With that, gray Gerald Musgrave dipped his pen. He put the boy quite out of mind. And the well-thought-of old scholar began to write, just where his natural body had left off a bit earlier in the evening, setting down decorously the historical and scientific truth as to the rules governing pre-nuptial intercourse in the bedchambers of New Guinea and the Tonga Islands.
50. Exodus of Glaum
THE boy waited, looking down at this old fellow who sat there making small scratches upon paper, the most of which he presently canceled with yet other scratches, all the while with the air of a person who is about something intelligent and of actual importance. Then the boy shrugged. For, as always, to an onlooker the motions or creative writing revealed that flavor of the grotesque which is attendant upon every form of procreation.
And besides, to him for whom the silver stallion waited without, and for whom his appointed kingdom waited also, such time-wasting appeared futile. He, who was young, and who retained as yet the untroubled faith of every boy in his own abilities and in his own importance,—and who, of course, might not foresee the fate which awaited him in the arms of Evadne of the Dusk,—could not regard without impatience such time-wasting. What made it even worse was that this dilapidated remnant of a man was so plainly enjoying himself. For he chuckled as he wrote; he had self-evidently found what he considered a rather beautiful idea to play with, for now he had cocked his battered, so nearly bald, old head to one side, and that which he had just written down was being regarded by his dimmed and peering eyes with entire admiration: and it was all somewhat pitiable to the young eyes of the observer.
For it did not seem possible that anybody should sit here, thus stuffily immured, and with no exercise more profitable than writing, when yonder, as all youth knew, the way lay open to the unimaginable splendors of Antan. It was, for that matter, an unthrifty wantonness for Gerald Musgrave’s young observer to be lingering here, in the cold company of books and china animals, when yonder (as all youth knew) along the pleasant way to Antan were waiting so many dear, fond, loving women eager to cheer and to inspire and to trust and to give all to speed the high-hearted adventurer in that glorious journeying toward his appointed kingdom. Decidedly, the old fellow was lost: for now he was infatuated by the contentment to be got out of writing, which remained always, in its own way, as bedrugging as the contentment to be got out of domesticity; and there was no help for this preposterous, doomed, chuckling Gerald Musgrave,—who would always now be finding one or another rather beautiful idea to play with, and who must remain, so long as life remained, a poet whose one real delight was to shape and to play with puppets....
Yet it mattered very little, to any person who was already for every practical purpose a reigning monarch, that all which pertained to this Gerald Musgrave was somewhat droll, the smiling red-haired boy decided, as he passed toward Evadne of the Dusk, and out of sight of that gray-fringed bald head bent over that incessant pen scratching.
THE END