"After that I see no reason why I should not follow along the same lines. I shall be on the high road to build up a career for myself, and I have a feeling that I shall eventually branch off into journalism, where all the knowledge and experience I shall have gained will be of use to me."
"Tell me, Morgan," said Archibald. "Have you abandoned your first ambition entirely?"
Morgan leaned forward towards the fire and rested his head on his hands. For a moment he seemed lost in meditation, and then at last spoke slowly.
"There are times," he said, "when poetry still beats in my blood, when melody comes to me hauntingly. Often, as I sit here brooding, there surges up a full flood of I know not what, save that it is exquisitely beautiful. And, as I walk through these long, grey streets, lined with flaring market-stalls and massed thick with people, I seem to feel a great throb, a living heart-beat, that speaks to me of humanity; and what these bustling streets hold of humanness, of the warmth and energy of life, comes to me like a flowing tide. The pain, too, I feel; for there are odd, pathetic episodes. One catches sight of faces pinched, starved, unrebellious, large-eyed children of six a-marketing shrewdly with slender purses; and now and then a figure detaches itself from the crowd and speaks a whole history. If there is much pain and privation, much foulness and wickedness, there is also much of the joy of life, of the ecstacy of overflowing animal spirits. There are plague-spots, there are besotted critical jeerers at the wayside with an aggressive sense of superiority to all unlike themselves; there are half-grown lads and girls boisterously foul-mouthed. But probe beneath the large, vigorous unrestraint, the rollicking vagabondage of the streets, and you will find the far-spread, steady—if colourless—respectability of the industrial family. And at moments something grand, rugged, and passionate, a roaring harmonic discord, seems to sweep though the reeking grime, through the swarming boisterousness, through the magnificent brutality, through the utterance of putrid tongues, through the grey, lamp-lit atmospheres, as though man and his activities were but the swirled symbols of a music played in high Heaven. And as I stand listening, terrified yet thrilled, there seems to come a sudden lull; and then I perceive a goodness showing through the rough-and-readiness, sometimes blurred in the individual lives, sometimes inspired to a full glow. Often its leaps and flickerings are irregular, inconsistent, unpredictable. In the ruffian the spark is scarcely alive, but in some rare moment it will quicken and show through tremblingly.
"And all these perceptions to which I was blind before have wrought their effect on me. They have fused into and strengthened the better part of me. They make poetry in me, not such as I once wrote, but a full-blooded, living poetry. You see, father, I have drawn inspiration from all this reality. I have felt the true spirit of the universe in this dense-packed encampment on the march of civilisation, this living pattern in Time's kaleidoscope; the same spirit that lies behind the green country and the sweet airs, behind a great idea, a noble deed, a gracious woman.
"And so I feel that I am fortified enough to defy all external sordidness. The soiled lime-washed walls, the heavy grind of machinery, and the tinged breath of the printing-house I am insensible to; and with this result I am satisfied. I will not take up my harp wherewith to gather harmonies from amid the discords of things, as I feel it is in me to do. If such dream comes to me at times I know it must remain a dream, for I must continue with my shoulder to the wheel and do my full share of human labour!"
He broke off. An almost sacred stillness followed his half-mused speech, to which Archibald had listened with bent head.
"Will you forgive me, dear Morgan, if I remind you of something?" said the old man, breaking the long silence. "I feel you are the best judge of your own life, and I do not mean to say a word that should make you imagine I am trying to interfere with you. I only want to ask you not to forget that we at home have claims upon you as well. We want to have you near us a little, too. Your mother has been fretting about you of late."
"My mother!" said Morgan. "Is she aware of my existence? She never cared about me."
"But she cares about you now. Won't you come home to us when you are through this—in three years' time, say?" pleaded the old man. "Your end will have been achieved, you will feel sure of yourself by then. And, to tell the truth, Morgan, I've set my heart on—your being a great poet."