Part 55 (1/2)
”'Twas only a line of Tibullus that cometh now and then to my mind. _Et teneam moriens deficiente manu...._ I never read Tibullus with the boys.
Not altogether suited, I felt, to their time of life. And yet sometimes, as in those particular lines, my dear, he is quite innocent, indeed expressing sentiments appropriate to a man of honorable feeling. 'May I'--(saith Tibullus, my dear)--'may I look on thee when cometh my last hour, and may I hold thy hand as I sink dying!'”
”I must tell Kate this one is nearly past mending, but if she'll make a pattern for me I believe I could follow it in my blundering fas.h.i.+on. He ought to have a change of them for every day. I know a place on Sudbury Street where they have better material than this, and cheap.”
”I recall some other lines from the same poem--_me mea paupertas vita traducat inerti, dum meus adsiduo luceat igne focus...._ 'Let the humble fortune that is proper to me lead me through a quiet way of life, if only my hearth may glow with an unfailing fire!' You'd suppose that the sentiment of an aging man, wouldn't you? And yet they tell that Tibullus, he died young.... Charity....”
”Yes, Mr. Hibbs?”
”Charity, having spent, I must admit, very nearly twenty years--beginning, let us say, with the year I commenced study at Harvard, the which was the thirteenth year of my life--having spent so much time, I say, in what would seem, to some, a most arid employment, namely the cultivation of the abstract, the exploration (tentative, limited by the frailty of mine own poor powers) of the borders of philosophy--having spent thus much time in--shall I call it, perhaps, a sanctuary of loneliness?--not altogether unrewarding, you understand; not without the consolation of the poets; not without an occasional satisfaction, like unto discovery, within the region of the inquiry: nevertheless, out of such loneliness--out of----”
”Sir----”
”Nay, forgive me, Charity, I'm most clumsy with words, and could never speak bold and plain what's in my mind, the which plain speaking I do much admire to discover in others, but let me essay it. Having spent, I say, almost twenty years, yes, almost a full score in the--I must call it the dust of scholars.h.i.+p, save the mark--one may then, suddenly as it were, look out as through the window of a study, let us say, and observe that outside this not altogether despicable refuge there is--oh, spring perhaps, as it is even now, my dear--and one may presume to hope that one hath not remained so long out of the world, nor grown so old, but that--but that----”
”Mr. Hibbs, I pray you----”
”Not so old but that perhaps one who is truly at the very brightest beginning of the springtime might find--might find in one's maturer years--oh, nothing like the call of youth to youth, my G.o.d! but--but....
You have not known how I--how since you began coming here in so much kindness--I think you have not known----”
”Mr. Hibbs, I must speak too, and I pray you say no more till I have done. The sentiments you express, the which--oh _bother_! There goes my thread again and I wasn't even pulling at it, they needn't to make it so miserable weak, do they? The sentiments--look, Mr. Hibbs: when we moved to Dorchester last autumn, I found there a place on the sh.o.r.e, just beyond reach of the high tides, a pretty place, a kind of--what was it you said?--a sanctuary of loneliness, at any rate I made it one. The rocks hide it from the house, from the land; 'tis like a room overlooking the open waters, where all the s.h.i.+ps from the south must pa.s.s when they come in for the harbor, and I go there--oh, whenever I may. My mother thinks I'm looking for seash.e.l.ls or other such employment suited to children, and so I do bring in any pretty ones I find--and then throw them away secret-like, la, to make room for more--why, I'm a deceiving small beast, Mr. Hibbs, learned deception young, marry did I, I often wonder that anyone can put up with me. Well--even last winter, if it wasn't outright storming, I'd bundle up in my coat and go out there. The rocks break the wind. You can look a long way out.... I told Reuben about this. He understood--well, of course he did. One expects understanding from Reuben, I don't quite know why.”
”I am not certain that I myself understand you, Charity.”
”I must say more then?... But perhaps you will tell me, as my mother would, that at my years I can know nothing of love, and yet I do....
Sometimes I'll see a sail that looks from a distance like the _Artemis_.
But I watch any sail that appears, because--because who can say what manner of s.h.i.+p it will be that brings him home?--and now you are weeping, but Mr. Hibbs, I never intended----”
”Nay, I--am not. The fireplace a'n't drawing properly--I'll push these logs further back.”
”I am a beast.”
”Hus.h.!.+... I think he will come home, Charity--older, as you are, but what you saw in him will not be greatly changed.... But I may be your gray-headed counselor, and--friend?”
”Of course. You aren't gray.”
”Soon enough.”
”What is it, Mr. Hibbs--what _is_ it that doth compel one to--eh, as they say, to give away the whole heart to another? I would be better, I would be happier, I suppose, if I....”
”I could wish for mine own sake that I knew the answer to that. Why, Charity, it seems we love where we must and no help for it.”
”I remember I was not happy, very far from it, a year and more ago, when I was a silly child, had not even met him, indeed had none to love but--oh, poor Sultan. Clarissa of course, but it seems to me I never knew I loved her until I lost her, only took her for granted like sunlight until the day she was no longer there.”
”Sultan?”
”Don't you remember Sultan, Mr. Hibbs? Why, the child I was would never forgive your forgetting Sultan. He died, very fat and ancient, soon after we moved to Dorchester. It was the sea air, my mother said. I wept like a fountain. But I think it was some while before then that I had ceased to feel like a child.”
_Chapter Three_