The Man Who Was Thursday | Page 4

world ten million leaves of
grass; Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain-- Truth
out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain. Yea, cool and clear and
sudden as a bird sings in the grey, Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and
darkness unto day. But we were young; we lived to see God break their
bitter charms. God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:
We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved--
Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.
This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, And none
but you shall understand the true thing that it tells-- Of what colossal

gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, Of what huge devils hid
the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash. The doubts that were so plain to chase,
so dreadful to withstand-- Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who
shall understand? The doubts that drove us through the night as we two
talked amain, And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the
brain. Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;
Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. We
have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, And I may
safely write it now, and you may safely read.
G. K. C.

CHAPTER I
THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK
THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red
and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick
throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was
wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged
with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and
sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two
sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as an
artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art.
But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little
vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable.
The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses
could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could
fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this
respect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could
regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people
were not "artists," the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man
with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face--that young man was
not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with
the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat--that venerable humbug

was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of
philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like
head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science
that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but
what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than
himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be
regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for artists,
but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped into its social
atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy.
More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall,
when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the
whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again
was more strongly true of the many nights of local festivity, when the
little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns
glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And
this was strongest of all on one particular evening, still vaguely
remembered in the locality, of which the auburn-haired poet was the
hero. It was not by any means the only evening of which he was the
hero. On many nights those passing by his little back garden might hear
his high, didactic voice laying down the law to men and particularly to
women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed one of the
paradoxes of the place. Most of the women were of the kind vaguely
called emancipated, and professed some protest against male
supremacy. Yet these new women would always pay to a man the
extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him,
that of listening while he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the
red-haired poet,