A Lifes Morning | Page 9

not a keen interest in the subject yourself?'
'I try to have.'
Her voice was of singular quality; if she raised it the effect was not
agreeable, owing possibly to its lack of strength, but in low tones, such
as she employed at present, it fell on the ear with a peculiar sweetness,
a natural melody in its modulation.
'The way in which you speak of your father interests me,' said Wilfrid,
leaning his chin upon his hand, and gazing at her freely. 'You seem so
united with him in sympathy.'
She did not turn her eyes to him, but her face gathered brightness.

'In sympathy, yes,' she replied, speaking now with more readiness. 'Our
tastes often differ, but we are always at one in feeling. We have been
companions ever since I can remember.'
'Is your mother living?'
'Yes.'
Something in the tone of the brief affirmative kept Wilfrid from further
questioning.
'I wonder,' he said, 'what you think of the relations existing between
myself and my father. We are excellent friends, don't you think?
Strange--one doesn't think much about such things till some occasion
brings them forward. Whether there is deep sympathy between us, I
couldn't say. Certainly there are many subjects on which I should not
dream of speaking to him unless necessity arose; partly, I suppose, that
is male reserve, and partly English reserve. If novels are to be trusted,
French parents and children speak together with much more freedom;
on the whole that must be better.'
She made no remark.
'My father,' he continued, 'is eminently a man of sense if I reflect on my
boyhood, I see how admirable his treatment of me has always been. I
fancy I must have been at one time rather hard to manage; I know I was
very passionate and stubbornly self-willed. Yet he neither let me have
my own way nor angered me by his opposition. In fact, he made me
respect him. Now that we stand on equal terms, I dare say he has
something of the same feeling towards myself. And So it comes that we
are excellent friends.'
She listened with a scarcely perceptible smile.
'Perhaps this seems to you a curiously dispassionate way of treating
such a subject,' Wilfrid added, with a laugh. 'It illustrates what I meant
in saying I doubted whether there was deep sympathy between us. Your
own feeling for your father is clearly one of devotedness. You would
think no sacrifice of your own wishes too great if he asked it of you.'
'I cannot imagine any sacrifice, which my father could ask, that I
should refuse.'
She spoke with some difficulty, as if she wished to escape the subject.
'Perhaps that is a virtue that your sex helps to explain,' said Wilfrid,
musingly.
'You do not know,' he added, when a bee had hummed between them

for half a minute, 'how constant my regret is that my mother did not
live till I was old enough to make a friend of her. You know that she
was an Italian? There was a sympathy taken out of my life. I believe I
have more of the Italian nature than the English, and I know my
mother's presence would be priceless to me now that I could talk with
her. What unsatisfactory creatures we are as children, so imperfect, so
deficient! It is worse with boys than with girls. Compare, for instance,
the twine with boys often. What coarse, awkward, unruly lumps of
boisterousness youngsters mostly are at that age! I dislike boys, and
more than ever when I remember myself at that stage. What an
insensible, ungrateful, brainless, and heartless brat I was!'
'You must be wrong in one respect,' she returned, watching a large
butterfly. 'You could not have been brainless.'
'Oh, the foundation of tolerable wits was there, no doubt; but it is just
that undeveloped state that irritates me. Suppose I were now ten years
old, and that glorious butterfly before me; should I not leap at it and
stick a pin through it--young savage? Precisely what a Hottentot boy
would do, except that he would be free from the apish folly of
pretending a scientific interest, not really existing. I rejoice to have
lived out of my boyhood; I would not go through it again for anything
short of a thousand years of subsequent maturity.'
She just glanced at him, a light of laughter in her eyes. She was
abandoning herself to the pleasure of hearing him speak.
'That picture of my mother,' he pursued, dropping his voice again, 'does
not do her justice. Even at twelve years old--(she died when I was
twelve)--I could not help seeing and knowing how beautiful she was. I
have thought of her of late more than I ever did; sometimes