The boy Royal had a poem of his own make in his pocket, and being on his
travels, he had climbed up from the east to rest himself, and to re-read
his verses yet again in solitude. Perhaps he was about to add to them
some touch of immortality, some wistful trace of that philosophy which
may not revisit the mind of man after his seventeenth year, but day by
day loses itself more deeply in the underbrush of uncharted, enchanted
woodways. The poem was about a maiden called Amaryllis. In the prose
of private life, Royal’s Amaryllis was a wholly good and pretty girl a
little older than himself. Her name was Mary, but even at nineteen she
was still signing herself Maimée. However, what is poetry for, unless to
quicken and rechristen all worlds into strangeness and beauty? Let Royal
keep his Amaryllis a while longer, I beg!
Is there any good and comfortable thing that the heart of youth will not
flee from, in its longing for the untrodden way? The boy Royal was a
fugitive from the eggs-and-bacon type of breakfast. He was in search of
some ambrosial, sit-by-the-brookside food more precious and sustaining to
his spirit, so he dreamed, than any of the comestibles, fine or gross,
involving his parents in worrisome monthly bills at the grocer’s. For
him, life and letters were mingled mysteriously in the same sparkling
cup, and he wanted to drink of that cup freely. One can do such things
better away from home. He had therefore wrung from his mother, his father
being absent in the city, working for the wherewithal, her unwilling
consent to a solitary three days’ walking tour, his entire luggage to
consist of a flashlight, the Iliad, and a toothbrush. Oh, of course, a
full tin of provender slung across the back of his Norfolk jacket! You
will doubtless understand what his twin brother Peter meant when he said
that the difference between Royal’s travels and R. L. S.’s was all in one
word; a preposition, don’t they call it? Stevenson’s Travels were With a
Donkey, Royal’s were Of a Donkey. Peter was sore because he had not been
invited to be a donkey too.
The twins loved one another dearly, but now that adolescence was upon
them, they often wounded one another sorely. Each boy, recognizing
certain superiorities in the other, felt all the more bound to rescue and
protect and assert his own individuality. Who knows what dire harm to
ourselves may issue from our brother’s excellences? And Royal, even more
than Peter, longed for a more emphatic identity of his own—something so
distinct and compelling that the world would forever cease contrasting
and comparing him with another.
Their father was a painter, their mother a writer. Peter took to
colors, Royal to ink. But Peter, luckily for the world, was no such
born-in-the-blood Romantic as poor Royal then was, and might forever
be, unless something could be done about it! That boy’s parents had
showered upon him all the benefits of education, dentistry, operations
for adenoids. They had even had him psycho-analyzed, since Uncle Tom’s
business in life was exactly that. My uncle the psychiatrist; the boys
often stuck the phrase into their cheeks, for the benefit of their mates.
The work on Royal had been done with the utmost secrecy, of course. Uncle
Tom had made a mental diagram of Royal’s case, as carefully as for a
paying patient. In seven closely typewritten pages, bristling with words
like prognosis, adolescence, stimuli, adaptability, environment, Royal’s
young soul-history may still be found among Uncle Tom’s files. And
Uncle Tom would be the first to tell you that for the unlearned, those
seven pages might be summed up in seven words: a poet is growing, let
him alone. Royal’s parents were cheered by that report. They had always
rejoiced in the harmonious understanding that existed between the uncle
and nephew. There was a strong family likeness between the two; they
turned their heads to the same side when arguing, and waved a good-bye in
the same manner. Often Royal at his most poetical made observations that
staggered Uncle Tom at his most psychological. Uncle Tom sometimes found
it ludicrous when, simply because “_maxima debetur puero reverentia_,”
he had refrained from saying something, and then found that Royal, with
immense earnestness, was saying it himself.
Royal was a lean, rangy, bright-haired lad, with a clear skin and a good
carriage. He had nobly-set blue eyes whose depths seemed practically
bottomless, the young eyes that suggest both heaven and hell. He had
also a determined chin that often pushed him into positions in which his
undetermined nose was of no use whatever. Oh, quite the ordinary type
of boy whose unusualness is chiefly within! Perhaps the most striking
thing about him, thus far, was his passion for beauty; beauty to be seen,
heard, tasted, clasped, protected, prayed to. There was Scotch blood in
him; he had plenty of second sight, but was often found lacking in that
vulgar variety of first sight known as common sense.
In planning his travels, he had seen himself, now as a sailor in tarry
trousers, jingling strange coins in foreign ports that reeked with
incredible oaths and aromas; now as a gifted young scholar, teaching
French to some sturdy blacksmith’s fair daughters, in exchange for a
noggin of milk and a brace of doughnuts, since you can’t expect cakes
and ale in this country; and now as a prince-in-disguise mechanic out of
work, in smutched overalls, with nothing clean at all about him but his
teeth; his toothbrush would tell the world. Royal recognized the weakness
of his own fables. He knew well enough that, unlike practical Peter he
himself could scarcely tell a bolt from a bit-stock, or a belaying-pin
from a bo’s’n’s whistle; and also (here Peter would be no better off)
that he would certainly be unable to explain away the French subjunctive,
in case the prettier of the blacksmith’s daughters should show an
unfortunate curiosity about a topic so repugnant. Yes, Royal was a stern
critic of his own castles, and therefore spent much time in rebuilding
them.
Royal on his travels soon found that three days were all too brief a term
for such adventures as he sought. His mother and he had been reading the
“Crock of Gold” together, and he knew that she would understand him when
he wrote, on the second day of his faring:
“_Dear Mother_, I am with the leprecauns, and so shall not return as
early as we said. Fear not, all is well with me. The world is wide, the
weather fine, and the extra $3.75 you gave me is hardly touched as yet.
Besides, I can earn what I need, if I need more than I have. I love the
feel of this life in the open, and you know how much I want to spin the
wheel of life, in my own philosopher fashion.”
Thus wrote Royal, giving neither date nor address, and incontinently
planning to reach far cities by means of gondola cars. His mother was
hurt, irritated, and anxious, in equal parts; but she understood her boy
well enough to know that there was some fabric to his fustian. Uncle Tom
jeered openly, saying that people who breakfast with the leprecauns may
have to sup with the lepers, if they don’t watch out. These psychiatrists
have a way of taking the worm’s-eye view of high doings.