The Quest of the Golden Girl: A Romance

by Richard Le Gallienne

  How pretty it looked spread out on the grass in front of me! How soft!how wondrously dainty the finish of every little seam! And the lace!It almost tempts one to change one's sex to wear such things. Therewas a time indeed, and not so long ago, when brave men wore garments noless dainty.

  Rupert's Cavaliers were every bit as particular about their lacecollars and frills as the lady whose pretty limbs once warmed thiscambric.

  But where is the name? Ah! here it is! What sweet writing! "SylviaJoy, No. 6."

  Sylvia Joy! What a perfectly enchanting name! and as I repeated itenthusiastically, it seemed to have a certain familiarity for myear,--as though it were the name of some famous beauty or some popularactress,--yet the exact association eluded me, and obviously it wasbetter it should remain a name of mystery. Sylvia Joy! Who could havehoped for such a pretty name! Indeed, to tell the truth, I had dreadedto find a "Mary Jones" or an "Ann Williams"--but Sylvia Joy! The namewas a romance in itself. I already felt myself falling in love withits unseen owner. With such a petticoat and such a name, Sylviaherself could not be otherwise than delightful too. Already, you see, Iwas calling her by her Christian name! And the more I thought of her,the stronger grew the conviction--which has no doubt already forceditself upon the romantic reader--that we were born for each other.

  But who is Sylvia, who is she? and likewise where is Sylvia, where isshe? Obviously they were questions not to be answered off-hand. Wasnot my future--at all events my immediate future--to be spent inanswering them?

  Indeed, curiously enough, my recent haste to have them answered hadsuddenly died down. A sort of matrimonial security possessed me. Ifelt as I imagine a husband may feel on a solitary holiday--if thereare husbands unnatural enough to go holidaying without theirwives--pleasantly conscious of a home tucked somewhere beneath thedistant sunset, yet in no precipitate hurry to return there before theappointed day.

  In fact, a chill tremor went through me as I realised that, to allintent, I was at length respectably settled down, with quite aconsiderable retrospect of happy married life. To come to a decision isalways to bring something to an end. And, with something of a pang,resolutely stifled, I realised for a moment the true blessedness of thesingle state I was so soon to leave behind. At all events, a littlegolden fragment of bachelorhood remained. There was yet a fertilestrip of time wherein to sow my last handful of the wild oats of youth.So festina lente, my destined Sylvia, festina lente!

  CHAPTER XVIII

  IN WHICH THE NAME OF A GREAT POET IS CRIED OUT IN A SOLITARY PLACE

  As I once more shouldered my pack and went my way, the character of thecountry side began to change, and, from a semi-pastoral heathiness andfurziness, took on a wildness of aspect, which if indeed melodramaticwas melodrama carried to the point of genius.

  It was a scene for which the nineteenth century has no worthy use. Itfinds ignoble occupation as a gaping-ground for the vacuoustourist,--somewhat as Heine might have imagined Pan carrying thegentleman's luggage from the coach to the hotel. It suffers teetotalpicnic-parties to encamp amid its savage hollows, and it humbly allowsitself to be painted by the worst artists. Like a lion in a menagerie,it is a survival of the extinct chaos entrapped and exhibited amid thesmug parks and well-rolled downs of England.

  I came upon it by a winding ledge of road, which clung to the bare sideof the hill like the battlements of some huge castle. Some two hundredfeet below, a brawling upland stream stood for the moat, and for theenemy there was on the opposite side of the valley a great greencompany of trees, settled like a cloud slope upon slope, making allhaste to cross the river and ascend the heights where I stood. Someintrepid larches waved green pennons in the very midst of the turbulentwater, here and there a veteran lay with his many-summered head abasedin the rocky course of the stream, and here was a young foolhardy beechthat had climbed within a dozen yards of the rampart. All was wild andsolitary, and one might have declared it a scene untrodden by the footof man, but for the telegraph posts and small piles of broken "macadam"at punctual intervals, and the ginger-beer bottles and paper bags oflocal confectioners that lent an air of civilisation to the road.

  It was a place to quote Alastor in, and nothing but a bad memoryprevented my affrighting the oaks and rills with declamation. As itwas, I could only recall the lines

  "The Poet wandering on, through Arabie And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves--"

  and that other passage beginning

  "At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused--"

  This last I mouthed, loving the taste of its thunder; mouthed thrice,as though it were an incantation,--and, indeed, from what immediatelyfollowed, it might reasonably have seemed so.

  "At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused--"

  I mouthed for the fourth time. And lo! advancing to me eagerly alongthe causeway seemed the very sprite of Alastor himself! There was astar upon his forehead, and around his young face there glowed anaureole of gold and roses--to speak figuratively, for the star upon hisbrow was hope, and the gold and roses encircling his head, a miniaturerainbow, were youth and health. His longish golden hair had no doubtits share in the effect, as likewise the soft yellow silk tie thatfluttered like a flame in the speed of his going. His blue eyes weretragically fresh and clear,--as though they had as yet been littleused. There were little wings of haste upon his feet, and he camestraight to me, with the air of the Angel Gabriel about to make hisdivine announcement. For a moment I thought that he was an apparitionof prophecy charged to announce the maiden of the Lord for whom I wasseeking. However, his brief flushed question was not of these things.He desired first to ask the time of day, and next--here, after a bumpto the earth, one's thoughts ballooned again heavenwards--"had I seen agreen copy of Shelley lying anywhere along the road?"

  Nothing so good had happened to me, I replied--but I believed that Ihad seen a copy of Alastor! For a moment my meaning was lost on him;then he flushed and smiled, thanked me and was off again, saying thathe must find his Shelley, as he wouldn't lose it for the world!

  He had presently disappeared as suddenly as he had come, but he hadleft me a companion, a radiant reverberant name; and for some littlespace the name of Shelley clashed silvery music among the hills.

  Its seven letters seemed to hang right across the clouds like the SevenStars, an apocalyptic constellation, a veritable sky sign; and againthe name was an angel standing with a silver trumpet, and again it wasa song. The heavens opened, and across the blue rift it hung in aglory of celestial fire, while from behind and above the clouds came awarbling as of innumerable larks.

  How strange was this miracle of fame, I pondered, this strangeapotheosis by which a mere private name becomes a public symbol!Shelley was once a private person whose name had no more universalmeaning than my own, and so were Byron and Cromwell and Shakespeare;yet now their names are facts as stubborn as the Rocky Mountains, orthe National Gallery, or the circulation of the blood. From theiroriginal inch or so of private handwriting they have spread and spreadout across the world, and now whole generations of men findintellectual accommodation within them,--drinking fountains and otherpublic institutions are erected upon them; yea, Carlyle has become aChelsea swimming-bath, and "Highland Mary" is sold for whiskey, whileMr. Gladstone is to be met everywhere in the form of a bag.

  Does Mr. Gladstone, I wonder, instruct his valet "to pack hisGladstone"? How strange it must seem! Try it yourself some day andits effect on your servant. Ask him, for example, to "pack your ----"and see how he'll stare.

  Coming nearer and nearer to earth, I wondered if Colonel Boycott everuses the word "boycott," and how strange it must have seemed to thelate MacAdam to walk for miles and miles upon his own name, like acarpet spread out before him.

  Then I once more rebounded heavenwards, at the vision of the eagerdreamy lad whose question had set going all this odd clockwork ofassociation. He would
n't lose his Shelley for the world! How liketwenty! And how many things that he wouldn't lose for the world will hehave to give up before he is thirty, I reflected sententiously,--giveup at last, maybe, with a stony indifference, as men on a sinking shiptake no thought of the gold and specie in the hold.

  And then, all of a sudden, a little way up the ferny grassy hillside, Icaught sight of the end of a book half hidden among the ferns. Iclimbed up to it. Of course it was that very green Shelley which theyoung stranger wouldn't lose for the world.

  CHAPTER XIX

  WHY THE STRANGER WOULD NOT LOSE HIS SHELLEY FOR THE WORLD

  Picking up the book, I opened it involuntarily at the titlepage, andthen--I resisted a great temptation! I shut it again. A little floweryplot of girl's handwriting had caught my eye, and a girl's pretty name.When Love and Beauty meet, it is hard not to play the eavesdropper, andit was easy to guess that Love and Beauty met upon that page. St.Anthony had no harder fight with the ladies he was unpolite enough tocall demons, than I in resisting the temptation to take another look atthat pen-and-ink love making. Now, as I look back, I think it wassheer priggishness to resist so human and yet so reverent an impulse.There is nothing sacred from reverence, and love's lovers have a rightto regard themselves as the confidants of lovers, whenever they maychance to surprise either them or their letters.

  While I was still hesitating, and wondering how I could get the bookconveyed to its romantic owner, suddenly a figure turned the corner ofthe road, and there was Alastor coming back again. I slipped the book,in distracted search for which he was evidently still engaged, underthe ferns, and, leisurely lighting a pipe, prepared to tease him. Hewas presently within hail, and, looking up, caught sight of me.

  "Have you found your Shelley yet?" I called down to him, as he stood amoment in the road.

  He shook his head. No! But he meant to find it, if he had to huntevery square foot of the valley inch by inch.

  Wouldn't any other book do, I asked him. Would he take a Boccaccio, ora "Golden Ass," or a "Tom Jones," in exchange?--for of such consistedmy knapsack library. He laughed a negative, and it seemed a shame totease him.

  "It is not so much the book itself," he said.

  "But the giver?" I suggested.

  "Of course," he blushingly replied.

  "Well, suppose I have found it?" I continued.

  "You don't mean it--"

  "But suppose I have--I'm only supposing--will you give me the pleasureof your company at dinner at the next inn and tell me its story?"

  "Indeed I will, gladly," he replied.

  "Well, then," I said, "catch, for here it is!"

  The joy with which he recovered it was pretty to behold, and theeagerness with which he ran through the leaves, to see that the violetsand the primroses and a spray of meadowsweet, young love's bookmarkers,were all in their right places, touched my heart.

  He could not thank me enough; and as we stepped out to the inn, somethree or four miles on the road, I elicited something of his story.

  He was a clerk in a city office, he said, but his dreams were notcommercial. His one dream was to be a great poet, or a great writer ofsome sort, and this was one of his holidays. As I looked at hissensitive young face, unmarred by pleasure and unscathed by sorrow,bathed daily, I surmised, in the may-dew of high philosophies--ah, sohigh! washed from within by a constant radiancy of pure thoughts, andfrom without by a constant basking in the shine of every beautiful andnoble and tender thing,--I thought it not unlikely that he might fulfilhis dream.

  But, alas! as he talked on, with lighted face and chin in the air, howcruelly I realised how little I had fulfilled mine.

  And how hard it was to talk to him, without crushing some flower of hisfancy or casting doubt upon his dreams. Oh, the gulf between twentyand thirty! I had never quite comprehended it before. And howinexpressibly sad it was to hear him prattling on of the ideal life, ofsocialism, of Walt Whitman and what not,--all the dear oldquackeries,--while I was already settling down comfortably to aconservative middle age. He had no hope that had not long been mydespair, no aversion that I had not accepted among the more or lesscomfortable conditions of the universe. He was all for nature andliberty, whereas I had now come to realise the charm of the artificial,and the social value of constraint.

  "Young man," I cried in my heart, "what shall I do to inherit EternalYouth?"

  The gulf between us was further revealed when, at length coming to ourinn, we sat down to dinner. To me it seemed the most natural thing inthe world to call for the wine-list and consult his choice of wine;but, will you believe me, he asked to be allowed to drink water! Andwhen he quoted the dear old stock nonsense out of Thoreau about beingable to get intoxicated on a glass of water, I could have laughed andcried at the same time.

  "Happy Boy!" I cried, "still able to turn water into wine by the divinepower of your youth"; and then, turning to the waiter, I ordered abottle of No. 37.

  "Wine is the only youth granted to middle age," I continued,--"in vinojuventus, one might say; and may you, my dear young friend, long remainso proudly independent of that great Elixir--though I confess that Ihave met no few young men under thirty who have been excellent criticsof the wine-list."

  As the water warmed him, he began to expand into further confidence,and then he told me the story of his Shelley, if a story it can becalled. For, of course, it was simple enough, and the reader has longsince guessed that the reason why he wouldn't lose his Shelley for theworld was the usual simple reason.

  I listened to his rhapsodies of HER and HER and HER with an achingheart. How good it was to be young! No wonder men had so desperatelysought the secret of Eternal Youth! Who would not be young for ever,for such dreams and such an appetite?

  Here of course was the very heaven-sent confidant for such anenterprise as mine. I told him all about my whim, just for the pleasureof watching his face light up with youth's generous worship of all suchfantastic nonsense. You should have seen his enthusiasm and heard allthe things he said. Why, to encounter such a whimsical fellow as myselfin this unimaginative age was like meeting a fairy prince, or comingunexpectedly upon Don Quixote attacking the windmill. I offered himthe post of Sancho Panza; and indeed what would he not give, he said,to leave all and follow me! But then I reminded him that he hadalready found his Golden Girl.

  "Of course, I forgot," he said, with I'm afraid something of a sigh.For you see he was barely twenty, and to have met your ideal so earlyin life is apt to rob the remainder of the journey of something of itszest.

  I asked him to give me his idea of what the Blessed Maid should be, towhich he replied, with a smile, that he could not do better thandescribe Her, which he did for the sixth time. It was, as I hadforeseen, the picture of a Saint, a Goddess, a Dream, very lovely andpure and touching; but it was not a woman, and it was a woman I was insearch of, with all her imperfections on her head. I suppose no boy oftwenty really loves a WOMEN, but loves only his etherealised extract ofwoman, entirely free from earthy adulteration. I noticed the words"pure" and "natural" in constant use by my young friend. Some lineswent through my head, but I forbore to quote them:--

  Alas I your so called purity Is merely immaturity, And woman's nature plays its part Sincerely but in woman's art.

  But I couldn't resist asking him, out of sheer waggery, whether hedidn't think a touch of powder, and even, very judiciously applied, atouch of rouge, was an improvement to woman. His answer went to myheart.

  "Paint--a WOMAN!" he exclaimed.

  It was as though you had said--paint an angel!

  I could bear no more of it. The gulf yawned shiveringly wide atremarks like that; so, with the privilege of an elder, I declared ittime for bed, and yawned off to my room.

  Next morning we bade good-bye, and went our several ways. As weparted, he handed me a letter which I was not to open till I was wellon my journey. We waved good-bye to each other till the turnings ofthe road made parting final, and then, sitting down b
y the roadside, Iopened the letter. It proved to be not a letter, but a poem, which hehad evidently written after I had left him for bed. It was entitled,with twenty's love for a tag of Latin, Ad Puellam Auream, and it ranthus:--

  The Golden Girl in every place Hides and reveals her lovely face; Her neither skill nor strength may find-- 'T is only loving moves her mind. If but a pretty face you seek, You'll find one any day or week; But if you look with deeper eyes, And seek her lovely, pure, and wise, Then must you wear the pilgrim's shoon For many a weary, wandering moon.

  Only the pure in heart may see That lily of all purity, Only in clean unsullied thought The image of her face is caught, And only he her love may hold Who buys her with the spirit's gold.

  Thus only shall you find your pearl, O seeker of the Golden Girl! She trod but now the grassy way, A vision of eternal May.

  The devil take his impudence! "Only the pure in heart," "clean,unsullied thought." How like the cheek of twenty! And all the samehow true! Dear lad, how true! Certainly, the child is father to theman. Dirige nos! O sage of the Golden Twenties!

  As I meditatively folded up the pretty bit of writing, I made aresolution; but it was one of such importance that not only is anotherchapter needed to do it honour, but it may well inaugurate another bookof this strange uneventful history.