Short Stories 1927-1956 (57 page)

‘Ah, yes. Thank you!’ replied the professor. But it was well under his breath that he repeated, ‘Ah, yes.’

‘A Nest of Singing-Birds'

‘A Nest of Singing-Birds'
*

Hilbert had cooled down at last. And now so sweetly chimed his heart, so transporting a sense of peace had stolen over his mind, that he had all but repented of his hasty vow – never, never to run for a train again. And
particularly
for a train not his own. After the din and fever of the arterial road, this tiny station – Bovey Fausset – of which he was the sole occupant, with its Noah's Ark trees, its nursery bridge, and tall toy signal-post, was like a scene out of some Hans Andersen fairy-story. How very odd that those dreadful Victorians, those slaves of the squat god, Pocket, should have
indulged
in anything so ridiculous and charming! The whole thing looked as if it were made of cardboard, and just for fun. If, now and then, between trains, he could sit on here, on this hard, hot, narrow bench in this
westering
September sunshine – mellow as a vintage hock – how simple it would become to stuff lines of verse with sad melodious thoughts; to rhyme
pass
with
alas
!
–
anguish
with
languish.
This morning, unfortunately, he had hastened out of the house
minus
his fountain-pen.

So narrow was the single track of glinting steel that he could have jumped it with ease – a hop, a skip, and clean over. If he had been sure he was not alone he would have made the attempt. But ‘deeds of reckless daring
demand
an audience of the fair'! All along the twin platforms – snapdragons, cottage roses, dahlias – yellow sunflowers of every tint and magnitude, from Van Gogh tea-trays downwards, stood opulently exposing their charms to a host of bees and flies and butterflies in the gentle breeze – a breeze so gentle indeed that it had taken exactly twenty minutes to cool Hilbert's fevered brow.

If he had refused to believe that a ramshackle train going the wrong way could possibly be his own, if he had merely mocked at the silly fallacy of ‘saving' time, he would long ago have detected how heavenly, how
earthly-sweet
this faint wind was, as if it were laden with the spices of the
Hesperides
. The little old leather handbag now squatting on the seat beside him and packed almost exclusively with pretty little
bibelots
– how
could
it have come to weigh so heavy. His own Works, too!

They simply irradiated the air – the sunflowers; and continued to be the bliss of Hilbert's outward eye until suddenly he remembered that their very splendour proclaimed that autumn had come. Autumn! Bedizened
creatures
, how odd that they should wait so long to bloom. But then poor Hilbert seemed now unlikelier than ever to bloom at all. Never. And this in spite of the fact that his present little expedition, which for the moment had
come to so hapless yet serene a pause, just hinted that in a more favourable sphere and loaded up with some other kind of merchandise, he might have proved himself to be a really rabid go-getter.

The little expedition had been solely his own idea, too. Hilbert, in fact, had long had leanings towards literature. He was already the author of the quite recently published little volume of fancies,
pensées,
conceits, now in his bag. And so precisely mid-way were its contents between a respectable prose and a defensible verse that the harsh critics of an earlier era might have avowed that they had issued from a vacuum with the merits of neither. Hilbert's very few reviewers – still following a passing fashion to ‘say it with flowers' – had been far more indulgent.

One of them, after a jocular sally (in July) at ‘spring poets', had referred to ‘these, as doubtless we may assume, dainty first-fruits'; and another, after (possibly with the help of the printer) citing the title of the book as
Parlour
ings
instead of
Parleyings
with
Pegasus,
had pleasantly remarked that Mr Hilbert Winslow ‘wielded a dainty and pensive quill'. This had been a no less welcome tribute for being purely metaphorical, since the pen Hilbert had that morning left at home on his dressing-table, between a rather
decayed
ivory-backed hair brush and an empty bottle of brilliantine, was an exceedingly bloated ‘Swan'.

How odd that critiques as affable as these should have failed to sell a single copy of
Parleyings.
Even poems by Ellis, Currer, and Acton Bell had wooed three into the fold; and editors, of course,
must
know what is good for their readers! But then – though economy rather than foresight had counselled it – how fortunate that Hilbert had ordered only a hundred copies in all. ‘I suppose it's the gilt,' his mother had remarked on seeing the binders' account, ‘I suppose it's the gilt, darling, that makes it so expensive, but I am sure it deserves every penny.' Thirty of these Hilbert had
squandered
on the press. Three had gone to relatives, and twenty-two to friends and well-wishers – a phrase, alas! that for the literary novice is by no means equivalent to go-getter. And the family bookseller had taken twenty. Not on approval, of course, but, as he carefully explained, for ‘sale or return'.

Within ten days, Hilbert was astounded to hear, this enterprising
tradesman
had disposed of the complete batch. And Hilbert had naturally asked for some description of his local patrons. At this the bookseller had looked a trifle confused. He had retrieved at last – but very vaguely – a tall, dark gentleman in spectacles; and then – ‘a lady, yes, a lady, sir.'

It was at mention of the lady that Hilbert's heart had sunk. Telepathy, perhaps. But although next morning he had peeped into his mother's
bedroom
and afterwards covertly surveyed the bookcase in her little
sitting-room
, he had actually detected only one copy of his little masterpiece. This was lying with her Prayer Book on the barley-sugar-legged walnut
prie-dieu
at her bedside, and its fly-leaf was adorned with his signature. ‘I always
told
my beloved one, darling, that some day you would be famous; although I must say books never entered my head. I fancied perhaps something useful. Your Uncle Charles, you know, once went down in a diving-bell.'

But even if, in the abundance of her maternal heart, Hilbert's mother
had
acquired those nineteen copies, a little discreet questioning soon showed that she could not possibly have read them all. ‘Knowing my precious boy, as I do,' she had assured him, ‘there's no need to
study
the book. Why, darling, I might have made up every word of it myself – though I should
never
have thought of the title! Let me see, in
which
story of Charles Dickens is it that that poor old Mr Pegasus is drowned?'

It needed only Hilbert's mastery of arithmetic to calculate that he had thus been left with twenty-four copies in all – copies stranded, as he feared, high and dry. So having decided that since the mountain showed no
symptom
of coming to Mahomet, Mahomet had better make the first advances, at intervals of a few days he had sallied out with the little brown bag which now shared with him the autumnal sunshine of his painted bench, and had already managed to dispose of ten of them. One on the seat of a bus, two in the corner of a tram, four on the shelves of an unsuspecting second-hand bookseller, one on the verger – a widower – of St Swithin's, who left it by an oversight on the lectern, one on the counter of an obscure haberdasher's shop, and two (in late dusk) pushed through a dentist's letter-box. Like the young Benjamin Disraeli, all in his finery and plush, and facing a discordant House, Hilbert had muttered to himself: ‘Some day they
shall
read me.' By which he meant the fastidious few. The degradation of becoming a
bestseller
had never even in fancy so much as darkened his mind.

Thus it came about that he had this morning set out bound for a quarry a little farther afield – a populous town that boasted no fewer than three booksellers – a town, it seemed, pining for sweetness and light. Nevertheless he had twice failed to sell a copy of his
Parleyings,
in spite of offering a very liberal discount. And the third bookseller was so barbarous in
appearance
that he had not even made the attempt. So he had given it to the boy.

Indeed, when it came to a question of
acquiring
a stock-in-trade rather than of disposing of one, booksellers as a species appeared to be singularly busy and absent-minded men. They would palm off on you a complete
encyclopaedia
in chaste morocco without turning a hair; whereas the very notion of purchasing even one copy of a
bibelot
seemed to threaten insolvency. To get the slightest attention from Mr A – a man with thick and powerful spectacles precariously perched on a broken nose – Hilbert had been compelled to buy a second-hand copy in purple leather of
Poems
of
Passion
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox – even though in business transactions
passion is anathema and, unlike Sappho, Mrs Wilcox had always left him cold.

With Mr B, on the other hand, a little fussy man with a somewhat ragged black moustache, the purchase of a shilling shocker had sufficed, Hilbert having no further stomach left for a rival wooer of the Muses. In spite of the profit thus to be derived, neither Mr A nor Mr B had consented to accept his commission. ‘If you will
leave
a copy with me, sir, I will look it over and let you know,' had been their reply – and in almost identical terms. And Hilbert had with difficulty resisted the temptation to don a false beard, return to the shop and persuade
this
busy B to sell him his particular copy before he had had time to be as good as his word.

Outside B's rather musty little shop Hilbert's four-year-old Austin Seven, as if in umbrage at her master's ill-fortune, had decided that she needed a rest-cure, and the railway had proved to be his quickest way home.
Nevertheless
every ounce of Hilbert's moral fibre and better nature had revolted at the notion of his ignominiously returning home with his four unwanteds. But how dispose of them? After all,
Parley
ings
with
Pegasus
was his first born. Mere paternal affection alone shunned the temptation of leaving his offspring under the seat. It was of course his infants, not his literary
masterpieces
, that Jean-Jacques Rousseau had abandoned. There are degrees of consciencelessness.

What then was the alternative? Tracts being obsolete, the only literature nowadays bestowed gratis is the circular. There are Philistines who resent even these. It is a sad fact, Hilbert mused, that human nature should
suspect
a taint in anything that is given away – unless it is accompanied by tea or tobacco. The cost of circulars, he supposed, worked out at about ten a penny; whereas every single 3
s
. 6
d.
copy of his
Parleyings
had cost his mother 10
s
. 11.375
d
. net. He had done the sum himself.

Nonetheless, the frigidity of Messrs A and B had only fanned the flame of his enthusiasm. In spite of all such rebuffs Hilbert had made no attempt to unbridle his Pegasus. There was plenty of sugar where the Parleyings had come from; and some day – Some Day – he would find himself in the
saddle
cantering gaily off to Mt Helicon. Nothing could exceed his assurance of this. Ever since he had been a fat little boy with flaxen finger-curls he had had a passion – undiluted, ineradicable – for putting himself into words – the very best words in the very best order.

So had William Shakespeare. Why, at this very moment there was scarcely an object around him which was not pleading for its real right setting:
The
flaunting
sunflower
at
the
platform's
brink;
The
spidery
arch
that
spans
the
wayside
track;
Sadly
I
sat
while
Autumn's
furtive
rust.
Whithersoever his eye roamed his vocabulary coyly responded.
Mots
justes,
like midges, fairly danced in his mind. Hilbert had quite recently decided that his next volume
should be in verse: a poetry book. This would, he knew, be shockingly out of fashion. Rhymes were gone; punctuation was gone; verse, free or
otherwise
, need not nowadays even trouble to scan. But then stops for Hilbert had always been a stumbling-block, and their absence does, of course, keep any kind of verse from reading like mere prose. While as for rhymes, even a Petrarchan sonnet per morning would be child's play without them. He would defer his decision concerning these little trifles, in the assurance that he could dispense with them at a moment's notice.