Part 5 (1/2)

Walter had, just then, for the first time published a thing of his own.

That it should have arrested the eye of this lovely creature! He acknowledged that he had printed a trifle in ”The Observatory.”

”I was _charmed_ with it!” said the girl, the word charmingly drawled.

”The merest trifle!” remarked Walter. ”It cost me nothing.”

He meant what he said, unwilling to be judged by such a slight thing.

”That is the beauty of it!” she answered. ”Your song left your soul as the thrush's leaves his throat. Should we prize the thrush's more if we came upon him practicing it?”

Walter laughed.

”But we are not meant to sing like the birds!”

”That you could write such a song without effort, shows you to possess the bird-gift of spontaneity.”

Walter was surprised at her talk, and willing to believe it profound.

”The will and the deed in one may be the highest art!” he said. ”I hardly know.”

”May I write music to it?” asked Lady Lufa, with upward glance, sweet smile, and gently apologetic look.

”I am delighted you should think of doing so. It is more than it deserves!” answered Walter. ”My only condition is, that you will let me hear it.”

”That you have a right to. Besides, I dared not publish it without knowing you liked it.”

”Thank you so much! To hear you sing it will let me know at once whether the song itself be genuine.”

”No, no! I may fail in my part, and yours be all I take it to be. But I shall not fail. It holds me too fast for that!”

”Then I may hope for a summons?” said Walter, rising.

”Before long. One can not order the mood, you know!”

CHAPTER X.

THE ROUND OF THE WORLD.

Birds when they leave the nest carry, I presume, their hearts with them; not a few humans leave their hearts behind them--too often, alas! to be sent for afterward. The whole round of the world, many a cloud-rack on the ridge of it, and many a mist on the top of that, rises between them and the eyes and hearts which gave their very life that they might live.

Some as they approach middle age, some only when they are old, wake up to understand that they have parents. To some the perception comes with their children; to others with the pang of seeing them walk away light-hearted out into the world, as they themselves turned their backs on their parents: they had been all their own, and now they have done with them! Less or more, have we not all thus taken our journey into a far country? But many a man of sixty is more of a son to the father gone from the earth, than he was while under his roof. What a disintegrated ma.s.s were the world, what a lump of half-baked brick, if death were indeed the end of affection! if there were no chance more of setting right what was so wrong in the loveliest relations! How gladly would many a son who once thought it a weariness to serve his parents, minister now to their lightest need! and in the boundless eternity is there no help?

Walter was not a prodigal; he was a well-behaved youth. He was _only_ proud, _only_ thought much of himself; was _only_ pharisaical, not hypocritical; was _only_ neglectful of those nearest him, always polite to those comparatively nothing to him! Compa.s.sionate and generous to necessity, he let his father and his sister-cousin starve for the only real food a man can give, that is, _himself_. As to him who thought his very thoughts into him, he heeded him not at all, or mocked him by merest ceremony. There are who refuse G.o.d the draught of water He desires, on the ground that their vessel is not fit for Him to drink from: Walter thought his too good to fill with the water fit for G.o.d to drink.

He had the feeling, far from worded, not even formed, but certainly in him, that he was a superior man to his father. But it is a fundamental necessity of the kingdom of heaven, impossible as it must seem to all outside it, that each shall count other better than himself; it is the natural condition of the man G.o.d made, in relation to the other men G.o.d has made. Man is made, not to contemplate himself, but to behold in others the beauty of the Father. A man who lives to meditate upon and wors.h.i.+p himself, is in the slime of h.e.l.l. Walter knew his father a reading man, but because he had not been to a university, placed no value on his reading. Yet this father was a man who had intercourse with high countries, intercourse in which his son would not have perceived the presence of an idea.

In like manner, Richard's carriage of mind, and the expression of the same in his modes and behavior, must have been far other than objectionable to the ushers of those high countries; his was a certain quiet, simply, direct way, reminding one of Nathanael, in whom was no guile. In another man Walter would have called it bucolic; in his father he shut his eyes to it as well as he could, and was ashamed of it. He would scarcely, in his circle, be regarded as a gentleman! he would look odd! He therefore had not encouraged the idea of his coming to see him.

He was not satisfied with the father by whom the Father of fathers had sent him into the world! But Richard was the truest of gentlemen even in his outward carriage, for he was not only courteous and humble, but that rare thing--natural; and the natural, be it old as the Greek, must be beautiful. The natural dwells deep, and is not the careless, any more than the studied or a.s.sumed.

Walter loved his father, but the root of his love did not go deep enough to send aloft a fine flower: deep in is high out. He seldom wrote, and wrote briefly. He did not make a confidant of his father. He did not even tell him what he was doing, or what he hoped to do. He might mention a success, but of hopes, fears, aspirations, or defeats, or thoughts or desires, he said nothing. As to his theories, he never imagined his father entering into such things as occupied _his_ mind!