"The doctors tell me that I have three incurable diseases," returned Mr. Floyd, laughing. "Then I took cold the moment I landed in this horrible climate. I perfectly realize the truth of the Psalmist, who declares that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Physicians dote upon me: I am an admirable field of research. Some people have the ill taste to die without any preliminaries, but I shall not give occasion for any painful surprise. Still, I only tell you this that you may make the most of me. Let me hear about yourself, Mary. If you only knew how often I have thought of you shut away here from the world in this wretched country place, nothing near you not utterly foreign to your tastes and your circles of thought!"
My mother's hand stole into mine, and she met my jealous glance and smiled into my face. "Cousin James does not know what good times we have, does he, Floyd?" said she.
"I forgot for one moment your consolations," said Mr. Floyd. "I saw your boy's mates when I came in: one of them has a powerful face: he looks like a youthful Cato."
"That is Jack Holt," I cried. "He is like Cato: he is strong, severe, just. Whatever he says ought to be done we know must be done, even if the heavens fall."
"And the handsome fellow, who is he? Harry Dart? He looks equal to the heroism of all Plutarch's heroes: he has a beautiful, consecrated face. I hope he will live up to what it tells us now."
Glad and proud although I was to see Mr. Floyd, his coming disturbed me a little. Hitherto I had accepted my life unquestioningly. We had been poor ever since my father's death, and my mother's life had become circumscribed and narrowed down to Belfield. It had seemed to me that no other people in the world were just so happy as my mother and myself. What need had we of a larger house, when the one stately mansion that I was familiar with appeared to me a desert, even with all its fairy-land splendors? Jack Holt's father was too rich a man not to allow his wife all the good things which she coveted, and her parlors, halls and bedrooms were irrefragable proof of the enormities which may be committed with an utter want of taste and tens of thousands of dollars. Both Harry and Jack hated the house, and spent every available moment out of school in our comfortable, well-worn nooks inside and out of doors. My mother used to play to us at twilight, and sing sweet ballads which gave us a state of mind full of the blessed misery which youth loves. Then what gay little waltzes used to rattle off from my mother's fingers! She taught us all to dance, and in the winter dusk we would waltz in turn with Georgy Lenox, the two of us who could not have her as a partner circling with our arms about each other's less slender waists. Then the feasts my mother used to cook for us with her own clever hands have made the greatest banquets seem poor since: she had the gift of performing every feminine task better than any other woman in the world. In short, I had lived the life which undoubtedly comes to many a lad who has no father: my mother appeared to have no thought but of me and my happiness, and not one of my dreams of far-reaching happiness but included her. I realized enough of the exquisite worth of her devotion to me never to cross her wishes: an invisible yet insurmountable barrier separated me from any of the grosser faults of boyhood, for she never let me go from her without her kiss, the clasp of her hand, and her saying, "You will be a good boy, Floyd?"
Yes, I had been perfectly happy; and, as I say, it disturbed me to have a doubt suggested that this full, complete existence of mine had not filled my mother's heart as well. Belfield—merely writing the word "Belfield" has a breezy influence over my mind still. Wherever a man has spent his boyhood there linger associations of the cool wind of the hill-top, the sound of the sea audible yet invisible, the hush before a storm, the tumbling of the ice in the river in the spring freshets, the berries that grew on the edge of the wood, the ecstatic thrill of physical strength and delight on the playground where he ran "drinking in the wind of his own speed." But youth is the season not alone of action, but of reverie. Most of our original thinking is done before we are sixteen: after that we acquire so much of other men's experience that our thoughts wear the current stamp. We come into our rich inheritance of the world's accumulated knowledge, and evolve from it the answers to the necessities of our own individual development. As boys we were not cribbed by any exact logic and hard common sense, which must stretch us a little later on a Procrustean bed, and we were free to grow as we would and to stand on the highest level of noble thought and heroic deed. The writers whom we read with avidity were those who ennobled us: in those days youth was the era of a high romanticism, and our authors did not enter the actual world which lay about us, giving us pictures of real life, and with devilish ingenuity teaching us to regard men's actions from the reverse side, and thus detect ignoble traits as the mainspring of human achievement.
More than forty of us went to school together in the stiff white academy which stood on the hill surrounded by a quadrangle of straight poplars. We learned many things there—some from the grim old preceptor, some outside the walls. I had a volume of Plutarch, from which I used to read stories to the boys as we lay on the grassy slopes in the shade, and I often felt a tremor in my voice as I read. It seems to me sometimes that the youth of this day lose some of the grandeur which made our ideals. Our sons read "Oliver Optic" and the magazines, while we used to thrill over the grand words of the men who have ruled the world. Then my mother's teaching was simple, direct and wise, and had become incorporated in every action of my will and impulse of my heart. I was to love and obey my God, never to tell a lie, never to do a mean action, never to be disloyal to a friend nor unfair to a foe. Still, if Harry and I were tolerably good, one of the reasons which acted most powerfully to restrain us from committing faults was our wish to stand well with Jack: he never scolded, never gave advice, but if he were displeased with our conduct we could not eat or sleep. Once Harry committed a trifling error—to call it a wickedness seems a grotesque exaggeration now—and Jack did not like it.
"Of course, Harry," he said coldly, "you can do as you please, but I am disappointed in you."
Harry rushed out of doors, and could not be found all night: he slept on the turf beneath his cousin's window, and the rain drenched him and he took a violent cold.