The Day of His Youth

								

silver bells. And you were the soul of it. I should not have been
surprised to see you there in some dim vista, with the sun upon your
hair. But I shall never be surprised again at seeing you. You are in my
world now; and my world cannot move without you. O, but I wish you were
not so wise! I would you had never learned this strange and intricate
game they call society. What profit is in it for you, but what infinite
pain is there in it to me! These are the ironies of Those Who are above
us. (That is my father's phrase; he talks of Them sometimes, in the
night when he cannot sleep, and walks up and down the cabin as if he
wished it were a world for width. The ironies of the immortal gods! I
begin to understand my father a little now. I thought I understood him
before.) We two, you and I, should have been born like twin birds in a
nest, and gone singing away to the south. (Yet O my bird of the shining
wing, O my bird! I would not have you other than you are.) We should
have grown together, twin plants, from the sweet black earth, to twine
and blossom and die. But it was not so to be; and therein I see what
they call the hardships of life, and against such will I take my lance
and shield, and ride forth. I will watch beside my arms, and draw down
holiness from heaven, to be worthy to fight for you, and wear your
favor. Not worthy of winning you--O, mistake me not in that! No heart
was ever humbler than mine before its lady. Yet, as I am a man, my
reward must come. I will win the world's delight, and I will wear her
in the eye of the world: I, her plain and humble squire, whose only
pride is to keep unsmirched for her fair sake. I have not your wisdom,
but I begin to believe that I have a will to conquer; and it shall be
bent upon my quest as if the world,--aye, and the sun!--were made for
that. But tell me, you who know the lore of men, when we really begin
to live, do we always ache so at the heart?
[Sidenote: Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume]
My child,--Your questions are delicious. What you felt on reading my
letter? Yes, Sir Innocence, it hath a name: Jealousy. 'Tis a very
legitimate passion, so I think, but it hath earned in the world a bad
repute. You white-armored child! this meeting a soul so dense to its
own emotions is like cooling drink in a desert. You complain because I
am your senior and a trifle world-worn, and you do not know that you
are complaining. You wish we had been born at the same minute. Pretty!
poetic! but in plain prose, "I would you were not my elder!" And so
would I; for if I were set back those five years, it would give me just
five years more to hack away at my plays. I will not say how your
moonings and mouthings would affect me; possibly then I might be caught
by such pretty sweets. The last question of all: Does the world feel
immortal pain at its heart? Frankly, yes. Nobody can be really happy
except imbeciles and children; and not they, if they chance to be