Big, black crows on bare, black branches,
Cawing!...
"Where's the rest of it!" said John innocently.
The poet looted at him with such contempt that he felt certain he had
committed an indiscretion. "Is that the whole of it?" he hurriedly
asked.
"That fact that you ask such a question," said the poet, "shows that
you have no knowledge of the completeness of life!..."
"Well, I only came here about a fortnight ago," John humbly replied ...
but the poet had moved away and would not listen to him any longer. "I
seem to have put my foot in it," John murmured to himself.
He made his way to Hinde's side, resolved that he would not budge from
it for the rest of the evening. The people present frightened him,
particularly after his experience with the poet, and he determined that
he would keep himself as inconspicuous as possible. He felt that all
these people were terribly clever and that his ignorance would be
immediately apparent if he opened his mouth in their presence. He tried
hard to realise the magnitude of "Life," but he could not convince
himself that it was either an adequate description of existence or that
it was a description of anything; and, in his innocence, he believed
that he was mentally deficient. Hinde named some of the guests to him.
This one was a novelist and that one had written a play ... and in the
excitement of seeing and listening to men who had actually done things
that he wished to do, John forgot some of his humiliation.
"I saw you talking to Palfrey," Hinde said to him.
"The poet chap?" John replied.
Hinde nodded his head. "What did you think of him?" he continued.
"He showed me one of his poems. I couldn't understand it, and when I
said so, he walked away!"
Hinde laughed. "That's as good a description of him as you could
invent," he said. "He always walks away when you can't understand what
he's getting at. The reason why he does that is he's afraid someone'll
discover he isn't getting at anything. He's just an impertinent person.
He thinks he's being great when he's only being cheeky!"
John repeated the poem entitled "Life" to Hinde. "What do you think of
that?" he asked.
"I don't think anything of it," Hinde replied.
John felt reassured. "I asked him where the rest of it was, and he
nearly ate the face off me," he said. "I was afraid he'd think me a
terrible gumph!..."
"If you let a humbug like that impose upon you, Mac, I'll never own you
for my friend. Any intelligent office-boy could write poems like that
all day long!"
There was a movement in the room, and the guests began to settle in
their seats or on the floor, and after a short while, Mr. Haverstock,
who acted as chairman of the meeting, took his place in front of a
small table, and Mr. Palfrey sat down beside him. The poet, said the
chairman, would honour them by reading some new poems to them, after
which he would open a discussion on Marriage. They all knew that
Marriage was an important matter, affecting the lives of men and women
to a far greater extent, probably, than anything else in the world, and
it was desirable therefore that they should discuss it frankly and
frequently. Problems would remain insoluble so long as people remained
silent about them. He could not help expressing his regret to those
present at the extraordinary reluctance which the average person had to
revealing experiences of matrimony. He had initiated an important
enquiry into the question of marital relationships with a view to
discovering exactly what it was that caused so many marriages to fail,
and he had had to abandon the enquiry because very few people were
willing to tell anything about their marriages to him. There was a
great deal of foolish reticence in the world ... at this point Mr.
Palfrey emphatically said, "Hear! Hear!"... and he trusted that those
present that evening would cast away false modesty and would say quite
openly what their experiences had been. He would not detain them any
longer ... he was quite certain that they were all very anxious to hear
Mr. Palfrey ... and so without any more ado he would call upon him to
read his poems and then to discuss the great and important question of
Marriage.