Chapter 3

       Young Irony

       Table of Contents

      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….”

       “Who the devil is there in Ramilly County,” muttered Amory aloud, “who would deliver Verlaine in an extemporaneous tune to a soaking haystack?”

      “Somebody’s there!” cried the voice unalarmed. “Who are you? — Manfred, St. Christopher, or Queen Victoria?”

      “I’m Don Juan!” Amory shouted on impulse, raising his voice above the noise of the rain and the wind.

      A delighted shriek came from the haystack.

      “I know who you are — you’re the blond boy that likes ‘Ulalume’ — I recognize your voice.”

      “How do I get up?” he cried from the foot of the haystack, whither he had arrived, dripping wet. A head appeared over the edge — it was so dark that Amory could just make out a patch of damp hair and two eyes that gleamed like a cat’s.

      “Run back!” came the voice, “and jump and I’ll catch your hand — no, not there — on the