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THE DAY OF HIS YOUTH



By

ALICE BROWN



BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

M DCCC XCVII

COPYRIGHT, 1897
BY ALICE BROWN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.




THE DAY OF HIS YOUTH


The life of Francis Hume began in an old yet very real tragedy. His
mother, a lovely young woman, died at the birth of her child: an event
of every-day significance, if you judge by tables of mortality and the
probabilities of being. She was the wife of a man well-known among
honored American names, and her death made more than the usual ripple
of nearer pain and wider condolence. To the young husband it was an
afflicting calamity, entirely surprising even to those who were
themselves acquainted with grief. He was not merely rebellious and
wildly distraught, in the way of mourners. He sank into a cold
sedateness of change. His life forsook its accustomed channels. Vividly
alive to the one bright point still burning in the past, toward the
present world he seemed absolutely benumbed. Yet certain latent
conceptions of the real values of existence must have sprung up in him,
and protested against days to be thereafter dominated by artificial
restraints. He had lost his hold on life. He had even acquired a sudden
distaste for it; but his previous knowledge of beauty and perfection
would not suffer him to shut himself up in a cell of reserve, and
isolate himself thus from his kind. He could become a hermit, but only
under the larger conditions of being. He had the firmest conviction
that he could never grow any more; yet an imperative voice within bade
him seek the highest out-look in which growth is possible. He had
formed a habit of beautiful living, though in no sense a living for any
other save the dual soul now withdrawn; and he could not be satisfied
with lesser loves, the makeshifts of a barren life. So, turning from
the world, he fled into the woods; for at that time Nature seemed to
him the only great, and he resolved that Francis, the son, should be
nourished by her alone.

One spring day, when the boy was eight years old, his father had said
to him:--

"We are going into the country to sleep in a tent, catch our own fish,
cook it ourselves, and ask favors of no man."

"Camping!" cried the boy, in ecstasy.

"No; living."

The necessities of a simple life were got together, and supplemented by
other greater necessities,--books, pictures, the boy's violin,--and
they betook themselves to a spot where the summer visitor was yet
unknown, the shore of a lake stretching a silver finger toward the
north. There they lived all summer, shut off from human intercourse
save with old Pierre, who brought their milk and eggs and constituted
their messenger-in-ordinary to the village, ten miles away. When autumn
came, Ernest Hume looked into his son's brown eyes and asked,--

"Now shall we go back?"

"No! no! no!" cried the boy, with a child's passionate cumulation of
accent.

"Not when the snow comes?"

"No, father."

"And the lake is frozen over?"

"No, father."

"Then," said Hume, with a sigh of great content, "we must have a
log-cabin, lest our bones lie bleaching on the shore."

Next morning he went into the woods with Pierre and two men hastily
summoned from the village, and there they began to make axe-music, the
requiem of the trees. The boy sat by, dreaming as he sometimes did for
hours before starting up to throw himself into the active delights of
swimming, leaping, or rowing a boat. Next day, also, they kept on
cutting into the heart of the forest. One dryad after another was
despoiled of her shelter; one after another, the green tents of the
bird and the wind were folded to make that sacred tabernacle--a home.
Sometimes Francis chopped a little with his hatchet, not to be left out
of the play, and then sat by again, smoothing the bruised fern-forests,
or whistling back the squirrels who freely chattered out their opinions
on invasion. Then came other days just as mild winds were fanning the
forest into gold, when the logs went groaning through the woods, after
slow-stepping horses, to be piled into symmetry, tightened with
plaster, and capped by a roof. This, windowed, swept and garnished,
with a central fireplace wherein two fires could flame and roar, was
the log-cabin. This was home. The hired builders had protested against
its primitive form; they sighed for a snug frame house, French roof and
bay windows. "'Ware the cold!" was their daily croak.

"We'll live in fur and toughen ourselves," said Ernest Hume. And
turning to his boy that night, when they sat together by their own
fire, he asked,--

"Shall we fashion our muscles into steel, our skin into armor? Shall we
make our eyes strong enough to face the sun by day, and pure enough to
meet the chilly stars at night? Shall we have Nature for our only love?
Tell me, sir!"

And Francis, who hung upon his father's voice, even when the words were
beyond him, answered, "Yes, father, please!" and went on feeding birch
strips to the fire, where they turned from vellum to mysterious missals
blazoned by an unseen hand.

The idyl continued unbroken for twelve years. Yet it was not wholly
idyllic, for, even with money multiplying for them out in the world,
there were hard personal conditions against which they had to fight.
Ernest Hume delighted in the fierceness of the winter wind, the cold
resistance of the snow; cut off, as he honestly felt himself to be,
from spiritual growth, he had great joy in strengthening his physical
being until it waxed into insolent might. Francis, too, took so happily
to the stern yet lovely phases of their life that his father never
thought of possible wrong to him in so shaping his early years. As for
Ernest Hume, he had bound himself the more irrevocably to right living
by renouncing artificial bonds. He had removed his son from the world,
and he had thereby taken upon himself the necessity of becoming a
better world. Therefore he did not allow himself in any sense to rust
out. He did a colossal amount of mental burnishing; and, a gentleman by
nature, he adopted a daily purity of speech and courtesy of manner
which were less like civilized life than the efflorescence of chivalry
at its best. He had chosen for himself a part; by his will, a Round
Table sprang up in the woods, though two knights only were to hold
counsel there.

The conclusion of the story--so far as a story is ever concluded--must
be found in the words of Francis Hume. Before he was twenty, his
strength began stirring within him, and he awoke, not to any definite
discontent, but to that fever of unrest which has no name. Possibly a
lad of different temperament might not have kept housed so long; but he
was apparently dreamy, reflective, in love with simple pleasures, and,
though a splendid young animal, inspired and subdued by a thrilling
quality of soul. And he woke up. How he awoke may be learned only from
his letters.

These papers have, by one of the incredible chances of life, come into
my hands. I see no possible wrong in their publication, for now the
Humes are dead, father and son; nay, even the name adopted here was not
their own. They were two slight bubbles of being, destined to rise, to
float for a time, and to be again resolved into the unknown sea. Yet
while they lived, they were iridescent; the colors of a far-away sun
played upon them, and they sent him back his gleams. To lose them
wholly out of life were some pain to those of us who have been
privileged to love them through their own written confessions. So here
are they given back to the world which in no other way could adequately
know them.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to the Unknown Friend_[1]]

      [1] This title is adopted by the editor that the narrative may be
      at least approximately clear. The paragraphs headed thus were
      scribblings on loose sheets: a sort of desultory journal.

I never had a friend! Did any human creature twenty years old ever
write that before, unless he did it in a spirit of bitterness because
he was out of humor with his world? Yet I can say it, knowing it to be
the truth. My father and I are one, the oak and its branch, the fern
and its fruitage; but for somebody to be the mirror of my own thoughts,
tantalizingly strange, intoxicatingly new, where shall I look? Ah, but
I know! I will create him from my own longings. He shall be born of the
blood and sinew of my brain and heart. Stand forth, beautiful one, made
in the image of my fancy, and I will tell thee all--all I am ashamed to
tell my father, and tired of imprisoning in my own soul. What shall I
call thee? Friend: that will be enough, all-comprehending and rich in
joy. To-day I have needed thee more than ever, though it is only to-day
that I learned to recognize the need. All the morning a sweet languor
held me, warm, like the sun, and touched with his fervor, so that I
felt within me darts of impelling fire. I sat in the woods by the
spring, my eyes on the dancing shadows at my feet, not thinking, not
willing, yet expectant. I felt as if something were coming, and that I
must be ready to meet it when the great moment should strike. Suddenly
my heart beat high in snatches of rhythm; my feet stirred, my ears woke
to the whir of wings, and my eyes to flickering shade. My whole self
was whelmed and suffocated in a wave of sweet delight. And then it was
that my heart cried out for another heart to beat beside it and make
harmony for the two; then it was that thou, dear one, wast born from my
thought. I am not disloyal in seeking companionship. My father is
myself. Let me say that over and over. When I tell him my fancies, he
smiles sadly, saying they are the buds of youth, born never to flower.
To him Nature is goddess and mother; he turns to her for sustenance by
day, and lies on her bosom at night. After death he will be content to
rest in her arms and become one flesh with her mould. But I--I! O, is
it because I am young; and will the days chill out this strange, sweet
fever, as they have in him? Two years ago--yes, a year--I had no higher
joy than to throw myself, body and soul, into motion: to row, fish,
swim, to listen, in a dream of happiness, while my father read old
Homer to me in the evening, or we masterfully swept through
duets--'cello and violin--that my sleep was too dreamless to repeat to
me. And now the very world is changed; help me to understand it, my
friend; or, if I am to blame, help me to conquer myself.


II

I have much to tell thee, my friend! and of a nature never before known
in these woods and by this water. Last night, at sunset, I stood on the
Point waiting for my father to come in from his round about the island,
when suddenly a boat shot out from Silver Stream and came on toward me,
rowed to the accompaniment of a song I never heard. I stood waiting,
for the voices were beautiful, one high and strong (and as I listened,
it flashed upon me that my father had said the 'cello is like a woman
singing), another, deep and rich. There were two men, as I saw when
they neared me, and two women; and all were young. The men--what were
they like? I hardly know, except that they made me feel ashamed of my
roughness. And the women! One was yellow-haired and pale; she had a
fairy build, I think, and her shoulders were like the birch-tree. Her
head was bare, and the sun--he had stayed to do it--had turned all the
threads to gold. She was so white! white as the tiarella in the spring.
When I saw her, I bent forward; they looked my way, and I drew back
behind the tree. I had been curious, and I was ashamed; it seemed to me
they might stop and say, "Who is this fellow who lives in the woods and
stares at people like an owl by night?" But the oars dipped, and the
boat and song went on. The song! if I but knew it! It called my feet to
dancing. It was like laughter and the play of the young squirrels. I
watched for them to go back, and in an hour they did, still singing in
jubilant chorus; and after that came my father. As soon as I saw him, I
knew something had happened. I have never seen him so sad, so weary. He
put his hand on my shoulder, after we had beached the boat and were
walking up to the cabin.

"Francis," he said, "our good days are over."

"Why?" I asked.

It appeared to me, for some reason, that they had just begun; perhaps
because the night was so fragrant and the stars so near. The world had
never seemed so homelike and so warm. I knew how a bird feels in its
own soft nest.

"Because some people have come to camp on the Bay Shore. I saw their
tents, and asked Pierre. He says they are here for the summer. Fool!
fool that I was, not to buy that land!"

"But perhaps we shall like them!" I said, and my voice choked in the
saying, the world seemed so good, so strange. He grasped my shoulder,
and his fingers felt like steel. "Boy! boy!" he whispered. For a
minute, I fancied he was crying, as I cried once, years ago, when my
rabbit died. "I knew it would come," he said. "Kismet! I bow the neck.
Put thy foot upon it gently, if may be."

We went on to the cabin, but somehow we could not talk; and it was not
long before my father sought his tent. I went also to mine, and lay
down as I was: but not to sleep. Those voices sang in my ears, and my
heart beat till it choked me. Outside, the moon was at full flood, and
I could bear it no longer. I crept softly out of my tent, and
ran--lightly, so that my father should not hear, but still swiftly--to
the beach. I pushed off a boat, grudging every grating pebble, and
dipped my oars carefully, not to be heard. My father would not have
cared, for often I go out at midnight; but I felt strangely. Yet I knew
I must see those tents. Out of his earshot, I rowed in hot haste, and
every looming tree on the wooded bank seemed to whisper "Hurry! hurry!"
I rounded the Point in a new agony lest I should never hear those
singing voices again; and there lay the tents, white in the moonlight.
I rowed into the shadow of a cliff, tied my boat, and crept along the
shore. I could see my mates, and they were mad with fun. Perhaps a
dozen people stood there together on the sand laughing, inciting one
another to some merrier deed. I stayed in the shadow of my tree,
watching them. Then five who were in bathing-dress began wading, and
struck out swimming lazily. She was there, the slight, young creature,
now with her hair in a glory below her waist. The jealous dark had hid
its gold, but I knew what it would be by day. They swam about, calling
and laughing in delicious tones, while those on the bank--older people
I think--challenged and cautioned them. Then a cry went up, "The raft!
the raft!" and they began swimming out, while the women on the bank
urged them not to dive, but to wait until to-morrow. I thought I had
seen all the sports of young creatures, but I never dreamed of anything
so full of happy delight in life as that one girl who climbed on the
raft without touching the hand a man offered to help her, and danced
about on it, laughing like a wood-thrush gone mad with joy, while the
other women shrieked in foolish snatches. Then a man dived from the
raft, and another. A woman called from shore, "Don't dive, Zoe,
to-night!" and suddenly I knew she was Zoe, and that she would dive and
that I must be with her. I knocked off my shoes, waded out, still in
the shadow, and swam toward the raft. As I neared it, there was one
splash after another; then they were coming up, and I was among them.
It seemed as if I had dreamed it, and knew how it would all happen; for
when her head, sleek as polished metal, came up beside me, I knew it
would, and that I should grasp her dress and swim back with her to
land. She was surprised; but quite mechanically she swam beside me.

"Let me alone, Tom," she said at last. "I don't want to go in." I had
guided her down the bank to my shadowy covert, and there we rose on our
feet in shallow water. Then she turned and looked at me. I was not Tom.
I was a stranger. I wondered if she would be frightened, if it was a
woman's way to scream; and, still worse, if the others would come. I
felt that if they did come to mar that one moment, I should kill them.
But she was scarcely even surprised. I saw