Reb Monash looked up. It was too late to hide the yamelke. Reb Monash's eyes glinted unpleasantly. Chayder drew to an immediate end.
The drizzle falling beyond the chayder window next day was like a curtain of liquid soot. The interview between Reb Monash and Philip on the conclusion of last evening's episode had made them both, for different, for opposite, reasons, very tired. Philip, though the hard form where he sat left him at no time unconscious of his wounds, was only a little more listless than his father. His mind was too numbed even to appreciate the exquisite irony of his letter to his "esteemed and beloved parents." When the ritual of "Hebrew" recommenced, it was only with an effort that he suspended the mechanical scrawling of his pen. The dirge of question and reply proceeded mournfully, broken only by the occasional "where holds one?" like the surface of a pond on a dull day when the fish seem to rise rather to assert their rights than to satisfy their hunger. Oh, to get away from it all, mused Philip dimly. To where there are trees and grass like Longton Park, but freer, larger. To go there alone and to come back to mother, perhaps with an offering of cowslips, whatever they were. There would be a bird there who would sing. Not like a canary. He couldn't bear the singing of canaries. They reminded him of a pale girl whom he saw sometimes at a window of the hat-and-cap factory. She sang sometimes, like a canary, ever so sweetly, but a captive. He had once seen a canary cage hanging on an outside wall. A great rain-storm had burst, but the people on the doorstep had gone in, forgetting all about the bird. He had knocked at their door and told them, and though the man had sworn at him, he took the bird in, a sickly sodden mass, greyish-yellow. That bird had not sung again. It uttered only a little broken cheep each morning when the sun came. Now out there ... Oh, what was all this useless droning, droning about ... "Pilpelim?" "Pepper!" ... out there, when the rain came, there would be thick branches to shelter that singing bird. He would walk alone, clean, free. "Alone I walked, I walked alone." There was music in that! "Alone I walked, I walked alone." Yes of course! the sense was quite different, but there was something about it identical with his "On Linden when the sun was low." "Alone I walked, I walked alone," he stressed. "I sat upon a mossy stone," he followed swiftly. What fun! That was like real poetry. He repeated the words, trembling with delight.
Alone I walked, I walked alone.
I sat upon a mossy stone.
What about that bird? We must introduce that bird! "I heard a bird singing up in the sky." No, that wouldn't do! Something was wrong! Gosh! it was very easy! Just leave out that "singing," thus: "I heard a bird up in the sky." But we can't end there! "I heard a bird up in the sky," and ... and ... "He sang so sweet and so did I!" His thighs trembled. His heart stormed. He had beaten down the walls of chayder; he was away beyond somewhere; he was elected into the fellowship of poetry; what did Miss Tibbet matter for ever and ever? Again, again ... how did it go? ... lest he should lose it! Listen! Ah, the surge the fullness of it!
Alone I walked, I walked alone,
I sat upon a mossy stone.
I heard a bird up in the sky.
He sang so sweet and so did I!
Green fields stretching away, trees, stones with soft moss, a bird, a bird!
"Feivel, where holds one?"
Sickeningly, with the click of a trap, the walls of chayder shut to about him. An ecstasy was in his eyes. A mist of stupidity, helplessness, obscured their light. Oh, no! oh, no! he would make no pretence about it. He'd not been listening, he'd been away, singing! ... What did it matter? Let the fist come down on his aching back! Let the muscles of his arm be pinched and wrenched again. Listen, oh listen!
I heard a bird up in the sky.
He sang so sweet and so did I.
He lifted his wide eyes to his father. In an even voice he said, "Tatte, I've not been listening!"