Kenelm Chillingly Part 81

Every word you have said has sunk into the deepest deep of my heart.

Pardon my foolish, purposeless s.n.a.t.c.h of talk to myself: it is but my way, only my way, dear Father!"

"Boy, boy," cried Sir Peter, with tears in his voice, "if you could get out of those odd ways of yours I should be so thankful. But if you cannot, nothing you can do shall grieve me. Only, let me say this; running waters have had a great charm for you. With a humble rill you a.s.sociate thoughts, dreams, memories in your past. But now you halt by the stream of the mighty river: before you the senate of an empire wider than Alexander's; behind you the market of a commerce to which that of Tyre was a pitiful trade. Look farther down, those squalid hovels, how much there to redeem or to remedy; and out of sight, but not very distant, the nation's Walhalla, 'Victory or Westminster Abbey!' The humble rill has witnessed your past. Has the mighty river no effect on your future? The rill keeps no record of your past: shall the river keep no record of your future? Ah, boy, boy, I see you are dreaming still,--no use talking. Let us go home."

"I was not dreaming, I was telling myself that the time had come to replace the old Kenelm with the new ideas, by a new Kenelm with the Ideas of Old. Ah! perhaps we must,--at whatever cost to ourselves,--we must go through the romance of life before we clearly detect what is grand in its realities. I can no longer lament that I stand estranged from the objects and pursuits of my race. I have learned how much I have with them in common. I have known love; I have known sorrow."

Kenelm paused a moment, only a moment, then lifted the head which, during that pause, had drooped, and stood erect at the full height of his stature, startling his father by the change that had pa.s.sed over his face; lip, eye, his whole aspect, eloquent with a resolute enthusiasm, too grave to be the flash of a pa.s.sing moment.

"Ay, ay," he said, "Victory or Westminster Abbey! The world is a battle-field in which the worst wounded are the deserters, stricken as they seek to fly, and hus.h.i.+ng the groans that would betray the secret of their inglorious hiding-place. The pain of wounds received in the thick of the fight is scarcely felt in the joy of service to some honoured cause, and is amply atoned by the reverence for n.o.ble scars. My choice is made. Not that of deserter, that of soldier in the ranks."

"It will not be long before you rise from the ranks, my boy, if you hold fast to the Idea of Old, symbolized in the English battle-cry, 'Victory or Westminster Abbey.'"

So saying, Sir Peter took his son's arm, leaning on it proudly; and so, into the crowded thoroughfares, from the halting-place on the modern bridge that spans the legendary river, pa.s.ses the Man of the Young Generation to fates beyond the verge of the horizon to which the eyes of my generation must limit their wistful gaze.

THE END.