Part 41 (1/2)
Rite follalol-lol-lol-lol-lido, Rite follalol-lol-lol-lol-lay.”
After this there followed another prolonged silence. Talbot was now the first to speak.
”Brooke,” said she, in her low, soft, tremulous voice, which had died down almost to a whisper, ”we know the secrets of one another's hearts. Oh, Brooke! Brooke! why have we never met before? Oh, Brooke!
how strangely we have drifted together! How much we have learned about each other! Is Fate so bitter as to make us drift away, after--after--”
Her voice died away altogether, and she turned her face aside and bowed down her head.
Brooke looked at her for a moment, and seemed about to take her hand, but he conquered this impulse and resolutely averted his eyes.
”Don't know, I'm sure,” said he, at last, with an affectation of airy indifference.
”It would take a man with a head as long as a horse to answer such a question as that. Talbot, lad, you shouldn't plunge so deep into the mysteries of being.”
After this there was another silence, and then Talbot looked up at Brooke with her deep, dark glance, and began to speak in a calm voice, which, however, did not fail to thrill through the heart of Brooke as he listened.
”Brooke,” said she, ”you have your own way. Your way is to conceal a most tender and pitying heart under a rough or at least an indifferent manner--to hide the deepest feeling under a careless smile, and pretend to be most volatile and flippant when you are most serious. You can perform heroic actions as though they were the merest trifles, and lay down your life for a friend with an idle jest. You make nothing of yourself and all of others. You can suffer, and pretend that you enjoy it; and when your heart is breaking, you can force your voice to troll out verses from old songs as though your chief occupation in life were nonsense, and that alone. And this is the man,” continued Talbot, in a dreamy tone, like that of one soliloquizing--”this is the man that I found by chance in my distress; the man that responded to my very first appeal by the offer of his life; that went into the jaws of death merely to bring me food; the man that gave up all the world for me--his duty, his love, his life; the man that has no other purpose now but to save me, and who, when his whole frame is quivering with anguish, can smile, and sing, and--”
”Well, what of it?” interrupted Brooke, harshly. ”What of it, oh, thou searcher of hearts? And, moreover, as to nonsense, don't you know what the poet says?
”'A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the wisest men.'
Moreover, and, yea, more, as to smiles and laughter, don't you know what another poet says?--Shakspeare, for instance:
”''Tis better to laugh than be sighing;'
or, as Lord Bacon, or Plato, or somebody else says, 'Laugh and grow fat.' And didn't John Bunyan prefer the House of Mirth to the House of Mourning?
”'John Bunyan was a tinker bold, His name we all delight in; All day he tinkered pots and pans, All night he stuck to writin'.
In Bedford streets bold Johnny toiled, An ordinary tinker; In Bedford jail bold Johnny wrote-- Old England's wisest thinker.
About the Pilgrims Johnny wrote, Who made the emigration; And the Pilgrim Fathers they became Of the glorious Yankee nation.
Ad urbem ivit Doodlius c.u.m Caballo et calone, Ornavit plnma pilenm Et diiit:--Maccaroni!'
”Excuse me,” he continued; ”you don't understand dog-Latin, do you, Talbot?”
”No,” said she, with a smile, ”but I understand you, Brooke.”
”Well,” said Brooke, ”but apart from the great question of one another which is just now fixing us on the rack, or on the wheel, or pressing us to any other kind of torment, and considering the great subject of mirthfulness merely in the abstract, do you not see how true it is that it is and must be the salt of life, that it preserves all living men from sourness, and decay, and moral death? Now, there's Watts, for instance--Isaac Watts, you know, author of that great work, 'Watts's Divine Hymns and Spiritual Songs for Infant Minds,' or it may have been 'Watts's Divine Songs and Spiritual Hymns for Infant Mind.' I really don't remember. It's of no consequence.
Now, what was Watts? Why, on my side altogether. Read his works.
Consult him in all emergencies. If anything's on your mind, go and find Watts on the mind. It'll do you good. And as the song says:
”'Oh, the Reverend Isaac Watts, D.D., Was a wonderful boy at rhyme; So let every old bachelor fill up his gla.s.s And go in for a glorious time.