Nobody Part 75

"Mend your cause, Julia," said her husband.

"I haven't got the poets in my head," said the lady. "They are not all like that. I am very fond of Elizabeth Barrett Browning."

"The 'Cry of the Children'?" said Mrs. Barclay.

"O no, indeed! She's not all like that."

"She is not all like that. There is 'Hector in the Garden.'"

"O, that is pretty!" said Lois. "But do you remember how it runs?--

'Nine years old! The first of any Seem the happiest years that come--'"

"Go on, Lois," said her friend. And the request being seconded, Lois gave the whole, ending with--

'Oh the birds, the tree, the ruddy And white blossoms, sleek with rain!

Oh my garden, rich with pansies!

Oh my childhood's bright romances!

All revive, like Hector's body, And I see them stir again!

'And despite life's changes--chances, And despite the deathbell's toll, They press on me in full seeming!

Help, some angel! stay this dreaming!

As the birds sang in the branches, Sing G.o.d's patience through my soul!

'That no dreamer, no neglecter Of the present work unsped, I may wake up and be doing, Life's heroic ends pursuing, Though my past is dead as Hector, And though Hector is twice dead.'"

"Well," said Mrs. Lenox slowly, "of course that is all true."

"From her standpoint," said Lois. "That is according to my charge, which you disallowed."

"From her standpoint?" repeated Mr. Lenox. "May I ask for an explanation?"

"I mean, that as she saw things,--

'The first of any Seem the happiest years that come.'"

"Well, of course!" said Mrs. Lenox. "Does not everybody say so?"

n.o.body answered.

"Does not everybody agree in that judgment, Miss Lothrop?" urged the gentleman.

"I dare say--everybody looking from that standpoint," said Lois. "And the poets write accordingly. They are all of them seeing shadows."

"How can they help seeing shadows?" returned Mrs. Lenox impatiently.

"The shadows are there!"

"Yes," said Lois, "the shadows are there." But there was a reservation in her voice.

"Do not _you_, then, reckon the years of childhood the happiest?" Mr.

Lenox inquired.

"No."

"But you cannot have had much experience of life," said Mrs. Lenox, "to say so. I don't see how they can _help_ being the happiest, to any one."

"I believe," Lois answered, lowering her voice a little, "that if we could see all, we should see that the oldest person in our company is the happiest here."

The eyes of the strangers glanced towards the old lady in her low chair at the front of the ox cart. In her wrinkled face there was not a line of beauty, perhaps never had been; in spite of its sense and character unmistakeable; it was grave, she was thinking her own thoughts; it was weather-beaten, so to say, with the storms of life; and yet there was an expression of unruffled repose upon it, as calm as the glint of stars in a still lake. Mrs. Lenox's look was curiously incredulous, scornful, and wistful, together; it touched Lois.

"One's young years ought not to be one's best," she said.

"How are you going to help it?" came almost querulously. Lois thought, if _she_ were Mr. Lenox, she would not feel flattered.

"When one is young, one does not know disappointment," the other went on.

"And when one is old, one may get the better of disappointment."

"When one is young, everything is fresh."

"I think things grow fresher to me with every year," said Lois, laughing. "Mrs. Lenox, it is possible to keep one's youth."

"Then you have found the philosopher's stone?" said Mr. Lenox.

Lois's smile was brilliant, but she said nothing to that. She was beginning to feel that she had talked more than her share, and was inclined to draw back. Then there came a voice from the arm-chair, it came upon a pause of stillness, with its quiet, firm tones:

'He satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.'"

The voice came like an oracle, and was listened to with somewhat of the same silent reverence. But after that pause Mr. Lenox remarked that he never understood that comparison. What was it about an eagle's youth?

"Why," said Lois, "an eagle never grows old!"

"Is that it! But I wish you would go on a little further, Miss Lothrop.

You spoke of hymn-writers having a different standpoint, and of their words as more cheerful than the utterances of other poets. Do you know, I had never thought other poets were not cheerful, until now; and I certainly never got the notion that hymns were an enlivening sort of literature. I thought they dealt with the shadowy side of life almost exclusively."

"Well--yes, perhaps they do," said Lois; "but they go kindling beacons everywhere to light it up; and it is the beacons you see, and not the darkness. Now the secular poets turn that about. They deal with the brightest things they can find; but, to change the figure, they cannot keep the minor chord out of their music."