Читать книгу Lures of Life - Joseph Lucas - Страница 5

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A friend put me in remembrance that I had a birthday recently. Birthday emotion with an old man is an extinct crater. When I was young a coming birthday set my pulse throbbing to mad music weeks beforehand; it filled me with delightful anticipations. Romance gathered round the happy event. Our thoughts tripped capriciously along the primrose paths of the future. I felt myself preordained to greatness. The hoarded treasure held in bond for me was surely there awaiting delivery, and Time the magician's wand would wave its largesse into my outstretched eager hands, and, clothed in honour, I should ride prosperously all the days of my life.

To the youngster starting on the grand tour of life, the journey is a splendid venture. The cup held to the lips overflows with rich, ripe, sparkling liquor; every draught of it is nectar, exhilarating the spirits, expanding the experience, and discoursing music on every chord of the harp of a thousand strings. It is superb doing, riding life on a flowing tide when the warm south wind blows, and the air is redolent with aromatic spices, when driftwood floats from distant climes, and shore-birds sail in the central blue signalling that the Land of Heart's Desire will soon be reached. Truly youth takes life with a zest of its own.

Yes, the birthday is a happy day to the young. You rejoice that you are a year older and of added consequence and stature in the world of men, and a step nearer realizing the daydreams sweetly dreamed in school, when the magic of life filled you with wonder and awe. Birthday joy increases immensely until the period of ecstatic joy crowns all, when you score twenty-one years and write yourself down a man. You are no longer a flower in the bud worn in anybody's buttonhole, but a well-developed plant on your own root growing in the open. When you get twice twenty-one birthday joy cloys on your palate, and you begin to resent the intrusion of the natal day as an unwelcome guest that you have seen too often. He reminds you that you are growing old and growing older. Your friends may crown the day with roses and toast you at the evening dinner in your best champagne let loose for the occasion, but the obvious remains, and your response to their unblushing flattery is not gushing as of yore. You tire of birthday greetings and birthday festivities; your vivacity flags; your digestion suffers. The thoughts that adorn the occasion are chiefly reminiscent, for the horizon of the future is narrowing down and leaves less space for Fancy in which to fly her kite.

When I had covered my half-century a curious feeling like an electric shock chased along every fibre of my being on facing the cold, hard fact for the first time; I had grown old, and done it surreptitiously. Time glides smoothly, silently, swiftly, and startled as from a deep sleep, one marvels at the hot haste of the rolling years. You dread nearing the vortex of the great unknown to which we all inevitably steer, and finally sink beneath its swirling surface. The outlook is disturbing. Can't you put down the brake and gentle the pace? Will no opiate drug Time into forgetfulness? You try the rejuvenating influences of Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer, but nothing happens. The bald spot on the crown of your head increases in baldness and shining splendour. The longer you watch it, the larger it grows. Time baffles your artful devices, smiles at your wild alarms, and drives from you the crimson days of youth, with their vigour and vivacity, leaving in your possession a feeling of comfortable lethargy which solidifies into pacific blissfulness. Insensibly a change has passed over you with the mounting years. How the change wrought you do not know. Where you crossed the frontier which in the twinkling of an eye ranked you amongst the elders you cannot say. Who can tell the moment when summer ends and autumn commences? Who can cut a clean cleavage between afternoon and evening hours?

However, you settle down to an old man's pleasures. You dislike being hustled after dinner. You prefer a quiet rubber at Bridge in a cosy room, with shaded lights, and a silent cigar with cronies of a choice, familiar brand as playmates. You prefer it to strenuously dancing in a stuffy, glaring ball-room till morning hours chase the stale and weary dancers to their homes. It is too fatiguing an amusement to make pleasure for you, as there is no new romance to be looked for after fifty. Anticipation at your ripe age is wasted stimulant. Boys dream of the future, old men live in the present. Youth, once upon a time, was an asset held in hand, a rich inheritance to be proud of, but now the treasury of youth is spent to the last coin and only the empty coffer remains, a memento of the vanished wealth of early days. You are a middle-aged man aged fifty, and you settle down to it solidly and squarely and comfortably. You will never be young and flippant again this side the harbour-bar.

As we steer cautiously into the sixties and face the grand climacteric, life grows pensive. Sober reflections automatically cast their lengthening shadows over us. We have drunk copiously of the wine of life, and are now coming to the dregs of the bottle. We get moody. Meridian sunshine has not fructified the promise of youth as we appointed it. Lean years have eaten up years of plenty. We have gathered tares with the wheat which brought disappointment into the storehouse. Varied experiences have chequered life with cross lights and shadows. The grand ideals of sanguine youth have dissolved like dreams at daybreak, and instead of the great achievement ours is the common lot. Rates and taxes are hardy annuals that flourish undisturbed amidst the ruins. Are we downhearted because the romance of life has fizzled out like spent fireworks and left us in darkness? We did not expect to finish up in obscurity. Are we downhearted? No; after the struggle and stress of conflict we get our second breath; and the calm of age overtakes us. The halcyon hours set in to cheer us. I now move airily along the line of least resistance, and this brings tranquillity of mind in my advancing years. We are no longer broody. Experience breaks one in gently to the monotony of daily routine, and the collar neither frets nor rubs the shoulder, for the velvet lining of contentment softens the friction and we trudge along serenely going West.

Everything contributes to make an old man's lot happy if the salt of life has not lost its savour. We have played the game, and now we watch others take their innings. It is good fun to watch. I tell you it is music to the eye watching the gay young world go its own way. The swagger, the bravoure, the buoyancy of its manners, stagger the dull parental mind. There is rhythm in its movements, there is character in its gaiety. It tops the record of the far-off days of splendour when we, their portly ancestors, were down in the arena beating up the dust of conflict, and considered ourselves the cream of modernity and the finest goods in the market. The youth of to-day has its hand on the wheel and the joy-car pads merrily, heedless of speed limits, for time has no limit and life sings a pleasant song to boys of the new régime.

Life's afterglow is the period when the past is viewed through the golden haze of memory and we live over again the days of our youth, the splendid days of hope and promise. Pleasant things and pleasant people are remembered, and disagreeable events that vexed us are forgotten. We wipe clean from the slate memories that are unwelcome. From the mellowy distance we admire the picture in its broad outlines; its uninteresting details drop out of sight. It is the vivid patches of colour upon the canvas where the eye lingers lovingly and long. It is the happy past that enchants the memory to-day.

An old man glances over his shoulder adown the long pathway of receding years hungrily, and muses to himself, "Oh, to be out in the world again as I knew it fifty years ago, with the same sunny people about me; to meet them on the old familiar footing. We had capacious times together; we understood one another and loved one another with kindred hearts and flowing speech. I talk with people nowadays, but these new friends of mine are not responsive. There is a glass screen between us as we talk together; we sit near one another, but we are far apart. I catch a far-off glint in their eye which holds me at arm's-length. Our lips are restrained, our thoughts are bottled up. It seems like sitting together in a room with blinds drawn, talking in the dark. Yes; new friends at best are but amiable strangers, for we met one another only when the flower of life had wilted and the leaf was sere and yellow on the tree. The full, unrestrained days when the sap was rising, the blossoming days of youth, were lived apart. I do not know these good people intimately, and I never can, and they can never know me. We each have a buried past which is sacred ground where the other never treads."

I met recently a grey-haired man who was a schoolboy friend of mine. A wide sundering gap of years lies between us since our previous meeting, but at once we grasped hands and knew each other intimately, although mid-life with each had been filled with a fulness the other knew nothing of. As boys we chummed together, and now we renewed our ancient friendship on olden lines. We had studied the same lessons, slept in the same dormitory, sculled in the same boat, fought in the same playground scrimmages, and, having met again after long intervening years, we had endless youthful reminiscences in common to discuss and life-histories to relate. There was no need to sit on the safety-valve to throttle down the conversation. Talk came, a flowing stream bubbling up from the hot springs of the heart. Our meeting had the perfume of romance clinging to it, which made golden the precious hours in the spending. Two grey-haired men chattering with their heads together for the nonce were merry schoolboys. The present was forgotten; the past was everything to them while the old enthusiasms flared up brightly and shot a warm rosy afterglow athwart life's pleasant evening hour.

Loafing is a privilege of one's declining years. It is an agreeable form of laziness which sits well upon old shoulders. It is that mellow state of stagnant content which pervades the mind when the natural force abates. I do not extol it as a virtue, I claim it as a privilege. It helps to fill gaps in the daily round when business no longer engages your attention and office hours are a dread ordeal done with for ever. Having dropped out of the marching line and become a spectator of the passing show, what more natural than that you manifest a livelier curiosity in other people's activities than in your own sluggish movements. I love to spend a sunny morning lingering on the old garden seat, chatting to a friend, or watching the energetic youngsters at play amongst the roses. I find it enjoyable to take my pitch on the pierhead with the gay summer crowd ambling along, passing and repassing my post of observation, and watch the pretty and well-accoutred girls angling for admiration, and the budding men in spotless flannels flashing answering glances to catch the lasses' eyes; an endless conversation going on without voices whispering a word; they look at each other and laugh, and the incipient mystery of the thing slips into their blood.

I was once reluctant to relinquish youth. Its passions and pleasure made my life intensely joyous in a clean, healthy way. I resented the horrid fact that with encroaching years I was no longer able to wake the old thrill of existence by any of the old methods. The call came to me, but nature responded not to its alluring voice. The spent fires could not be rekindled; and in a tragic moment the truth stood uncovered in its stark nakedness: "I am growing old!" I had to readjust my bearings in life to meet the new situation. I found it better to walk in step with the years and melt into middle life with all the gentle conciliations of an easy mind than to clutch at the hem of the garment of departing youth and hold on frantically to a corpse; and so it came to pass youth, with its frank, jovial, devil-may-care lightheartedness, was surrendered ground, and I put on a splendid face, taking up a new position in the rear as an old fogy, a little moss-grown, but still alive, healthy, happy, and hearty.