Part 39 (2/2)
Arnold went straight to the nearest book-shelf, and took down the first volume that his hand lighted on--a solid quarto, bound in sober brown.
”Well?” asked Blanche. ”What have you found?”
Arnold opened the volume, and conscientiously read the t.i.tle exactly as it stood:
”Paradise Lost. A Poem. By John Milton.”
”I have never read Milton,” said Blanche. ”Have you?”
”No.”
”Another instance of sympathy between us. No educated person ought to be ignorant of Milton. Let us be educated persons. Please begin.”
”At the beginning?”
”Of course! Stop! You musn't sit all that way off--you must sit where I can look at you. My attention wanders if I don't look at people while they read.”
Arnold took a stool at Blanche's feet, and opened the ”First Book” of Paradise Lost. His ”system” as a reader of blank verse was simplicity itself. In poetry we are some of us (as many living poets can testify) all for sound; and some of us (as few living poets can testify) all for sense. Arnold was for sound. He ended every line inexorably with a full stop; and he got on to his full stop as fast as the inevitable impediment of the words would let him. He began:
”Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit.
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste.
Brought death into the world and all our woe.
With loss of Eden till one greater Man.
Restore us and regain the blissful seat.
Sing heavenly Muse--”
”Beautiful!” said Blanche. ”What a shame it seems to have had Milton all this time in the library and never to have read him yet! We will have Mornings with Milton, Arnold. He seems long; but we are both young, and we _may_ live to get to the end of him. Do you know dear, now I look at you again, you don't seem to have come back to Windygates in good spirits.”
”Don't I? I can't account for it.”
”I can. It's sympathy with Me. I am out of spirits too.”
”You!”
”Yes. After what I saw at Craig Fernie, I grow more and more uneasy about Anne. You will understand that, I am sure, after what I told you this morning?”
Arnold looked back, in a violent hurry, from Blanche to Milton. That renewed reference to events at Craig Fernie was a renewed reproach to him for his conduct at the inn. He attempted to silence her by pointing to Geoffrey.
”Don't forget,” he whispered, ”that there is somebody in the room besides ourselves.”
Blanche shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
”What does _he_ matter?” she asked. ”What does _he_ know or care about Anne?”
There was only one other chance of diverting her from the delicate subject. Arnold went on reading headlong, two lines in advance of the place at which he had left off, with more sound and less sense than ever:
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