"Wine is the only youth granted to middle age," Icontinued,--"in vino juventus, one might say; and may you, my dear young friend, long remain so proudly independent of that great Elixir--though I confess that I have met no few young men under thirty who have been excellent critics of the wine-list."As the water warmed him, he began to expand into further confidence, and then he told me the story of his Shelley, if a story it can be called.For, of course, it was simple enough, and the reader has long since guessed that the reason why he wouldn't lose his Shelley for the world was the usual simple reason.
I listened to his rhapsodies of HER and HER and HER with an aching heart.How good it was to be young! No wonder men had so desperately sought the secret of Eternal Youth! Who would not be young for ever, for such dreams and such an appetite?
Here of course was the very heaven-sent confidant for such an enterprise as mine.I told him all about my whim, just for the pleasure of watching his face light up with youth's generous worship of all such fantastic nonsense.You should have seen his enthusiasm and heard all the things he said.Why, to encounter such a whimsical fellow as myself in this unimaginative age was like meeting a fairy prince, or coming unexpectedly upon Don Quixote attacking the windmill.I offered him the post of Sancho Panza; and indeed what would he not give, he said, to leave all and follow me! But then I reminded him that he had already found his Golden Girl.
"Of course, I forgot," he said, with I'm afraid something of a sigh.For you see he was barely twenty, and to have met your ideal so early in life is apt to rob the remainder of the journey of something of its zest.
I asked him to give me his idea of what the Blessed Maid should be, to which he replied, with a smile, that he could not do better than describe Her, which he did for the sixth time.It was, as I had foreseen, the picture of a Saint, a Goddess, a Dream, very lovely and pure and touching; but it was not a woman, and it was a woman I was in search of, with all her imperfections on her head.I suppose no boy of twenty really loves a WOMEN, but loves only his etherealised extract of woman, entirely free from earthy adulteration.I noticed the words "pure" and "natural" in constant use by my young friend.Some lines went through my head, but I forbore to quote them:--Alas I your so called purity Is merely immaturity, And woman's nature plays its part Sincerely but in woman's art.
But I couldn't resist asking him, out of sheer waggery, whether he didn't think a touch of powder, and even, very judiciously applied, a touch of rouge, was an improvement to woman.His answer went to my heart.
"Paint--a WOMAN!" he exclaimed.
It was as though you had said--paint an angel!
I could bear no more of it.The gulf yawned shiveringly wide at remarks like that; so, with the privilege of an elder, I declared it time for bed, and yawned off to my room.
Next morning we bade good-bye, and went our several ways.As we parted, he handed me a letter which I was not to open till I was well on my journey.We waved good-bye to each other till the turnings of the road made parting final, and then, sitting down by the roadside, I opened the letter.It proved to be not a letter, but a poem, which he had evidently written after I had left him for bed.It was entitled, with twenty's love for a tag of Latin, Ad Puellam Auream, and it ran thus:--The Golden Girl in every place Hides and reveals her lovely face;Her neither skill nor strength may find--'T is only loving moves her mind.
If but a pretty face you seek, You'll find one any day or week;But if you look with deeper eyes, And seek her lovely, pure, and wise, Then must you wear the pilgrim's shoon For many a weary, wandering moon.
Only the pure in heart may see That lily of all purity, Only in clean unsullied thought The image of her face is caught, And only he her love may hold Who buys her with the spirit's gold.
Thus only shall you find your pearl, O seeker of the Golden Girl!
She trod but now the grassy way, A vision of eternal May.
The devil take his impudence! "Only the pure in heart,""clean, unsullied thought." How like the cheek of twenty! And all the same how true! Dear lad, how true! Certainly, the child is father to the man.Dirige nos! O sage of the Golden Twenties!
As I meditatively folded up the pretty bit of writing, I made a resolution; but it was one of such importance that not only is another chapter needed to do it honour, but it may well inaugurate another book of this strange uneventful history.
