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Walter could not but be flattered that Lady Tremaine was so evidently pleased with him. She called his profession an aristocracy too! therefore she was not patronizing him, but receiving him on the same social level! We can not blame him for the inexperience which allowed him to hold his head a little higher as he walked home.

There was little danger of his forgetting the appointment. Lady Tremaine received him in what she called her growlery, with cordiality. By and by she led the way toward literature, and after they had talked of several new books—

“We are not in this house altogether strange,” she said, “to your profession. My daughter Lufa is an authoress in her way. You, of course, never heard of her, but it is twelve months since her volume of verse came out.”

Surely Walter had, somewhere about that time, when helping his friend Sullivan, seen a small ornate volume of verses, with a strange name like that on the title-page! Whether he had written a notice of it he could not remember.

“It was exceedingly well received—for a first, of course! Lufa hardly thought so herself, but I told her what could she expect, altogether unknown as she was. Tell me honestly, Mr. Colman, is there not quite as much jealousy in your profession as in any other?”

Walter allowed it was not immaculate in respect of envy and evil speaking.

“You have so much opportunity for revenge, you see!” said Lady Tremaine; “and such a coat of darkness for protection! With a few strokes of the pen a man may ruin his rival!”

“Scarcely that!” returned Walter. “If a book be a good book, the worst of us can not do it much harm; nor do I believe there are more than a few in the profession who would condescend to give a false opinion upon the work of a rival; though doubtless personal feeling may pervert the judgment.”

“That, of course,” returned the lady, “is but human! You can not deny, however, that authors occasionally make furious assaults on each other!”

“Authors ought not to be reviewers,” replied Walter. “I fancy most reviewers avoid the work of an acquaintance even, not to say a friend or enemy.”

The door opened, and what seemed to Walter as lovely a face as could ever have dawned on the world, peeped in, and would have withdrawn.

“Lufa,” said Lady Tremaine, “you need not go away. Mr. Colman and I have no secrets. Come and be introduced to him.”

She entered—a small, pale creature, below the middle height, with the daintiest figure, and child-like eyes of dark blue, very clear, and—must I say it?—for the occasion “worn” wide. Her hair was brown, on the side of black, divided in the middle, and gathered behind in a great mass. Her dress was something white, with a shimmer of red about it, and a blush-rose in the front. She greeted Walter in the simplest, friendliest way, holding out her tiny hand very frankly. Her features were no smaller than for her size they ought to be, in themselves perfect, \Walter thought, and in harmony with her whole being and carriage. Her manner was a gentle, unassuming assurance—almost as if they knew each other, but had not met for some time. Walter felt some ancient primeval bond between them—dim, but indubitable.

The mother withdrew to her writing-table, and began to write, now and then throwing in a word as they talked. Lady Lufa seemed pleased with her new acquaintance; Walter was bewitched. Bewitchment I take to be the approach of the real to our ideal. Perhaps upon that, however, depends even the comforting or the restful. In the heart of every one lies the necessity for homeliest intercourse with the perfectly lovely; we are made for it. Yet so far are we in ourselves from the ideal, which no man can come near until absolutely devoted to its quest, that we continually take that for sufficing which is a little beyond.

“I think, Mr. Colman, I have seen something of yours! You do put your name to what you write?” said Lady Lufa.

“Not always,” replied Walter.

“I think the song must have been yours!”

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 mass 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! Compassionate 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 God 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 God 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 God made, in relation to the other men God 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 worship himself, is in the slime of hell. 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 assumed.

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! The ordinary young man takes it for granted that he and the world are far ahead of “the governor;” the father may have left behind him, as nebulae sinking below the horizon of youth, questions the world is but just waking to put.

The blame, however, may lie in part at the parent’s door. The hearts of the fathers need turning to the children, as much as the hearts of the children need turning to the fathers. Few men open up to their children; and where a man does not, the schism, the separation begins with him, for all his love be deep and true. That it is unmanly to show one’s feelings, is a superstition prevalent with all English-speaking people. Now, wherever feeling means weakness, falsehood, or excitement, it ought not merely not be shown, but not to exist; but for a man to hide from his son his loving and his loathing, is to refuse him the divinest fashion of teaching. Richard read the best things, and loved best the best writers: never once had he read a poem with his son, or talked to him about any poet! If Walter had even suspected his father’s insight into certain things, he would have loved him more. Closely bound as they were, neither knew the other. Each would have been astonished at what he might have found in the other. The father might have discovered many handles by which to lay hold of his son; the son might have seen the lamp bright in his father’s chamber which he was but trimming in his.

CHAPTER XI. THE SONG

AT length came the summons from Lady Lufa to hear her music to his verses.

It was not much of a song, neither did he think it was.

Mist and vapor and cloud
Filled the earth and the air!
My heart was wrapt in a shroud.
And death was everywhere.

The sun went silently down
To his rest in the unseen wave;
But my heart, in its purple and crown.
Lay already in its grave.

For a cloud had darkened the brow
Of the lady who is my queen;