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I was ashamed of having exposed my cheap imaginings to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but it did not happen. He proceeded with his subject: "Nicky's appointed life is sixty-two years." "That's grand!" I said. "Lisa's, thirty-six. But, as I told you, I shall change their lives and those ages. Two minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of his sleep and find the rain blowing in.
They all looked at him where he sat, upright and noble, in his chair, and most absurdly young. Dorothy said under her breath: "Oh, you darling Daddy." "You won't be allowed to go, anyhow," said John to his father. "You needn't think it." "Why not?" "Well ." He hadn't the heart to say: "Because you're too old." "Nicky's brains will be more use to the country than my old carcass."
Life was not simple even at seventy, when such a mixture of motives and sensations could hold sway the old fear of Archelaus crystallised into a definite writhing under this triumph of his, the aching sense of personal loss in his son, and, sharpest pang of any, the fear that all of life lay hollow behind and before.... Ever since Nicky's birth it had seemed to him that every revelation had come to him through his fatherhood of Nicky ecstasies he had otherwise not touched.... Never, much as he loved his girls, could they have given him hours such as Nicky had; neither when Georgie had told him of the advent of each, nor at the time of birth, had there been for him the deep significance of the night when Phoebe had whispered to him.... There the fact that he could only feel a thing at its height for the first time had stepped in, preventing ever again a renewal of such ecstasy.
Ishmael had sometimes resented all this on Nicky's behalf, and then Georgie had accused him of loving his son the most. Of course, she knew the others were "only girls," and therefore she supposed of no interest to a farmer.... Scenes such as this would end in penitence on her part and a weary forgiveness on Ishmael's.
Nicky had kept the knowledge from them, in his mercy, to save them the agony of deciding whether they would recognize the marriage or not. And as neither Frances nor Anthony had ever faced squarely the prospect of disaster to their children, they had turned their backs on Nicky's marriage and supported each other in the hope that at the last minute something would happen to prevent it.
But that doesn't make me see any real reason why you should go to Canada." Nicky's bright face took on a sulky expression, he swung a foot, and his jaw stood out as it did when he was angry, thickening his whole aspect. "Because, if you want to know, I'm not going to be content to spend my whole life in an obscure farm in Cornwall, as you've done!" he burst out.
A few days after Nicky's triumphant election, when thought was once more possible at Cloom, Ishmael felt more depressed than he had for long; he had been living not so much in the valleys as upon the straight plains of late. To-day his eyes were hurting him and he could not read; there was no work crying to be done, and the heavy warm air was misted with damp that seemed to melt into the bones.
The room was mysterious, full of dusk air that thinned as the dawn stirred in it palpably, waking first Anne's white bed, a strip of white cornice and a sheet of watery looking-glass. Nicky's saucer of milk gleamed white on the dark floor at Anne's feet. The pale ceiling lightened; and with a sliding shimmer of polished curves the furniture rose up from the walls.
Michael's foot, with its long, arched instep, fascinated Anthony. He seemed to be thinking: "If I look at it long enough I may forget what Nicky has said." "I hope you won't mind, Father; but I'm enlisting too." John's voice was a light, high echo of Nicky's. With a great effort Anthony roused himself from his contemplation of Michael's foot.
The moment died, and with it his bitterness, merged in the pity of youth which welled up in him as he sat fronting Nicky's superb confidence, his health, his swelling appetite for life. "But why Canada?" asked Ishmael at last, temporising in his turn.
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