Part 40 (2/2)

Big, black crows on bare, black branches, Cawing!...

”Where's the rest of it!” said John innocently.

The poet looted at him with such contempt that he felt certain he had committed an indiscretion. ”Is that the whole of it?” he hurriedly asked.

”That fact that you ask such a question,” said the poet, ”shows that you have no knowledge of the completeness of life!...”

”Well, I only came here about a fortnight ago,” John humbly replied ...

but the poet had moved away and would not listen to him any longer. ”I seem to have put my foot in it,” John murmured to himself.

He made his way to Hinde's side, resolved that he would not budge from it for the rest of the evening. The people present frightened him, particularly after his experience with the poet, and he determined that he would keep himself as inconspicuous as possible. He felt that all these people were terribly clever and that his ignorance would be immediately apparent if he opened his mouth in their presence. He tried hard to realise the magnitude of ”Life,” but he could not convince himself that it was either an adequate description of existence or that it was a description of anything; and, in his innocence, he believed that he was mentally deficient. Hinde named some of the guests to him.

This one was a novelist and that one had written a play ... and in the excitement of seeing and listening to men who had actually done things that he wished to do, John forgot some of his humiliation.

”I saw you talking to Palfrey,” Hinde said to him.

”The poet chap?” John replied.

Hinde nodded his head. ”What did you think of him?” he continued.

”He showed me one of his poems. I couldn't understand it, and when I said so, he walked away!”

Hinde laughed. ”That's as good a description of him as you could invent,” he said. ”He always walks away when you can't understand what he's getting at. The reason why he does that is he's afraid someone'll discover he isn't getting at anything. He's just an impertinent person.

He thinks he's being great when he's only being cheeky!”

John repeated the poem ent.i.tled ”Life” to Hinde. ”What do you think of that?” he asked.

”I don't think anything of it,” Hinde replied.

John felt rea.s.sured. ”I asked him where the rest of it was, and he nearly ate the face off me,” he said. ”I was afraid he'd think me a terrible gumph!...”

”If you let a humbug like that impose upon you, Mac, I'll never own you for my friend. Any intelligent office-boy could write poems like that all day long!”

There was a movement in the room, and the guests began to settle in their seats or on the floor, and after a short while, Mr. Haverstock, who acted as chairman of the meeting, took his place in front of a small table, and Mr. Palfrey sat down beside him. The poet, said the chairman, would honour them by reading some new poems to them, after which he would open a discussion on Marriage. They all knew that Marriage was an important matter, affecting the lives of men and women to a far greater extent, probably, than anything else in the world, and it was desirable therefore that they should discuss it frankly and frequently. Problems would remain insoluble so long as people remained silent about them. He could not help expressing his regret to those present at the extraordinary reluctance which the average person had to revealing experiences of matrimony. He had initiated an important enquiry into the question of marital relations.h.i.+ps with a view to discovering exactly what it was that caused so many marriages to fail, and he had had to abandon the enquiry because very few people were willing to tell anything about their marriages to him. There was a great deal of foolish reticence in the world ... at this point Mr.

Palfrey emphatically said, ”Hear! Hear!”... and he trusted that those present that evening would cast away false modesty and would say quite openly what their experiences had been. He would not detain them any longer ... he was quite certain that they were all very anxious to hear Mr. Palfrey ... and so without any more ado he would call upon him to read his poems and then to discuss the great and important question of Marriage.

VII

Mr. Palfrey read his poems in a curious sing-song fas.h.i.+on, beating time with his right hand as he did so. He seemed to be performing physical exercises rather than modulating his own accents, and on two occasions his gesture was longer than his poem. He read ”Life” very slowly and very deliberately, saying the word ”cawing” in a high-pitched tone, and prolonging it until his breath was exhausted. He recited a dozen of these poems, obtaining his greatest effect with, the last of them, which was ent.i.tled, ”The Sea”:

Immense, incalculable waste, The dribblings from a giant's beard....

”Isn't it wonderful?” said an ecstatic girl sitting next to John.

”No,” he replied.

She looked at him interrogatively, and he added, very aggressively, ”I think it's twaddle!”

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