human
Gargoyle was under the rose-arbor this morning. It was according to custom that Evelyn Strang would relate the child's latest phase.
gpt
He sat there without stirring such a long time that I was fascinated. I noticed that he never picked a rose, never smelled one. The early sun fell slanting through their petals till they glowed like thin little wheels of fire. John dear, it was that scalloped fire which Gargoyle was staring at. The flowers seemed to lean toward him, vibrating color and perfumes too delicate for me to hear. _I_ only saw and smelled the flowers; Gargoyle looked as if he _felt_ them! Don't laugh; you know we look at flowers because when we were little, people always said, 'See the pretty flower, smell the pretty flower,' but no one said, 'Listen and see if you can hear the flower grow; be still and see if you can catch the flower speaking.'
human
By the way, he said once,
gpt
Of course I haven't; neither have you. Young Mrs. Strang averred it confidently.
human
He never has smiled, poor baby, nor cried--his mother told me that long ago.
gpt
You know that nest in the tree we call the Siegfried tree?
human
The other day a bird fell out of it, one of the young ones, pushed out by a housecleaning mother, I suppose. It killed the poor little feathered gawk. I saw Gargoyle run, quick as a flash, and pick it up. He pushed open the closing eyes, tried to place the bird on a hollyhock stalk, to spread its wings, in every way to give it motion. When, after each attempt, he saw it fall to the ground, he stood still, looking at it very hard. Suddenly, to my surprise, he seemed to understand something, to _comprehend_ it fully and delightedly. He laughed.
gpt
I can imagine that laugh,
human
I don't think you can. It--it wasn't pleasant. It was as uncanny as the rest of the little chap--a long, rattling, eerie sound, as if a tree should groan or a butterfly curse; but wait--there's more. In his earnestness Strang sat up, adding,
gpt
Then Gargoyle got up and stretched out his hands, not to the sky, but to the air all around him. It was as if-- Here Strang, the normal, healthy man of the world, hesitated; it was only the father of the little boy who had died who admitted in low tones:
human
You would have said--At least even _I_ could imagine that Gargoyle--well--that he _saw_ something like a released principle of life fly happily back to its main source--as if a little mote like a sunbeam should detach itself from a clod and, disembodied, dart back to its law of motion.
gpt
Of course the whole thing's damned nonsense. He repeated that a little brutally to his wife's silence before in softened voice he added,
human
Only, perhaps you're right, Evelyn; perhaps we, too, should be seeing that kind of thing, understanding what, God knows, we long to understand, if we had 'undressed minds,' if we hadn't from earliest infancy been smeared all over with the plaster-of-Paris of 'normal thinking.'