maxims which I have in this paper amused myself with
drawing up for your instruction. Write to me
from time to time, and I will, in replying to your
letters, give you the best advice in my power.
For the rest, my dear boy, I have only to request
that you will be frank, and I, in my turn, will promise
that when I cannot assist, I will never reprove.
And now, Clarence, as the hour is late and you leave
us early tomorrow, I will no longer detain you.
God bless you and keep you. You are going to
enjoy life,—I to anticipate death; so that
you can find in me little congenial to yourself; but
as the good Pope said to our Protestant countryman,
’Whatever the difference between us, I know well
that an old man’s blessing is never without
its value.’”
As Clarence clasped his benefactor’s hand, the
tears gushed from his eyes. Is there one being,
stubborn as the rock to misfortune, whom kindness
does not affect? For my part, kindness seems
to me to come with a double grace and tenderness from
the old; it seems in them the hoarded and long purified
benevolence of years; as if it had survived and conquered
the baseness and selfishness of the ordeal it had
passed; as if the winds, which had broken the form,
had swept in vain across the heart, and the frosts
which had chilled the blood and whitened the thin
locks had possessed no power over the warm tide of
the affections. It is the triumph of nature over
art; it is the voice of the angel which is yet within
us. Nor is this all: the tenderness of
age is twice blessed,—blessed in its trophies
over the obduracy of encrusting and withering years,
blessed because it is tinged with the sanctity of
the grave; because it tells us that the heart will
blossom even upon the precincts of the tomb, and flatters
us with the inviolacy and immortality of love.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Cannot
I create,
Cannot I form, cannot I fashion
forth
Another world, another universe?—Keats.
The next morning Clarence, in his way out of town,
directed his carriage (the last and not the least
acceptable present from Talbot) to stop at Warner’s
door. Although it was scarcely sunrise, the aged
grandmother of the artist was stirring, and opened
the door to the early visitor. Clarence passed
her with a brief salutation, hurried up the narrow
stairs, and found himself in the artist’s chamber.
The windows were closed, and the air of the room
was confined and hot. A few books, chiefly of
history and poetry, stood in confused disorder upon
some shelves opposite the window. Upon a table
beneath them lay a flute, once the cherished recreation
of the young painter, but now long neglected and disused;
and, placed exactly opposite to Warner, so that his
eyes might open upon his work, was the high-prized
and already more than half-finished picture.
Copyrights
The Disowned — Volume 03 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
