Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/282

Rh "Gentlemen," said the village idiot, suddenly and unexpectedly, "I have listened to your various stories with great interest, recognising in them sincere if unconscious contributions towards the elucidation of the Eternal Problem. My own life, as you may imagine, is circumscribed and moves completely in a groove, so that, like our friend the knife-grinder, of familiar quotation, 'I have no story.' There is, however, a trifling reminiscence connected with my very early days which I will venture to relate, in the hope that he who otherwise on some future occasion might run, may perhaps, instead, remain.

"My father was a professor of elocution, my mother the daughter of a country clergyman. The nature of the man was romantic, impractical and ambitious; that of the woman narrow and commonplace. On the eve of their wedding day they stood together on the shore of one of the most beautiful bays of this richly-endowed coast, watching the play of the moonlight upon the rippling water—a time and a situation well calculated to bring out, one must admit, all that was stirring and impassioned even in the most sluggish nature. Under the various influences my father's characteristics rose to their highest pitch, and casting all reserve to the winds in the assurance of a responsive sympathy he thus delivered himself:

Christabel,' he said, 'I have a feeling, amounting to a most inspired conviction, that I am destined to some great future. Hitherto there has been one thing lacking to fire an ambition that is as illimitable as the space above us, as sure and resistless as the tides beneath. That incentive has been supplied by the magic touch of your proud love, and in that golden future it is only fitting that you should have an equal part. Say, then, to what pinnacles of supremacy your fancy turns? Do