No More Learning

Then I took my head tenderly between both hands, to
make certain that it was not coming off or turning round.

Then--but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and
finding myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked Private
in a corridor of the British Museum. All I demanded, as politely as
possible, was "the Greek antiquity man. " The policeman knew nothing
except the rules of the Museum, and it became necessary to forage
through all the houses and offices inside the gates. An elderly
gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my search by holding
the note-paper between finger and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully.

"What does this mean? H'mm," said he. "So far as I can ascertain it is
an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part"--here he glared
at me with intention--"of an extremely illiterate--ah--person. " He read
slowly from the paper, "Pollock, Erckman, Tauchnitz, Henniker"--four
names familiar to me.

"Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean--the gist of
the thing? " I asked.

"'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 that it was
absolutely and literally true. 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?