8
THE ABBOT
He was a still boy—the boy who had first shown us the two cottages on the shore the afternoon his father was ill. You would have thought him without temperament. I often recalled how little he knew about the affairs of prospective tenants that afternoon; and how Penelope rescued me from his silences.... We saw him often, coming down to bathe with another lad during the afternoons throughout that first summer, but drew no nearer to acquaintance. Sometimes as I rode to town for mail in the evening I would see him watching me from his walk or porch; and the sense that his regard was somehow different, I believe, did impress me vaguely. It all happened in a leisurely sort of ordained fashion. I remember his "hello," cheerful but contained, as I would ride by. He was always still as a gull, and seemed natural with the dusk upon him.... One day his father said to me:
"I have to buy everything you write for him."
"Well, well," said I.
I had not looked for market in the little town, and The Abbot was only fourteen. (One of the older boys christened him The Abbot afterward, because he seemed so freshly come from monastic training.) ... Finally I heard he was interested in the stars and owned a telescope. I called him over to the Study one day, and we talked star-stuff. He had done all that I had and more. It appears that in his Sunday School paper when he was seven or eight, there had been an astronomical clipping of some sort that awakened him. He had it read to him several times, but his own reading picked up at that time with an extraordinary leap, as any study does under driving interest. Presently he was out after the star books on his own hook. He suggested bringing his telescope to the Study, and that night I got my first look at the ineffable isolation of Saturn. It was like some magnetic hand upon my breast. I could not speak. Every time I shut my eyes afterward I saw that bright gold jewel afar in the dark. We talked.... Presently I heard that he hated school, but this did not come from him. The fact is, I heard little or nothing from him.
This generation behind us—at least, the few I have met and loved—is not made up of explainers. They let you find out. They seem able to wait. It is most convincing, to have events clean up a fact which you misunderstood; to have your doubts moved aside, not by words, nor any glibness, but leisurely afterward by the landmarks of solid matter. He did not come to the Study unless called for. The little girl brought in word from him from time to time, and the little girl's mother, and the boy's father—a very worthy man. I heard again that he was not doing well in school. I knew he was significant, very much so, having met the real boy on star-matters. I knew that the trouble was they were making him look down at school, when he wanted to look up. His parents came over to dinner one day, and I said: