot of
your romance, my young Arcadians, is not the most original conceivable.
I think that the denouement need not baffle our imaginations."
The dwarf went toward Sarah Drew. The chary sunlight had found the
gold in her hair, and its glint was brightly visible to him. "My
dear--" he said. His thin long fingers touched her capable hand. It
was a sort of caress--half-timid. "My dear, I owe my life to you. My
body is at most a flimsy abortion such as a night's exposure would have
made more tranquil than it is just now. Yes, it was you who found a
caricature of the sort of man that Mr. Hughes here is, disabled,
helpless, and--for reasons which doubtless seemed to you
sufficient--contrived that this unsightly parody continue in existence.
I am not lovable, my dear. I am only a hunchback, as you can see. My
aspirations and my sickly imaginings merit only the derision of a
candid clean-souled being such as you are." His finger-tips touched
the back of her hand again. "I think there was never a maker of
enduring verse who did not at one period or another long to exchange an
assured immortality for a sturdier pair of shoulders. I think--I think
that I am prone to speak at random," Pope said, with his half-drowsy
smile. "Yet, none the less, an honest man, as our kinsmen in Adam
average, is bound to pay his equitable debts."
She said, "I do not understand."
"I have perpetrated certain jingles," Pope returned. "I had not
comprehended until to-day they are the only children I shall leave
behind me. Eh, and what would you make of them, my dear, could
ingenuity contrive a torture dire enough to force you into reading
them! . . . Misguided people have paid me for contriving these
jingles. So that I have money enough to buy you from your father just
as I would purchase one of his heifers. Yes, at the very least I have
money, and I have earned it. I will send your big-thewed adorer--I
believe that Hughes is the name?--L500 of it this afternoon. That sum,
I gather, will be sufficient to remove your father's objection to your
marriage with Mr. Hughes."
Pope could not but admire himself tremendously. Moreover, in such
matters no woman is blind. Tears came into Sarah's huge brown eyes.
This tenderhearted girl was not thinking of John Hughes now. Pope
noted the fact with the pettiest exultation. "Oh, you--you are good."
Sarah Drew spoke as with difficulty.
"No adjective, my dear, was ever applied with less discrimination. It
is merely that you have rendered no inconsiderable service to
posterity, and merit a reward."
"Oh, and indeed, indeed, I was always fond of you----" The girl sobbed
this.
She would have added more, no doubt, since compassion is garrulous, had
not Pope's scratched hand dismissed a display of emotion as not
entirely in consonance with the rules of the game.
"My dear, therein you have signally honored me. There remains only to
offer you my appreciation of your benevolence toward a sickly monster,
and to entreat for my late intrusion--however unintentional--that
forgiveness which you would not deny, I think, to any other impertinent
insect."
"Oh, but we have no words to thank you, sir----!" Thus Hughes began.
"Then don't attempt it, my good fellow. For phrase-spinning, as I can
assure you, is the most profitless of all pursuits." Whereupon Pope
bowed low, wheeled, walked away. Yes, he was wounded past sufferance;
it seemed to him he must die of it. Life was a farce, and Destiny an
overseer who hiccoughed mandates. Well, all that even Destiny could
find to gloat over, he reflected, was the tranquil figure of a smallish
gentleman switching at the grass-blades with his cane as he sauntered
under darkening skies.
For a storm was coming on, and the first big drops of it were
splattering the terrace when Mr. Pope entered Lord Harcourt's mansion.
Pope went straight to his own rooms. As he came in there was a vivid
flash of lightning, followed instantaneously by a crashing, splitting
noise, like that of universes ripped asunder. He did not honor the
high uproar with attention. This dwarf was not afraid of anything
except the commission of an error in taste.
Then, too, there were letters for him, laid ready on the writing-table.
Nothing of much importance he found there.--Here, though, was a rather
diverting letter from Eustace Budgell, that poor fool, abjectly
thanking Mr. Pope for his advice concerning how best to answer the
atrocious calumnies on Budgell then appearing in _The Grub-Street
Journal_,--and reposing, drolly enough, next the proof-sheets of an
anonymous letter Pope had prepared for the forthcoming issue of that
publication, wherein he sprightlily told how Budgell had poisoned Dr.
Tindal, after forging his will. For even if Budgell had not in point
of fact been guilty of these particular peccadilloes, he had quite
certainly committed the crime of speaking lightly of Mr. Pope, as "a
little envious animal," some seven years ago; and it was for this grave
indiscretion that Pope was dexterously goading the man into insanity,
and eventually drove him to suicide. . . .
The storm made the room dark and reading difficult. Still, this was an
even more amusing letter, from the all-powerful Duchess of Marlborough.
In as civil terms as her sick rage could muster, the frightened woman
offered Mr. Pope L1,000 to suppress his verbal portrait of her, in the
character of Atossa, from his _Moral Essays_; and Pope straightway
decided to accept the bribe, and afterward to print his verses
unchanged. For the hag, as he reflected, very greatly needed to be
taught that in this world there was at least one person who did not
quail before her tantrums. There would be, moreover, even an
elementary justice in thus robbing her who had robbed England at large.
And, besides, her name was Sarah. . . .
Pope lighted four candles and set them before the long French mirror.
He stood appraising his many curious deformities while the storm raged.
He stood sidelong, peering over his left shoulder, in order to see the
outline of his crooked back. Nowhere in England, he reflected, was
there a person more pitiable and more repellent outwardly.
"And, oh, it would be droll," Pope said, aloud, "if our exteriors were
ever altogether parodies. But time keeps a diary in our faces, and
writes a monstrously plain hand. Now, if you take the first letter of
Mr. Alexander Pope's Christian name, and the first and last letters of
his surname, you have A. P. E.," Pope quoted, genially. "I begin to
think that Dennis was right. What conceivable woman would not prefer a
well-set man of five-and-twenty to such a withered abortion? And what
does it matter, after all, that a hunchback has dared to desire a
shapely brown-haired woman?"
Pope came more near to the mirror. "Make answer, you who have dared to
imagine that a goddess was ever drawn to descend into womanhood except
by kisses, brawn and a clean heart."
Another peal of thunder bellowed. The storm was growing furious. "Yet
I have had a marvelous dream. Now I awaken. I must go on in the old
round. As long as my wits preserve their agility I must be able to
amuse, to flatter and, at need, to intimidate the patrons of that ape
in the mirror, so that they will not dare refuse me the market-value of
my antics. And Sarah Drew has declined an alliance such as this in
favor of a fresh-colored complexion and a pair of straight shoulders!"
Pope thought a while. "And a clean heart! She bargained royally,
giving love for nothing less than love. The man is rustic, illiterate;
he never heard of Aristotle, he would be at a loss to distinguish
between a trochee and a Titian, and if you mentioned Boileau to him
would probably imagine you were talking of cookery. But he loves her.
He would forfeit eternity to save her a toothache. And, chief of all,
she can make this robust baby happy, and she alone can make him happy.
And so, she gives, gives royally--she gives, God bless her!"
Rain, sullen rain, was battering the window. "And you--you hunchback
in the mirror, you maker of neat rhymes--pray, what had you to offer?
A coach-and-six, of course, and pin-money and furbelows and in the end
a mausoleum with unimpeachable Latin on it! And--_pate sur pate_--an
unswerving devotion which she would share on almost equal terms with
the Collected Works of Alexander Pope. And so she chose--chose brawn
and a clean heart."
The dwarf turned, staggered, fell upon his bed. "God, make a man of
me, make me a good brave man. I loved her--oh, such as I am, You know
that I loved her! You know that I desire her happiness above all
things. Ah, no, for You know that I do not at bottom. I want to hurt,
to wound all living creatures, because they know how to be happy, and I
do not know how. Ah, God, and why did You decree that I should never
be an obtuse and comely animal such as this John Hughes is? I am so
tired of being 'the great Mr. Pope,' and I want only the common joys of
life."
The hunchback wept. It would be too curious to anatomize the writhings
of his proud little spirit.
Now some one tapped upon the door. It was John Gay. He was bidden to
enter, and, complying, found Mr. Pope yawning over the latest of
Tonson's publications.
Gay's face was singularly portentous. "My friend," Gay blurted out, "I
bring news which will horrify you. Believe me, I would never have
mustered the pluck to bring it did I not love you. I cannot let you
hear it first in public and unprepared, as, otherwise, you would have
to do."
"Do I not know you have the kindest heart in all the world? Why, so
outrageous are your amiable defects that they would be the public
derision of your enemies if you had any," Pope returned.
The other poet evinced an awkward comminglement of consternation and
pity. "It appears that when this storm arose--why, Mistress Drew was
with a young man of the neighborhood--a John Hewet----" Gay was
speaking with unaccustomed rapidity.
"Hughes, I think," Pope interrupted, equably.
"Perhaps--I am not sure. They sought shelter under a haycock. You
will remember that first crash of thunder, as if the heavens were in
demolishment? My friend, the reapers who had been laboring in the
fields--who had been driven to such protection as the trees or hedges
afforded----"
"Get on!" a shrill voice cried; "for God's love, man, get on!" Mr.
Pope had risen. This pallid shaken wisp was not in appearance the
great Mr. Pope whose ingenuity had enabled Homeric warriors to excel in
the genteel.
"They first saw a little smoke. . . . They found this Hughes with one
arm about the neck of Mistress Drew, and the other held over her face,
as if to screen her from the lightning. They were both"--and here Gay
hesitated. "They were both dead," he amended.
Pope turned abruptly. Nakedness is of necessity uncouth, he held,
whether it be the body or the soul that is unveiled. Mr. Pope went
toward a window which he opened, and he stood thus looking out for a
brief while.
"So she is dead," he said. "It is very strange. So many rare
felicities of curve and color, so much of purity and kindliness and
valor and mirth, extinguished as one snuffs a candle! Well! I am
sorry she is dead, for the child had a talent for living and got such
joy out of it. . . . Hers was a lovely happy life, but it was sterile.
Already nothing remains of her but dead flesh which must be huddled out
of sight. I shall not perish thus entirely, I believe. Men will
remember me. Truly a mighty foundation for pride! when the utmost I
can hope for is but to be read in one island, and to be thrown aside at
the end of one age. Indeed, I am not even sure of that much. I print,
and print, and print. And when I collect my verses into books, I am
altogether uncertain whether to took upon myself as a man building a
monument, or burying the dead. It sometimes seems to me that each
publication is but a solemn funeral of many wasted years. For I have
given all to the verse-making. Granted that the sacrifice avails to
rescue my name from oblivion, what will it profit me when I am dead and
care no more for men's opinions than Sarah Drew cares now for what I
say of her? But then she never cared. She loved John Hughes. And she
was right."
He made an end of speaking, still peering out of the window with
considerate narrowed eyes.
The storm was over. In the beech-tree opposite a wren was raising
optimistic outcry. The sun had won his way through a black-bellied
shred of cloud; upon the terrace below, a dripping Venus and a Perseus
were glistening as with white fire. Past these, drenched gardens, the
natural wildness of which was judiciously restrained with walks, ponds,
grottoes, statuary and other rural elegancies, displayed the
intermingled brilliancies of diamonds and emeralds, and glittered as
with pearls and rubies where tempest-battered roses were reviving in
assertiveness.
"I think the storm is over," Mr. Pope remarked. "It is strange how
violent are these convulsions of nature. . . . But nature is a
treacherous blowsy jade, who respects nobody. A gentleman can but
shrug under her onslaughts, and henceforward civilly avoid them. It is
a consolation to reflect that they pass quickly."
He turned as in defiance. "Yes, yes! It hurts. But I envy them.
Yes, even I, that ugly spiteful hornet of a man! 'the great Mr. Pope,'
who will be dining with the proudest people in England within the hour
and gloating over their deference! For they presume to make a little
free with God occasionally, John, but never with me. And _I_ envy
these dead young fools. . . . You see, they loved each other, John. I
left them, not an hour ago, the happiest of living creatures. I looked
back once. I pretended to have dropped my handkerchief. I imagine
they were talking of their wedding-clothes, for this broad-shouldered
Hughes was matching poppies and field-flowers to her complexion. It
was a scene out of Theocritus. I think Heaven was so well pleased by
the tableau that Heaven hastily resumed possession of its enactors in
order to prevent any after-happenings from belittling that perfect
instant."
"Egad, and matrimony might easily have proved an anti-climax," Gay
considered.
"Yes; oh, it is only Love that is blind, and not the lover necessarily.
I know. I suppose I always knew at the bottom of my heart. This
hamadryad was destined in the outcome to dwindle into a village
housewife, she would have taken a lively interest in the number of eggs
the hens were laying, she would even have assured her children,
precisely in the way her father spoke of John Hughes, that young people
ordinarily have foolish fancies which their rational elders agree to
disregard. But as it is, no Eastern queen--not Semele herself--left
earth more nobly--"
Pope broke off short. He produced his notebook, which he never went
without, and wrote frowningly, with many erasures. "H'm, yes," he
said; and he read aloud:
"When Eastern lovers feed the funeral fire,
On the same pile the faithful fair expire;
Here pitying heaven that virtue mutual found,
And blasted both that it might neither wound.
Hearts so sincere the Almighty saw well pleased,
Sent His own lightning and the victims seized."
Then Pope made a grimace. "No; the analogy is trim enough, but the
lines lack fervor. It is deplorable how much easier it is to express
any emotion other than that of which one is actually conscious." Pope
had torn the paper half-through before he reflected that it would help
to fill a printed page. He put it in his pocket. "But, come now, I am
writing to Lady Mary this afternoon. You know how she loves oddities.
Between us--with prose as the medium, of course, since verse should,
after all, confine itself to the commemoration of heroes and royal
persons--I believe we might make of this occurrence a neat and moving
_pastorelle_--I should say, pastoral, of course, but my wits are
wool-gathering."
Mr. Gay had the kindest heart in the universe. Yet he, also, had
dreamed of the perfected phrase, so worded that to alter a syllable of
its wording would be little short of sacrilege. Eyes kindling, he took
up a pen. "Yes, yes, I understand. Egad, it is an admirable subject.
But, then, I don't believe I ever saw these lovers----?"
"John was a well-set man of about five-and-twenty," replied Mr. Pope;
"and Sarah was a brown woman of eighteen years, three months and
fourteen days."
Then these two dipped their pens and set about a moving composition,
which has to-day its proper rating among Mr. Pope's Complete Works.
PRO HONORIA
"_But that sense of negation, of theoretic insecurity, which was in the
air, conspiring with what was of like tendency in himself, made of Lord
UFFORD a central type of disillusion. . . . He had been amiable
because the general betise of humanity did not in his opinion greatly
matter, after all; and in reading these 'SATIRES' it is well-nigh
painful to witness the blind and naked forces of nature and
circumstance surprising him in the uncontrollable movements of his own
so carefully guarded heart._"
Why is a handsome wife adored
By every coxcomb but her lord?
From yonder puppet-man inquire
Who wisely hides his wood and wire;
Shows Sheba's queen completely dress'd
And Solomon in royal vest;
But view them litter'd on the floor,
Or strung on pegs behind the door,
Punch is exactly of a piece
With Lorrain's duke, and prince of Greece.
HORACE CALVERLEY.--_Petition to the Duke of Ormskirk_. |
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