ert was now at times
astonishingly apathetic. At times an impish malice I had never known in
him before gleamed in little acts and speeches. His talk rambled, and
for the most part was concerned with small, long-forgotten contentions.
It was indistinct and difficult to follow because of a recent loss of
teeth, and he craved for brandy, to restore even for a moment the sense
of strength and well-being that ebbed and ebbed away from him. So that
when I came to look at his dead face at last, it was with something like
amazement I perceived him grave and beautiful--more grave and beautiful
than he had been even in the fullness of life.

All the estrangement of the final years was wiped in an instant from my
mind as I looked upon his face. There came back a rush of memories, of
kind, strong, patient, human aspects of his fatherhood. And I remembered
as every son must remember--even you, my dear, will some day remember
because it is in the very nature of sonship--insubordinations,
struggles, ingratitudes, great benefits taken unthankfully, slights and
disregards. It was not remorse I felt, nor repentance, but a tremendous
regret that so things had happened and that life should be so. Why is
it, I thought, that when a son has come to manhood he cannot take his
father for a friend? I had a curious sense of unprecedented communion
as I stood beside him now. I felt that he understood my thoughts; his
face seemed to answer with an expression of still and sympathetic
patience.

I was sensible of amazing gaps. We had never talked together of love,
never of religion.

All sorts of things that a man of twenty-eight would not dream of hiding
from a coeval he had hidden from me. For some days I had to remain in
his house, I had to go through his papers, handle all those intimate
personal things that accumulate around a human being year by
year--letters, yellowing scraps of newspaper, tokens, relics kept,
accidental vestiges, significant litter. I learnt many things I had
never dreamt of. At times I doubted whether I was not prying, whether I
ought not to risk the loss of those necessary legal facts I sought, and
burn these papers unread. There were love letters, and many such
touching things.

My memories of him did not change because of these new lights, but they
became wonderfully illuminated. I realized him as a young man, I began
to see him as a boy. I found a little half-bound botanical book with
stencil-tinted illustrations,