"You don't tell me, Mr. Byrd—you don't tell me!" he repeated over and over. "Then this is what I do," he announced with a sudden ferocity of decision. "I hold that work, if I have to hold it for ten years, until such a time as you feel you can take it. Only I am so short of room here," he added blandly, "will you not store it for me on your shelves?"
"Why, you—you Samaritan!" I laughed in my embarrassment, clapping him on the shoulder. "What are you trying to do—make a bankrupt of me?"
"If you will include it under your insurance—" he answered—"but never mind: I'll insure it myself." And then he talked of something else. He was as good as his word. Before I reached home that Boswell was here and is now on my shelves. I have been gloating over that epic of personality and it occurs to me that Johnson and Griselda are kindred of the spirit.
Two months! It is incredible. Years must have passed since the children have come here. My past life seems remote as ancient Egypt. This morning came a letter from Biagi of the Laurentian, asking why he did not hear from me, when was I coming to Florence, and adding that at Oxford also some Brunetto Latini material has been recently unearthed and that I might stop on the way and examine it. I laughed. Gone are those days, never, I fear, to return. If only I could smell a good old parchment once again! I still remember the thrill I felt when Biagi first showed me the vellum script of Sophocles at the Laurentian. I could actually see the scribe in the Byzantium of the eleventh century reverently copying the lofty beautiful words, in a spirit of high worship, his pale cheeks flushed with his pious task. I was that scribe! Why, I ask, was that strange and eager feeling implanted in my particular bosom? Could it be that in some past age, I was myself the scholarly Greek?—But that is nonsense.
If only I could pay my bills. Yet I dare not touch the trifle Laura left to her children. That must remain for emergency.
And on May first we must change our quarters. The renting agent, a decent enough little person, was very apologetic.
"I have kids myself," he informed me deprecatingly, "and I know what it is. But you understand. A bachelor is one thing and four children is quite another. Makes a difference." I told him that I was more or less aware of the difference it made.
"And these people here, in this here, now, building," he explained, "they're so nasty nice—they can't stand the sight of a kid, let alone the sound." I made no comment, for too recently had I been just so nasty-nice.
We shall have to seek some pastures new.
Fred Salmon, as good as his word, has actually looked me up.