Little Richard liked also to preach. The audience which he usually selected was, like that of St. Anthony, one of fishes. In imagination he saw before him, from his pulpit on the bank, a decorous congregation and a tuneful choir. His performance, while it shocked his mother, yet gave her hope that he might incline toward the ministry. Her father, for whom he was named, had had theological training and used to preach in the college church. It seemed to her often that she could see in Richard's solemn gestures a resemblance to those of the grave old man.
Richard's discourses suggested no such probability to his father, eavesdropping from behind a convenient tree. They were pleasant to Dr. Lister, who sometimes feared that a boy who was never uproarious, who always remembered to wipe his shoes on the mat, and who never carried toads or mice in his pockets, might be too amiable and good. He wished for a little temper, a little disobedience, a little steel under the satin. When Richard cried out, "Oh, you darned fishes!" in imitation of the ice man whom Mrs. Lister could neither silence nor reform, his father was convulsed.
When Richard grew older and ceased to sing, his mother, while she missed his hymns, was content. Thus had Basil sung when he was a little boy. At Thomasina's suggestion, Richard had begun early to take music lessons from her. Except that he had often to be summoned from the old piano to other duties, and that he often called to his mother to listen to little melodies which he invented or to certain resolutions of chords which pleased him, and which were to her ear like any other musical sounds, he gave no disturbing sign of special interest in music. Sometimes he repeated stories of musicians which Thomasina told him, about Beethoven who was an accomplished player at the age of nine, and who had become deaf when he had scarcely left his youth, and about Handel who had become blind. Richard's face would glow and his eyes shine with tears.
"Could you imagine, mother, how he felt when he knew that he could never hear again? He never heard his greatest works. Think of it, mother, what a fearful thing that would be!"
Mrs. Lister could not imagine it and would not think of it, having but slight conception of the pleasures which harmonious sound can give to the ear of the musician. Thus had Basil called upon her for sympathy in his strange, incomprehensible satisfactions. She wished that Thomasina would not tell Richard such stories.
Richard was always busy. He kept a series of little notebooks, neatly indexed; he cut clippings from newspapers and filed them away; he divided his day into periods for each sort of study, for exercise, and for play.
Soon after he entered college, his voice returned, a clear, serviceable tenor. He led the Glee Club which then took no long journeys round the country, but sang for its own amusement and that of the college, and he played the chapel organ and the assembly room piano. He continued to practice at home, but his practice was chiefly that of dull exercises and unending scales which roused no alarm in his mother's breast, and which his father regarded fearfully as the indication of a rather feeble intellect seeking exercise which involved no mental or physical effort. Richard called out no more with tears, "Oh, mother, did you know that Handel was blind?" cried out no more, "Oh, mother, listen!" in ecstasy over some sound which he had produced, no more, "That is to be played delicatessimente, mother. Isn't that a beautiful word?" Richard's musical passion, at least so it seemed to his mother, had died a natural death. She could not quite understand why he sought the society of Cora Scott so seldom and that of Thomasina for several hours daily—but that was a choice to be thankful for at his age.
In the fall he would have to begin in earnest to prepare for whatever profession he was to follow. So far there had been no family discussion of this matter. Mrs. Lister had not quite given up her hopes that he might become a preacher. Of the other professions open to him, medicine, law, and teaching, she hoped that he would choose teaching. Then they could all stay here, forever.
As a matter of fact—alas, for poor Mrs. Lister!—Richard's plans were made, and of them in their entirety one person knew beside himself. Under Richard's satin there was steel. His life-work had been selected and he meant to begin to-morrow. His Commencement money would buy him a clavier and to it he intended to devote the summer. He could have it in his own room where it would disturb no one and where he could look upon it when he woke and practice upon it when he was supposed to be in bed. He knew that his mother was not fond of music, but his mother would let him have his way, had always let him have his way. He did not realize that thus far his way had been hers. In the fall he would go to study with Faversham in New York, and therefore it was probable that he would be at home no more. Thus lightly does youth arrange for itself. If poor Mary Alcestis could have looked into Richard's mind as he sat beside her at the dinner table when Commencement was over, and could there have read its hopes and plans so alien to her own, her heart would have been nearly broken.