The Man Who Was Thursday | Page 6

Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh,
their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden,
if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!"
"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say
of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare,
strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it.

We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird.
Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant
station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go
anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his
whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria.
No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table,
with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats
of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me
Bradshaw, I say!"
"Must you go?" inquired Gregory sarcastically.
"I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that every time a train comes
in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has
won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has
left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a
thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have
the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out
the word 'Victoria,' it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a
herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the
victory of Adam."
Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile.
"And even then," he said, "we poets always ask the question, 'And what
is Victoria now that you have got there ?' You think Victoria is like the
New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be like
Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of
heaven. The poet is always in revolt."
"There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being
in revolt ? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being
sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the
wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I
can see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is--revolting. It's
mere vomiting."
The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was too

hot to heed her.
"It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical I Our digestions, for
instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all
poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers,
more poetical than the stars--the most poetical thing in the world is not
being sick."
"Really," said Gregory superciliously, "the examples you choose--"
"I beg your pardon," said Syme grimly, "I forgot we had abolished all
conventions."
For the first time a red patch appeared on Gregory's forehead.
"You don't expect me," he said, "to revolutionise society on this
lawn ?"
Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly.
"No, I don't," he said; "but I suppose that if you were serious about
your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do."
Gregory's big bull's eyes blinked suddenly like those of an angry lion,
and one could almost fancy that his red mane rose.
"Don't you think, then," he said in a dangerous voice, "that I am serious
about my anarchism?"
"I beg your pardon ?" said Syme.
"Am I not serious about my anarchism ?" cried Gregory, with knotted
fists.
"My dear fellow!" said Syme, and strolled away.
With surprise, but with a curious pleasure, he found Rosamond
Gregory still in his company.

"Mr. Syme," she said, "do the people who talk like you and my brother
often mean what they say ? Do you mean what you say now ?"
Syme smiled.
"Do you ?" he asked.
"What do you mean ?" asked the girl, with grave eyes.
"My dear Miss Gregory," said Syme gently, "there are many kinds of
sincerity and insincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt, do you
mean what you say ? No. When you say 'the world is round,' do you
mean what you say ? No. It is true, but you don't mean it. Now,
sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does mean. It
may be only a half-truth, quarter-truth, tenth-truth; but then he says
more than he means--from sheer force of meaning it."
She