"
Tom's insight had always been ahead of his character, and of late
he had been growing. People do grow very fast in bed sometimes.
Also he had in him plenty of material, to which a childlike
desire now began to give shapes and sequences.
The musician's remark consisted in taking his violin, and once
more giving his idea of the "old gentleman's" music, but this
time with a richer expression and fuller harmonies. Mary had
every reason to be satisfied with her experiment. From that time
she talked a good deal more about her favorite writers, and
interested both the critical taste of Tom and the artistic
instinct of the blacksmith.
But Joseph's playing had great faults: how could it be
otherwise?--and to Mary great seemed the pity that genius should
not be made perfect in faculty, that it should not have that
redemption of its body for which unwittingly it groaned. And the
man was one of those childlike natures which may indeed go a long
time without discovering this or that external fault in
themselves, patent to the eye of many an inferior onlooker--for
the simple soul is the last to see its own outside--but, once
they become aware of it, begin that moment to set the thing
right. At the same time he had not enough of knowledge to render
it easy to show him by words wherein any fault consisted--the
nature, the being of the fault, that is--what it simply was; but
Mary felt confident that, the moment he saw a need, he would obey
its law.
Pages:
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494