It was shortly after this disaster that Mr Mortimer Wells came to stay with the Headmaster. Mr Mortimer Wells was a brilliant and superior young man, who was at some pains to be a cynic. He was an old pupil of the Head’s in the days before he had succeeded to the rule of Beckford. He had the reputation of being a ‘ripe’ scholar, and to him had been deputed the task of judging the poetical outbursts of the bards of the Upper Fifth, with the object of awarding to the most deserving—or, perhaps, to the least undeserving—the handsome prize bequeathed by his open-handed highness, the Rajah of Seltzerpore.
This gentleman sat with his legs stretched beneath the Headmaster’s generous table. Dinner had come to an end, and a cup of coffee, acting in co-operation with several glasses of port and an excellent cigar, had inspired him to hold forth on the subject of poetry prizes. He held forth.
‘The poetry prize system,’ said he—it is astonishing what nonsense a man, ordinarily intelligent, will talk after dinner—’is on exactly the same principle as those penny-in-the-slot machines that you see at stations. You insert your penny. You set your prize subject. In the former case you hope for wax vestas, and you get butterscotch. In the latter, you hope for something at least readable, and you get the most complete, terrible, uninspired twaddle that was ever written on paper. The boy mind’—here the ash of his cigar fell off on to his waistcoat—’the merely boy mind is incapable of poetry.’
From which speech the shrewd reader will infer that Mr Mortimer Wells was something of a prig. And perhaps, altogether shrewd reader, you’re right.
Mr Lawrie, the master of the Sixth, who had been asked to dinner to meet the great man, disagreed as a matter of principle. He was one of those men who will take up a cause from pure love of argument.
‘I think you’re wrong, sir. I’m perfectly convinced you’re wrong.’
Mr Wells smiled in his superior way, as if to say that it was a pity that Mr Lawrie was so foolish, but that perhaps he could not help it.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but you have not had to wade through over thirty of these gems in a single week. I have. I can assure you your views would undergo a change if you could go through what I have. Let me read you a selection. If that does not convert you, nothing will. If you will excuse me for a moment, Beckett, I will leave the groaning board, and fetch the manuscripts.’
He left the room, and returned with a pile of paper, which he deposited in front of him on the table.
‘Now,’ he said, selecting the topmost manuscript, ‘I will take no unfair advantage. I will read you the very pick of the bunch. None of the other—er—poems come within a long way of this. It is a case of Eclipse first and the rest nowhere. The author, the gifted author, is a boy of the name of Lorimer, whom I congratulate on taking the Rajah’s prize. I drain this cup of coffee to him. Are you ready? Now, then.’
He cleared his throat.
[16]
A DISPUTED AUTHORSHIP
‘One moment,’ said Mr Lawrie, ‘might I ask what is the subject of the poem?’
‘Death of Dido,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Good, hackneyed, evergreen subject, mellow with years. Go on, Wells.’
Mr Wells began.
Queen of Tyre, ancient Tyre, Whilom mistress of the wave.
Mr Lawrie, who had sunk back into the recesses of his chair in an attitude of attentive repose, sat up suddenly with a start.
‘What!’ he cried.
‘Hullo,’ said Mr Wells, ‘has the beauty of the work come home to you already?’
‘You notice,’ he said, as he repeated the couplet, ‘that flaws begin to appear in the gem right from the start. It was rash of Master Lorimer to attempt such a difficult metre. Plucky, but rash. He should have stuck to blank verse. Tyre, you notice, two syllables to rhyme with “deny her” in line three. “What did fortune e’er deny her? Were not all her warriors brave?” That last line seems to me distinctly weak. I don’t know how it strikes you.’
‘You’re hypercritical, Wells,’ said the Head. ‘Now, for a boy I consider that a very good beginning. What do you say, Lawrie?’
‘I—er. Oh, I think I am hardly a judge.’
‘To resume,’ said Mr Mortimer Wells. He resumed, and ran through the remaining verses of the poem with comments. When he had finished, he remarked that, in his opinion a whiff of fresh air would not hurt him. If the Headmaster would excuse him, he would select another of those excellent cigars, and smoke it out of doors.
‘By all means,’ said the Head; ‘I think I won’t join you myself, but perhaps Lawrie will.’
‘No, thank you. I think I will remain. Yes, I think I will remain.’
Mr Wells walked jauntily out of the room. When the door had shut, Mr Lawrie coughed nervously.
‘Another cigar, Lawrie?’
‘I—er—no, thank you. I want to ask you a question. What is your candid opinion of those verses Mr Wells was reading just now?’
The Headmaster laughed.
‘I don’t think Wells treated them quite fairly. In my opinion they were distinctly promising. For a boy in the Upper Fifth, you understand. Yes, on the whole they showed distinct promise.’
‘They were mine,’ said Mr Lawrie.
‘Yours! I don’t understand. How were they yours?’
‘I wrote them. Every word of them.’
‘You wrote them! But, my dear Lawrie—’
‘I don’t wonder that you are surprised. For my own part I am amazed, simply amazed. How the boy—I don’t even remember his name—contrived to get hold of them, I have not the slightest conception. But that he did so contrive is certain. The poem is word for word, literally word for word, the same as one which I wrote when I was at Cambridge.’
‘You don’t say so!’
‘Yes. It can hardly be a coincidence.’
‘Hardly,’ said the Head. ‘Are you certain of this?’