Nobody Part 32

"Not quite yet, but I feel it is going to be. Unless Miss Lothrop can teach me something."

"There are some things that cannot be taught," said Lois.

"And people--hey? But I am not one of those, Miss Lothrop."

He looked at her with such a face of demure innocence, that Lois could not keep her gravity.

"Now Tom _is_," Lenox went on. "You cannot teach him anything, Miss Lothrop. It would be lost labour."

"I am not so stupid as you think," said Tom.

"He's not stupid--he's obstinate," Lenox went on, addressing himself to Lois. "He takes a thing in his head. Now that sounds intelligent; but it isn't, or _he_ isn't; for when you try, you can't get it out of his head again. So he took it into his head to come to the Isles of Shoals, and hither he has dragged his mother and his sister, and hither by consequence he has dragged me. Now I ask you, as one who can tell--what have we all come here for?"

Half-quizzically, half-inquisitively, the young man put the question, lounging on the rocks and looking up into Lois's face. Tom grew impatient. But Lois was too humble and simple-minded to fall into the snare laid for her. I think she had a half-discernment of a hidden intent under Mr. Lenox's words; nevertheless in the simple dignity of truth she disregarded it, and did not even blush, either with consciousness or awkwardness. She was a little amused.

"I suppose experience will have to be your teacher, as it is other people's."

"I have heard so; I never saw anybody who had learned much that way."

"Come, George, that's ridiculous. Learning by experience is proverbial," said Tom.

"I know!--but it's a delusion nevertheless. You sprain your ankle among these stones, for instance. Well--you won't put your foot in that particular hole again; but you will in another. That's the way you do, Tom. But to return--Miss Lothrop, what has experience done for you in the Isles of Shoals?"

"I have not had much yet."

"Does it pay to come here?"

"I think it does."

"How came anybody to think of coming here at first? that is what I should like to know. I never saw a more uncompromising bit of barrenness. Is there no desolation anywhere else, that men should come to the Isles of Shoals?"

"There was quite a large settlement here once," said Lois.

"Indeed! When?"

"Before the war of the revolution. There were hundreds of people; six hundred, somebody told me."

"What became of them?"

"Well," said Lois, smiling, "as that is more than a hundred years ago, I suppose they all died."

"And their descendants?--"

"Living on the mainland, most of them. When the war came, they could not protect themselves against the English."

"Fancy, Tom," said Lenox. "People liked it so well on these rocks, that it took s.h.i.+ps of war to drive them away!"

"The people that live here now are just as fond of them, I am told."

"What earthly or heavenly inducement?--"

"Yes, I might have said so too, the first hour of my being here, or the first day. The second, I began to understand it."

"Do make me understand it!"

"If you will come here at five o'clock to-morrow, Mr. Leno--xin the morning, I mean,--and will watch the wonderful sunrise, the waking up of land and sea; if you will stay here then patiently till ten o'clock, and see the changes and the colours on everything--let the sea and the sky speak to you, as they will; then they will tell you--all you can understand!"

"All I can understand. H'm! May I go home for breakfast?"

"Perhaps you must; but you will wish you need not."

"Will you be here?"

"No," said Lois. "I will be somewhere else."

"But I couldn't stand such a long talk with myself as that," said the young man.

"It was a talk with Nature I recommended to you."

"All the same. Nature says queer things if you let her alone."

"Best listen to them, then."

"Why?"

"She tells you the truth."

"Do you like the truth?"

"Certainly. Of course. Do not you?"

"_Always?_"

"Yes, always. Do not you?"

"It's fearfully awkward!" said the young man.

"Yes, isn't it?" Tom echoed.

"Do you like falsehood, Mr. Lenox?"

"I dare not say what I like--in this presence. Miss Lothrop, I am very much afraid you are a Puritan."

"What is a Puritan?" asked Lois simply.

"He doesn't know!" said Tom. "You needn't ask him."

"I will ask you then, for I do not know. What does he mean by it?"