Young Irony
For years afterward when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still to hear
the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills into the places
beside his heart. The night when they rode up the slope and watched the
cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further part of him that
nothing could restore; and when he lost it he lost also the power of
regretting it. Eleanor was, say, the last time that evil crept close to
Amory under the mask of beauty, the last weird mystery that held him with
wild fascination and pounded his soul to flakes.
With her his imagination ran riot and that is why they rode to the
highest hill and watched an evil moon ride high, for they knew then that
they could see the devil in each other. But Eleanor—did Amory dream
her? Afterward their ghosts played, yet both of them hoped from their
souls never to meet. Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes that drew
him or the mirror of himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her
mind? She will have no other adventure like Amory, and if she reads this
she will say:
"And Amory will have no other adventure like me."
Nor will she sigh, any more than he would sigh.
Eleanor tried to put it on paper once: "The fading things we only know We'll have forgotten . . . Put away . . . Desires that melted with the snow, And dreams begotten This to-day: The sudden dawns we laughed to greet, That all could see, that none could share, Will be but dawns . . . and if we meet We shall not care.
Dear . . . not one tear will rise for this . . . A little while hence No regret Will stir for a remembered kiss— Not even silence, When we've met, Will give old ghosts a waste to roam, Or stir the surface of the sea . . . If gray shapes drift beneath the foam We shall not see."
They quarrelled dangerously because Amory maintained that sea and see
couldn't possibly be used as a rhyme. And then Eleanor had part of
another verse that she couldn't find a beginning for: ". . . But wisdom passes . . . still the years Will feed us wisdom. . . . Age will go Back to the old— For all our tears We shall not know."
Eleanor hated Maryland passionately. She belonged to the oldest of the
old families of Ramilly County and lived in a big, gloomy house with her
grandfather. She had been born and brought up in France. . . . I see I
am starting wrong. Let me begin again.
Amory was bored, as he usually was in the country. He used to go for far
walks by himself—and wander along reciting "Ulalume" to the corn-fields, and congratulating Poe for drinking himself to death in that atmosphere of smiling complacency. One afternoon he had strolled for several miles along a road that was new to him, and then through a wood on bad advice from a colored woman . . . losing himself entirely. A passing storm decided to break out, and to his great impatience the sky grew black as pitch and the rain began to splatter down through the trees, become suddenly furtive and ghostly. Thunder rolled with menacing crashes up the valley and scattered through the woods in intermittent batteries. He stumbled blindly on, hunting for a way out, and finally, through webs of twisted branches, caught sight of a rift in the trees where the unbroken lightning showed open country. He rushed to the edge of the woods and then hesitated whether or not to cross the fields and try to reach the shelter of the little house marked by a light far down the valley. It was only half past five, but he could see scarcely ten steps before him, except when the lightning made everything vivid and grotesque for great sweeps around.
Suddenly a strange sound fell on his ears. It was a song, in a low, husky voice, a girl's voice, and whoever was singing was very close to him. A year before he might have laughed, or trembled; but in his restless mood he only stood and listened while the words sank into his consciousness:
"Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone."
The lightning split the sky, but the song went on without a quaver. The girl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed to come vaguely from a haystack about twenty feet in front of him.
Then it ceased: ceased and began again in a weird chant that soared and
hung and fell and blended with the rain:
"Tout suffocant
Et bleme quand
Sonne l'heure
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure. . . ."