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قراءة كتاب Port Argent A Novel

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‏اللغة: English
Port Argent
A Novel

Port Argent A Novel

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 7

Arcadian age are of all creatures most capable of receiving. She called him her "graduate course," and he replied gallantly by calling her his "postponed education." He had had his happy surprise as well. It was an especial, an unexpected reward for the efforts Champ-ney had made—not altogether painless—to realise the lapse of old conditions, and to pick up threads of interest in the new,—that his efforts had brought him to these relations with Camilla; so that the two were able to sit together of a morning, and talk friendly and long, without patronage or impatience.

To realise the lapse of old conditions, to realise that he was obsolete, that his effective days were over! It was a hard matter. Hard, but an old story now, this struggle to realise this change. The books on his shelves had grown to seem passive and lifeless, since they no longer had connection through himself with the stir of existence.

The Websterian periods had taken on a ghostly echo, and the slow ebbing of the war issues had left him with a sense of being stranded on dry sands. There seemed to be a flatness everywhere,—a silence, except for the noisy rattle of the street.

It is a pleasant saying, that "The evening of life comes bringing its own lamp," but it seemed to him it was a drearily false one. The great men of a great time, he thought, were gone, or fast going. It was a stagnation period in his life, pictured in his mind afterward as an actual desert, dividing arable lands. Were the new men so small, so unuplifted, or was it only his own mind grown dry and nerveless? He was afraid it was the latter,—afraid life was dying away, or drying up in his still comfortable body.

He would prove to himself that it was not.

This was the beginning of the effort he had made,—a defiant, half-desperate rally. The struggle began at a definite date. One day he put away his old books. He bought new ones, and new periodicals, and determined to find the world still alive,—to find again that old sense of the importance of things that were going on. It was an intimate fight this time, unapplauded—against a shadow, a creeping numbness. He fought on, and at length had almost begun to lose hope.

When Camilla came back from college and Eastern friends she dawned upon him in a series of minute surprises. She brought him his victory, and the lamp for his evening. So it came about. The struggle was over, and the longed-for hope and cheer came back to him.

So it came that the relation between them was peculiar. New books had a meaning when Camilla read them to him, as she read from Alcott Aidee's book to-day, while the noise of the freight-yards, and the rattle of the travelling crane unloading a docked ship, sounded dull and distant. The sunlight came yellow and pleasant through tall windows, and the fire snapped briskly, and Alcott Aidee spoke through the medium of Camilla and the grey volume, making these singular remarks:

"Incarnation of divinity! Surely you have been unfortunate, if in going to and fro in this world you have nowhere observed any measure of divinity incarnated in a man, apparent in ordering or in obedience, in leading or in following, speaking from lips which said, 'Follow me,' as well as from those which said, 'Thy will, not mine be done,' speaking, for aught I know, as largely in one way as the other. I am not measuring divinity. I am showing you where to look for it. I am trying to persuade you that it does not speak from lips which say 'I am as good as you.'"

New books, ran Champney's thoughts, new men, new times, new waves foaming up the old slant shores. But only as they spoke with Camilla's voice, did they seem to him now to make the numbed cords vibrate again, or comfort his wintry age.

"Isn't it interesting, daddy? If you're going to be frivolous, I shan't read."

Champney was looking at the volume with a grim smile.

"I was thinking that to read only in the middle of the gentleman's book was perhaps not doing him justice. It was perhaps why I did not understand where he began, or where he was going. It seems to be neither old democracy nor new socialism, but more like the divine rights of some kind of aristocracy. Shall we not read the book through in order, my dear? Having become convinced that Mr. Aidee himself contains a measure of this divinity, and having taken him for our leader, shall we not then induce our recalcitrant friend Dick to join us, and in that way induce him to become a politician?"

This was the Champney manner in the stately vein of irony.

"Oh!" Camilla pushed her hand through her hair, a Champney gesture, "Dick was horrid about that."

"Recalcitrant, Hum! Horrid, horridus, bristling, Ha! Not inappropriate to the attitude on that occasion of the said Dick. Not usual for him, I should say. He is like his father, Camilla. A quiet man, but striking, the latter. You don't remember him?"

"Oh, yes! But you see, Dick didn't like it, because Mr. Aidee asked me to help him. But it isn't like him to be fussy. Anyway, I liked it, but Dick didn't. So!" Camilla pushed back her hair, another Champney gesture—the defiant one. "Now, what made him act like hornets?"

"I also took the liberty not to like it, Camilla," with a rumble of thorough bass.

Camilla glanced up, half startled, and put a small warm hand into her father's hand, which was large, bony, and wrinkled. The two hands clasped instinctively hard, as if for assurance that no breach should come between them, no distance over which the old and the young hand could not clasp.

Camilla turned back to Alcott Aidee's book, and read on. Champney found himself now listening in a personal, or what he might have described as a feminine, way; he found himself asking, not what meaning or truth there was in this writer, but asking what meaning it might have toward Camilla, at the Arcadian age when maids are fain of surprises. He thought of Dick Hennion, of the Hennions, father and son. One always wondered at them, their cross-lot logic, their brevities, their instinct as to where the fulcrum of a thing rested. One believed in them without asking reasons—character was a mysterious thing—a certain fibre or quality. Ah! Rick Hennion was dead now, and Henry Champney's fighting days were over. It was good to live, but a weariness to be too old. He thought of Alcott Aidee, of his gifts and temperament, his theory of devotion and divinity—an erratic star, a comet of a man, who had a great church—by the way, it was not a church—a building at least, with a tower full of clamouring bells, and a swarming congregation. It was called "The Seton Avenue Assembly." So Aidee had written this solid volume on—something or other. One could see he was in earnest, but that Camilla should be over-earnest in the wake of his argument seemed a strong objection to the argument. A new man, an able writer—all very interesting—but—— In fact, he might prove resident divinities, or prove perpetual incarnations of the devil, if he chose, but what did the fellow mean by asking Camilla to—— In fact, it was an unwarranted liberty. Champney felt suddenly indignant. Camilla read on, and Champney disliked the doctrine, whatever it was, in a manner defined even by himself as "feminine."

"'Not in vain,' she read, 'have men sought in nature the assurance of its large currents, of its calm and self-control, the knitting up of "the ravelled sleave of care," "the breathing balm of mute insensate things," "the sleep that is among the lonely hills." It has been written,


"Into the woods my Master went

Clean foresprent,


and that "the little grey leaves were kind to him." All these things have I found, and known them. Was it there my Master went? I found the balm, the slumber, and the peace. But I found no inspiration. This, wherever I found it, always spoke with human lips, always looked out of human eyes. The calm of nature is as the calm of the past. Green battlefields lie brooding, because the issue

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