|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 53
A week later the boy left his childhood by the side of his mother's
grave. His history for the next seven years may go in a few lines.
School days, vacations, the four years at college, outwardly the
commonplace of an even and prosperous development, inwardly the infinite
variety of experience by which each soul is a person; the result of the
two so wholesome a product of young manhood that no one realized under
the frank and open manner a deep reticence, an intensity, a
sensitiveness to impressions, a tendency toward mysticism which made the
fibre of his being as delicate as it was strong.
Suddenly, in a turn of the wheel, all the externals of his life changed.
His rich father died penniless and he found himself on his own hands,
and within a month the boy who had owned five polo ponies was a
hard-working reporter on a great daily. The same quick-wittedness and
energy which had made him a good polo player made him a good reporter.
Promotion came fast and, as those who are busiest have most time to
spare, he fell to writing stories. When the editor of a large magazine
took one, Philip first lost respect for that dignified person, then felt
ashamed to have imposed on him, then rejoiced utterly over the check.
After that editors fell into the habit; the people he ran against knew
about his books; the checks grew better reading all the time; a point
came where it was more profitable to stay at home and imagine events
than to go out and report them. He had been too busy as the days
marched, to generalize, but suddenly he knew that he was a successful
writer; that if he kept his head and worked, a future was before him. So
he soberly put his own English by the side of that of a master or two
from his book-shelves, to keep his perspective clear, and then he worked
harder. And it came to be five years after his father's death.
At the end of those years three things happened at once. The young man
suddenly was very tired and knew that he needed the vacation he had gone
without; a check came in large enough to make a vacation easy--and he
had his old dream. His fagged brain had found it but another worry to
decide where he should go to rest, but the dream settled the vexed
question off-hand--he would go to Kentucky. The very thought of it
brought rest to him, for like a memory of childhood, like a bit of his
own soul, he knew the country--the "God's Country" of its people--which
he had never seen. He caught his breath as he thought of warm, sweet air
that held no hurry or nerve strain; of lingering sunny days whose hours
are longer than in other places; of the soft speech, the serene and
kindly ways of the people; of the royal welcome waiting for him as for
every one, heartfelt and heart-warming; he knew it all from a daughter
of Kentucky--his mother. It was May now, and he remembered she had told
him that the land was filled with roses at the end of May--he would go
then. He owned the old place, Fairfield, and he had never seen it.
Perhaps it had fallen to pieces; perhaps his mother had painted it in
colors too bright; but it was his, the bit of the earth that belonged to
him. The Anglo-Saxon joy of land-owning stirred for the first time
within him--he would go to his own place. Buoyant with the new thought
he sat down and wrote a letter. A cousin of the family, of a younger
branch, a certain John Fairfield, lived yet upon the land. Not in the
great house, for that had been closed many years, but in a small house
almost as old, called Westerly. Philip had corresponded with him once or
twice about affairs of the estate, and each letter of the older man's
had brought a simple and urgent invitation to come South and visit him.
So, pleased as a child with the plan, he wrote that he was coming on a
certain Thursday, late in May. The letter sent, he went about in a dream
of the South, and when its answer, delighted and hospitable, came
simultaneously with one of those bleak and windy turns of weather which
make New York, even in May, a marvellously fitting place to leave, he
could not wait. Almost a week ahead of his time he packed his bag and
took the Southwestern Limited, and on a bright Sunday morning he awoke
in the old Phoenix Hotel in Lexington. He had arrived too late the night
before to make the fifteen miles to Fairfield, but he had looked over
the horses in the livery-stable and chosen the one he wanted, for he
meant to go on horseback, as a Southern gentleman should, to his domain.
That he meant to go alone, that no one, not even John Fairfield, knew of
his coming, was not the least of his satisfactions, for the sight of the
place of his forefathers, so long neglected, was becoming suddenly a
sacred thing to him. The old house and its young owner should meet each
other like sweethearts, with no eyes to watch their greeting, their slow
and sweet acquainting; with no living voices to drown the sound of the
ghostly voices that must greet his home-coming from those walls--voices
of his people who had lived there, voices gone long since into eternal
silence.
A little crowd of loungers stared with frank admiration at the young
fellow who came out smiling from the door of the Phoenix Hotel, big and
handsome in his riding clothes, his eyes taking in the details of
girths and bits and straps with the keenness of a horseman.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|