ays--all my life," he said. "I
don't know how it is between most fathers and sons, but I admired Hugh.
I found exquisite things in him. I doubt if other people saw them. He
was quiet. He seemed clumsy. But he had an extraordinary fineness. He
was a creature of the most delicate and rapid responses.... These aren't
my fond delusions. It was so.... You know, when he was only a few days
old, he would start suddenly at any strange sound. He was alive like an
AEolian harp from the very beginning.... And his hair when he was
born--he had a lot of hair--was like the down on the breast of a bird. I
remember that now very vividly--and how I used to like to pass my hand
over it. It was silk, spun silk. Before he was two he could talk--whole
sentences. He had the subtlest ear. He loved long words.... And then,"
he said with tears in his voice, "all this beautiful fine structure,
this brain, this fresh life as nimble as water--as elastic as a steel
spring, it is destroyed....

"I don't make out he wasn't human. Often and often I have been angry
with him, and disappointed in him. There were all sorts of weaknesses in
him. We all knew them. And we didn't mind them. We loved him the better.
And his odd queer cleverness!.... And his profound wisdom. And then all
this beautiful and delicate fabric, all those clear memories in his dear
brain, all his whims, his sudden inventions....

"You know, I have had a letter from his chum Park. He was shot through a
loophole. The bullet went through his eye and brow.... Think of it!

"An amazement ... a blow ... a splattering of blood. Rags of tormented
skin and brain stuff.... In a moment. What had taken eighteen
years--love and care...."

He sat thinking for an interval, and then went on, "The reading and
writing alone! I taught him to read myself--because his first governess,
you see, wasn't very clever. She was a very good methodical sort, but
she had no inspiration. So I got up all sorts of methods for teaching
him to read. But it wasn't necessary. He seemed to leap all sorts of
difficulties. He leapt to what one was trying to teach him. It was as
quick as the movement of some wild animal....

"He came into life as bright and quick as this robin looking for
food....

"And he's broken up and thrown away.... Like a cartridge case by the
side of a covert...."

He choked and stopped speaking. His elbows were on his knees, and he put
his face between his hands and shuddered and became still