University of Virginia Library

ACT I

SCENE.—A Room in a Public-House. Glasses on the table. Brown is discovered talking excitedly; Jones, attempting to interrupt him; and Robinson, in a corner with a newspaper.
Brown.
Truth is an airy point between two cliffs
Of adamant opinion: safest he
Who foots it far from either beetling brink.
Hallowes, now: he goes hanging on the verge
His martyr-face and aspirations strung
With bent keys. If his starting eyes behold
Some tartan star, or other fire-flaught born
Of pallid brains ill-nourished on bleached blood,
It is the truth—truth absolute! And down,
Loosing his hold to clasp his fervid hands,
He'll crash, and spill his life on stones untrod.

Robinson.
Fair—very fair, indeed!

Jones.
So would not you!
The Bastille Column or St. Paul's at noon,
Where crowds may see your glossy frock-coat fly,
And wax pathetic o'er the exotic spray
That slips the button-hole in middle air,
And twinkling after, lights upon the mess
Of limbs and oozing blood that late was you.

Robinson.
Come, let each other be! no answer, Brown;
Because I want to open up a point.
That fellow, Smith—the point is suicide—
He said the other day—why, it was here!—
He would have coffee; we had brandy: well—
You know he speaks to everybody; so,
He cries to Topsy, there, who brought the drink—
He spoils the barmaids with his high-flown talk:
I tried it, and they laughed at me; but he!
He talks philosophy, religion, books:
And they can talk it too, with him. Well, then—

Brown.
Pure innocence: the man's a baby.

Jones.
Yes.
Uncultured, too; he lacks the college stamp.

Robinson.
Well, then, my point—

Brown.
Oh, never mind your point!
You've hit it, Jones; “uncultured” is the word.
Give me a man who knows what language means:
No forging sudden bolts that gild the fact,
A bright enough reality before:
Who never says a thing a thousand ways,
Nibbling with slippery sleight-of-tongue, till chance
Expose the end to bite. Give me a man
Whose mind is ready as a lawyer's desk,
Each pigeon-hole accountable for this,
Each drawer containing that, and nothing else.

Jones.
Whose thinking's done; whose automatic mind
Strikes the same absolute response each time.

Brown.
A man who knows the best of everything;
Consummate, bland; whom novelty annoys,
Guessing what musty masquerade it is
Of some dispute of Lamech and his wives.

Jones.
Smith's a mere savage, barbarous as a Lapp:
A handsome creature, but elliptical.

Brown.
Something awanting to complete the sense!

Robinson.
Fair, very fair! But here's a point: you men
Since you began to go about with Smith,
Have caught a little of his style of talk;
You can't deny his power.

Brown.
Power?—seething blood.
Give Jones, or such a man, Smith's body—why,
You'd have the hero of the age! Power? stuff!

Jones.
Admit the power—potential as a troop;
But where's the captain?

Brown.
Ay; his brain's a mess
Of sodden sawdust; it ferments and fumes:
But, let me say, wood-spirit's not champagne,
In spite of fables to the contrary.

Jones.
Labels, you mean.

Robinson.
Fair—very fair, by Jove!
Do you go north this year?

Brown.
I do, this week.

Robinson.
So soon! Health and a happy holiday!

Jones.
Your good health and a pleasant time in Garth!

Robinson.
Here's a point, Brown. Hallowes—he talks of Garth:
I thought the place was only known to you.

Brown.
Hallowes discovered it a year ago:
And there I met him.

Jones.
So: I understand
How such an out-at-elbows man as he
Is known to you: there you had no one else.

Brown.
Exactly: with his simple ecstasies
He made good sport when Maudlin took the dumps.

Jones.
When do you wed your cousin?

Brown.
In a month.

Jones.
Is the day fixed?

Brown.
I go to have it fixed.

Robinson.
Your cousin, Magdalen . . . . By Jove, here's Smith!

Enter Smith.
Smith.
You here! Has Hallowes been?

Brown.
No; not to-night.
Are you to meet him?

Smith.
Yes.

Brown.
He'll not appear:
He acts the people's notion of a poet.
He has a double memorandum-book—
Engagements to be broken—to be kept;
And most of those he makes are for the first:
“Sorry I failed you,” when he sees you; “but”—
And you are left to gather that the Muse
Hugged him so close he couldn't get away.

Smith.
He'll not fail me.

Jones.
Don't be too sure of that.
I've known him break with me a dozen times.

Smith.
Perhaps he's braver than your other friends.

Jones.
The satire's deep.

Brown.
A little underbred—
Hallowes, I mean.

Robinson.
Still he's a graduate.

Jones.
Finished apprentice; but he shuns the stress
Of competition with the journeymen,
Whereby alone dexterity is gained.

Brown.
A fledgling knight who flies the eager fray
Where sword whets sword.

Robinson.
He herds with nobody,
I've noticed that. But here's a point: I, you,
Smith—everybody wants to know the man;
He—won't be known: no one can equal him
In turning forth the dark slide when you think
Acquaintance burns to intimacy. Smith,
Only you see his lantern blazing bright;
How's that?

Brown.
Speak for yourself, sir. This I know,
He rather courted me. His fitful wisp,
However, I assure you, Robinson,
Leads to a quaking bog of egotism.

Jones.

Brown.
By Jove!
The net result of solitude. This world,
This oyster with its valves of toil and play,
Would round his corners for its own good ease,
And make a pearl of him if he'd plunge in.

Smith.
Then you would change the diamonds into pearls,
The rubies and the opals?

Robinson.
Very fair!

Brown.
Better a pure pearl than a damaged diamond.

Jones.
And in this matter we may all be pearls.

Smith.
Be worldlings, truly. I would rather be
A shred of glass that sparkles in the sun,
And keeps a lowly rainbow of its own,
Than one of those so trim and patent pearls
With hearts of sand veneered, sewed up and down
The stiff brocade society affects.

Robinson.
Fair, very fair!

Jones.
Be quiet, parroquet!
Are we such pearls?

Smith.
Pearls! This is what you are:
The commonest type of biped crawling here.
Take it thus crudely: you would not believe
A subtle phrase in full, but think I meant
Less than the words might bear, deeming me dull—
Barbarian you call me . . . .

Brown.
Who said that?

Smith.
The friends of gossips gossip, little Brown.

Brown.
The great Smith gossips too, then.

Smith.
What! You fool!
You dare to bandy words with me! Begone!
Get out of here the three of you!

Jones.
He's mad.

Smith.
You sots, you maggots, shavings, asteroids!
A million of you wouldn't make a man!
Out, or I'll strike you, monkeys, mannikins!

[All go out; then re-enter Smith, followed by Topsy with salver, etc.
Smith.
You're looking fresh: You've had a holiday?

Topsy.
I've had my week.

Smith.
Where were you?

Topsy.
At the coast.

Smith.
Now, tell me, what of all you saw, remains?

Topsy.
Oh, well—there's many a thing! There's—
Ah! there's this!
One morning early that I stood alone,
And saw the green sea from a windy cliff,
With small, white, curling waves, like shavings pinned
Upon a watered silk.

Smith.
Oh! how was that?

Topsy.
There was a great Scotch lady long ago—
I read it in a penny paper there;
That made me think of it; and she was poor,
And wore, instead of ribbons, shavings once,
And was the belle and made a match that night.
Here's Mr. Hallowes, sir.

Smith.
The same for him.

Enter Hallowes. Topsy goes out, and returns as before, and goes out again.
Hallowes.
Smith, I congratulate you. Come, your hand.

Smith.
Thank you; I'm very pleased indeed. On what?

Hallowes.
On the great gladness you're about to feel.
I've lost my post—dismissed—incompetence.

Smith.
So soon! I said three months: it's just three weeks.
Business is worse than teaching, then.

Hallowes.
Oh, worse!
Give me a week to coin its condemnation!
Business—the world's work—is the sale of lies:
Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more
In every branch becomes the sale of money:
Why, goods are now the means of bartering gold!

Smith.
It fits these reeling times of tail-wagged dogs.

Hallowes.
But wish me joy.

Smith.
Joy, friend, till pain be ease!

Hallowes.
Now will I tell you what I mean to do.
Garth's in the North, a hamlet like a cave,
Nestling unknown in tawny Merlin's side,
A mount, brindled with scars and waterways.
The windows, Argus-eyed with knotted panes
That under heavy brows of roses blink
Blind guard, have never wept with hailstones stung;
No antique, gnarled, and wrinkled, roundwood porch,
Whiskered with hollyhocks in this old thorpe
Has ever felt the razor of the East:
No rail, no coach, no tourist passes there:
But in the brooding evening from her seat,
A worn tree-trunk, the toothless beldame leaps
As lithe as superstition, says a saw,
And kills the toad that in the channel hops;
Far up the mountain children's voices ring;
The quoiters cry; and past the ivied inn
A chastened brook tells all its pebbled beads;
Between the bourtrie-bushes and the thorns
The commonest bird that sings is wonderful,
So empty are the spaces of the air
From any breath of modern weariness.
There will I live and walk the mountain-side,
Looking across the strath upon a stream,
A beakerful of water, spilt along
A winding strip of green and bosky spray,
That showers in silver when light-fingered winds
Turn up the leaves: a ridge, fire-reared and low,
Of coppice-covered hills, scalloped against
A loftier mass of purple, nobly borne,
Gives body to the sunset: night and day,
Asleep or waking, earth in heaven's lap lies.

Smith.
And is this to be wholly holiday?

Hallowes.
I shall make poetry—a line a day,
If nothing more. I'm twenty: I may count
On ten years yet. Three thousand lines, each line
A very mountain from whose sun-gilt crest
The stormy world a peaceful picture seems.
I shall upheave and range a chain like this:
Realms shall rejoice in it: my fame shall grow
For ever like the sward.

Smith.
Let fame alone.

Hallowes.
You misconceive: fame is the breath of power:
What valid work was ever for itself
Wrought solely, be it war, art, statesmanship?
Nothing can be its own reward and hold
Rank above patience, or whatever game,
Angling or avarice, is selfisher.
O watering palates! and, O skyey grapes!
O purple path above the milky way!
Give me to dream dreams all would love to dream;
To tell the world's truth; hear the world tramp time
With satin slippers and with hob-nailed shoes
To my true singing: fame is worth its cost,
Blood-sweats, and tears, and haggard, homeless lives.
How dare a man, appealing to the world,
Content himself with ten! How dare a man
Appeal to ten when all the world should hear!
How dare a man conceive himself as else
Than his own fool without the world's hurrah
To echo him!

Smith.
But if the world won't shout
Till he be dead?

Hallowes.
Let him address the street:
No subtle essences, ethereal tones
For senses sick, bed-ridden in the down
Of culture and its stifling curtains. Gusts
From bean-fields and the pine-woods, thought and deed
Of the young world bursting its swaddling bands
Before the upturned eyes and warning palms
Of fangless Use and Wont, his nurses hoar—
These find an echo everywhere.

Smith.
The world
Still follows culture, though.

Hallowes.
Maybe. But it
Follows itself, and shall, Narcissus-like,
Perish of self-love.

Smith.
Echo, what of her?

Hallowes.
She shall be re-incarnate by the word
That she shall hear

Smith.
What word?

Hallowes.
It is not said.

Smith.
Who shall pronounce it?

Hallowes.
Who knows?—You, or I?

Smith.
Well said! We'll go together to the North.

Hallowes.
What! are you free?

Smith.
I am. You want to write:
I want to think. When shall we start?

Hallowes.
To-morrow.

Smith.
So soon! But you are right: one must become
Fanatic—be a wedge—a thunder-bolt,
To smite a passage through the close-grained world.

[They go out.