Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (159 page)

"I
have
been—many
times—overcome
with
weariness
in
this
particular
employment.
That
is
the
meaning."
He
returned
me
the paper,
and
I
fled
without
a
word
of
thanks,
explanation,
or
apology.

I
might
have
been
excused
for
forgetting
much.
To
me
of
all
men had
been
given
the
chance
to
write
the
most
marvelous
tale
in
the world,
nothing
less
than
the
story
of
a
Greek
galley-slave,
as
told
by himself.
Small
wonder
that
his
dreaming
had
seemed
real
to
Charlie. The
Fates
that
are
so
careful
to
shut
the
doors
of
each
successive
life behind
us
had,
in
this
case,
been
neglectful,
and
Charlie
was
looking, though
that
he
did
not
know,
where
never
man
had
been
permitted to
look
with
full
knowledge
since
Time
began.
Above
all,
he
was
absolutely
ignorant
of
the
knowledge
sold
to
me
for
five
pounds;
and
he would
retain
that
ignorance,
for
bank-clerks
do
not
understand
metempsychosis,
and
a
sound
commercial
education
does
not
include
Greek. He
would
supply
me—here
I
capered
among
the
dumb
gods
of
Egypt and
laughed
in
their
battered
faces—with
material
to
make
my
tale sure—so
sure
that
the
world
would
hail
it
as
an
impudent
and
vamped fiction.
And
I—I
alone
would
know
tjiat
it
was
absolutely
and
literally true.
I,—I
alone
held
this
jewel
to
my
hand
for
the
cutting
and
polishing.
Therefore
I
danced
again
among
the
gods
till
a
policeman
saw me
and
took
steps
in
my
direction.

It
remained
now
only
to
encourage
Charlie
to
talk,
and
here
there was
no
difficulty.
But
I
had
forgotten
those
accursed
books
of
poetry. He
came
to
me
time
after
time,
as
useless
as
a
surcharged
phonograph —drunk
on
Byron,
Shelley,
or
Keats.
Knowing
now
what
the
boy
had been
in
his
past
lives,
and
desperately
anxious
not
to
lose
one
word
of his
babble,
I
could
not
hide
from
him
my
respect
and
interest.
He misconstrued
both
into
respect
for
the
present
soul
of
Charlie
Mears, to
whom
life
was
as
new
as
it
was
to
Adam,
and
interest
in
his
readings;
and
stretched
my
patience
to
breaking
point
by
reciting
poetry— not
his
own
now,
but
that
of
others.
I
wished
every
English
poet
blotted
out
of
the
memory
of
mankind.
I
blasphemed
the
mightiest names
of
song
because
they
had
drawn
Charlie
from
the
path
of direct
narrative,
and
would,
later,
spur
him
to
imitate
them;
but
I
choked
down
my
impatience
until
the
first
flood
of
enthusiasm
should have
spent
itself
and
the
boy
returned
to
his
dreams.

"What's
the
use
of
my
telling
you
what
I
think,
when
these
chaps wrote
things
for
the
angels
to
read?"
he
growled,
one
evening.
"Why don't
you
write
something
like
theirs?"