Tramping on Life Part 114

Hildreth was very wise and very patient with one who was as yet a mere acolyte in love's ways and uses ... she taught me many things, and I adored her for it--as little by little, day by day, she brought me to the full stature of my manhood....

Of course the two other women of the household immediately sensed what was happening. But Penton remained pathetically blind....

What an incredible man! A mole would have gotten a glimmer of the gradually developing change.

With bravado I acted my part of the triangular drama ... but Hildreth carried off her part with an easiness, a femininely delicate boldness, that compelled my utmost admiration ... she even threw suspicious Ruth and Darrie off the scent--at times.

The night of the performance of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ I shall never forget ... Hildreth as t.i.tania in her green tights ... I sat in the back (she would not allow me in the front because it might fl.u.s.ter her, she pleaded) and enjoyed a sense of blissful ownership in her, as she glided about, through the Shakespearean scenes ...--such a sense of ownership that it ran through my veins with a full feeling, possessed my entire body....

Who was this little, alien man, Penton Baxter, who also dared claim her possession!...

Nonchalantly and with an emotion of inner triumph I let him walk homeward with Hildreth, while I paced along with Ruth and Darrie.

Let him congratulate her now on her triumph ... that she had had, as t.i.tania, there under the wide heaven of stars, in our outdoor theatre ... in the midst of the Chinese lanterns that swayed in the slight breaths of summer air....

Later on, when she was warm in my arms, _I_ would congratulate her ... --tell her she was greater than Bernhardt ... than Duse herself!...

tell her every incredible thing that lovers hold as mere, commonplace truths.

Jones had acquitted himself wonderfully as Bottom ... roaring like any suckling dove ... putting real philosophic comedy in his part ... to the applause of even the elder Grahame, who, to do him credit, was not such a bad sport, after all.

"Johnnie, we are having a sing to-night ... there'll be a full moon up.

I have informed the committee that you will read a few of your poems by the camp-fire."

"--the first time I ever heard of it," I replied, concealing my pride in the invitation, under show of being disgruntled....

That was Penton's way, arranging things first, telling you afterward.

"But you will do it? I have said you would!"

"Yes, Penton, if you wish me to!"

Hildreth was always insistent on my strength ... my greyhound length of limb, my huge chest ... she stood up and pounded on my chest once....

"Oh, why do I pick out a poor poet, and not a millionaire, for a lover!"

There grew up between us a myth ... we were living in cave-days ... she was my cave-woman ... I was her cave-man....

As I came to her in my bath-robe (for now, bolder with seeming immunity, we threw caution aside, and met often in the little house)--

As I came to her in my bath-robe, unshaven, once ... she called me her Paphnutius ... and she was my Thas ... and she told me Anatole France's story of _Thas_.

But the cave-legend of our love ... in a previous incarnation ... was what spelled her most ... she doted on strength ... cruel, sheer, brute strength....

That I could carry her, lift her high up with ease, toss her about, rejoiced her to the utmost....

I caught her up in my arms, pleasing this humour, tossing her like a ball ... till my muscles were as sore as if I had fought through the two halves of a foot-ball game....

Out of all this play between us there grew a series of Cave Poems.

One of them I set aside to read at the sing, beside the camp-fire.

They had chorused _Up With the Bonnet for Bonny Dundee_ and _You Take the Highway_....

There ran a ripple of talk while they waited for me.

In the red glow of the camp-fire I towered over the stocky little husband as he introduced me. Hildreth was sitting there ... I must make a good impression before my mate. All I saw was she--too patently, I fear.

I went through poem after poem, entranced with the melody of my verse ... mostly delicate, evanescent stuff ... like this one ...

"THE EMPEROR TO HIS LOVE

"I've a green garden with a grey wall 'round Where even the wind's foot-fall makes no sound; There let us go and from ambition flee, Accepting love's brief immortality.

Let other rulers hugely labour still Beneath the burden of ambition's ill Like caryatids heaving up the strain Of mammoth chambers, till they stoop again ...

Your face has changed my days to splendid dreams And baubled trumpets, traffics, and triremes; One swift touch of your pa.s.sion-parted lips Is worth five armies and ten seas of ships."

Hildreth's applause was sweet. My heart almost burst with happiness within me, as those tiny hands, that had run through my hair and been so wonderful with me ... hands that I had kissed and fondled in secret--joined in unison with Penton's and Darrie's and Ruth's hand-claps.

"And now I will finish with the _Song of Kaa, the Cave-Man_," I announced ... it seemed that the poem was not, after all, in the bunch of MSS. I had brought along with me....

At last I found it--and read:

"THE SONG OF KAA

"Beat with thy club on a hollow tree While I chant the song of Kaa for thee: I lived in a cave, alone, at first, Till into a neighbouring valley I burst Wild and bearded and seeking prey, And I came on Naa, and bore her away ...

Away to my hole in the crest of the hill, Where I broke her body to my fierce will....

"My fellow cave-men, fell in a rage: 'What hast thou done?' cried Singh, the Sage, 'For I hear far off a battle-song, And the tree-men come, a hundred strong ...'

Long the battle and dread the fight; We hurled rocks down from our mountain height"--

I copy this from memory alone ... Hildreth has all my cave-poems. I gave them to her, holding no transcripts of them--

The upshot--