II.
ON EXALTATION: TOGETHER WITH AN ANECDOTE FROM
THE ENTERTAINMENTS OF KAPNIDES.
ON quiet days, when no wind blows, my canoe is particularly restful. It has perfect sympathy with the weather. It creeps down slowly to King’s, leans itself against the bank, and thinks. Then, later in the afternoon, it bears the organ humming in the chapel—a faint, sweet sound which produces religious exaltation; and it becomes necessary to wrestle with the canoe, because it desires to fly away and be at rest. It is owing to this rhythmic alternation of laziness and spirituality in the boat that I have given it the name which is blazoned on its bows—Zeitgeist.
I have said the boat has sympathy with the weather. It also has sympathy with me, or I have sympathy with it, which is the same thing. There was a time when I suffered only from rhythmic alternations of two kinds of laziness. Now exaltation is beginning to enter in as well, and I do not know the reason, unless I have caught it from the boat. Materialistic friends have told me that too much pudding will cause exaltation. I have not so much as looked upon pudding this day. An unknown poet comes swiftly past me. I hail him, and ask him for information. He tells me that he had been that way himself, and that with him it is generally caused by the scent of gardenias, or hyacinths, or narcissus.
I am glad he has gone away. I think if he had stayed a moment longer I should have been a little rude.
Anyway, I have got it. When one suffers from it, memory-vignettes come up quickly before the mental eye, and the mental eye has a rose-tinted glass stuck in it.
That is a memory-vignette. I am back again at school in a low form, and I am asked to parse “passi,” and I parse it humorously, and there is awful silence; and then one sharp click, because the master in nervous irritation snaps in two the cedar pencil in his hand. I hate him, and he hates me. For the meaning of the words I care nothing. Now I think over them again, and I see that Virgil is very intimate with me, and that he knows the way I feel.
Up comes another quotation, this time from a more modern author:—
Yes, and if he had said that the curled moon was like a bitten biscuit thrown out of window in a high wind, it would not have been much less true. But there is no poetry in a biscuit, and precious little sustenance. The gentle fall of a feather is full of poetry:—
Edgar Allan Poe quoted those lines in his lecture on The Poetic Principle, and remarked on their insouciance. Well, he’s dead.
There are no more memory-vignettes. I have no more exaltation left. For a certain young woman crossed the bridge, and she had a baby with her, and a young man behind her. And she had the impertinence to call the baby’s attention to my canoe. Then she spoke winged words to the infant, and these are the exact winged words she used:—
“Chickey-chickey-chickey, boatey-boatey-boatey, o-o-m! Do you love auntey?”
And she called to the young man, saying, “’Enry, cummere. ’Ere’s a boat.”
Then they staggered slowly away, and took my exaltation with them. Just as I was getting a little better, the wind set in the wrong direction, and I heard her say some of it over again.
There is magic in the words. They set a man thinking of his past, his bills, and things which he has done and wishes he had left undone. All at once it seems as if it were going to rain. The wind turns colder. The cushions of the canoe change to brickbats. Somebody nearly runs into me, and I drop my pipe, and remember I never posted that letter after all. I look at my watch, and, of course, it’s stopped. Mainspring broken, probably. The way that woman talked was enough to destroy the works of a steam-engine. And I have a twinge in my side which I am quite sure is heart disease. I had not hoped for Westminster Abbey quite so soon. “Deeply lamented. No flowers, by request.”
And all this is due to the fearful words which that woman spoke, or it may be merely reaction. If one gets too high, or too low, one pays for it afterwards; and the commonplace praises of aurea mediocritas are properly founded. The quietist never pays, because he incurs no debts. All the rest pay, and there is no dun like a Natural Law. It may agree to renew for a short time, on the consideration of that small glass of brandy, perhaps, or a week’s rest; but one has to pay for the accommodation, and the debt must be discharged in the end.
Do you remember that quaint old story told by Kapnides in his third book of Entertainments? Well, Kapnides is not enough read at Oxford or Cambridge. I doubt if he is read at all. He is a little artificial, perhaps, but he has his points. It is the story of a Greek boy.
No; it is not the story of the Spartan boy who lied about a fox, and subsequently died of the lies which were told about himself.
It is the story of an Athenian boy, who in the month of June sat quite alone in a thin tent by night. And the tent was pitched under the shadow of the long wall, and the night was hot and stifling.
He sat alone, for dead men are no company. His father and his eldest brother were in the tent with him; but he was alone. He had not been afraid to tend them in their sickness, for he had himself recovered from the pestilence; but it had taken away from him his beauty and his memory. He had been very beautiful, and his mind had been very full of fair memories. All were gone now. He kept only the few bare facts which his dying father had told him, that his mother had died long before; that they had lived in the country and had been ordered into the city; that Pericles had made a remarkably fine speech in the preceding year; and that his only surviving relation was his twin-brother, who had gone away into Eubœa with the sheep. On these few poor facts, and on the two dead manly bodies before him, he pondered as he sat. And the night grew late, and yet he could hear outside the tent people passing busily, and quarrels, and long horrible cries.
And suddenly the poor Greek boy, with the ghost of an old beauty haunting his dull eyes and scarred cheeks, looked up, because he was conscious of the presence of a deity; and there before him sat an old gentleman in a silk hat, a frock-coat worn shiny under the fore arm, pepper-and-salt trousers, with a pen stuck at the back of his ear.
“I perceive a divine fragrance,” the boy said. The fragrance was gin-and-water, but he knew it not. “And about thy neck there is a circle of brightness.” In this he was correct, because the old gentleman was wearing an indiarubber dickey covered with luminous paint, which saves washing and makes it possible to put in a stud in the dark. “And thy dress is not like unto mine. It cannot be but that thou art some god. And at the right time art thou come; for my heart is heavy, and none but a god can comfort me. And due worship have I ever rendered to the gods, but they love me not, and they have taken all things from me; and only my twin-brother is left, and he keeps the sheep in Eubœa. And what name dost thou most willingly hear?”
“Allow me,” said the old gentleman, and produced a card from his pocket, handing it to the boy. On it was printed:—
The Proleptical Cashier.
(Agent for Zeus & Co., Specialists in Punishments.)
“The tongue is barbarian,” said the boy, “and thy spoken words are barbarian, and yet I understand them; and now I know that the gods are kinder to me, because already I have greater wisdom than my fathers, and, perhaps, somewhat greater remains. Give to me, O cashier, the power to stay this pestilence.”
“For a young ’un,” said the cashier, “that’s pretty calm, seeing that I made that pestilence. I just want to go into your little account. Your great-grandpapa, my boy, incurred a little debt, and Zeus & Co. want the thing settled before they dissolve partnership. They’ve just taken those two lives.” He touched the body of the boy’s father lightly with his foot. “They’ve taken your beauty and your memory. How sweet the girls used to be on you, my lad! but you can’t recollect it, and you won’t experience it again. You are a bad sight. Now we shall just kill your brother, and give the sheep the rot, and then the thing will be square. Now then, it’s a hot night, and you’d better burn these two. I’ll show you how to do it on the cheap, without paying for it. As long as Zeus & Co. are paid I don’t care about the rest.”
The boy sat dazed, and did not speak.
“There’s a rich man built a first-class pyre twenty yards from your tent. They’ve gone to fetch his dead daughter to burn on it. We’ll collar it before they get back. I’ll take the old man, because he’s the lightest. You carry your brother. He was a hoplite, wasn’t he, one of them gentlemen that do parasangs? Oh, I know all about it.”
Still the boy did not speak. They took up the two bodies, passed out of the tent, and laid their burden on the pyre.
“You look as if something had hurt you,” said the old gentleman. “I like these shavings miles better than newspaper.” He pulled a box of matches from his pocket, and set light to the pyre. It flared up brightly.
Then the boy touched him on the shoulder, and pointed first in the direction of Eubœa, and then at himself. A word came into him from a future civilisation.
“Swop?” he said gently.
“All right,” grumbled the cashier. “I don’t mind. It gives a lot of trouble—altering the books. But I don’t mind, I’m sure. It’s a thirsty night.”
For a moment the boy stood motionless; then, with a little cry, leapt into the flames. And his life went to join his beauty and his memory in a land of which we know too little.
It’s begun to rain. I think I’ll be off. I do hate anachronisms.