Chapter XXXVII. Teiresias,
the Blind Prophet, and Squeem,
the Student in the Back-waters of
College Life. A Night of Grim
Fate
ONE winter afternoon as I approached Quarles’ room, to take him for a walk, I heard a loud voice raised in angry altercation, as I thought. I paused on the dormitory stairs, and there came to my ears the blind student’s voice, raised high, as if he were spitting fire. I hurried to his door and entered the room to see what the quarrel between my friend and his enemy could be.
“Priddy, sit down!” quoth Quarles, pausing in his strange heat of jargon. “Listen,” and then, standing in the center of the room, he declaimed this strange-sounding sentence:
“Eipo ti deta kall, in orgitze pleon!” and attended it with a fierce and angry thrust of his fist, as if he were thrusting red-hot bolts down the unwilling throat of a helpless foe.
“Well, of all the strange jumbles, Quarles!” I exclaimed, “what is the baby talk, please?”
“Soo de athlios ge taut oneiditzon, a soi oudeis os ouxi tond oneidiei taxi!” he continued, scowling frightfully and staring with his expressionless eyes as if he would have his stored up wrath break through to flash like fierce lightning on the pride of his unseen opponent.
“Taxi?” I mused, “that means automobile riding at ten dollars a minute—what is the rest?”
“It’s Greek,” he explained, sitting down. “I am the blind Prophet Teiresias, in the Greek drama ‘King Œdipus,’ to be given by the college. Let me translate!”
He sprang to the middle of the floor, and, in English, attended by the same angry gestures, he declaimed to the scoffing King whom he was warning:
“‘Shall I speak something more, to feed thy wrath?’” and then he paused to explain, “and when you called it baby talk, I recited the line which I am to use when the King slanders me for being blind, ‘O miserable reproach, which all who now behold thee, soon shall thunder forth on thee!’ and,” went on Quarles, “you are to know, if you do not know it now, how that later the King does blind himself with hot irons and fulfils the prophecy I hurl at his coward lips!”