fe, the true
reality had come to be success or failure in the struggle for bread.
What was art to them but an empty name, a pastime for the drones and
idlers of existence? How could he set up his ambitions before them, to
be bowled over like so many ninepins? When, at length, after much
heartburning and conscientious scrupling, he was mastered by a
healthier spirit of self-assertion, which made him rebel against the
uselessness of the conflict, and doggedly resolve to put an end to it,
he was only enabled to stand firm by summoning to his aid all the
strengthening egoism, which is latent in every more or less artistic
nature. To the mother, in her honest narrowness, the son's choice of a
calling which she held to be unfitting, was something of a tragedy. She
allowed no item of her duty to escape her, and moved about the house as
usual, sternly observant of her daily task, but her lips were
compressed to a thin line, and her face reflected the anger that burnt
in her heart, too deep for speech. In the months that followed, Maurice
learnt that the censure hardest to meet is that which is never put into
words, which refuses to argue or discuss: he chafed inwardly against
the unspoken opposition that will not come out to be grappled with, and
overthrown. And, as he was only too keenly aware, there was more to be
faced than a mere determined aversion to the independence with which he
had struck out: there was, in the first place, a pardonably human sense
of aggrievedness that the eldest-born should cross their plans and
wishes; that, after the year-long care and thought they had bestowed on
him, he should demand fresh efforts from them; and, again, most
harassing of all and most invulnerable, such an entire want of faith in
the powers he was yearning to test--the prophet's lot in the mean
blindness of the family--that, at times, it threatened to shake his
hard-won faith in himself.--But before the winter drew to a close he
was away.

Away!--to go out into the world and be a musician--that was his longing
and his dream. And he never came to quite an honest understanding with
himself on this point, for desire and dream were interwoven in his
mind; he could not separate the one from the other. But when he weighed
them, and allowed them to rise up and take shape before him, it was
invariably in this order that they did so. In reality, although he
himself was but vaguely conscious of the fact, it was to some extent as
means to a