“Pretty platitudes! Read them before a score of times—and somewhat more happily expressed. If I were a poet—which I’m not, thank goodness!—I could turn ’em out by the score. Ten shillings each, reduction upon taking a dozen. Suitable for amateur tenors, or the fashion-magazines. Alterations made if required... Anything else in the lucky bag?”
“There’s my note-book. They are all in there—the new ones, I mean, written since I came up here. You can read which you please.”
Ron took the precious leather book from his pocket, and handed it over with an effort as painful as that of submitting a live nerve to the dentist’s tool. As he sat on the ground beside his critic he dug his heels into the grass, and the knuckles of his clenched hands showed white through the tan. The beginning had not been propitious, and he knew well that no consideration for his feelings would seal the lips of this most honest of critics. For a few moments he had not courage to look at his companion’s face, but even without that eloquent guide it was easy to follow his impressions.
A grunt, a groan, a long incredulous whistle, a sharp intake of breath—these were but too readily translated as adverse criticisms, but between these explosions came intervals of silence less easy to explain. Ron deliberately rolled over on his side, turning his back on his companion, thereby making it impossible to see his face. Those who have never trusted their inmost thoughts to paper can hardly imagine the acute suffering of the moment when they are submitted to the cold criticism of an outsider. Life and death themselves seemed to hang in the balance for the young poet during the half-hour when he lay on the heather listening to each sound and movement of his critic. At the end of half an hour the interruption came. A yawn, a groan, the pressure of a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Now then, wake up, over there! Time to move on!”
Awake! As if it were possible that he could be asleep! Never in his life had he been more acutely, painfully conscious of his surroundings. Ron rose to his feet, casting the while a tense glance at his companion’s face. What verdict would he see written on eye and mouth as the result of that half-hour’s study? He met a smile of bland good-humour; the cheery, carelessly complacent smile of the breakfast-table, the smoke-room, the after-dinner game; with not one trace of emotion, of kindled feeling, or even ordinary appreciation! The black note-book was tossed into his hands, as carelessly as if it had been a ball; even a commonplace word of comment was denied.
It was a bitter moment, but, to the lad’s credit be it said, he met it bravely. A gulp to a tiresome lump in the throat, a slight quivering of the sensitive lips, and he was master of himself again, hastily stuffing the precious note-book out of sight, and striving to display the right amount of interest in his companion’s conversation. It was not until the inn was within sight that Mr Elgood made the slightest allusion to the verses which he had read.
“Ah—about those rhymes!” he began casually. “Don’t take yourself too seriously, you know. It’s a strange thing that young people constitute themselves the pessimists of the world, while the old ones, who know what real trouble is, are left to do the optimism by themselves. If you are bound to sing, sing cheerfully! Try to forget that ‘sad’ rhymes with ‘glad,’ and don’t feel it necessary to end in the minor key. That rhyming business has a lot to answer for. I like you best when you are content to be your natural, cheerful self!”
“You think, then—you do think—some of them a little good?”
Ron’s wistful voice would have melted a heart of stone. The Chieftain laid a hand on his arm with a very kindly pressure.