154
PARTISAN REVIEW
ambition. Good golly! he whispered within his soul, feeling the back
of
his
neck and then his cheeks go hot; and with a cold and marvel–
ing, compassionate contempt for the child he had so recently been, he
lost himself in reflective remembrance, unaware that it was for the
first time in
his
life.
It was hardly more than a year ago, when he was only eleven,
that the image and meaning of Jesus and the power and meaning of
the Sacraments and of the teachings of the Church, all embodied and
set forth in formalities of language and of motion whose sober
beauties were unique, and in music which at that time moved and
satisfied him as no other music could, had first and, it had seemed,
irreducibly, established upon
all
his heart and mind their quality, their
comfort, their nobility, their sad and soaring weight; and, entering
upon his desolation of loneliness, had made of suffering a springing
garden, an Eden in which to walk, enjoying the cool of the evening.
It had become a secret kind of good to be punished, especially
if
the
punishment was exorbitant or unjust; better to be ignored by
others, than accepted; better still to be humiliated, than ignored. He
remembered how on mornings when he had waked up and found
his
bed dry, he had felt as much regret as relief. He had begun to take
care to read in conspicuous places, where he would be most liable to
interruption and contempt. He had pretended not to know lessons he
had in fact prepared, in order that even such teachers as thought
well of him, or thought "at least he's smart," or "he studies, any–
way," might think
ill
of him. He had continued his solitary wander–
ings in the woods until it occurred to him that these excursions, for
all their solitude and melancholy, were more pleasant than un–
pleasant; from then on he had put himself into the middle of crowds,
especially on the drearier afternoons when even the hardiest boys
stayed indoors and the restive, vindictive, bored, mob feelings were
at their most sullen and light-triggered. The leaden melodies of the
Lenten hymns had appealed to him as never before; lines in certain
hymns seemed, during that time, to have been written especially for
him.
Jesus, I my Cross have taken,
he would sing, already anticipating
the lonely solace of tears concealed in public:
all to leave and follow
Thee; destitute, despis'd, forsaken,
were words especially dear to him;
Thou from hence my All shalt be.
As
he sang that he felt: nobody
else wants me; and did his best to believe it, even of his mother. He
