"The other had a long time to wait; but it did grow one of the loveliest roses ever seen. And at last it had the highest honour ever granted to a flower: two lovers smelled it together, and were content with it."Harry was silent, and so was Hugh; for he could not understand himself quite. He felt, all the time he was speaking, is if he were listening to David, instead of talking himself. The fact was, he was only expanding, in an imaginative soil, the living seed which David had cast into it. There seemed to himself to be more in his parable than he had any right to invent. But is it not so with all stories that are rightly rooted in the human?
"What a delightful story, Mr. Sutherland!" said Harry, at last.
"Euphra tells me stories sometimes; but I don't think I ever heard one I liked so much. I wish we were meant to grow into something, like the flower-seeds.""So we are, Harry."
"Are we indeed? How delightful it would be to think that I am only a seed, Mr. Sutherland! Do you think I might think so?""Yes, I do."
"Then, please, let me begin to learn something directly. I haven't had anything disagreeable to do since you came; and I don't feel as if that was right."Poor Harry, like so many thousands of good people, had not yet learned that God is not a hard task-master.
"I don't intend that you should have anything disagreeable to do, if I can help it. We must do such things when they come to us; but we must not make them for ourselves, or for each other.""Then I'm not to learn any more Latin, am I?" said Harry, in a doubtful kind of tone, as if there were after all a little pleasure in doing what he did not like.
"Is Latin so disagreeable, Harry?"
"Yes; it is rule after rule, that has nothing in it I care for. How can anybody care for Latin? But I am quite ready to begin, if I am only a seed--really, you know.""Not yet, Harry. Indeed, we shall not begin again--I won't let you--till you ask me with your whole heart, to let you learn Latin.""I am afraid that will be a long time, and Euphra will not like it.""I will talk to her about it. But perhaps it will not be so long as you think. Now, don't mention Latin to me again, till you are ready to ask me, heartily, to teach you. And don't give yourself any trouble about it either. You never can make yourself like anything."Harry was silent. They returned to the house, through the pouring rain; Harry, as usual, mounted on his big brother.
As they crossed the hall, Mr. Arnold came in. He looked surprised and annoyed. Hugh set Harry down, who ran upstairs to get dressed for dinner; while he himself half-stopped, and turned towards Mr. Arnold. But Mr. Arnold did not speak, and so Hugh followed Harry.
Hugh spent all that evening, after Harry had gone to bed, in correcting his impressions of some of the chief stories of early Roman history; of which stories he intended commencing a little course to Harry the next day.
Meantime there was very little intercourse between Hugh and Euphra, whose surname, somehow or other, Hugh had never inquired after. He disliked asking questions about people to an uncommon degree, and so preferred waiting for a natural revelation. Her later behaviour had repelled him, impressing him with the notion that she was proud, and that she had made up her mind, notwithstanding her apparent frankness at first, to keep him at a distance. That she was fitful, too, and incapable of showing much tenderness even to poor Harry, he had already concluded in his private judgment-hall. Nor could he doubt that, whether from wrong theories, incapacity, or culpable indifference, she must have taken very bad measures indeed with her young pupil.
The next day resembled the two former; with this difference, that the rain fell in torrents. Seated in their strawy bower, they cared for no rain. They were safe from the whole world, and all the tempers of nature.
Then Hugh told Harry about the slow beginnings and the mighty birth of the great Roman people. He told him tales of their battles and conquests; their strifes at home, and their wars abroad. He told him stories of their grand men, great with the individuality of their nation and their own. He told him their characters, their peculiar opinions and grounds of action, and the results of their various schemes for their various ends. He told him about their love to their country, about their poetry and their religion; their courage, and their hardihood; their architecture, their clothes, and their armour; their customs and their laws; but all in such language, or mostly in such language, as one boy might use in telling another of the same age; for Hugh possessed the gift of a general simplicity of thought, one of the most valuable a man can have. It cost him a good deal of labour (well-repaid in itself, not to speak of the evident delight of Harry), to make himself perfectly competent for this; but he had a good foundation of knowledge to work upon.
This went on for a long time after the period to which I am now more immediately confined. Every time they stopped to rest from their rambles or games--as often, in fact, as they sat down alone, Harry's constant request was:
"Now, Mr. Sutherland, mightn't we have something more about the Romans?"And Mr. Sutherland gave him something more. But all this time he never uttered the word--Latin.