A Far Country — Complete. Winston Churchill
concerned Aztec relics my answer would undoubtedly have been the same. And I watched him, dazedly, while he took down a silver porringer from the shallow mantel shelf.
“It's not a Revere,” he said, in a slightly apologetic tone as though to forestall a comment, “but it's rather good, I think. I picked it up at a sale in Dorchester. But I have never been able to identify the coat of arms.”
He showed me a ladle, with the names of “Patience and William Simpson” engraved quaintly thereon, and took down other articles in which I managed to feign an interest. Finally he seated himself in the chair opposite, crossed his feet, putting the tips of his fingers together and gazing into the fire.
“So you thought you could fool me,” he said, at length.
I became aware of the ticking of a great clock in the corner. My mouth was dry.
“I am going to forgive you,” he went on, more gravely, “for several reasons. I don't flatter, as you know. It's because you carried out the thing so perfectly that I am led to think you have a gift that may be cultivated, Paret. You wrote that theme in the way Peters would have written it if he had not been—what shall I say?—scripturally inarticulate. And I trust it may do you some good if I say it was something of a literary achievement, if not a moral one.”
“Thank you, sir,” I faltered.
“Have you ever,” he inquired, lapsing a little into his lecture-room manner, “seriously thought of literature as a career? Have you ever thought of any career seriously?”
“I once wished to be a writer, sir,” I replied tremulously, but refrained from telling him of my father's opinion of the profession. Ambition—a purer ambition than I had known for years—leaped within me at his words. He, Alonzo Cheyne, had detected in me the Promethean fire!
I sat there until ten o'clock talking to the real Mr. Cheyne, a human Mr. Cheyne unknown in the lecture-room. Nor had I suspected one in whom cynicism and distrust of undergraduates (of my sort) seemed so ingrained, of such idealism. He did not pour it out in preaching; delicately, unobtrusively and on the whole rather humorously he managed to present to me in a most disillusionizing light that conception of the university held by me and my intimate associates. After I had left him I walked the quiet streets to behold as through dissolving mists another Harvard, and there trembled in my soul like the birth-struggle of a flame something of the vision later to be immortalized by St. Gaudens, the spirit of Harvard responding to the spirit of the Republic—to the call of Lincoln, who voiced it. The place of that bronze at the corner of Boston Common was as yet empty, but I have since stood before it to gaze in wonder at the light shining in darkness on mute, uplifted faces, black faces! at Harvard's son leading them on that the light might live and prevail.
I, too, longed for a Cause into which I might fling myself, in which I might lose myself … I halted on the sidewalk to find myself staring from the opposite side of the street at a familiar house, my old landlady's, Mrs. Bolton's, and summoned up before me was the tired, smiling face of Hermann Krebs. Was it because when he had once spoken so crudely of the University I had seen the reflection of her spirit in his eyes? A light still burned in the extension roof—Krebs's light; another shone dimly through the ground glass of the front door. Obeying a sudden impulse, I crossed the street.
Mrs. Bolton, in the sky-blue wrapper, and looking more forbidding than ever, answered the bell. Life had taught her to be indifferent to surprises, and it was I who became abruptly embarrassed.
“Oh, it's you, Mr. Paret,” she said, as though I had been a frequent caller. I had never once darkened her threshold since I had left her house.
“Yes,” I answered, and hesitated. … “Is Mr. Krebs in?”
“Well,” she replied in a lifeless tone, which nevertheless had in it a touch of bitterness, “I guess there's no reason why you and your friends should have known he was sick.”
“Sick!” I repeated. “Is he very sick?”
“I calculate he'll pull through,” she said. “Sunday the doctor gave him up. And no wonder! He hasn't had any proper food since he's be'n here!” She paused, eyeing me. “If you'll excuse me, Mr. Paret, I was just going up to him when you rang.”
“Certainly,” I replied awkwardly. “Would you be so kind as to tell him—when he's well enough—that I came to see him, and that I'm sorry?”
There was another pause, and she stood with a hand defensively clutching the knob.
“Yes, I'll tell him,” she said.
With a sense of having been baffled, I turned away.
Walking back toward the Yard my attention was attracted by a slowly approaching cab whose occupants were disturbing the quiet of the night with song.
“Shollity—'tis wine, 'tis wine, that makesh—shollity.”
The vehicle drew up in front of a new and commodious building—I believe the first of those designed to house undergraduates who were willing to pay for private bathrooms and other modern luxuries; out of one window of the cab protruded a pair of shoeless feet, out of the other a hatless head I recognized as belonging to Tom Peters; hence I surmised that the feet were his also. The driver got down from the box, and a lively argument was begun inside—for there were other occupants—as to how Mr. Peters was to be disembarked; and I gathered from his frequent references to the “Shgyptian obelisk” that the engineering problem presented struck him as similar to the unloading of Cleopatra's Needle.
“Careful, careful!” he cautioned, as certain expelling movements began from within, “Easy, Ham, you jam-fool, keep the door shut, y'll break me.”
“Now, Jerry, all heave sh'gether!” exclaimed a voice from the blackness of the interior.
“Will ye wait a minute, Mr. Durrett, sir?” implored the cabdriver. “You'll be after ruining me cab entirely.” (Loud roars and vigorous resistance from the obelisk, the cab rocking violently.) “This gintleman” (meaning me) “will have him by the head, and I'll get hold of his feet, sir.” Which he did, after a severe kick in the stomach.
“Head'sh all right, Martin.”
“To be sure it is, Mr. Peters. Now will ye rest aisy awhile, sir?”
“I'm axphyxiated,” cried another voice from the darkness, the mined voice of Jerome Kyme, our classmate.
“Get the tackles under him!” came forth in commanding tones from Conybear.
In the meantime many windows had been raised and much gratuitous advice was being given. The three occupants of the cab's seat who had previously clamoured for Mr. Peters' removal, now inconsistently resisted it; suddenly he came out with a jerk, and we had him fairly upright on the pavement minus a collar and tie and the buttons of his evening waistcoat. Those who remained in the cab engaged in a riotous game of hunt the slipper, while Tom peered into the dark interior, observing gravely the progress of the sport. First flew out an overcoat and a much-battered hat, finally the pumps, all of which in due time were adjusted to his person, and I started home with him, with much parting counsel from the other three.
“Whereinell were you, Hughie?” he inquired. “Hunted all over for you. Had a sousin' good time. Went to Babcock's—had champagne—then to see Babesh in—th'—Woods. Ham knows one of the Babesh had supper with four of 'em. Nice Babesh!”
“For heaven's sake don't step on me again!” I cried.
“Sh'poloshize, old man. But y'know I'm William Shakespheare. C'n do what I damplease.” He halted in the middle of the street and recited dramatically:—
“'Not marble, nor th' gilded monuments
Of prinches sh'll outlive m' powerful rhyme.'”
“How's that, Alonzho, b'gosh?”
“Where did you learn it?” I demanded, momentarily forgetting his condition.