Chapter XII: Gregory Lectures

I

The committee on entertainment of visiting lecturers had called upon Gregory at his hotel and been pleased. He had the ear-marks of eccentricity, to be sure, but in their capacity of hostesses they were used to that. Geniuses might not live in St. Pierre but they were frequently imported thither and as a matter of fact several had grown there, though their wings had been only budding when they had taken themselves to the denser air of the great cities.

They had met him now and he pleased them. His fine courtesy, the slight exaggeration of his manner, his deference to their arrangements and his lack of pompousness charmed them. They withdrew after he had politely but firmly refused invitations for either lunch or dinner saying that he must concentrate before his talk. He neglected to mention that he was concentrating on Freda and was planning to meet her at a lunch room outside her office where she had said they would have a chance to talk.

A clean, white table needing no cloths to cover its shining metal surface with two bowls of oyster stew, steaming very hot, furnished him and Freda their occasion.

She told him Margaret had asked for him.

“And you told her?”

“That I was having dinner with you to-night. I didn’t mention lunch. Wasn’t that ridiculously secretive?”

“It was deliciously secret.”

“I don’t think I should monopolize all your time, though,” she demurred.

“Freda!” He was frowning now. “You aren’t going to waste time like that, are you? You aren’t going to hint at cheapness and little crippled conventions, are you?”

“No, I’m not. I was just saying--words. I wasn’t thinking. I suppose I was trying to hold you off for a minute for some obscure reason.”

He glanced at her very tenderly.

“You needn’t hold me off, darling. But it’s such a short time. And there’s nothing in the world as wise as to seize the cup of joy when it’s full. There’s an undiscoverable leak in that cup and it empties if you dawdle over it. It may be accident--death--or human perversity--almost anything. I’m so sure our cup is full now that I want to drink it with you quickly. Listen--there’s nothing in the world against it except that some person whom neither of us cares about at all might say we weren’t considered--were too hasty. For the sake of that obscure person whom we don’t know, you aren’t going to send me away, are you?”

She was hesitant.

“It doesn’t trouble you longer that I came out here to see Margaret Duffield, does it?”

“A little,” she answered honestly.

“It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t and it mustn’t. With her it was all argument and all tangle--with you it was like a flash of light.”

“I don’t want her to matter,” said Freda, “I always have wanted my love to come like this. Without question. Fearlessly.”

“Then you will, darling?”

“I don’t care about the rest, but there’s father. I hate to not tell him.”

“Will he hate it when you’re happy?”

“He’ll love it.”

“Then--listen. I shall tell him--later. I’ll tell him that I always prayed that when I married I wouldn’t have to have the eyes of the world on the coming of my bride. That my wedding should be secret and holy. If we could tell him without the rest knowing--but he would tell your mother, wouldn’t he?”

“And mother would want a wedding,” said Freda, a little drearily.

He leaned across to touch her hand.

“You don’t think it’s furtive--clandestine?”

“Oh, no!”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No--”

“I must go on, you see--those damned lectures. I must have the money. And I must go through to Spokane. I could ask you to wait until I got back but, darling--what’s the use of waiting? What’s the use of waiting? We could be married to-morrow--and have Sunday together. Then--then--we could wait for each other. Or you could come with me--”

“No, we couldn’t, Gregory. It’s too expensive. You know we couldn’t.”

She was so definite that his face fell. At the sight of it she smiled and reassured him.

“I shan’t mind a bit not having any money.”

“Money’s a nuisance. But I want enough of it--I’ll earn enough of it to take you to Ireland with me, when I come back in six weeks.”

Her forehead was a little knit. He went on eagerly.

“I’ve never been so practical. You wouldn’t believe what a man of affairs--American affairs--I’ve been. I looked up the name of a little hamlet where we could go to-morrow afternoon and be married by sundown. And then, sweetheart, an eternity of a day before us--and immortality to look forward to.”

“And no one to know.”

“Unless you wish it--no one.”

“I don’t wish it. It sounds dangerous and mad--but if I don’t, Gregory, I know I’ll regret it all the rest of my life. It’s my chance to prove life. It’s not as if I had the faintest doubt of you--”

“Never have I been married,” he laughed, “I’m poor and that’s the worst of me. You can read all about me in the papers to-day. They tell the worst.”

“Freda, darling, I’ve always wanted to steal the secret of life. Come with me--and we can do it.”

There was a flame in her eyes--a response as urgent as his call.

“That’s what I’ve wanted too--all my life.”

The waitress at their table glanced at them impatiently. They dallied too long--this gawky, skinny, black haired young fellow and the girl in the dark blue cape. Making love, all right. She was a pretty girl too, but no style. All that heavy, yellow hair half slipping down her neck. She’d do with a bob.

She had a still greater impatience as she searched the table in vain for the tip they had forgotten.

II

The committee in the ante-room glanced cheerfully in at the crowd gathering for Gregory’s lecture. They had hoped for a big audience but it was a bad week. The town was full of the Convention delegates and in little mood for lectures, they had feared. But people came. Fully a thousand people had gathered to hear the lecture on Ireland and its Poetry.

They wondered a little at some of the people who bought tickets at the door--men whom they were sure never had attended any lecture under their auspices before. That was because they did not know that Gregory Macmillan’s name was one familiar to other circles than the literary poetic ones--that his vigor in the Irish Republican cause had been told even on this side of the Atlantic. There were those who would have come to hear a lecture of no other subject--Irishmen who had heard his name and subject announced at their meeting of the Knights of Columbus. The literary-minded, the students, the people who patronized the lectures of the Collegiate Alumnae as they did all semi-social affairs, sat side by side in the hall and watched Gregory as he came out from the faded wings at one side of the amateur stage.

Margaret Duffield, Carpenter, Helen and a rather unwilling Gage had adjoining seats. Gage had been extremely disrespectful in his characterization of the lecture, the society which gave it and the presumable character of the man who was to give it, especially as he learned that he was a friend of Margaret’s.

Yet it was Gage who enjoyed the lecture most. From the opening sentence it was clear that the discussion of Irish Poetry was to Gregory merely a discussion of Ireland. In Ireland to be a poet meant that one thought deeply enough to be a patriot. All his poets were patriots.

He made no specific indictment of England except as he read with passionate fervor the translation of Padraic Pearse from the old Irish--

“The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway.
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low,
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!”

It was a quotation and he did not comment on its content. But he sketched the lives of some of his poets--his friends--his leaders. He made their dream clear--their simple idealism--their ignoring of the politics of expediency--their lives so chaste and beautiful. He told of their homes, their schools,--and sometimes when he ended simply, “He was killed in the attack of ----, shot by the military”--or more briefly, “He was executed on ----,” a shudder ran through his audience.

He would show the gayety of Ireland, the joy of the people, their exuberance--and end with a simple “Of course it is not like that now. There is much grief and mourning.”

It was not politics. It was a prose poem composed by a poet. One could not take exception to it as political but the hearers would forever have their standpoints colored by what he said. It was like a picture which, once seen, could never be forgotten.

Margaret listened, her ready mind taking exception to some of the things he said, seeing how he played upon his audience--Walter and Helen listened with intellectual appreciation. But Gage, slouched down in his seat felt envy grow in him. There was before him what he had always wanted. A man who had something indestructible, something immortal to care for. A conviction--and an ideal--an outlet for his soul. He felt himself cheated.

He liked too to listen to the poems about women. No controversial tirades these poems--but verses soft and sweet and pliable as the essence of women--once had been. He checked his running thoughts and looked at his wife, sitting beside him with her head high, “conscious of herself, every minute now,” he thought bitterly.