perish in a frosty May night, before the fruit has had time to set.
He was fifteen years old and had therefore arrived at the age when civilised man attains to manhood and is ripe to give life to a new generation, but is prevented from doing so by his inability to maintain a family. Consequently he was about to begin the ten years’ martyrdom which a young man is called upon to endure in the struggle against an overwhelming force of nature, before he is in a position to fulfil her laws.
It is a warm afternoon about Whitsuntide. The appletrees are gorgeous in their white splendour which nature has showered all over them with a profuse hand. The breeze shakes the crowns and fills the air with pollen; a part of it fulfils its destination and creates new life, a part sinks to the ground and dies. What is a handful of pollen more or less in the inexhaustible store-house of nature! The fertilised blossom casts off its delicate petals which flutter to the ground and wither; they decay in the rain and are ground to dust, to rise again through the sap and re-appear as blossoms, and this time, perhaps, to become fruit. But now the struggle begins: those which a kind fate has placed on the sunny side, thrive and prosper; the seed bud swells, and if no frost intervenes, the fruit, in due time, will set. But those which look towards the North, the poor things which grow in the shadow of the others and never see the sun, are predestined to fade and fall off; the gardener rakes them together and carts them to the pig-sty.
Behold the apple-tree now, its branches laden with half-ripe fruit, little, round, golden apples with rosy cheeks. A fresh struggle begins: if all remain alive, the branches will not be able to bear their weight, the tree will perish. A gale shakes the branches. It requires firm stems to hold on. Woe to the weaklings! they are condemned to destruction.
A fresh danger! The apple-weevil appears upon the scene. It, too, has to maintain life and to fulfil a duty towards its progeny. The grub eats its way through the fruit to the stem and the apple falls to the ground. But the dainty beetle chooses the strongest and soundest for its brood, otherwise too many of the strong ones would be allowed to live, and competition would become over-keen.
The hour of twilight, the gathering dusk, arouses the passionate instincts of the beast-world. The night-crow crouches on the newly-dug flower-bed to lure its mate. Which of the eager males shall carry the prize? Let them decide the question!
The cat, sleek and warm, fresh from her evening milk, steals away from her corner by the hearth and picks her way carefully among daffodils and lilies, afraid lest the dew make her coat damp and ragged before her lover joins her. She sniffs at the young lavender and calls. Her call is answered by the black tom-cat which appears, broad-backed like a marten, on the neighbour’s fence; but the gardener’s tortoise-shell approaches from the cow-shed and the fight begins. Handfuls of the rich, black soil are flying about in all directions, and the newly-planted radishes and spinach plants are roughly awakened from their quiet sleep and dreams of the future. The stronger of the two remains in possession of the field, and the female awaits complacently the frenetic embraces of the victor. The vanquished flies to engage in a new struggle in which, perhaps, victory will smile on him.
Nature smiles, content, for she knows of no other sin than the sin against her law; she is on the side of the strong for her desire is for strong children, even though she should have to kill the “eternal ego” of the insignificant individual. And there is no prudery, no hesitation, no fear of consequences, for nature has plenty of food for all her children—except mankind.
After supper he went for a walk in the garden while his father sat down at his bed-room window to smoke a pipe and read the evening paper. He strolled along the paths, revelling in the delicious odours which a plant only exhales when it is in full bloom, and which is the finest and strongest extract of etheric oils, containing in a condensed form the full strength of the individual, destined to become the representative of the species. He listened to the nuptial song of the insects above the lime trees, which rings in our ears like a funeral dirge: he heard the purring call of the night-crow; the ardent mewing of the cat, which sounds as if death, and not life, were wooing; the humming note of the dung-beetle, the fluttering of the large moths, the thin peeping of the bats.
He stopped before a bed of narcissus, gathered one of the while, starry flowers, and inhaled its perfume until he felt the blood hammering in his temples. He had never examined this flower minutely. But during the last term they had read Ovid’s story of Narcissus. He had not discovered a deeper meaning in the legend. What did it mean, this story of a youth who, from unrequited love, turned his ardour upon himself and was consumed by the flame when he fell in love with his own likeness seen in a well? As he stood, examining the white, cup-shaped petals, pale as the cheeks of an invalid with fine red lines such as one may see in the faces of consumptives when a pitiless cough forces the blood into the extremest and tiniest blood-vessels, he thought of a school-fellow, a young aristocrat, who was a midshipman now; he looked like that.
When he had inhaled the scent of the flower for some time, the strong odour of cloves disappeared and left but a disagreeable, soapy smell which made him feel sick.
He sauntered on to where the path turned to the right and finally lost itself in an avenue planted on both sides with elm-trees whose branches had grown together and formed an arch overhead. In the semi-darkness, far down the perspective, he could see a large green swing, suspended by ropes, slowly moving backwards and forwards. A girl stood on the back board, gently swinging herself by bending her knees and throwing her body forward, while she clung, with arms raised high above her head, to the ropes at her side. He recognised the gardener’s daughter, a girl who had been confirmed last Easter and had just begun to wear long skirts. To-night, however, she was dressed in one of her old dresses which barely reached to her ankles.
The sight of the young man embarrassed her, for she remembered the shortness of her skirt, but she nevertheless remained on the swing. He advanced and looked at her.
“Go away, Mr. Theodore,” said the girl, giving the swing a vigorous push.
“Why should I?” answered the youth, who felt the draught of her fluttering skirts on his throbbing temples.
“Because I want you to,” said the girl.
“Let me come up, too, and I’ll swing you, Gussie,” pleaded Theodore, springing on to the board.
Now he was standing on the swing, facing her. And when they rose into the air, he felt her skirts flapping against his legs, and when they descended, he bent over her and looked into her eyes which were brilliant with fear and enjoyment. Her thin cotton blouse fitted tightly and showed every line of her young figure; her smiling lips were half-open, displaying two rows of sound white teeth, which looked as if they would like to bite or kiss him.
Higher and higher rose the swing, until it struck the topmost branches of the maple. The girl screamed and fell forward, into his arms; he was pushed over, on to the seat. The trembling of the soft warm body which nestled closely in his arms, sent an electric shock through his whole nervous system; a black veil descended before his eyes and he would have let her go if her left shoulder had not been tightly pressed against his right arm.
The speed of the swing slackened. She rose and sat on the seat facing him. And thus they remained with downcast eyes, not daring to look one another in the face.
When the swing stopped, the girl slipped off the seat and ran away as if she were answering a call. Theodore was left alone. He felt the blood surging in his veins. It seemed to him that his strength was redoubled. But he could not grasp what had happened. He vaguely conceived himself as an electrophor whose positive electricity, in discharging, had combined with the negative. It had happened during a quite ordinary, to all appearances chaste, contact with a young woman. He had never felt the same emotion in wrestling, for instance, with his school-fellows in the play-ground. He had come into contact with the opposite polarity of the female sex and now he knew what it meant to be a man. For he was a man, not a precocious boy, kicking over the traces; he was a strong, hardy, healthy youth.
As he strolled along, up and down the garden paths, new thoughts formed in his brain. Life looked at him with graver eyes, he felt conscious of a sense of duty. But he