Part 88 (2/2)
She looked at me with a strange earnestness in her eyes, and sighed heavily.
”What have you been doing all this time, fellow-student?” she asked, after a pause.
The old name sounded very sweet upon her lips!
”I? Alas!--nothing.”
”But you are a surgeon, are you not?”
”No. I never even went up for examination. I gave up all idea of medicine as a profession when my father died.”
”What are you, then?”
”An idler upon the great highway--a book-dreamer--a library fixture.”
Hortense looked at me thoughtfully, with her cheek resting on her hand.
”Have you done nothing but read and dream?”
”Not quite. I have travelled.”
”With what object?”
”A purely personal one. I was alone and unhappy, and--”
”And fancied that purposeless wandering was better for you than healthy labor. Well, you have travelled, and you have read books. What more?”
”Nothing more, except--”
”Except what?”
I chanced to have one of the papers in my pocket, and so drew it out, and placed it before her.
”I have been a rhymer as well as a dreamer,” I said, shyly. ”Perhaps the rhymes grew out of the dreams, as the dreams themselves grew out of something else which has been underlying my life this many a year. At all events I have hewn a few of them into shape, and trusted them to paper and type--and here is a critique which came to me this morning with some three or four others.”
She took the paper with a smile half of wonder, half of kindness, and, glancing quickly through it, said:--
”This is well. This is very well. I must read the book. Will you lend it to me?”
”I will give it to you,” I replied; ”if I can give you that which is already yours.”
”Already mine?”
”Yes, as the poet in me, however worthless, is all and only yours! Do you suppose, Hortense, that I have ever ceased to love you? As my songs are born of my sorrow, so my sorrow was born of my love; and love, and sorrow, and song, such as they are, are of your making.”
”Hus.h.!.+” she said, with something of her old gay indifference. ”Your literary sins must not be charged upon me, fellow-student! I have enough of my own to answer for. Besides, I am not going to acquit you so easily. Granted that you have written a little book of poetry--what then? Have you done nothing else? Nothing active? Nothing manly?
Nothing useful?”
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