Home Again. George MacDonald
\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.
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