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Page 48
Evelyn came,
Her mother with her, but they had agreed
That Evelyn should be with Lota first,
Then tell her who besides was there. But yet
She did not tell her; but she left her side
To warn her mother. "Nay she is too weak,
I dare not let her guess that you are here.
Dear mother, when she saw you last such wrath
Was hot between you - and she is so weak.
Leave her to me until some stronger day."
So Evelyn stayed alone with Lota, watched
Her life that ebbed and flowed like river tides,
Changing but changing silently. For weeks
She watched and hoped and scarcely could be sure
If better came a little oftener
Than worse. But when the vivid autumn leaves
Showed crimson through the mist of afternoons
She knew that Lota stirred a little more
And asked more questions, and she saw a dawn
Of glimmering sea-shell pink in the wax cheeks,
And sunlights coming back upon her hair.
And Lota said, "My Evelyn, but for you
I should have shut my eyes and gone to sleep
Like the lost travellers in the snow. But you,
You kept me waking, warmed me: I shall live."
Then bye and bye she thirsted for the sight
Of grey hills through the air, and woods where yet
The leaves were lingering thinly, of quick brooks
Between the red-leafed brambles, slope-side waves
Of plumy ferns with fronds just tipped with brown
By earliest frosts, and flower-weeds in the lanes.
And in the sunniest hours of sunny days
The cousins lingered through the nearest walks
While Lota breathed in life from sun and air,
Like flowers, too long forgotten in the dark,
That come back to the daylight - till she said
"Why I am strong!" Then, on an afternoon
Yellow with autumn sunlight striking low,
She said "My churchyard is not now too far -
I long to show it, 'tis so beautiful."
And so they rambled for an easy mile
Through field ways and along a little grove,
And came to a grey church with tower and porch
Half lost in glistening ivy, and the shade
Of a great cedar on its southern wall.
And westward a green slope curved slowly down
To a broad river's brim, where now and then
A barge came drifting by, but oftener
The great white swans from Yewter Hall at hand
Broke the smooth water slowly. Down the slope,
And underneath the cedar, lay the graves
Among smooth turf, with here and there a flower
Of simple kind, set by some loving hand;
And here and there a hedge-rose climbed and drooped,
With its wild careless trails, about a stone,
Pruned off no more than not to hide the name -
No gardener's playground this, but just so kept
As showed it was a cared for, sacred place.
And from the river's other bank there stretched
A green far plain of fields that came at last
To woodland rises, and above these peered
The grey and shadowy line of five long hills.
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