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Show THE POET M By Harris Morton Lyon. H "What do you think of this? I'm not going to B tell you what I think about it myself. I prove my M point simply by telling you the story. Don't I? B I prove I had imagination enough to see the story. m That's my point; and I'm nothing but a miserable, M veak worm of a business man. See? M "What I want to tell you is about a duffer B named McTrouville. French-Irish extraction. Age, H thirty-five, plump, smooth, finicky about his B clothes. A New Yorker. A piano salesman. He B used to live at this very chop house, bepause m well, he was trying his best to be a gentlemen, m and they helped him here to carry out the bluff. H He could dress like a gentleman here. He could Hl eat like a gentleman here. He could drink like a H gentleman here. A -gentleman in a gentleman's H club. See? He could converse. He could pose. H He could put his little finger in the air when he H held his fork. He could modulate his voice, refine H it, when he addressed a waiter. All that sort of H thing counted, and counted tremendously with m McTrouville. You see it was partly because he B only really lived at night. He vegetated in the B day-time; but he blossomed after ouslness hours. H To him the business of selling pianos was merely B a vague means to a mild end; the end was that H he could sit in this grill room from eight in the H evening until, say, two in the morning in ample H animal content. The rest of life was nothing. You H know there are people like that in this world, H especially in New York. And especially at the H age of thirty-five, which you remember I told you, H was his age. H "By the way, let me branch off here a moment H and tell you something about New York. You M come here broke and you work hard until you B amount to something, until the money begins to M come in. Not too unuch of it, but just enough to H let you be a little bit luxurious with yourself. Then M you begin to loaf; you begin to float. And there's 1 only one way you nan float. Down stream. Bv- VAVJ everyone does it in New York, everyone that is VJ successful and that has just one teeny knuckle M missing out of his backbone. You generally begin fl when you'ro about thirty and by the time you're M thirty-five it's come to be a nice, easy, fixed habit. m Smoke and talk and eat and drink and float. M Especially plenty of talk and especially plenty of B drink. B "Now, I'm not so far off my story as you might M think, because all this applies to McTouville. Mac M was floating. He had a charming manner about M him; what we call a 'pleasing personality' he had B to have to sell pianos. I can't forget the man. I B liked him immensely. B " 'I didn't,' said the harsh littlo man with the H goatee. He was a literary man, named Fergus, KVfl who made the third at our table. H "Naturally you wouldn't," went on the worm H of a business man. "He was always poking fun B at you because he knew more about literature fl than you did. However, I can't forget him be- EVfl cause of one permeating memory. As I said, he Hj was trying to live the life of a gentleman with H all the agony of repression and all the agony of H luxury which the word implies upon the salary H of a piano salesman. And he had actually -gained Hj something of his ideal, too. He had actually at- Hj tained something of the smooth ballast of a club- M man, you know. Groomed, rotund, quiet, extrava- H! gant, but extravagant in a matter-of-fact way. He H went through anguish about his clothes and his HH neckties, tring to keep them quietly extravagant. H That's the way with the floaters in New York. H His gloves, his cane, his hose mimicked those of VAH the young millionaires to the very up-to-datest Hj fashion. You should have seen him when a we.'. tor handed him his cane awkwardly. His stare wa perfect. "The fellow was lovable but, like everything in New York that he was trying to be, fae was all attitude. When he came through those swinging swing-ing doors of an evening it was an attitude which said 'Good evening, Williams,' to the clerk; an attitude which ordered a cocktail at the bar 'Just a hint of orange bitters, Jack!'; an attitude which seated Itself rather heavily and grandly at a table; an attitude which jerked open the evening paper and made a pretence of reading; an attitude atti-tude which selected his choicely select, almost meticulous, meal. Attitudes, attitudes of magnificence, mag-nificence, of repose, of security. Little finger in the air. See? "I want you to begin to get an idea of this man and then I'll tell you about his 'magnificent poem. There he moved ... a bland, intelligent attitude, atti-tude, full of little, surface, mental surprises. A plump, clean-shaven man in eyeglasses, dinner coat, white, starchy expanse of linen, S'U'i-handed, velvet-knuckled, dilettante. "He did as much as he could, I know now, but the one thing he could not hide was defeat. "You bet he was beginning to know his own defeat. That was the reason he fooled around so busily over the little, unimportant tnings of life. I know he accepted his defeat and did it calmly; I even knew he tried to cloak it, because I caught him several times. But when he talked, especially when he talked about himself, all through that talk ran the faint cry of his own failure. Mac, you see, wasn't the kind that went down before his appetites in a grand crash of despair. He just piddled along. Delicately, always that; slowly! imperceptibly. I think there is a philosopher over in France who says that the important thing in life is not the series of big feats. The important thing is the series of gaps between the big feats. These gaps he practically calls lost worlds. Well, you will understand me when I say Mac's life was spent always among his lost worlds. His failure must have crawled on through years. It must have been, even then, such an Intangible truth that he fooled 'himself at times into thinking it a spook. And, in front of the curtain of his secret L chamber, here he stood, in spats and jewelry, hocusing us with attitudes, attitudes. j" "Have I left you any idea that he was vulgar, simply because he was fat and took life easy? Don't get the idea that he was vulgar. Mac felt. He cloaked and he attitudinized, but he felt. "He said to me once that he had been educated in a Jesuit College in Wisconsin, I think and that he had gone on from there in the craving way In which they had started him. He read, read, read everything modern and ancient. Read with a real emotional craving to read. Read with nervous exaltation. He said: 'I think this is how I became well, a dilettante. I cannot explain It to you, but I must have been shut up too long. My father was an Irish politician in one of the wards in St. Louis. Of course, he wanted me to get out and hustle. But I had stayed in the closet too long. Hustle and force have always been he paused and searched sincerely for the words 'abominably vulgar to me.' He threw up both his white hands and went into an attitude before my eyes. 'What was I to do? I had often thought of writing. Without trying to be affected, I can tell you I had the equipment. But I never wrote. I loved music' He held up his manicured fingernails finger-nails and carefully studied whether he should say .the next words. 'So I went to selling pianos.' "Ho had gormandized over books until he was twenty-six. Then he had idled with pianos for nine years. Now, in an irritating way, a spectre stalked through his consciousness, you see, the cruel, haunting, honied spectre of personal fail- ure. He absolutely did not dare to think of the future. Time and again he hinted as much. So he searched, for distraction, every labyrinth of his passing, present deeds. He could "not order a dinner without going drowningly into each item, hugging the transaction to himself for what it was worth in temporary interest. "I speak continually of his dinners because ho had come to make much of eating. Of another sensation he had also come to make much, but, by some blank stupidity of mine, this escaped me , for imonths, it was indulged in so casually by him amongst his attitudes. I mean drink. Every t evening he carefully put his clean linen and his dinner coat over his spectre and descended to the dining-room; every evening he crooked his little finger over the menue; every evening his jewelry shone; every evening he cut Fergus to pieces and taunted the shreds 'mildly; every evening he closed his eyes and would not look at the past or the future. "The hustle of life, of New York, was abominable abom-inable to him. If he had had money, he would not have needed to tolerate it at all. But he did not have money. And so he did what was, absolutely, abso-lutely, for him, the next best thing. He shirked the vulgarity of bustling, as beot he could, every- l where he could, and lived as nearly the life of a ' gentleman as he could without money. That's the way the refinement of his taste went on; that's the way, too, that his physical laziness stealthily grew and clutched him. In time, if you get my meaning, his devious, persistent attempts to slip away from the anarchy of the world into the culture of his ideals brought on their own excess. McTrouville got to be dandified, extravagantly affected, af-fected, an overdone man; yet, even then, curiously curious-ly gross, curiously solid and curiously melancholy. melan-choly. "I said he used to twit Fergus. ' He did.' Here the little (man with the -goatee nodded. "You see, Mac felt more real feelings in a minute than Fergus will in a thousand years." Here the harsh little one with the goatee raised his eyes. 'Also, ho knew more about literature than Fergus ever will." Here the harsh little man with the goatee shrugged one shoulder and yawned. "'And Fergus was making a decenter living out of writing than ) Mac was out of selling pianos. Hence, mild an tagonism. Hence, cross-questions and silly answers.' He stopped. "It was due to one of these bouts that the poem oh was written. Fergus, what did you say?" "I asked hi'm, since he knew so much, why the devil he didn't write something." The worm of a business man nodded. "Exactly. And he said a fellow didn't always write just because be-cause ho knew. And he also said he might have been a poet once. Could be one even yet if he had a mind to. And he nodded at me and declared, de-clared, 'You know I could!' I nodded yes, because I honestly believed he could. You see, he really had an astounding knowledge of poetry; especially espe-cially of minor poetry. He had such people as O'Shaugnessey, Dowson, Lazarus, Marston, Laurence Laur-ence Hope and all that bunch at his tongue's end. And he had that Celtic throbbing of color and romance traveling weirdly underneath his smugness. smug-ness. Whatever he was, he was a man who actually ac-tually had tears, Irish tears, for those places where created beauty demanded tears, or, at any rate, sought them. As I said, McTrouville felt. He cloaked and he attitudinized, but he felt. "Well, what happened was that Fergus put him on his mettle. 'I'll write you something some day that will make you gasp and take off your hat to the department store clerk!' he said. " 'Some day. Yes, some day,' said FerguB. 'You're always going to do something some day. That's what's the matter with all you fellows. You procrastinate eternally. You float on the stream.' "Mac sat back and glared at him. I could see the shot told. He watched us both for a few moments mo-ments and then took a deep breath. 'I'll write it to-night,' he finally remarked. "Ftigus kept pushing him. 'Write what?' " 'A poem.' " 'A long one or a short one?' " 'I don't know. But it will be a poem that will mean something.' " 'Don't all poems mean something?' '"I don't think so. we will.' "'This interests me. What do you intend to put into it? Flowers and hours? Dreams gleams? Love dove? Is it going to be a sonnet, Mac, or an ode? Or maybe a triolet? A triolet's easiest Take my advice and start with a triolet; then you can get your hand in and work up to a ballade; and so on.' Fergus talked something like that. "Mac still kept taking him seriously. 'Whatever 'What-ever it is,' he said, 'it will be a true poem. Something Some-thing out of my own life. That' he shot a flash at Fergus 'is where we go for all the true things we write.' "And then I broke in. Fergus and I had to (Continued on Tago 13.) THE POET. (Continued from Page 7.) go to a publisher's banquet that night and didn't figure on getting home until late. And I told Mc-Trouville Mc-Trouville so. " 'No mattei,' he answered. 'I'll be sitting up . waiting for you.' Just then Fergus excused himself him-self and went upstairs a moment. Mac took the opportunity gratefully. He leaned over and clasped clasp-ed my arm. 'I couldn't say it in front of him,' he nodded, 'but I mean to put my best into this. You'll be surprised. I know you will. I've been thinking over some lines for a long time and I mean to put my best into this. You understand. It is remarkable what my life has been. Of course I am dissatisfied. Maybe, if this poem is a success if you think it is a success I might try writing. It isn't too late, you know, and I have a lot of things to say. And besides, it would sort of justify me to myself to write.' Fergus was returning. re-turning. Don't say anything about this.' I nodded. " 'Well, Mac, we'll bo back at two o'clock, Fergus Fer-gus broke in. 'You wait up for us with the masterpieceand mas-terpieceand if it's good, I'll buy you a drink." "As a matter of fact, though, it was half-past two before we got back. Tho drowsy night clerk let us in. The grill room downstairs was deserted. de-serted. " 'Mr. McTrouville about?' I asked. 'He said he would wait up for us.' 'The clerk grinned. 'He said something about writing some potery,' ho replied, and grinned again. " 'Where is he?" " 'Up in his his room.' "Fergus interrupted. 'I said I'd buy the drinks. Send up throe whiskeys to Mr. McTrou-ivllo's McTrou-ivllo's room. "Wo turned and went upstairs. Mac's room was on the third floor front. As wo came to tho head of the stairs wo saw his door one-third opened. The electric light was going brightly in- H side. Fergus whispered melodramatically and H stepped on tiptoe. 'Hush! We now approach the H poet in his lair! Sssh!' H "I pushed the door farther open and we walked H in. A center table had been pulled out into the H middle of the room and its cover removed. Upon H the bare wood lay a solitary sheet of paper. The H chair at which he had sat had been over- H turned. A lead pencil lay where it had been H thrown on the floor. Upon the bed sprawled the H prostrate form of McTrouville, clad in its im- H maculate dinner clothes, helpless, inert, snoring. H The reek of whiskey filled every corner of the H little room. Fergus picked up the paper and read H it." The old man turned abruptly to the harsh H little man with the goatee. 'What did you read? ' H The harsh little man answered in a dry tone, as if describing a map: "The first line was fair'.y H firmly written. It ran straight across the page H and contained the words: H Oh, the years the years the years. H The second line was written across the middle of H the page in a more shaky hand. It read: H Oh, the years the years The third line, almost running off the paper at H the bottom, was so poorly scrawled as to be al- H most illegible. It simply ran: H "Oh, the years!" H They looked at each other; then both turned to H me. The older man resumed: "We switched out H the light and left the room. As we came down- H stairs we met the boy bringing up the three H glasses of whiskey." From the Forum. H |