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Page 9
He eventually arrived at his destination, lied blithely to the chief
steward, and was assigned to the first-class cabins on the promenade
deck, simply because his manner was engaging and his face pleasing to
the eye. The sea? He had never been on it but once, and then only in
a rowboat. A good sailor? Perhaps. Chicken and barley broths at
eleven; the captain's table in the dining-saloon, breakfast, luncheon
and dinner; cabin housekeeper and luggage man at the ports; and always
a natty, stiffly starched jacket with a metal number; and "Yes, sir!"
and "No, sir!" and "Thank you, sir!" his official vocabulary. Fine job
for a poet!
It was all in the game he was going to play with fate. A chap who
could sell flamingo ties to gentlemen with purple moses, and shirts
with attached cuffs to coal-porters ought not to worry over such a
simple employment as cabin-steward on board an ocean liner.
Early the next morning they left port, with only a few first-class
passengers. The heavy travel was coming from the west, not going that
way. The series of cabins under his stewardship were vacant.
Therefore, with the thoroughness of his breed, he set about to learn
"ship"; and by the time the first bugle for dinner blew, he knew port
from starboard, boat-deck from main, and many other things, some
unknown to the chief-steward who had made a hundred and twenty voyages
on this very ship.
Beautiful weather; a mild southwest blow, with a moderate beam-sea;
only the deck _would_ come up smack against the soles of his boots in a
most unexpected and aggravating manner. But after the third day out,
he found his sea-legs and learned how to "lean." From two till five
his time was his own, and a very good deal of this time he devoted to
Henley and Morris and Walt Whitman, an ancient brier between his teeth
and a canister of excellent tobacco at his elbow. Odd, isn't it, that
an Englishman without his pipe is as incomplete as a Manx cat, which,
as doubtless you know, has no tail. After all, does a Manx cat know
that it is incomplete? Let me say, then, as incomplete as a small boy
without pockets.
Toward his fellow stewards he was friendly without being companionable;
and as they were of a decent sort, they let him go his way.
Several times during the voyage he opened his trunk and took out the
manuscripts. Hang it, they weren't so bally bad. If he could still
re-read them, after an hour or two with Henley, there must be some
merit to them.
One afternoon he sat alone on the edge of his bunk. The sun was
pouring into the porthole; intermittently it flashed over him.
Suddenly and alertly he got up, looked out, listened intently, then
stepped back into the cabin and locked the door. Again he listened.
There was no sound except the steady heart-beats of the great engines
below. He sat down sidewise, took out the chamois bag which hung
around his neck, and poured the contents out on the blanket. Blue
stones, rather dull at first; but ah! when the sun awoke the fires in
them: blue as the flower o' the corn, the flame of burning sulphur. He
gathered them up and slowly trickled them through his fingers.
Sapphires, unset, beautiful as a woman's eyes. He replaced them in the
chamois bag; and for the rest of the afternoon went about his affairs
preoccupiedly, grave as a bishop under his miter. For, all said and
done, he had much to be grave about.
In one of the panels of the partition which separated the cabin from
the next, there was a crack. A human eye could see through it very
well. And did.
My young poet had "signed on" under the name of Thomas Webb. It was
not assumed. For years he had been known in the haberdashery as Webb.
There was more to it, however; there was a tail to the kite. The
English have an inordinate fondness for hyphens, for mother's family
name and grandmother's family name and great-grandmother's, with the
immediate paternal cognomen as a period. Thomas' full name was a
rosary, if you like, of yeomen, of soldiers, of farmers, of artists, of
gentle bloods, of dreamers. The latest transfusion of blood is always
most powerful in effect upon the receiver; and as Thomas' father had
died in penury for the sake of an idea, it was in order that the son
should be something of a dreamer too. Poetry is but an expression of
life seen through dreams.
His father had been a scholar, risen from the people; his mother had
been gentle. From his seventh year the boy had faced life alone. He
had never gone with the stream but had always found lodgment in the
backwaters. There is no employment quieter, peacefuller than that of a
clerk in a haberdashery. From Mondays till Saturdays, calm; a perfect
environment for a poet. You would be surprised to learn of the vast
army of poets and novelists and dramatists who dispense four-in-hands,
collars, buttons and hosiery six days in the week and who go
a-picnicking on the seventh, provided it does not rain.
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