Baldwin flicked a fine powder of chalk from his coat-sleeve, and fixed Stuart with the super-concentrated glare of one whose attention has wandered. It was difficult to tell what was the effect of the poem on the other two men, standing with faces in deepest shadow, well above the zone of illumination.
“They wrought a deeper treason,
Led seas that served my needs;
They sold Diego Valdez
To bondage of great deeds.”
By a curious power he possessed of projection into the future, Stuart was able to glimpse himself, victim of a self-made great career, striving passionately to escape its easeful heaviness; regain the careless freedom, the stimulating longings of non-achievement. And he saw, too, with unerring clarity, how, step by step, he, even he, another Diego Valdez, might be spurred by inspiring eloquence, noble example, to such inevitable bondage.
“His will can loose ten thousand,
To seek their loves again—
But not Diego Valdez
High Admiral of Spain!”
Baldwin thought, relieved, that the ensuing pause marked the signal for opinions to be delivered:
“I must say, I don’t see that the fellow, Diego What’s-his-name, had much to grumble at.”
Stuart looked towards Derwent, who said, rather elaborately:
“It seems to me, my dear boy, that I detect an inconsistency, if I may be permitted to make the remark. With one breath you assure us that you desire to fight your battles without assistance to detract from the joy of victory; while in the verses you so—er—ah, yes, so effectively repeated, I take it that you were voicing a distaste for the responsibilities of high office consequent on victory?”
“It does sound as if there were a flaw,” Stuart admitted, overjoyed at having evoked a point sufficiently strong to put him on the defensive: “You might reconcile it this way, Khalif: I want to do; I don’t want to become.”
Derwent enquired: “Then what are your plans? It strikes me as somewhat preposterous that you should be let work out your destiny from the very bottom of the ladder, like so many millions who have no alternative.”