No More Learning

"

"Of course I can, but I wasn't thinking of him. His name need never
appear in the story. "

"Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try. "

"I am going to. "

"For your own credit and for the sake of money, of course? "

"No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honor that will be all. "

"Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the Gods. It is a
very pretty story now. As they say, Let it go on that--I mean at that.
Be quick; he will not last long. "

"How do you mean? "

"What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman. "

"Hasn't he though! " I remembered some of Charlie's confidences.

"I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes; bushogya--all
up' I know. There are millions of women here. Housemaids, for instance. "

I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid.

And yet nothing was more probable.

Grish Chunder grinned.

"Yes--also pretty girls--cousins of his house, and perhaps not of his
house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all
this nonsense or else"--

"Or else what? Remember he does not know that he knows. "

"I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the
trade and the financial speculations like the rest. It must be so. You
can see that it must be so. But the woman will come first, I think. "

There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously. He had
been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I could see
that he had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his
pockets. Charlie's poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him
to talk about the galley.

Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.

"I beg your pardon," Charlie said, uneasily; "I didn't know you had any
one with you. "

"I am going," said Grish Chunder.

He drew me into the lobby as he departed.

"That is your man," he said, quickly. "I tell you he will never speak
all you wish. That is rot--bosh. But he would be most good to make to
see things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play"--I had never
seen Grish Chunder so excited--"and pour the ink-pool into his hand.
Eh, what do you think? I tell you that he could see anything that a man
could see. Let me get the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he will
tell us very many things. "

"He may be all you say, but I'm not going to trust him to your Gods and
devils. "

"It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when
he wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before. "

"That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You'd better
go, Grish Chunder. "

He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my
only chance of looking into the future.

This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering
of hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me do that. But
I recognized Grish Chunder's point of view and sympathized with it.

"What a big black brute that was! " said Charlie, when I returned to
him. "Well, look here, I've just done a poem; dil it instead of playing
dominoes after lunch. May I read it? "

"Let me read it to myself. "

"Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make my things
sound as if the rhymes were all wrong. "

"Read it aloud, then. You're like the rest of 'em. "

Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average
of his verses. He had been reading his book faithfully, but he was not
pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow undiluted with
Charlie.

Then we began to go through the MS. line by line; Charlie parrying every
objection and correction with: "Yes, that may be better, but you don't
catch what I'm driving at. "

Charlie was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.

There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's that? " I
said.

"Oh that's not poetry 't all. It's some rot I wrote last night before I
went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made it
a sort of a blank verse instead. "

Here is Charlie's "blank verse":

"We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.

"Will you never let us go?

"We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when
you were beaten back by the foe,

"The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs,
but we were below,

"We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were
idle for we still swung to and fro.

"Will you never let us go?

"The salt made the oar handles like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the
bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips
were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row.

"Will you never let us go?

"But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water
runs along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us
you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the
winds in the belly of the sail. Aho! "Will you never let us go? "

"H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie? "

"The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might
sing in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story
and give me some of the profits? "

"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in
the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in
your notions. "

"I only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking about
from place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the
rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry
her or do something. "

"You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through
some few adventures before he married. "

"Well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort
of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began. "

"But you said the other day that he was red-haired. "

"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no
imagination. "

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the
half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to
laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

"You're right. You're the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a
decked ship," I said.

"No, an open ship--like a big boat. "

This was maddening.

"Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said
so yourself," I protested.

"No, no, not that ship. That was open, or half decked because--By Jove
you're right. You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap.
Of course if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted
sails. "

Surely, I thought he would remember now that he had served in two
galleys at least--in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired
"political man," and again in a Viking's open sea-serpent under the
man "red as a red bear" who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to
speak.

"Why, 'of course,' Charlie? " said I. "I don't know. Are you making fun
of me? "

The current was broken for the time being. I took up a notebook and
pretended to make many entries in it.

"It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I said
after a pause. "The way that you've brought out the character of the
hero is simply wonderful. "

"Do you think so? " he answered, with a pleased flush. "I often tell
myself that there's more in me than my--than people think. "

"There's an enormous amount in you. "

"Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank Clerks to
Tit-Bits, and get the guinea prize? "

"That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fellow: perhaps it would be
better to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story. "

"Ah, but I sha'n't get the credit of that. Tit-Bits would publish my
name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They would. "

"I know it. Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my notes
about our story. "

Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back,
might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the Argo--had
been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was
deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remembering what Grish Chunder
had said I laughed aloud. The Lords of Life and Death would never allow
Charlie Mears to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and I must even
piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while Charlie
wrote of the ways of bank-clerks.

I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result
was not cheering. I read them a second time. There was nothing that
might not have been compiled at second-hand from other people's
books--except, perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbor. The
adventures of a Viking bad been written many times before; the history
of a Greek galley-slave was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who
could challenge or confirm the accuracy of my details? I might as well
tell a tale of two thousand years hence. The Lords of Life and Death
were as cunning as Grish Chunder had hinted. They would allow nothing
to escape that might trouble or make easy the minds of men. Though I
was convinced of this, yet I could not leave the tale alone. Exaltation
followed reaction, not once, but twenty times in the next few weeks. My
moods varied with the March sunlight and flying clouds. By night or in
the beauty of a spring morning I perceived that I could write that tale
and shift continents thereby. In the wet, windy afternoons, I saw that
the tale might indeed be written, but would be nothing more than a
faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of Wardour Street work at the
end. Then I blessed Charlie in many ways--though it was no fault of his.
He seemed to be busy with prize competitions, and I saw less and less of
him as the weeks went by and the earth cracked and grew ripe to spring,
and the buds swelled in their sheaths. He did not care to read or talk
of what he had read, and there was a new ring of self-assertion in
his voice. I hardly cared to remind him of the galley when we met; but
Charlie alluded to it on every occasion, always as a story from which
money was to be made.

"I think I deserve twenty-five per cent. , don't I, at least," he said,
with beautiful frankness. "I supplied all the ideas, didn't I? "

This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that
it had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the
curious nasal drawl of the underbred City man.

"When the thing's done we'll talk about it. I can't make anything of it
at present. Red-haired or black-haired hero are equally difficult. "

He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "I can't understand
what you find so difficult. It's all as clean as mud to me," he replied.
A jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light and whistled
softly. "Suppose we take the red-haired hero's adventures first, from
the time that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to
the Beaches. "

I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I was out of reach of
pen and paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break the
current. The gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie's voice dropped almost
to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to
Furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the
one sail evening after evening when the galley's beak was notched into
the centre of the sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no
other guide," quoth Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and
explorations in its woods, where the crew killed three men whom they
found asleep under the pines. Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the
galley, swimming and choking in the water, and the crew cast lots and
threw one of their number overboard as a sacrifice to the strange gods
whom they had offended. Then they ate sea-weed when their provisions
failed, and their legs swelled, and their leader, the red-haired man,
killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a year spent among the woods
they set sail for their own country, and a wind that never failed
carried them back so safely that they all slept at night. This and much
more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low that I could not
catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain. He spoke of their
leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God; for it was he
who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought best for their
needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among floating ice,
each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail with us," said
Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the oars. "

The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down
with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking,
and I said no word.

"By Jove! " he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at the
fire till I'm dizzy. What was I going to say? "

"Something about the galley. "

"I remember now. It's 25 per cent. of the profits, isn't it? "

"It's anything you like when I've done the tale. "

"I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I've, I've an appointment. "
And he left me.

Had my eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering
over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the
prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the
Lords of Life and Death!
When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous
and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a
little parted.

"I've done a poem," he said; and then quickly: "it's the best I've ever
done. Read it. " He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.

I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to
criticise--that is to say praise--the poem sufficiently to please
Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his
favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse,
and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:

"The day is most fair, the cheery wind
Halloos behind the hill,
Where bends the wood as seemeth good,

And the sapling to his will!
Riot O wind; there is that in my blood
That would not have thee still!

"She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky:
Grey sea, she is mine alone--I
Let the sullen boulders hear my cry,
And rejoice tho' they be but stone!

'Mine! I have won her O good brown earth,
Make merry! 'Tis bard on Spring;
Make merry; my love is doubly worth
All worship your fields can bring!
Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth
At the early harrowing. "

"Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at
my heart. Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

"Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad; I am victor.
Greet me O Sun, Dominant master and absolute lord
Over the soul of one! "

"Well? " said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid
a photograph on the paper--the photograph of a girl with a curly head,
and a foolish slack mouth.

"Isn't it--isn't it wonderful? " he whispered, pink to the tips of his
ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I
didn't think--it came like a thunderclap. "

"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie? "

"My God--she--she loves me! " He sat down repeating the last words to
himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already
bowed by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and bow he had loved in
his past lives.

"What will your mother say? " I asked, cheerfully.

"I don't care a damn what she says. "

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should,
properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told
him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described
to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve.
Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a
weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already
that She had never been kissed by a man before.

Charlie spoke on, and on, and on; while I, separated from him by
thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I
understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully
behind us. It is that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not
so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.

"Now, about that galley-story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a
pause in the rush of the speech.

Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley--what galley?
Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how
serious it is! "

Grish Chunder was right. Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills
remembrance, and the "finest story" in the world would never be written.

* * * * *




VOLUME IV UNDER THE DEODARS




THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE


I

In the pleasant orchard-closes
"God bless all our gains," say we;
But "May God bless all our losses,"
Better suits with our degree.
--The Lost Bower.

This is the history of a failure; but the woman who failed said that it
might be an instructive tale to put into print for the benefit of the
younger generation. The younger generation does not want instruction,
being perfectly willing to instruct if any one will listen to it. None
the less, here begins the story where every right-minded story should
begin, that is to say at Simla, where all things begin and many come to
an evil end.

The mistake was due to a very clever woman making a blunder and not
retrieving it. Men are licensed to stumble, but a clever woman's mistake
is outside the regular course of Nature and Providence; since all good
people know that a woman is the only infallible thing in this world,
except Government Paper of the '70 issue, bearing interest at four and
a half per cent. Yet, we have to remember that six consecutive days of
rehearsing the leading part of The Fallen Age, at the New Gaiety Theatre
where the plaster is not yet properly dry, might have brought about an
unhingement of spirits which, again, might have led to eccentricities.

Mrs. Hauksbee came to "The Foundry" to tiffin with Mrs. Mallowe, her one
bosom friend, for she was in no sense "a woman's woman. " And it was a
woman's tiffin, the door shut to all the world; and they both talked
chiffons, which is French for Mysteries.

"I've enjoyed an interval of sanity," Mrs. Hauksbee announced, after
tiffin was over and the two were comfortably settled in the little
writing-room that opened out of Mrs. Mallowe's bedroom.

"My dear girl, what has he done? " said Mrs. Mallowe, sweetly. It is
noticeable that ladies of a certain age call each other "dear girl,"
just as commissioners of twenty-eight years' standing address their
equals in the Civil List as "my boy. "

"There's no he in the case. Who am I that an imaginary man should be
always credited to me? Am I an Apache? "

"No, dear, but somebody's scalp is generally drying at your wigwam-door.
Soaking, rather. "

This was an allusion to the Hawley Boy, who was in the habit of riding
all across Simla in the Rains, to call on Mrs. Hauksbee. That lady
laughed.

"For my sins, the Aide at Tyrconnel last night told me off to The
Mussuck. Hsh! Don't laugh. One of my most devoted admirers. When the
duff came--some one really ought to teach them to make pudding at
Tyrconnel--The Mussuck was at liberty to attend to me. "

"Sweet soul! I know his appetite," said Mrs. Mallowe. "Did he, oh did
he, begin his wooing? "

"By a special mercy of Providence, no. He explained his importance as a
Pillar of the Empire. I didn't laugh. "

"Lucy, I don't believe you. "

"Ask Captain Sangar; he was on the other side. Well, as I was saying,
The Mussuck dilated. "

"I think I can see him doing it," said Mrs. Mallowe, pensively,
scratching her fox-terrier's ears.

"I was properly impressed. Most properly. I yawned openly. 'Strict
supervision, and play them off one against the other,' said The
Mussuck, shoveling down his ice by tureenfuls, I assure you. 'That, Mrs.
Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government. '"

Mrs. Mallowe laughed long and merrily. "And what did you say? "

"Did you ever know me at loss for an answer yet? I said: 'So I have
observed in my dealings with you. ' The Mussuck swelled with pride. He is
coming to call on me tomorrow. The Hawley Boy is coming too. "

"'Strict supervision and play them off one against the other. That, Mrs.
Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government. ' And I dare say if we could
get to The Mussuck's heart, we should find that he considers himself a
man of the world. "

"As he is of the other two things. I like The Mussuck, and I won't have
you call him names. He amuses me. "

"He has reformed you, too, by what appears. Explain the interval of
sanity, and hit Tim on the nose with the paper-cutter, please. That dog
is too fond of sugar. Do you take milk in yours? "

"No, thanks. Polly, I'm wearied of this life. It's hollow. "

"Turn religious, then. I always said that Rome would be your fate. "

"Only exchanging half a dozen attaches in red for one and in black, and
if I fasted, the wrinkles would come, and never, never go. Has it ever
struck you, dear, that I'm getting old? "

"Thanks for your courtesy. I'll return it. Ye-es we are both not
exactly--how shall I put it? "

"What we have been. 'I feel it in my bones,' as Mrs. Crossley says.
Polly, I've wasted my life. "

"As how? "

"Never mind how. I feel it. I want to be a Power before I die. "

"Be a Power then. You've wits enough for anything--and beauty? "

Mrs. Hauksbee pointed a teaspoon straight at her hostess. "Polly, if you
heap compliments on me like this, I shall cease to believe that you're a
woman. Tell me how I am to be a Power. "

"Inform The Mussuck that he is the most fascinating and slimmest man in
Asia, and he'll tell you anything and everything you please. "

"Bother The Mussuck! I mean an intellectual Power--not a gas-power.
Polly, I'm going to start a salon. "

Mrs. Mallowe turned lazily on the sofa and rested her head on her hand.
"Hear the words of the Preacher, the son of Baruch," she said.

"Will you talk sensibly? "

"I will, dear, for I see that you are going to make a mistake. "

"I never made a mistake in my life at least, never one that I couldn't
explain away afterward. "

"Going to make a mistake," went on Mrs. Mallowe, composedly. "It is
impossible to start a salon in Simla. A bar would be much more to the
point. "

"Perhaps, but why? It seems so easy. "

"Just what makes it so difficult. How many clever women are there in
Simla? "

"Myself and yourself," said Mrs. Hauksbee, without a moment's
hesitation.

"Modest woman! Mrs. Feardon would thank you for that. And how many
clever men? "

"Oh--er--hundreds," said Mrs. Hauksbee, vaguely.

"What a fatal blunder! Not one. They are all bespoke of the Government.
Take my husband, for instance. Jack was a clever man, though I say so
who shouldn't. Government has eaten him up. All his ideas and powers of
conversation--he really used to be a good talker, even to his wife,
in the old days--are taken from him by this--this kitchen-sink of a
Government. That's the case with every man up here who is at work. I
don't suppose a Russian convict under the knout is able to amuse the
rest of his gang; and all our men-folk here are gilded convicts. "

"But there are scores--"

"I know what you're going to say. Scores of idle men up on leave. I
admit it, but they are all of two objectionable sets, The Civilian who'd
be delightful if he had the military man's knowledge of the world and
style, and the military man who'd be adorable if lie had the Civilian's
culture. "

"Detestable word! Have Civilians Culchaw? I never studied the breed
deeply. "

"Don't make fun of Jack's service. Yes. They're like the teapots in the
Lakka Bazar--good material but not polished. They can't help themselves,
poor dears. A Civilian only begins to be tolerable after he has knocked
about the world for fifteen years. "

"And a military man? "

"When he has had the same amount of service. The young of both species
are horrible. You would have scores of them in your salon. "

"I would not! " said Mrs. Hauksbee, fiercely. "I would tell the bearer to
darwaza band them. I'd put their own colonels and commissioners at the
door to turn them away. I'd give them to the Topsham girl to play with. "

"The Topsham girl would be grateful for the gift. But to go back to the
salon. Allowing that you had gathered all your men and women together,
what would you do with them?