Part 16 (2/2)
”But why speak of it so often? He was telling me to-day of an elderly Englishman who addressed him on the train, telling him what a striking resemblance he bore to the Prince of Wales when he was a youth.”
”Quite so; and he told me yesterday of hearing a lady in the drug-store ask the clerk who 'that handsome stranger' was. But, my dear, he tells them as jokes on himself, and he's so sheepish about it. And he's such a splendid orator. I persuaded him to-day to read me one of his college papers. I don't seem to recall much of the substance, but it was full of the most beautiful expressions. One, I remember, begins, 'Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare as this one flower of--' you know I've forgotten what it was--Civilisation or Truth or something. Anyway, whatever it was, it had like a giant engine rolled the car of Civilisation out from the maze of antiquity, where she now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius, and so on.”
”That seems impressive and--mixed, perhaps?”
”Of course I can't remember things in their order, but it was about the essential nature of man being gregarious, and truth is a potent factor in civilisation, and something would be a tear on the world's cold cheek to make it burn forever--isn't that striking? And Greece had her Athens and her Corinth, but where now is Greece with her proud cities? And Rome, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and splendour. Of course I can't recall his words. There was a beautiful reference to America, I remember, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the frozen North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny South--and a perfectly splendid pa.s.sage about the world is and ever has been illiberal. Witness the lonely lamp of Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of Pascal, the scaffold of Sidney--Sidney who, I wonder?”
”Has it taken you that way, Aunt Bell?”
”And France, the saddest example of a nation without a G.o.d, and succeeding generations will only add a new l.u.s.tre to our present resplendent glory, bound together by the most sacred ties of goodwill; independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, and it was fraught with vital interest to every thinking man--”
”Spare me, Aunt Bell--it's like Coney Island, with all those carrousels going around and five bands playing at once!”
”But his peroration! I can't pretend to give you any idea of its beauties--”
”Don't!”
”Get him to declaim it for you. It begins in the most impressive language about his standing on top of the Rocky Mountains one day and placing his feet upon a solid rock, he saw a tempest gathering in the valley far below. So he watches the storm--in his own language, of course--while all around him is suns.h.i.+ne. And such should be our aim in life, to plant our feet on the solid rock of--how provoking! I can't remember what the rock was--anyway, we are to bid those in the valley below to cease their bickerings and come up to the rock--I think it was Intellectual Greatness--No!--Unselfishness--that's it. And the t.i.tle of the paper was a sermon in itself--'The Temporal Advantage of the Individual No Norm of Morality.' Isn't that a beautiful thought in itself? Nancy, that chap will waste himself until he has a city parish.”
There was silence for a little time before Aunt Bell asked, as one having returned to baser matters:
”I wonder if the jacket of my gray suit came back from that clumsy tailor.
I forgot to ask Ellen if an express package came.”
And Nancy, whose look was bent far into the dusk, answered:
”Oh, I wonder if he will come back!”
BOOK THREE
The Age of Faith
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER I
THE PERVERSE BEHAVIOUR OF AN OLD MAN AND A YOUNG MAN
When old Allan Delcher slept with his fathers--being so found in the big chair, with the worn, leather-bound Bible open in his lap--the revived but still tender faith of Aunt Bell Hardwick was bitten as by frost. And this though the Bible had lain open at that psalm in which David is said to describe the corruption of a natural man--a psalm beginning, ”The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no G.o.d.'”
For it straightway appeared that the dead man had in life done a perverse and inexplicable thing, to the bitter amazement of those who had learned to trust him. On the day after he sent a blasphemous grandson from his door he had called for Squire c.u.mpston, announcing to the family his intention to make an entirely new will--a thing for which there seemed to be a certain sad necessity.
When he could no longer be reproached it transpired that he had left ”to Allan Delcher Linford, son of one Clayton Linford,” a beggarly pittance of five thousand dollars; and ”to my beloved grandson, Bernal Linford, I give, devise and bequeath the residue of my estate, both real and personal.”
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