"That I admit," answered Vavasor, who never did anything original except when he followed his instincts; "but for a mere trial of skill an imitation is admissible—don't you think?"
"Oh, surely," replied Hester; "only it seems to me a waste of time—especially with such a gift as you have of your own!"
"At all events," said Vavasor, hiding his gratification with false humility, "there was no great presumption in a shy at Suckling!"
"There may have been the more waste," returned Hester. "I would sooner imitate Bach or even Handel than Verdi."
Vavasor could stand a good deal of censure if mingled with some praise—which he called appreciation. Of this Hester had given him enough to restore his spirits, and had also suggested a subject on which he found he could talk.
"But," he said, "how can it be worse for me to imitate this or that writer, than for you to play over and over music you could easily excel."
"I never practice music," answered Hester, "not infinitely better than I could write myself. But playing is a different thing altogether from writing. I play as I eat my dinner—because I am hungry. My hunger I could never satisfy with any amount of composition or extemporization of my own. My land would not grow corn enough, or good enough for my necessity. My playing merely corresponds to your reading of your favorite poets—especially if you have the habit of reading aloud like my father."
"They do not seem to me quite parallel," rejoined Vavasor, who had learned that he lost nothing with Hester by opposing her—so long as no moral difference was involved. In questions of right and wrong he always agreed with her so far as he dared expression where he understood so little, and for that very reason, in dread of seeming to have no opinion of his own, made a point of differing from her where he had a safe chance. "One may read both poetry and music at sight, but you would never count such reading of music a reproduction of it. That requires study and labor, as well as genius and an art like those which produce it."
"I am equally sure you can never read anything worth reading," returned Hester, "as it ought to be read, until you understand it at least as well as the poet himself. To do a poem justice, the reader must so have pondered phrase and word as to reproduce meaning and music in all the inextricable play of their lights and shades. I never came near doing the kind of thing I mean with any music till I had first learned it thoroughly by heart. And that too is the only way in which I can get to understand some poetry!"
"But is it not one of the excellences of poetry to be easy?"