“Oh, very much,” I sighed. “I used to sleep in this end bedroom as a boy.”
“Well, you’ll find another boy sleeping there if you look,” he said, opening the door, and as he did so I saw a small, chubby, curly-haired boy of four or five snoozing on his pillow, his face turned away from the golden sun which poured into the room. The beauty of it touched me deeply. It brought back the lapse of time with a crash.
How nature dashes its generations of new childhood against the beaches of this old, old world, I thought. Our little day in the sun is so short. Our tenure of the things of earth so brief. And we fight over land and buildings and position. To my host and hostess I said, “beautiful,” and then that whimpering thing in the sealed room began to cry and I hurried down the stairs.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
DAY DREAMS
But I could not bear to tear myself away so swiftly. I went round to the side door on the north side, where often of a morning, before going to school, or of an afternoon, after school, or of a Saturday or Sunday, I was wont to sit and rock and look out at the grass and trees. As I see it now, I must have been a very peculiar youth, a dreamer, for I loved to sit and dream all the while. Just outside this door was the one best patch of lawn we possessed, very smooth and green. In late October and early November days it was most wonderful to me to sit and look at the leaves falling from the trees and think on the recurrent spectacles of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and wonder at the beauty and fragrance and hope of life. Everything was before me then. That is the great riches and advantage of youth. Experience was still to come—love, travel, knowledge, friends, the spectacle and stress of life. As age creeps on one says to one’s self, Well, I will never do that any more—or that—or that. I did it once, but now it would not be interesting. The joy of its being a new thing is gone once and for all.
And so now, as I looked at this door, the thought of all this came upon me most forcibly. I could actually see myself sitting there in an old rocking chair, with my books on my knees, waiting to hear the last school bell ring, which would give me just fifteen minutes in which to get to school. It was all so perfect. Knowledge was such a solution—were they not always telling me so? If one studied one could find out about life, I thought. Somebody must know. Somebody did know. Weren’t there books here on every hand, and schools and teachers to teach us?
And there was my mother, slipping about in her old grey dress working for us, for me, and wishing so wistfully that life might do better for us all. What a wonderful woman she was, and how I really adored her—only I think she never quite understood me, or what I represented. She was so truly earnest in her efforts for us all, so eager for more life for each and every one. I can see her now with her large, round grey eyes, her placid face, her hopeful, wistful, tender expression! Dear, dear soul! Sweet dreamer of vagrom dreams! In my heart is an altar. It is of jasper and chalcedony and set with precious stones. Before it hangs a light, the lamp of memory, and to that casket which holds your poet’s soul, I offer, daily, attar and bergamot and musk and myrrh. As I write, you must know. As I write, you must understand. Your shrine is ever fragrant here.
Inside this door, when I knocked, I found a two-room apartment not much better than that of my Slavic friends upstairs. Although the young married woman, a mere girl, who opened the door, spoke English plainly, she seemed of marked Hungarian extraction, an American revision of the European peasant, but with most of the old world worn off. I had never been familiar with this type in my day. There was a baby here and a clutter of nondescript things—colored calendars and chromos on the walls; clap-trap instalment-sold furniture and the like. I made my very best bow, which is never a very graceful one, and explained why I was here. The young woman was sympathetic. Wouldn’t I come right in?
“So this is the room,” I said, standing in the first one. “My mother used to use this as a living room, and this (I walked into the next one, looking south over the vanished pond to the courthouse tower) as a sewing room. There was always such a fine morning light here.”
“Yes, there is,” she replied.