Tom Beauling/Chapter 15
UP-STAIRS the child, wrapped about with hot typhoid, raved in many languages. His mother nursed him, and a doctor watched. His ravings were all of a little girl named Lettice. He had a photograph of her on a chair by the head of his bed. She was an impudent rogue of a child of twelve, with straight, dark hair cut off square at the shoulders like a page's; she had mischievous, puckered eyes, and grinned like a pussy-cat. She looked as healthy as a butterfly.
"Won't you be faithful, Lettice—won't you?" wailed the sick child.
It was sweating hot. Beauling, in white pajamas that clung to him in dark patches as if his body was sucking at the silk, bent over his open valise, and packed it for a long sea voyage. He was going quixotically to retrail it to Singapore on the hypothetical chance of there finding the delinquent Tibbs, of speaking his mind to him, and of sending him back, if necessary by freight, to rejoin his distracted wife and terribly sick child. Beauling hated to leave these alone, but one of the doctors appeared a responsible man, not without kindness, and it seemed that Beauling's absence on even an utterly hopeless search for her husband would afford the wife more relief, while it lasted, than could possibly be furnished her by his gentle and considerate presence. A cable sent to Tibbs at his supposed address had met with no acknowledgment, but still the wife said, "Won't you go, Tom? I know he's there—won't you?" What it must cost a man on the home trail to double and go back did not occur to her. She knew nothing of Phylis and the Spanish castle. Beauling wrote:
Dear Phylis: To me, counting the days between here and home, came Fate, saying, "You must put off the time—you must go back." But it won't be long—only back to Singapore and around the other way. Don't think I'm slighting your letter and your injunctions for a small cause. For, indeed, even if I were to completely lose your regard I would do as I am doing—not otherwise. I had hoped to win favor by going home as straightly as the shingler's hammer goes to the head of the nail, but it seems the shingler was to slip a little on the roof, to miss his aim, and have to strike again. But this time I shall send the hammer home, and, God willing and you helping, the nail also. . . .
What does it cost a man on the home trail to double and go back? I think it cost Beauling not even a pang. It seemed so much righter to break a lance for a poor little, sobbing, silly woman than to rush like a whirlwind into the very arms of the world's desire. He tiptoed into the sick-room to have a last look at Jack. Jack was so thin that you were hardly conscious of his body under the sheet He was more like an abstract intellect gone mad than a sick physical being. His delirium still harped on Lettice. Now he called that little pussy-cat "Gorgeous Arabian," and now "The haven where he would be." The precocity of his ravings was really shocking. A shadow streaming with tears was ever between them. They had packed his heart in ice, but they could not cool his love. He would give her his heart if he could get it out.
Three years later a boy of fifteen brought out a book of verses—a few sheets of cheap paper between pale-blue boards. The dedication was:
To Lettice
For the Ages of Ages
The book received but one press notice—four lines of utter and just condemnation—and nobody but those directly interested in Jack read the book. Then, as always, you were amazed at his maturity, but bitterly disappointed for him and for yourself that the verses were not prettier. Here is the prelude for a fair sample:
And the wide world fill
With the songs I feel about you—
Oh, the valley and the hill,
And the river and the ocean,
And the little woodland rill
Would listen to my singing, lovely singing,
And be still!
The wide world is already filled with that sort of singing. Any practised writer can do it for volumes—many do, alas!—and without proper guidance you cannot find anything of the real Jack in the pages of his one and only book. You must remember that he was only fifteen, very much in love—with a passion that had endured longer than do the passions of most grown men—and dying. Then the book, if you can find a copy anywhere, would burn for you with a pure light—small, like that of a candle—and occupy your heart. It is so fearless and optimistic and healthy: not good work—far from it—but brave work. He knew that the game was played out, and that he had lost. Did he turn his back, so that he should not see his colors finish last? Oh, no. He marked them all the way round in the tail of the procession,—the fainting jockey, the gasping horse,—and when the race was done, he turned to those who held him in great worship and smiled a gallant smile. One person alone could have saved the book—the minx Lettice. Had she loved Jack, her listening would have made his songs beautiful. But she didn't. She loved him rather less than the third finger of her left hand, over which somebody had slipped a man's seal-ring made small. As a matter of fact, the rascal considered herself engaged—she was only fifteen, mind you—to the son of a belted earl. At sixteen she actually married him, and—they led each other dances. But by that time Jack and his book were dead. I can see Lettice reading the dedication of his life and its epitaph:
To Lettice
For the Ages of Ages
and saying, "Silly boy!"
Tom Beauling kissed his little friend and lover good-by. Outside it was still blowing great guns. Beauling and the Osiris went into the storm at railroad speed—she was sister to the Isis, and could spin twenty-three knots in fair weather, twenty-two in foul. Beauling, because his face was turned from home, wondered if the back of a tortoise would not have afforded swifter locomotion.