Still musing, he wheeled himself into the dining-room and began to set the table for lunch. Through the clicking of the silver, Stephen could hear him say, “His daughter went through the Dark River, singing, but none could understand what she said ... none could understand what she said.”
It sounded like a song to Stephen, although Father was only talking to himself.
When he came out again into the kitchen and began to slice the bacon, he was saying in a loud, strong voice, “So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side! All the trumpets sounded....”
The words rang in Stephen’s ears. He said them over to himself in a murmur as he handled his top absently. “All the twumpets sounded. All the twumpets sounded on the other side.”
After a time he asked, “Father, what’s a twumpet?”
A question from Stephen!
His father turned his head from the frying-pan from which the bacon sent up its thin blue wreaths of smoke. “What’s a trumpet? It’s a great, gleaming brass horn which always, always has been blown where there has been a victory—like this!” He flung up his arm, holding an imaginary trumpet to his lips, “Taranta! Taranta!” He sounded it out ringingly! “That’s the way they sounded when Mr. Valiant crossed the Dark River.”
“Taranta!” murmured Stephen to himself. “And all the twumpets sounded.”
He sat in the sun on the kitchen floor, looking up at his crippled father frying bacon. For both of them the kitchen was ringing with the bright brazen shout of victory.
Men thrive in the Valley of Humiliation.