Ardath | Page 8

faint, half- mournful
smile shone for an instant in his deep, dark eyes, "though you may not
be conscious of it. Anyhow I feel impelled to unburden my heart to you:
I have kept silence so long! You know what it is in the world, ... one
must always keep silence, always shut in one's grief and force a smile,
in company with the rest of the tormented, forced-smiling crowd. We
can never be ourselves-- our veritable selves--for, if we were, the air
would resound with our ceaseless lamentations! It is HORRIBLE to
think of all the pent-up sufferings of humanity--all the inconceivably
hideous agonies that remain forever dumb and unrevealed! When I was
young,--how long ago that seems! yes, though my actual years are taut
thirty, I feel an alder-elde of accumulated centuries upon me--when I
was young, the dream of my life was Poesy. Perhaps I inherited the
fatal love of it from my mother--she was a Greek-and she had a subtle
music in her that nothing could quell, not even my father's English
coldness. She named me Theos, little guessing what a dreary sarcasm
that name would prove! It was well, I think, that she died early."
"Well for her, but perhaps not so well for you," said Heliobas with a
keen, kindly glance at him.
Alwyn sighed. "Nay, well, for us both,--for I should have chafed at her
loving restraint, and she would unquestionably have been disappointed
in me. My father was a conscientious, methodical business man, who
spent all his days up to almost the last moment of his life in amassing
money, though it never gave him any joy so far as I could see, and
when at his death I became sole possessor of his hardly-earned fortune,
I felt far more sorrow than satisfaction. I wished he had spent his gold
on himself and left me poor, for it seemed to me I had need of nothing
save the little I earned by my pen--I was content to live an anchorite
and dine off a crust for the sake of the divine Muse I worshipped. Fate,
however, willed it otherwise,--and though I scarcely cared for the
wealth I inherited, it gave me at least one blessing--that of perfect
independence. I was free to follow my own chosen vocation, and for a
brief wondering while I deemed myself happy, ... happy as Keats must

have been when the fragment of 'Hyperion' broke from his frail life as
thunder breaks from a summer-cloud. I was as a monarch swaying a
sceptre that commanded both earth and heaven; a kingdom was mine-a
kingdom of golden ether, peopled with shining shapes Protean,--alas!
its gates are shut upon me now, and I shall enter it no more!"
"'No more' is a long time, my friend!" interposed Heliobas gently. "You
are too despondent,--perchance too diffident, concerning your own
ability."
"Ability!" and he laughed wearily. "I have none,--I am as weak and
inapt as an untaught child--the music of my heart is silenced! Yet there
is nothing I would not do to regain the ravishment of the past--when the
sight of the sunset across the hills, or the moon's silver transfiguration
of the sea filled me with deep and indescribable ecstasy--when the
thought of Love, like a full chord struck from a magic harp, set my
pulses throbbing with delirious delight--fancies thick as leaves in
summer crowded my brain--Earth was a round charm hung on the
breast of a smiling Divinity--men were gods--women were angels'--the
world seemed but a wide scroll for the signatures of poets, and mine, I
swore, should be clearly written!"
He paused, as though ashamed of his own fervor. and glanced at
Heliobas, who, leaning a little forward in his chair was regaling him
with friendly, attentive interest; then he continued more calmly:
"Enough! I think I had something in me then,--something that was new
and wild and, though it may seem self praise to say so, full of that
witching glamour we name Inspiration; but whatever that something
was, call it genius, a trick of song, what you will,--it was soon crushed
out of me. The world is fond of slaying its singing buds and devouring
them for daily fare--one rough pressure of finger and thumb on the little
melodious throats, and they are mute forever. So I found, when at last
in mingled pride, hope, and fear I published my poems, seeking for
them no other recompense save fair hearing and justice. They obtained
neither--they were tossed carelessly by a few critics from hand to hand,
jeered at for a while, and finally flung back to me as lies--lies all! The
finely spun web of any fancy,--the delicate interwoven intricacies of

thought,--these were torn to shreds with as little compunction as idle
children feel when destroying