For he was young, and though his parents saw what had come upon him, he himself saw not.
So Nicanor had his supper, of black bean-porridge, taking no thought of those parents' loving thought for him; and later climbed the ladder to the loft where he slept. After a while, Susanna, yearning over her boy in this, the first dim hour of his awakening,—yearning all the more since she saw that he was following blindly the workings of his own appointed fate, without any sense or knowledge of it himself,—went up the ladder also and sat beside him, thinking him asleep. But Nicanor put out a hand and slid it into hers, and shuffled in his straw until he was close against her. She gathered him into her arms, his shaggy head upon her breast, and rocked him to and fro in the darkness. To-morrow he would go where this fate of his called him; but this last night he must be hers, all hers, who had borne him only to give him up. Nicanor, stupid with sleep and comfort, murmured drowsily, and she bent close over him to listen.
"Mother, three nights ago my father spoke of Melchior, and the name hath lingered in my head. Who was he? What was he?"
"Thy father's father's sire," she told him. She saw it coming; the chains which bound his heart to hers were stretching. "He was a teller of tales, son, and—thy father thinks a fold of his mantle hath fallen upon thee. He it was who was first servus in the family of our lord. Little one, tell mother; what thoughts hast thou when the night comes down and the wide earth hushes into drowsy crooning? Hast ever felt dreams stirring at thy heart-strings like chords of faintest music?"
"Mother!" Nicanor cried, and tightened his arms about her. "Thou hast it—the words—the words! Tell me how to do it! Thoughts I have, and visions so far away that they are gone before I know them—but the words! I cannot say the things I would, so that they ring. Teach it me, then!"
Susanna laughed, and stroked her boy's hot head.
"Words I have, little son," she said softly, "but I have no tune to sing them to. A woman hath but one tune, and that is ever in the same key. One song, and one only, in her life she hath, and when that is ended, she is dumb. But please the good God! thou'lt have what lies behind the words and alone makes them of value; the thought which is the foundation-stone to build upon. And then the words will come also. What visions hast thou seen, sonling?"
"Mother, I cannot tell, for my mouth is empty though my head rings. Always it begins as though a curtain of mist were swept rolling back from the face of the world, and I see below me vague mountains and broad lonely wastes, and gray cities sleeping in dead moonlight, for it is ever night. I see clouds that reach away to the rim of the earth, and it is all as in a dream, and—and so deep within me that I lose it before I know it.—Oh, I cannot tell!"
He stirred restlessly and nestled his head deeper into her breast, and she stroked his hair in silence. When he spoke again there was a new note in his boy's voice.
"Mother, I too will be a teller of tales, even as was that sire of my father's sire whose name was Melchior. For in that there is to me all joy, and no pain nor sorrow at all. And I shall be great, greater than he and greater than those who shall come after me."