ay
at the plough. He was the wisest fool I ever see."
"Poor fool!" said Nicholas softly. It was the epitaph over the unmarked
grave of that other member of his race who had blazed the thorny path
before him. A strange, pathetic figure rose suddenly in his vision--a
man with a great brow and a twisted back, with brawny, knotted hands--an
unlearned student driving the plough, an ignorant philosopher dragging
the mire.
"Poor fool!" he said again. "What did his learning do for him?"
"It killed him," returned his stepmother shortly.
She stood before him wiping her gnarled hands on her soiled apron. His
gaze fell upon her, and he wondered angrily whence sprung her
indomitable energy--the energy that could expend itself upon potatoes.
Her face was sharpened until it seemed to become all feature--there were
hollows in the narrow temples, and where the pale, thin hair was drawn
tightly over the head he could trace the prominent bones of the skull.
As he looked at her his own petty suffering was overshadowed by the
visible tragedy of her life--the sordid tragedy where unconsciousness
was pathos. He reached out quickly and took a corner of her apron in his
hand. It was the strongest demonstration of affection he had ever made
to her.
"I'll sort them, ma," he said lightly. "There's not a speck in the lot
of them too fine for my eyes." And he knelt down beside the earthy heap.
But when he went up to his room an hour later and lighted his kerosene
lamp, it was not of his stepmother that he was thinking--nor was it of
Eugenia. His stiffened muscles contracted in physical pain, and his
brain was deadened by the sense of unutterable defeat. The delirium of
his anger had passed away; the fever of his skin had chilled beneath the
cold sweat that broke over him--in the reaction from the madness that
had gripped him he was conscious of a sanity almost sublime. The
habitual balance of his nature had swung back into place.
He got out his books and arranged them as usual beside the lamp. Th
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John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.