II
The committee in the ante-room glanced cheerfully in at the crowd gathering for Gregory’s lecture. They had hoped for a big audience but it was a bad week. The town was full of the Convention delegates and in little mood for lectures, they had feared. But people came. Fully a thousand people had gathered to hear the lecture on Ireland and its Poetry.
They wondered a little at some of the people who bought tickets at the door—men whom they were sure never had attended any lecture under their auspices before. That was because they did not know that Gregory Macmillan’s name was one familiar to other circles than the literary poetic ones—that his vigor in the Irish Republican cause had been told even on this side of the Atlantic. There were those who would have come to hear a lecture of no other subject—Irishmen who had heard his name and subject announced at their meeting of the Knights of Columbus. The literary-minded, the students, the people who patronized the lectures of the Collegiate Alumnae as they did all semi-social affairs, sat side by side in the hall and watched Gregory as he came out from the faded wings at one side of the amateur stage.
Margaret Duffield, Carpenter, Helen and a rather unwilling Gage had adjoining seats. Gage had been extremely disrespectful in his characterization of the lecture, the society which gave it and the presumable character of the man who was to give it, especially as he learned that he was a friend of Margaret’s.
Yet it was Gage who enjoyed the lecture most. From the opening sentence it was clear that the discussion of Irish Poetry was to Gregory merely a discussion of Ireland. In Ireland to be a poet meant that one thought deeply enough to be a patriot. All his poets were patriots.
He made no specific indictment of England except as he read with passionate fervor the translation of Padraic Pearse from the old Irish—
“The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway.
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low,
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!”
It was a quotation and he did not comment on its content. But he sketched the lives of some of his poets—his friends—his leaders. He made their dream clear—their simple idealism—their ignoring of the politics of expediency—their lives so chaste and beautiful. He told of their homes, their schools,—and sometimes when he ended simply, “He was killed in the attack of ——, shot by the military”—or more briefly, “He was executed on ——,” a shudder ran through his audience.
He would show the gayety of Ireland, the joy of the people, their exuberance—and end with a simple “Of course it is not like that now. There is much grief and mourning.”
It was not politics. It was a prose poem composed by a poet. One could not take exception to it as political but the hearers would forever have their standpoints colored by what he said. It was like a picture which, once seen, could never be forgotten.
Margaret listened, her ready mind taking exception to some of the things he said, seeing how he played upon his audience—Walter and Helen listened with intellectual appreciation. But Gage, slouched down in his seat felt envy grow in him. There was before him what he had always wanted. A man who had something indestructible, something immortal to care for. A conviction—and an ideal—an outlet for his soul. He felt himself cheated.
He liked too to listen to the poems about women. No controversial tirades these poems—but verses soft and sweet and pliable as the essence of women—once had been. He checked his running thoughts and looked at his wife, sitting beside him with her head high, “conscious of herself, every minute now,” he thought bitterly.