More Trivia Part 8

'What a beautiful movement!' she murmured, as the music paused.

'Beautiful!' I roused myself to echo, though I hadn't heard a note.

Immediately I found myself again in the dock; and again the trial began, that ever-recurring criminal Action in which I am both Judge and culprit, all the jury, and the advocate on either side.

I now pleaded my other respectable attainments and previous good character; and winning a favourable verdict, I dropped back into my dream, letting the violin wail unheard through the other movements, and the Grand Piano tinkle.

SOMEWHERE

Somewhere, far below the horizon, there is a City; some day I shall sail to find that sun-bright harbour; by what star I shall steer my vessel, or where that seaport lies, I know not; but somehow, through calms and storms and all the vague sea-noises I shall voyage, until at last some mountain peak will rise to tell me I am near my destination; or I shall see, some day at dusk, a lighthouse twinkling at its port.

THE PLAt.i.tUDE

'It's after all the little things in life that really matter!' I exclaimed. I was as much chagrined as they were flabbergasted by this involuntary outbreak; but I have become an expert in that Taoist art of disintegration which Yen Hui described to Confucius as the art of 'sitting and forgetting.' I have learnt to lay aside my personality in awkward moments, to dissolve this self of mine into the All Pervading; to fall back, in fact, into the universal flux, and sit, as I now sat there, a blameless lump of matter, rolled on according to the heavens'

rolling, with rocks and stones and trees.

THE FETISH

Enshrined in a box of white paste-board upstairs I keep a black, ceremonial object; 'tis my link with Christendom and the world of grave custom; only on sacred occasions does it make its appearance, only at some great tribal dance of my race. To pageants of Woe I convey it, or of the hugest Felicity: at great Hallelujahs of Wedlock, or at last Valedictions, I hold it bare-headed as I bow before altars and tombs.

THE ECHO

Now and then, from the other end of the table, words and phrases reached us as we talked.

'What do they mean by complexes?' she asked. 'Oh, it's only one of the catchwords of the day,' I answered. 'Everything's a complex just now.'

'The talk of most people,' I went on, 'is simply--how shall I put it?--simply the ticking of clocks; it marks the hour, but it has no other interest. But I like to think for myself, to be something more than a mere mouthpiece of the age I live in--a mere sounding-board and echo of contemporary chatter.'

'Just listen!' I said as again their raised voices reached our ears.

'It's simply one of the catchwords of the day,' some one was shouting, 'the merest echo of contemporary chatter!'

THE SCAVENGER

'My parlour-maid and cook both gave notice--'

'My stomach is not at all what it should be--'

'Of course the telephone was out of order--'

'The coal they sent was all stones and coal-dust--'

'All the electric wiring has had to be renewed--'

'I find it impossible to digest potatoes--'

'My aunt has had to have eighteen of her teeth extracted--'

Am I nothing but a dust-bin or kitchen-sink for other people's troubles?

Have I no agonies, no indigestions of my own?

THE HOT-BED

It was too much: the news in the paper was appalling; Central Europe and the Continent of Asia in a state of chaos; no comfort anywhere; tempests in the Channel, earthquakes, famines, strikes, insurrections. The burden of the mystery, the weight of all this incorrigible world was really more than I could cope with.

'To prepare a hot-bed for early vegetables, equal quant.i.ties are taken of horse-manure and fallen leaves; a large heap is built in alternate layers,' I read with pa.s.sionate interest, 'of these materials; it is left for several days, and then turned over. The site of the hot-bed should be sheltered from cold winds, but open to the suns.h.i.+ne. Early and dwarf varieties of potatoes should be chosen; asparagus plants may be dug up from the open garden--'

APHASIA

'But you haven't spoken a word--you ought to tell us what you think.'

'The truth is,' I whispered hoa.r.s.ely in her unaverted ear, 'the truth is, I talk too much. Think of all the years I have been wagging my tongue; think how I shall go on wagging it, till it is smothered in dust!'

'And the worst of it is,' I went on hoa.r.s.ely vociferating, 'the horror is that no one understands me; I can never make clear to any one my view of the world. I may wear my tongue to the stump, and no one will ever know--I shall go down to the grave, and no one will know what I mean.'

MAGIC