VI
It was dark outside and the tannery had long been deserted when a pathetically pleased old war-horse of business and an addle-pated young poet ended the new version of Caleb Gridley’s youthful sentiment.
“Now read it all over, out loud,” ordered the tanner. He paced up and down with his dented, dusty, greenish derby on the back of his head, cant-hook thumbs in the armpits of his vest. Nat read:
“GRACIA
“Sometimes, dear heart, in the quiet night,
When the stars hang soft and low,
I slip away from the clash and care
To the Hills of Long Ago.
Across those Hills in the whisp’ring dark,
With the night-breeze sighing through,
I see those castles we’d planned to build
When our dreams had all come true.
“Your face grows plain in an evening star,
Ere the moon rides high and cold,
And Memory tunes with the summer night
On a chord that’s rare and old.
The troth we pledged comes in sad rebuke
To a thousand loveless days,
But wandering fires led me off and down,
‘Long a thousand ambushed ways.
“Yet somewhere deep in each tuneful night
Plays a softer, sweeter lay;
Though life is gray with a thousand sighs
It has held one deep-pink day.
And thus the glow of the Long Ago
Keeps my path to you, dear, bright;
Yet a little while and Our Morning dawns
So good night, dear heart, good night!”
“Don’t you see,” argued Nathan, “you’ve said the very same thing, only this is smooth and dreamy. You have a feeling old Mr. Abbot, the music teacher, might play it on his ‘cello, maybe. That’s the meaning of real poetry, Mr. Gridley—at least as I see it—to say the common thing uncommon, sweet and soft and low, so it lurks in your mind like music.”
“I guess I understand, bub,” replied the old man huskily. “That’s a dam’ good piece we’ve writ here. If Sam Hod, o’ the Daily Telegraph, can’t make space for it, I’ll call his notes. Bub, what the plunkin’-hell does your old man be thinkin’ of, settin’ you to skinning cows? Want to make you at my age what I am, maybe?”
Nathan was silent for a moment. Then he answered sadly:
“It’s the money I can earn. He needs it.”
“Money? Money? Dam’ money! Once I might o’ writ pieces like this, bub—dam’ good pieces. But my dad put his foot down and said that I should make money too. An’ look at me! I ain’t worth nothin’ else. And all this town knows it.” The tanner’s voice broke and he began to chew furiously. He turned away.
“I can’t help myself,” lamented Nathan. “He makes me work and so I must. I’m only waiting to grow. And then I’ll go away, I guess, where he can never get trace of me again.”
“Bub, what say you and me be partners—in poetry?”
“Partners—in poetry?”
“I’d like to write more pieces like this, with you, bub. B’dam, I ain’t had such a soul-satisfyin’ afternoon in thirty year! S’pose you quit the yard and come up here and see to things about the office. The brains o’ that redheaded girl rattle round in her head like a peanut in a wash boiler. And now and then we’ll fool with hexy—hexy——”
“Hexameters,” said Nathan gravely.
“Hexy-whatever you-call-’em,” said Caleb.
“You mean you aren’t going to fire me for fighting? You’ll give me a job up here in the office, instead?”
“That’s it, bub. You and me! Cow hides for bread and butter. Poems for dessert. Saturday afternoons and Sundays? What say?—what?”
“Th-Th-Thank you, Mr. Gridley,” was all that Nathan could call up. He felt a sudden grim affection for the old tanner who had been keeping the heart of a poet locked under his tough hide for two or three decades.
“The wages,” said Caleb, “will be two dollars more a week. I guess a poet oughta be worth it. But the real reason for the raise is keepin’ your mouth shut. The minute you go tellin’ what you and me’s mutually interested in—you’re fired!”
“I understand, Mr. Gridley. I’m much obliged.”
Overwhelmed with this sudden turn in his affairs, the boy began blindly picking up the scratch papers strewn about which they had spoiled. Carelessly he ripped them in strips until he came to the asinine lines of Caleb’s in 1871.
“You won’t need these any more, will you,” he asked, “now that we’ve written them better?”
The tanner rescued the sheet from the boy’s hand, however. Carefully folding it, he laid it away in the worn, brown wallet and locked it up in the old green safe.