The evening came. The setting sun stretched his celestial rods of light across the level landscape, and, like the Hebrew in Egypt, smote the rivers and the brooks and the ponds, and they became as blood.
Mr. Churchill turned his steps homeward. He climbed the hill with the old windmill on its summit, and below him saw the lights of the village; and around him the great landscape sinking deeper and deeper into the sea of darkness. He passed an orchard. The air was filled with the odor of the fallen fruit, which seemed to him as sweet as the fragrance of the blossoms in June. A few steps farther brought him to an old and neglected church-yard; and he paused a moment to look at the white gleaming stone, under which slumberedthe old clergyman, who came into the village in the time of the Indian wars, and on which was recorded that for half a century he had been “a painful preacher of the word.” He entered the village street, and interchanged a few words with Mr. Pendexter, the venerable divine, whom he found standing at his gate. He met, also, an ill-looking man, carrying so many old boots that he seemed literally buried in them; and at intervals encountered a stream of strong tobacco smoke, exhaled from the pipe of an Irish laborer, and pervading the damp evening air. At length he reached his own door.
II.
When Mr. Churchill entered his study, he found the lamp lighted, and his wife waiting for him. The wood fire was singing on the hearth like a grasshopper in the heat and silence of a Summer noon; and to his heart the chill autumnal evening became a Summer noon. His wife turned towards him with looks of love in her joyous blue eyes; and in the serene expression of her face he read the Divine beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart.”
No sooner had he seated himself by the fireside than the door was swung wide open, and on the threshold stood, with his legs apart, like a miniature colossus, a lovely, golden boy, about three years old, with long, light locks, and very red cheeks. After a moment’s pause, he dashed forward into the room with a shout, and establishedhimself in a large arm-chair, which he converted into a carrier’s wagon, and over the back of which he urged forward his imaginary horses. He was followed by Lucy, the maid of all work, bearing in her arms the baby, with large, round eyes, and no hair. In his mouth he held an India rubber ring, and looked very much like a street-door knocker. He came down to say good night, but after he got down, could not say it; not being able to say any thing but a kind of explosive “Papa!” He was then a good deal kissed and tormented in various ways, and finally sent off to bed blowing little bubbles with his mouth, — Lucy blessing his little heart, and asseverating that nobody could feed him in the night without loving him; and that if the flies bit him any more she would pull out every tooth in their heads!
Then came Master Alfred’s hour of triumph and sovereign sway. The fire-light gleamed on his hard, red cheeks, and glanced from his liquid eyes, and small, white teeth. He piled his wagon full of books and papers, and dashed off to town at the top of his speed; he delivered and received parcels and letters, and played the postboy’s horn with his lips. Then he climbed the back of the great chair, sang “Sweep ho!” asfrom the top of a very high chimney, and, sliding down upon the cushion, pretended to fall asleep in a little white bed, with white curtains; from which imaginary slumber his father awoke him by crying in his ear, in mysterious tones, —
“What little boy is this!”
Finally he sat down in his chair at his mother’s knee, and listened very attentively, and for the hundredth time, to the story of the dog Jumper, which was no sooner ended, than vociferously called for again and again. On the fifth repetition, it was cut as short as the dog’s tail by Lucy, who, having put the baby to bed, now came for Master Alfred. He seemed to hope he had been forgotten, but was nevertheless marched off to bed, without any particular regard to his feelings, and disappeared in a kind of abstracted mood, repeating softly to himself his father’s words, —
“Good night, Alfred!”
His father looked fondly after him as he went up stairs, holding Lucy by one hand, and with the other rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Ah! these children, these children!” said Mr. Churchill, as he sat down at the tea-table; “We ought to love them very much now, for we shall not have them long with us!”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed his wife, “what do you mean? Does any thing ail them? Are they going to die?”
“I hope not. But they are going to grow up, and be no longer children.”
“O, you foolish man! You gave me such a fright!”
“And yet it seems impossible that they should ever grow to be men, and drag the heavy artillery along the dusty roads of life.”
“And I hope they never will. That is the last thing I want either of them to do.”
“O, I do not mean literally, only figuratively. By the way, speaking of growing up and growing old, I saw Mr. Pendexter this evening, as I came home.”
“And what had he to say?”
“He told me he should preach his farewell sermon to-morrow.”
“Poor old man! I really pity him.”
“So do I. But it must be confessed he is a dull preacher; and I dare say it is as dull work for him as for his hearers.”
“Why are they going to send him away?”
“O, there are a great many reasons. He does not give time and attention enough to hissermons and to his parish. He is always at work on his farm; always wants his salary raised; and insists upon his right to pasture his horse in the parish fields.”
“Hark!” cried his wife, lifting up her face in a listening attitude.
“What is the matter?”
“I thought I heard the baby!”
There was a short silence. Then Mr. Churchill said, —
“It was only the cat in the cellar.”
At this moment Lucy came in. She hesitated a little, and then, in a submissive voice, asked leave to go down to the village to buy some ribbon for her bonnet. Lucy was a girl of fifteen, who had been taken a few years before from an Orphan Asylum. Her dark eyes had a gypsy look, and she wore her brown hair twisted round her head after the manner of some of Murillo’s girls. She had Milesian blood in her veins, and was impetuous and impatient of contradiction.
When she had left the room, the school-master resumed the conversation by saying, —
“I do not like Lucy’s going out so much in the evening. I am afraid she will get into trouble. She is really very pretty.”
Then there was another pause, after which he added, —
“My dear wife, one thing puzzles me exceedingly.”
“And what is that?”
“It is to know what that man does with all the old boots he picks up about the village. I met him again this evening. He seemed to have as many feet as Briareus had hands. He is a kind of centipede.”
“But what has that to do with Lucy?”
“Nothing. It only occurred to me at the moment; and I never can imagine what he does with so many old boots.”
III.
When tea was over, Mr. Churchill walked to and fro in his study, as his custom was. And as he walked, he gazed with secret rapture at the books, which lined the walls, and thought how many bleeding hearts and aching heads had found consolation for themselves and imparted it to others, by writing those pages. The books seemed to him almost as living beings, so instinct were they with human thoughts and sympathies. It was as if the authors themselves were gazing at him from the walls, with countenances neither sorrowful nor glad, but full of calm indifference to fate, like those of the poets who appeared to Dante in his vision, walking together on the dolorous shore. And then he dreamed of fame, and thought that perhaps hereafter he might be in some degree, and to some one, what these menwere to him; and in the enthusiasm of the moment he exclaimed aloud, —
“Would you have me be like these, dear Mary?”
“Like these what?” asked his wife, not comprehending him.
“Like these great and good men, — like these scholars and poets, — the authors of all these
books!”
She pressed his hand and said, in a soft, but excited tone, —
“O, yes! Like them, only perhaps better!”
“Then I will write a Romance!”
“Write it!” said his wife, like the angel. For she believed that then he would become famous for ever; and that all the vexed and busy world would stand still to hear him blow his little trumpet, whose sound was to rend the adamantine walls of time, and reach the ears of a far-off and startled posterity.
IV.
“I was thinking to-day,” said Mr. Churchill a few minutes afterwards, as he took some papers from a drawer scented with a quince, and arranged them on the study table, while his wife as usual seated herself opposite to him with her work in her hand,— “I was thinking to-day how dull and prosaic the study of mathematics is made in our school-books; as if the grand science of numbers had been discovered and perfected merely to further the purposes of trade.”
“For my part,” answered his wife, “I do not see how you can make mathematics poetical. There is no poetry in them.”
“Ah, that is a very great mistake! There is something divine in the science of numbers. Like God, it holds the sea in the hollow of its hand. It measures the earth; it weighs the stars;it illumines the universe; it is law, it is order, it is beauty. And yet we imagine — that is, most of us — that its highest end and culminating point is book-keeping by double entry. It is our way of teaching it that makes it so prosaic.”
So saying, he arose, and went to one of his book-cases, from the shelf of which he took down a little old quarto volume, and laid it upon the table.
“Now here,” he continued, “is a book of mathematics of quite a different stamp from ours.”
“It looks very old. What is it?”
“It is the Lilawati of Bhascara Acharya, translated from the Sanscrit.”
“It is a pretty name. Pray what does it mean?”
“Lilawati was the name of Bhascara’s daughter; and the book was written to perpetuate it. Here is an account of the whole matter.”
He then opened the volume, and read as follows: —
“It is said that the composing of Lilawati was occasioned by the following circumstance. Lilawati was the name of the author’s daughter, concerning whom it appeared, from the qualities of the Ascendant at her birth, that she was destinedto pass her life unmarried, and to remain without children. The father ascertained a lucky hour for contracting her in marriage, that she might be firmly connected, and have children. It is said that, when that hour approached, he brought his daughter and his intended son near him. He left the hour-cup on the vessel of water, and kept in attendance a time-knowing astrologer, in order that, when the cup should subside in the water, those two precious jewels should be united. But as the intended arrangement was not according to destiny, it happened that the girl, from a curiosity natural to children, looked into the cup to observe the water coming in at the hole; when by chance a pearl separated from her bridal dress, fell into the cup, and, rolling down to the hole, stopped the influx of the water. So the astrologer waited in expectation of the promised hour. When the operation of the cup had thus been delayed beyond all moderate time, the father was in consternation, and examining, he found that a small pearl had stopped the course of the water, and the long-expected hour was passed. In short, the father, thus disappointed, said to his unfortunate daughter, I will write a book of your name, which shall remain to the latest times, — for a good name isa second life, and the groundwork of eternal existence.”
As the school-master read, the eyes of his wife dilated and grew tender, and she said, —
“What a beautiful story! When did it happen?”
“Seven hundred years ago, among the Hindoos.”
“Why not write a poem about it?”
“Because it is already a poem of itself, — one of those things, of which the simplest statement is the best, and which lose by embellishment. The old Hindoo legend, brown with age, would not please me so well if decked in gay colors, and hung round with the tinkling bells of rhyme. Now hear how the book begins.”
Again he read; —
“Salutation to the elephant-headed Being who infuses joy into the minds of his worshippers, who delivers from every difficulty those that call upon him, and whose feet are reverenced by the gods! — Reverence to Ganesa, who is beautiful as the pure purple lotos, and around whose neck the black curling snake winds itself in playful folds!”
“That sounds rather mystical,” said his wife.
“Yes, the book begins with a salutation to the Hindoo deities, as the old Spanish Chronicles begin in the name of God, and the Holy Virgin. And now see how poetical some of the examples are.”
He then turned over the leaves slowly and read, —
“One-third of a collection of beautiful waterlilies is offered to Mahadev, one-fifth to Huri, one-sixth to the Sun, one-fourth to Devi, and six which remain are presented to the spiritual teacher. Required the whole number of water-lilies.”
“That is very pretty,” said the wife, “and would put it into the boy’s heads to bring you pond-lilies.”
“Here is a prettier one still. One-fifth of a hive of bees flew to the Kadamba flower; one-third flew to the Silandhara; three times the difference of these two numbers flew to an arbor; and one bee continued flying about, attracted on each side by the fragrant Ketaki and the Malati. What was the number of the bees?”
“I am sure I should never be able to tell.”
“Ten times the square root of a flock of geese—”
Here Mrs. Churchill laughed aloud; but he continued very gravely, —
“Ten times the square root of a flock of geese, seeing the clouds collect, flew to the Manus lake; one-eighth of the whole flew from the edge of the water amongst a multitude of water-lilies; and three couple were observed playing in the water. Tell me, my young girl with beautiful locks, what was the whole number of geese?”
“Well, what was it?”
“What should you think?”
“About twenty.”
“No, one hundred and forty-four. Now try another. The square root of half a number of bees, and also eight-ninths of the whole, alighted on the jasmines, and a female bee buzzed responsive to the hum of the male inclosed at night in a water-lily. O, beautiful damsel, tell me the number of bees.”
“That is not there. You made it.”
“No, indeed I did not. I wish I had made it. Look and see.”
He showed her the book, and she read it herself. He then proposed some of the geometrical questions.
“In a lake the bud of a water-lily was observed, one span above the water, and whenmoved by the gentle breeze, it sunk in the water at two cubits’ distance. Required the depth of the water.”
“That is charming, but must be very difficult. I could not answer it.”
“A tree one hundred cubits high is distant from a well two hundred cubits; from this tree one monkey descends and goes to the well; another monkey takes a leap upwards, and then descends by the hypothenuse; and both pass over an equal space. Required the height of the leap.”
“I do not believe you can answer that question yourself, without looking into the book,” said the laughing wife, laying her hand over the solution. “Try it.”
“With great pleasure, my dear child,” cried the confident school-master, taking a pencil and paper. After making a few figures and calculations, he answered, —
“There, my young girl with beautiful locks, there is the answer, — forty cubits.”
His wife removed her hand from the book, and then, clapping both in triumph, she exclaimed, —
“No, you are wrong, you are wrong, my beautiful youth with a bee in your bonnet. It is fifty cubits!”
“Then I must have made some mistake.”
“Of course you did. Your monkey did not jump high enough.”
She signalized his mortifying defeat as if it had been a victory, by showering kisses, like roses, upon his
forehead and cheeks, as he passed beneath the triumphal arch-way of her arms, trying in vain to articulate, —
“My dearest Lilawati, what is the whole number of the geese?”
V.
After extricating himself from this pleasing dilemma, he said, —
“But I am now going to write. I must really begin in sober earnest, or I shall never get any thing finished. And you know I have so many things to do, so many books to write, that really I do not know where to begin. I think I will take up the Romance first.”
“It will not make much difference, if you only begin!”
“That is true. I will not lose a moment.”
“Did you answer Mr. Cartwright’s letter about the cottage bedstead?”
“Dear me, no! I forgot it entirely. That must be done first, or he will make it all wrong.”
“And the young lady who sent you the poetry to look over and criticize?”
“No; I have not had a single moment’s leisure. And there is Mr. Hanson, who wants to know about the cooking-range. Confound it! there is always something interfering with my Romance. However, I will despatch those matters very speedily.”
And he began to write with great haste. For a while nothing was heard but the scratching of his pen. Then he said, probably in connection with the cooking-range, —
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 173
