The Flight of the Shadow | Page 4

they all said as you do, Martha?"
"No doubt the world would come to an end, but it would go out singing,
not crying. I don't see that would matter. There would be enough to

make each other happy in heaven, and the Lord could make more as
they were wanted."
"Uncle says it takes God a long time to make a man!" I ventured to
remark.
Miss Martha was silent for a moment. She did not see how my remark
bore on the matter in hand, but she had such respect for anything my
uncle said, that when she did not grasp it she held her peace.
"Anyhow there's no fear of it for the present!" she answered. "You
heard the screed of banns last Sunday!"
I thought you would have a better idea of Miss Martha Moon from
hearing her talk, than from any talk about her. To hear one talk is better
than to see one. But I would not have you think she often spoke at such
length. She was in truth a woman of few words, never troubled or
troubling with any verbal catarrh. Especially silent she was when any
one she loved was in distress. I have seen her stand moveless for
moments, with a look that was the incarnation of essential
motherhood--as if her eyes were swallowing up sorrow; as if her soul
was ready to be the sacrifice for sin. Then she would turn away with a
droop of the eye-lids that seemed to say she saw what it was, but saw
also how little she could do for it. Oh the depth of the love-trouble in
those eyes of hers!
Martha never set herself to teach me anything, but I could not know
Martha without learning something of the genuine human heart. I
gathered from her by unconscious assimilation. Possibly, a spiritual
action analogous to exosmose and endosmose, takes place between
certain souls.

CHAPTER III
.
MY UNCLE.
Now I must tell you what my uncle was like.
The first thing that struck you about him would have been, how tall and
thin he was. The next thing would have been, how he stooped; and the
next, how sad he looked. It scarcely seemed that Martha Moon had
been able to do much for him. Yet doubtless she had done, and was
doing, more than either he or she knew. He had rather a small head on

the top of his long body; and when he stood straight up, which was not
very often, it seemed so far away, that some one said he took him for
Zacchaeus looking down from the sycomore. I never thought of
analyzing his appearance, never thought of comparing him with any
one else. To me he was the best and most beautiful of men--the first
man in all the world. Nor did I change my mind about him ever--I only
came to want another to think of him as I did.
His features were in fine proportion, though perhaps too delicate.
Perhaps they were a little too small to be properly beautiful. When first
I saw a likeness of the poet Shelley, I called out "My uncle!" and
immediately began to see differences. He wore a small but long
moustache, brushed away from his mouth; and over it his eyes looked
large. They were of a clear gray, and very gentle. I know from the
testimony of others, that I was right in imagining him a really learned
man. That small head of his contained more and better than many a
larger head of greater note. He was constantly reading--that is, when
not thinking, or giving me the lessons which make me now thank him
for half my conscious soul.
Reading or writing or thinking, he made me always welcome to share
his room with him; but he seldom took me out walking. He was by no
means regular in his habits--regarded neither times nor seasons--went
and came like a bird. His hour for going out was unknown to himself,
was seldom two days together the same. He would rise up suddenly,
even in the middle of a lesson--he always called it "a lesson
together"--and without a word walk from the room and the house. I had
soon observed that in gloomy weather he went out often, in the
sunshine seldom.
The house had a large garden, of a very old-fashioned sort, such a place
for the charm of both glory and gloom as I have never seen elsewhere. I
have had other eyes opened within me to deeper beauties than I saw in
that garden then; my remembrance of it is none the less of an enchanted
ground. But my uncle never walked in it. When he walked, it was
always out on the moor