Part 10 (1/2)

”This,” he murmured fondly, without looking up, ”is the complete collection of my poems.”

”Indeed!” exclaimed Nicholas, with deep compa.s.sion.

”Yes, my complete collection. I have written a great deal more, and should have liked to publish all that I have written. But it was necessary to select, and I have included here only what it was intolerable to see wasted. There is nothing I value more than a group of elegiac poems, which every single member of my large family--who are fine critics--and all my friends, p.r.o.nounce very beautiful. I think it would be a good idea to inscribe a selection from one on my monument, since those who read the selection would wish to read the entire poem, and those who read the entire poem would wish to read the entire collection. I shall now favour you with these elegies.”

”I should be happy to hear them; but my time!” said Nicholas courteously. ”The living are too impatient to wait on me; the dead too patient to be defrauded.”

”Surely you would not refuse to hear one of them,” exclaimed the poet, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

”Read _one_, by all means.” Nicholas seated himself on a monumental lamb.

The poet pa.s.sed one hand gently across his forehead, as though to brush away the stroke of rudeness; then, fixing upon Nicholas a look of infinite remoteness, he read as follows:--

”He suffered, but he murmured not; To every storm he bared his breast; He asked but for the common lot-- To be a man among the rest.

”Here lies he now----”

”If you ask but for the common lot,” interrupted Nicholas, ”you should rest content to be forgotten.”

But before the poet could reply, a loud knock caused him to flap the leaves of the ”Complete Collection” together with one hand, while with the other he gathered the tails of his long coat about him, as though preparing to pa.s.s through some difficult aperture. The exaltation of his mood, however, still showed itself in the look and tone of proud condescension with which he said to Nicholas--

”Permit me to retire at once by some private pa.s.sway.”

Nicholas led him to a door in the rear of the shop, and there, with a smile and a tear, stood for a moment watching the precipitate figure of the retreating bard, who suddenly paused when disappearing and tore open the breast of his coat to a.s.sure himself that his beloved elegies were resting safe across his heart.

The second visitor was of another sort. He hobbled on a cork leg, but inexorably disciplined the fleshly one into old-time firmness and precision. A faded military cloak draped his stalwart figure. Part of one bushy grey eyebrow had been chipped away by the same sword-cut that left its scar across his battle-beaten face.

”I have come to speak with you about my monument,” he said, in a gruff voice that seemed to issue from the mouth of a rusty cannon. ”Those of my old comrades that did not fall at my side are dead. My wife died long ago, and my little children. I am old and forgotten. It is a time of peace. There's not a boy who will now listen to me while I tell of my campaigns. I live alone. Were I to die to-morrow my grave might not have so much as a head-stone. It might be taken for that of a coward. Make me a monument for a true soldier.”

”Your grateful country will do that,” said Nicholas.

”Ha!” exclaimed the veteran, whom the shock of battle had made deaf long ago.

”Your country,” shouted Nicholas, close to his ear, ”your country--will erect a monument--to your memory.”

”My country!” The words were shot out with a reverberating, melancholy boom. ”My country will do no such a thing. How many millions of soldiers have fallen on her battle-fields! Where are their monuments? They would make her one vast cemetery.”

”But is it not enough for you to have been a true soldier? Why wish to be known and remembered for it?”

”I know I do not wish to be forgotten,” he replied simply. ”I know I take pleasure in the thought that long after I am forgotten there will be a tongue in my monument to cry out to every pa.s.sing stranger, 'Here lies the body of a true soldier.' It is a great thing to be brave!”

”Is, then, this monument to be erected in honour of bravery, or of yourself?”

”There is no difference,” said the veteran bluntly. ”Bravery _is_ myself.”

”It is bravery,” he continued, in husky tones, and with, a mist gathering in his eyes that made him wink as though he were trying to see through the smoke of battle--”it is bravery that I see most clearly in the character of G.o.d. What would become of us if He were a coward? I serve Him as my brave Commander; and though I am stationed far from Him and may be faint and sorely wounded, I know that He is somewhere on the battle-field, and that I shall see Him at last, approaching me as He moves up and down among the ranks.”

”But you say that your country does not notice you--that you have no friends; do you, then, feel no resentment?”