Part 6 (1/2)
”I have read it, but I forget just how it goes,” vouchsafed the School-Master, forgetting for a moment the Robert Elsmere episode and its lesson.
”It goes something like this,” said the Idiot:
”Sombre and sere the slim sycamore sighs; Lushly the lithe leaves lie low o'er the land; Whistles the wind with its whisperings wise, Grewsomely gloomy and garishly grand.
So doth the sycamore solemnly stand, Wearily watching in wondering wait; So it has stood for six centuries, and Still it is waiting the boy at the gate.”
”No; I never read the poem,” said Mr. Whitechoker, ”but I'd know it was Swinburne in a minute. He has such a command of alliterative language.”
”Yes,” said the Poet, with an uneasy glance at the Idiot. ”It is Swinburnian; but what was the poem about?”
”'The boy at the gate,'” said the Idiot. ”The idea was that the sycamore was standing there for centuries waiting for the boy who never turns up.”
”It really is a beautiful thought,” put in Mr. Whitechoker. ”It is, I presume, an allegory to contrast faithful devotion and constancy with unfaithfulness and fickleness. Such thoughts occur only to the wholly gifted. It is only to the poetic temperament that the conception of such a thought can come coupled with the ability to voice it in fitting terms.
There is a grandeur about the lines the Idiot has quoted that betrays the master-mind.”
”Very true,” said the School-Master, ”and I take this opportunity to say that I am most agreeably surprised in the Idiot. It is no small thing even to be able to repeat a poet's lines so carefully, and with so great lucidity, and so accurately, as I can testify that he has just done.”
”Don't be too pleased, Mr. Pedagog,” said the Idiot, dryly. ”I only wanted to show Mr. Warren that you and Mr. Whitechoker, mines of information though you are, have not as yet worked up a corner on knowledge to the exclusion of the rest of us.” And with these words the Idiot left the table.
”He is a queer fellow,” said the School-Master. ”He is full of pretence and hollowness, but he is sometimes almost brilliant.”
”What you say is very true,” said Mr. Whitechoker. ”I think he has just escaped being a smart man. I wish we could take him in hand, Mr. Pedagog, and make him more of a fellow than he is.”
Later in the day the Poet met the Idiot on the stairs. ”I say,” he said, ”I've looked all through Swinburne, and I can't find that poem.”
”I know you can't,” returned the Idiot, ”because it isn't there.
Swinburne never wrote it. It was a little thing of my own. I was only trying to get a rise out of Mr. Pedagog and his Reverence with it. You have frequently appeared impressed by the undoubtedly impressive manner of these two gentlemen. I wanted to show you what their opinions were worth.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I KNOW YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE IT ISN'T THERE”]
”Thank you,” returned the Poet, with a smile. ”Don't you want to go into partners.h.i.+p with me and write for the funny papers? It would be a splendid thing for me--your ideas are so original.”
”And I can see fun in everything, too,” said the Idiot, thoughtfully.
”Yes,” returned the Poet. ”Even in my serious poems.”
Which remark made the Idiot blush a little, but he soon recovered his composure and made a firm friend of the Poet.
The first fruits of the partners.h.i.+p have not yet appeared, however.
As for Messrs. Whitechoker and Pedagog, when they learned how they had been deceived, they were so indignant that they did not speak to the Idiot for a week.
VIII
It was Sunday morning, and Mr. Whitechoker, as was his wont on the first day of the week, appeared at the breakfast table severe as to his mien.
”Working on Sunday weighs on his mind,” the Idiot said to the Bibliomaniac, ”but I don't see why it should. The luxury of rest that he allows himself the other six days of the week is surely an atonement for the hours of labor he puts in on Sunday.”