He had chosen the place with some degree of care, in order to be
sufficiently remote from society to work undisturbed, sufficiently near
civilization to be able to buy more music paper in case of need. Ten
miles of even a bad road is not an impassible barrier to an enthusiastic
bicyclist; yet the place was as rustic and countrified as if it had been,
not ten, but ten hundred miles from an electric light. His digestion was
good enough to cope even with Eulaly Sykes's perennial doughnuts, and it
was in a mood of supreme content that he settled into his quarters in the
wilderness. It was years since he had watched the on-coming of the New
England summer; he watched it now with the trained sense, the inherent
quickness of perception of the true artist who realizes that the simplest
facts of the day's routine by his touch can be transmuted into glowing,
vivid material for his work.
It must be confessed that Eulaly Sykes occasionally mourned to her
friends over the irregularities of her boarder. His hours of work
passed her comprehension, his work itself filled her soul with wonder
and disgust. In his moments of inspiration when he was evoking the
stormy chords of the introduction to his symphonic poem, _Bisesa_ he
never dreamed that his landlady was craning her head up from her
pillows in a vain effort to discover the tune, or to reduce it to the
known terms of short metre rhythm.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79