Sarah Simon - Part 6

Thus stood this tree, young fruit upon its boughs,
When by long chances devious to tell
One Stephen Oldfields, Fellow out of Kings,
Sauntered one sunny day down Sarah's lane,
And thought he saw an eclogue come to life,
Furnished with flocks and children, Sarah's house,
The flowers, and the cove, and " wine-dark sea. "
His was a soul that was as far removed
From Sarah's as the Alps from the Andes,
Opposing peaks on separate hemispheres,
Results of forces ships can never join.
Yet now in mid Atlantic they had met.
He left amid a negative applause
That deprecated musings on return
To all that made him everything he was,
And left him what he was not. Books he knew,
But looked upon the world with light-shy eyes.
And what remained of light which might have shone
Was much too dim to shine on something new.
It burned in memory by comparisons,
Reminding him of what someone had said
Of something else in England long ago;
What Horace meant, or Virgil; rags and tags
Of languages the living put on tombs,
Words beyond resurrection, cut from things,
And earth, and love, and happiness, and man,
By time's inevitable sickle reaped.
Garnered, and winnowed, gleaned — a grain from graves
That when transplanted festers in the dust.
Much had he seen since from the placid Cam
And from the lodge that looks like Crosby Hall
He left upon his travels, helped along,
By punctual envelopes from place to place.
Much had he seen; yet nothing much he saw.
Now partial to mild climates and the ease
With which a gentleman can settle down,
Forgetting all the scholar and his past,
Where cards dissolve all curiosities,
He settled down, dying by slow degrees,
But with good form on little maintenance.
Thus Stephen Oldfields strolled down Sarah's lane.
Oftener he came as many days went on,
For there was something here that he had missed.
The tentacles of earth to Sarah's talk
He misinterpreted for skill in words,
A kind of humble rhetoric he thought
That he might catch the voice of and, perchance,
Play Lazarus with to resurrect a pen
He sometimes fumbled with in gangrened hope,
And twilight reveries upon a style
So perfect that it never saw the day.
And all the natural forms of things about
That Sarah's spirit wrought with skillful hands,
Made perfect to their tasks, intrigued his eyes
With antique memories of the classic prime
His spirit thought to dwell in, for his soul,
Facing away from all reality,
Leaned backward for a bracing touch of earth
That souls once had who walked in balanced times
By seas as blue as Sarah's — times away.
All this, half thought, half felt, this " Roman " saw,
And with a kindness drawn from English ground
Reached out to take and — yet give in return
Some boon for hours passed beside the cove,
That might have made card partners stop and stare,
If they had known. And so it came about,
By slow advances and by small degrees,
The children found a mentor, and learned words
That only lived by letters, and went on
To read, and count, and cipher, and to speak
Of things they had to conjure out of sound.
They drew away, before their mother knew,
From her and life about, into themselves,
Bemused by books as later years spun on
That Stephen brought from England with a crest
Of Tudor roses, lily, and a lion,
While Stephen doted on this benefit,
Mouthing a little simile he heard
Of how the fullest harmony comes forth
Only when black and white keys on the board
Are played by master fingers. So he played.

His theme, however, lacked accompaniment,
And like a tag that captious children play,
Struck a few tuneful notes, a chord or two
By accident, and then in discords clanged
Louder and angrier, till a hail of fists
Threatened to tear the ivory from the keys
And ebony, too. Long after Stephen left
For coasts where every traveler's welcome home,
That fatal " tune " of his went jangling on,
Always with discord, till the taut strings broke,
Snarling amid the others; till no hands
That still had arms could urge forth harmony.
But seven years his voice went on and on
Talking to Sarah's children by the cove,
In a small, sheltered corner of the rocks,
Where he set up to be a church and school,
A master, priest, and mentor all in one,
But above all " a god from the machine "
To snatch his pupils up to higher ways
Than the low, dreamful coasts fate cast them on —
That somehow were so lovely, long and blue.
So Stephen was the " man from the machine "
Who loved the part of playing lucky god
To three poor victims of a fate perverse
He pitied, loved, and found his audience in.

Watch him enthroned, then, in a rocky chair,
His cloak thrown over it, and facing him
From three scooped niches in the sandy rock,
That like a lunar circle hemmed them in,
The faces of three " scholars, " boy and girls,
The only souls in all the universe
Who pondered what poor Stephen had to say.
Just overhead a one-limbed cedar tree,
A giant wreck of what the storm had left,
Thrust from the rock with gesture Japanese
An arm with fifty hands, umbrella-like,
Moving and fragrant, murmuring, and a tent
Whose shadows fingered on the coral sand
With dimmer shadows of its ghostly self.
Here it was cool, and to this crescent niche
That overlooked the benches of the cove —
A box above a natural theater,
When tides were out and birds upon the stage —
Sarah had brought a porous earthen jar
Filled with a sweet lime drink for summer days.
Beside a pile of stone deep honeycombed
With cavities where Stephen stuffed his books,
Under the cedar shade it calmly stood
Like priest beside an altar. Stephen sat
Conveniently beside it, and between
His long orations to his patient flock
Libations marked the order of the day,
With kind Jamaica mixed for Stephen's part;
Plain water, for a rock that served for slate,
To wash the childish scrawls of chalk away.
Here were the mysteries of arithmetic
Expounded, and the names of distant towns,
And famous men and battles told by rote,
With legends, stories sacred and profane,
In streams of sound that fell from Stephen's lips
With all the pent-up ardor of the years;
While cherished memories of might-have-beens
Floated before his eyes, of parliaments
His grandfather had talked to, lost to him
By a too constant run of lucky cards
That marked a knave forever. Thus alone,
But tired of flitting nowhere, now he talked,
And settled down at last to honest play;
To while away the evenings till he died,
And had the service like a gentleman
And scholar that he was — or might have been.
Curious these three should be his audience!
But so they were, and when the girls dropped out
He fastened all his hope on Trevlock's boy,
And swore that he would fill that half-caste brain,
Brilliant and eager in a handsome head,
With something seldom found in colonies.
So " James recited, " and his master talked,
And talked for seven years beside the sea.