Richard thought of writing to Eleanor, but promptly abandoned the idea of substituting a cool and unresponsive sheet of paper for a glowing cheek. He had inherited none of his Uncle Basil's facility with a pen. He must tell her everything, except that he had had to steal away and that he was received like a returning prodigal, and he must watch her as he talked.
It occurred to him after the first day that his father might have a really good reason for requiring him to stay with his mother. Could she be suffering from some dangerous and treacherous disease and for that reason need constant company? The possibility frightened him and he went at once to find her.
Mary Alcestis sat at the window of her bedroom, her little sewing-table beside her and a sock of Richard's stretched over her hand. Thus placed and thus occupied, she forgot for short periods her misery and with it his. It was difficult at best for her to put herself in the place of one who had experiences alien to her nature. Her large, sweet face now beamed upon her son. Richard, she was sure, would soon see, if he had not seen already, the blessedness of doing that which was exactly right.
"No, darling, I am not sick," said she. "There is nothing whatever the matter with me."
Richard read his mother's mind. She need not think that he was yielding, that he would ever yield—there should be demonstration of that immediately upon his father's return.
He took from his desk-drawer those neat notebooks which his mother admired without knowing their contents and turned from page to page. Here were his first transpositions and here his first exercises. How often he had worked at music when Greek and mathematics were supposed to be his occupation, until transposing had become much easier than reading Greek and until musical phrases stood for distinct ideas. Here were simple compositions, hymns, little tunes, and more elaborate exercises in counterpoint, worked out and agonized over by him and Thomasina, whose knowledge of harmony had been acquired because of his necessities. Here were sketches for greater works—his eyes glowed. Concerto, symphony, opera—his ambition was boundless. Weeks had passed since he had looked into his notebooks and in the meantime he had changed. His long conversation with Faversham, his new emotional experience, made all that he had done thus far seem puerile, undeveloped. He had now so much better plans! He studied his notes, covered sheets of music-paper with sketches, hummed a hundred airs, rewrote, and longed for Eleanor's piano. Faversham had opened undreamed-of vistas, and here he was doing nothing for three precious days which could never be his again!
Once he sat down at the piano. He lifted his long fingers over a great chord and let his hands fall—the result was a combination of tinkling and slightly discordant sounds, dying away with metallic echoes and even with a sharp wooden crack of the old frame. At the very end, he heard a gentle sigh and knew that his mother sat in the study across the hall. He longed at that to bring both hands and arms thumping down upon the yellow keys. It was a Richard far removed from the one who had once preached to the fishes.
Thomasina, to his keen disappointment, did not appear. The necessity for some one to talk to, the discomfort of repression, grew less tolerable. He went for the mail, his mother waiting for him on the porch, not with outspoken intention of staying there until he should return, but with every appearance to his mind of a jailer watching the short exercise of a prisoner. He stopped at Thomasina's door, but found that she was still absent. He met Cora Scott and answered her shortly, saying yes, it was a pleasant day. What he meant was that it was a long and hateful and intolerable day. Here was a heart aching for a word, here a mind which would have welcomed, cherished, and kept inviolate all confidences! Richard knew it and hated the heart upon Cora's sleeve.
That evening, the second of Dr. Lister's absence, black 'Manda sat herself down on the kitchen porch to rest before she went on her way to the cabins, and there she lifted up her voice in "I was a wandering sheep." Richard heard her from the front porch and sprang up from the hammock and went round the house. His clear and steady tenor took the melody from her, lifted it and went on with it, the deep tones of 'Manda proceeding undisturbed.
They sang one stanza, then another and another, 'Manda's "po' lamb" booming out. When they had finished, Mrs. Lister looked for Richard to return. She was almost smiling, the duet recalled so many blessed hours. But Richard did not return. He led off in "Hallelu," then "Swing low, sweet chariot." He sat down with 'Manda and an old-time concert began.