It was a casual remark, “You can think them over,” and at another time, Walter might quickly have forgotten the words. Somehow that day, the words stayed with Walter. They seemed to have roots, and they took hold of Walter’s thoughts, and went deep down into his soul, and there they clung.
“I don’t know what the matter is why I keep thinking of that composition,” he said, later in the day.
“You look sober, Walt,” observed Chauncy.
“Thinking,” replied Walter laughing.
“About that composition—eh? Well, here is one who is not,” and the wise man gave two or three satisfied little chuckles.
“Why should he fancy I was thinking about that composition?” Walter asked himself. “I am, though, and can’t seem to get rid of it.”
He went to his boarding–place, passed directly to his room, and sat down in a chair by the western window. There was an outlook across a stretch of green fields waving with grain, up to a round–topped hill, bushy with vigorous oaks. Over a shoulder of this hill peeped another, but so distant, that a veil of blue haze covered it all day. The stillness of the hour, for it was at twilight, the sun going down behind hangings of crimson along the blue hill, made a quiet in Walter’s breast, and suggested thoughts that in the hurry and noise of the day are not likely to be fostered.
“Oh, that composition, ‘What are we living for?’” thought Walter. “Well, what am I living for?”
Was he living for others? He did trust he was a help to those at home, and yet he had no conscious, definite purpose to give himself for their welfare; and as for those outside, he certainly hoped he had done them no harm, and he ventured to think he might have granted a few favors, but he had not thought in a very special way about anybody except Walter Plympton. He had gone on in a boy’s careless fashion, meaning in a general way to mind his parents and consult their welfare; and to do “about the fair thing by outsiders,” was also his thought. As for that other life which we must all meet, the whole subject to his mind was in a hazy condition like the distant blue hill he was looking at. Once a week, while sitting in St. Mary’s at home, the old rector saying some solemn thing in the pulpit or the choir singing a plaintive tune, he was quite likely to think of another life. The other six days, he was thinking of school, and farmwork, and his duties at home, or play, outside. And as for thoughts about God, they would chase through his mind like the shadows of clouds across a green summer field. They might visit him at family prayers, or on Sunday, in church, or when praying by himself at home; but like the hasty cloud–shadows, such thoughts were soon gone. His general attitude toward all these subjects was that of a thoughtless indifference; and any particular attention he paid now and then was the result of a mere habit of going to church, or the saying of hurried prayers, rather than a direct preference and purpose of his heart.
“I don’t think I am where I ought to be in such matters,” was Walter’s conclusion, and if he had a comfortable satisfaction in himself when he began to think, it had now melted away like a snow–bank in a spring rain.