Four Quarters Volume 4 Article 1 Number 2 Four Quarters: January 1955 Vol

Four Quarters Volume 4 Article 1 Number 2 Four Quarters: January 1955 Vol. IV No. 2

1-15-1955 Four Quarters: January 1955 Vol. IV, No. 2

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In This Beginning • Page 1 A Story by Emilie Glen

Europe From the Reformation ta the Revolution • Page 8 An Article by Christopher Dawson

Chatzkel • Page 14 IS A Story by Charles Angoff

O A Time to Die • Page 22 A Story by Daniel DePaola

The Professor Steals the Show • Page 30

A Story by LeGarJe S. Doughty

Poetry

• Bronislarv Slawecki, Page 7; • Geoffrey Johnson, Page 21; • Stephen Morris, Page 28; • Raymond Roseliep, Back Cover

January, 1955

vol. IV, no. 2 • fifty cents

1 Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/fourquarters91unse Contrihutors

i^HRlSTOPHER DAWSON, British sociologist-historiaH, continues his V^ study of European cultural forces. LeGARDE S. DOUGHTY, has con- tributed stories to Prairie Schooner, Arizona Quarterly, Decade, etc., and is honored in Martha Foley's most recent collection of The Best American Short

Stones. EMILIE GLEN is widely published and has also beeA honored in

Martha Foley's collections. CHARLES ANGOFF is a former editor of Ameri- can Mercury, besides being a prominent novelist. GEOFFREY JOHNSON, who lives in Dorset, England, has published verse in leading English, Ameri- can and Canadian periodicals. FATHER RAYMOND ROSELIEP, a frequent contributor to Spirit and America, is a member of the English Department of Loras College. STEPHEN MORRIS writes editorials for the Germantown Courier. BRONISLAW SLAWECKL graduated last June from LaSalle Col- lege, has appeared in four quarters a number of times. DANIEL DePAOLA is a new contributor. The block print (inside back cover) is by CARL MER- SCHEL, prominent Catholic ceramic artist and designer of the Catholic Chapel at the University of Chicago.

Editor, E. Russell Naughton

Associate Editor, John S. Penny

Managing Editor, John F. McGlynn

Business Manager, Brother G. Robert, F.S.C.

Circulation Manager, John A. Glischard

Editorial Associates: Max Guzikowski, Chairman

AisTLN J. App, Bbothek E. Joseph, F.S.C, Daniel J. Rodden, Brotmer E. Patrick, F.S.C,

Howard L. Hannum, Dennis J. McCarthy, Brother D. Matthew, F.S.C

Circulation Secretary: Joseph I. Donohoe, Jr.

Research: Tom Kimon Doulis

Typographic Cover Design by Joseph Mintzer

Manuscripts and other correspondence should be addressed to The Editor, FOUR

QUARTERS, La Salle College, Philadelphia 41, Pa. Manuscripts should be typed double- spaced and should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Annual Sub-

scription: Two Dollars. "

In This Beginning

• Emilie Glen

HURDY-GURDY of a dress- Artist, the great man had called ing-room piano dizzied Ker her artist, and she was ready for this nearer to the concert grand night if he said so. "Anyone else

" out there . . . "Mozart to a T, Cori- handling her, their concert man- anne, except for one phrase. ..." ager had told Mama, "slae'd be Her teacher folded down his height booked at ten years old, but wini a hke a collapsible cane, pearhng his Matheson pupil, a debut has got to tones even on this unstrung instru- be sure and mature." ment. Hall filhng out there, fiOing with "Oughtn't the child's mind to he people who had come to hear her on the Scarlatti? ' said Mama, still play, come through wet snow turn- woofing at the great man after all ing to rain, rushed here in 6/8 time these years. "That's what she's through street noise and subway

" playing first, you know. roar, come from cfuiet apartments on Poor Mama, in silvered lace for high, from furnished rooms on clam- the debut from mantilla to hem. orous courts, come to hear her play Given a fe^v more inches and a in this beginning. voice, she'd have played the diva. Mama sat her down at the mirror, Hands ice, and a fire all through and took the pins out of her hair for her. She stretched out her fingers a steenth re-do. Mirrors in dressing to the radiator, the dozing kitten rooms round the world if her debut steam hke the pipes at home, mak- went right. ing her not here, not there, not any- In the diamond fluorescence. where, spun around in space with- Mama's glasses, Mathie's, caught out knowing where she'd be when her in their crossbeams; they rayed the spinning stopped. out at her every waking minute, "No'— no. child," said Mathie, his tingled inside her hds at night. voice rough-neat as a glass-beaded "Dampness takes the life out of screen, "that radiator heat isn't good your hair, Corianne,' Mama was " for your hands. saying in her hard sauce voice. Mama rubbed them between hers. "Why did we have to have a wet "Ice, why they're ice. Debuts should snow on this night of nights? " All be in the spring hke I said. I the while brushing the slimsy brown wanted to see Corianne presented to stuff out of the white violet light. the pubhc while she was still six- Mama was wishing it \vould flea teen-— hop with red glints. "You couldn't "We know all about that, Mrs. object to a vegetable rinse, could Kalak. You'd rather exploit her as you?" she'd clamored at Mathie a prodigy than present her as a when he even thought nature's flame

' serious artist. a bit overdone, and puffing her own Four Quarters hennaed hair over balding spots, tips like tiny beating wings. Mama, ' had persisted, "It washes right out. Mathie, they were beaming their

Mama spread the brushed b^o^vn glasses like deadly rays. . . . You're to a cape about her shoulders. both making me so nervous I can't

"LooI<, Mr. Matheson," she said in stand it—I just can't stand it" . . . her plushiest tones, "isn't this better own voice jerked out like a sound than pihng it on the poor child's strip under quick thumbnail. >?" head? That hair will twine about "VVhere is your po ise, Cc the hearts of the critics." Its just temperament,' Mama "Then of what value, their criti- t\vaddled. "Doesn't the child have cism? She is not a child to be ex- a right to nerves on her debut ploited with hiked skirts and trainng night?" hair. Her unobtrusive black velvet "Nerves perhaps, but not hyster- " is jeune jille enough." ics. With her hair bundled up, the "Leave me^-please leave me'—" way Mama used to get it off her "We'll leave, but only because neck on perspiry practice afternoons, it's time. A concert artist must al- her features seemed poorly phrased, ways have a moment of quiet before the dimple in her chin, an over- going on.' accented passing note. "Oh no, I didn't mean—please "Mrs. Kalak, what are you don't leave me—please don't. Walk ' doing?" . . . Mama palming that jar with me to the stage^- of iridescent eyeshadow^ as if her "No more of this. You're making eyes weren't big enough with debut. an unholy sho\v of yourself. If I '

. . . "Not eyeshadow on that child? don't leave, how can I be down in "You said yourself she's a young front vt^here you can see me when lady tonight. Her little face needs you come on? Think harpsichord touches to show^ up across the foot- throughout the Scarlatti— strings not lights." percussion.

"They're not footlights. This is "Be sure to rub talcum powder on

" no vaudeville stage . . . his voice your fingers or they might squeak was pulling thin . . . "It's her hands, along the keys," Mama said with a Mrs. Kalak, the emphasis is on her hug before the two receded from her, hands." their steps at odds down the cor- Hands they all but kept in a jewel ridor. box, hands only for the keys—no Scarlatti, she must think Scar- tennis racket, no oars, not so much latti. Her hands sweated cold; her as the lifting of a window. Any- throat felt charred. She poured a one would think they were delicate glass of water that went down like as white violets instead of her one rocks; no amount of it could quench strength — better cushioned than her thirst. Mathie's tapers, a bigger reach. All "Time, Miss Kalak," the attend- her growth gone to hands, the rest ant called into her, easy throated. of her slurred over. Powered hands; In his irregular step along the hall yet that unreadiness in her finger- without wanting to be, she lost off In This Beginning his beat at tKe entrance. Coming fingers, the grand, the stage, the hall out on tKe oil-smooth stage, she —piano tones—and she couldn't get hfted her head against the weight outside the atom whirl to hear how of piled-up hair, the audience in she was playing except too fast, way blue mist as if the talcum she'd too fast. dusted on her hands had clouded Applause—applause lifting her on out to them. "None of that little high, lifting her beyond all doubt, lost girl look," he'd told her, "walk all criticism, applause tossing her up across that stage like the musician and up in a golden net.

' I've trained you to be. The bovv^ she'd practiced with Her footsteps beat back at her out Mathie w^as too harpsichord for the here . . . beat alone out here . . . percussion beat of those hands. alone out here. . . . The bench was Mama's mantilla urged a bow that a little high for her, but if she ad- would hug the audience, still trying justed it, Mathie would call it cheap for cheap theatrics after all these theatrics. A wet weather houses- Matheson years. "The child has cough bouquets, smell of damp everything to unlearn," he'd told clothes and soaked shoe leather. Mama after her efforts to prove she The snow outside could be falling had a seven-year-old prodigy by all around her^-sense of rising as getting her to mangle Chopin's Rev- you look down at the snow falling. olutionary Etude as she stood above Pretend it's concert class high her chanting, "Give, Corie- give.' above Central Park, Mathie sitting Demoted to Bach's Three Part beside you in the lamplight. "Could Inventions and Czerny's Exercises,

I, do you suppose," she'd asked him, she was kept from all performance "could I have a lamp beside me on until over a year later in concert the stage?" She looked out to class. Mama's moment to dress her where he said he'd be sitting. Yes, in taffeta that wrapped the Mozart he was there, the blue mist whiten- in crackling tissue, and a hooped ing to his face—there beside Mama skirt that set her on bouncing in her mantilla. She could begin. springs at the keyboard. First notes of the suite sounded Mama had rehearsed her to bring like a throat clearing, dynamics un- down the house as she had back in certain as a boy whose voice is Akron by blowing kisses to the au- changing, trying for choir clear. dience, smacking and blowing them Everything hyper-real—latecom- with both hands. With Mama's ers to-do, heel screeks, a phlegmy whacks, hugs, and whacks she had cough; almost thought she heard always known what catching it was, Mathies discreet catarrhal click be- but not in the form of Mathie, ris- hind the bridge of his nose, his voice ing, a dark column of wrath, saying,

a perpetual recording in her ears . . . "Never again turn my studio into a "Scarlatti, a discipline against your vaudeville stage. Go to yotir seat emoting." and learn from serious musicians. Everything was breaking down to His words had tattooed a perpetual atoms, her fingers, her dancing atom blush just under his skin ready to Four Quarters break out at every offense against a basement room damp as a sewer, musiciansKip. Worse, years of his but only two blocks from Carnegie disdain that were as severe for your . . . toilet in same closet with the good as a metal brace. "Mathie, kitchen burner that leaked gas into can't I learn Grieg instead of so the room where she practiced on a

" mucK Mozart? . . . Tbat to tbe rented upright so muffled she might

Dean of Mozart, world's authority as well be playing under water . . . on his every phrase. ... "I won't practiced in sweat and in chill while

" have Grieg played in this studio. Mama kept four floors of rented

. . . What if she w^alked to the edge rooms in the old brownstone, getting of the platform, leaned down to him about on her painful feet. It took and aslced, "What's wrong w^ith years for Mathie to notice how they Grieg that we can't play him? I lived, and move them into a high up never got around to asking." apartment with her own grand. Programs rustled hke the taffeta This debut was his. She looked of the first concert class as she sat toward Mathie. not sure whether down to the Mozart Sonata; she she glimpsed Mama's mantilla or a could almost feel the hoops cutting bit of shadow lace; put herself back in. Her name on all those programs into concert class, Mathie in the cir-

—Corianne'—Corianne Kalak. . . . cle of lamplight, a power in the Sure of Mozart as her name. Mathie beam of his glasses, an electric had trusted her with his Mozartian power charging her fingers to Mo- lore; she was his chosen, his in- zart. heritor. Tones like minnows silvering

The first movement unwinding through. . . . No longer a mere per- like maypole ribbons. Mathie's cau- former, she was a musician, playing tion from the edge of the green, a mature and selfless Mozart. A "The momentum must be inherent few bright-flung bars to intermis-

" in the music . . . inherent in . . . sion^-'the concert almost half over. inherent in . . . storm of bells scat- Hands beating Yes to her/—yes, yes. tering his words like pigeons . . . Let the critics say their worst, let Liszt's Campanile that he'd in- Mathie flake her performance like dulged her in as a change from the mica; applause finds no fault, asks debut pieces. . . , Bells, an embar- no questions. Applause rocketing rassment of bells, swinging, ringing, her up and up in a velvet sky; ap- outringing the Mozart, that's how plause is here, it is now, it is all. . . . pumice her head up here. The bells Flowers parted the blue mist of buffeted the Mozart about; con- the aisle . . . aisles along the capi- founded her fingers; held her foot tals of the v^^orld, aisles of flowers to the pedal. parting shoreless seas of applause. Must right herself^musf. Her Yellow roses, red roses, pink roses, life in this debut, hers and Mama's all her arms could hold, and still

. . . sweating work and empty stom- coming; baskets coming, baskets of achs when they sold the house in flowers at her feet, their fragrance Akron after Daddy died, coming to an applause delicate as a Chinese In This Beginning

wind charm. SKe Kad given tlie "we must leave. Every artist needs first bouquet, wild flowers sKe had a moment of quiet before going out picked for him at his summer studio, to the piano." and arranged at his piano, the great Cushiony fingers pressed to her man s piano, their shadows ovaled hps. Mama left on crunching tip- lace along the white plaster wall. toe. Such a place for mirrors—self The weight of flowers in her arms, chromatics, mirror to mirror to mir- Mathie's yellow roses was hghten- ror. Selfi—'Was she a self? Never ing; she was shpping away from the decided for herself^—Mathie always figure holding them; crouched unin- so right, she never got that far, nor vited while it did the bowing, bore spoke for self'—before she could get the flowers, sweated in velvet; she the words out. Mama and Mathie stole off leaving it there to the stir always spoke for her. Not much of hands. noticed until she was at the key- The dressing room was all bos- board. Could only think with her omy with flowers. Mama bending fingers^-no other way to self. over them in puffs of lace, flowers First key she ever pressed down too fragrant in the steam heat nice a —jack-in-the-box, toad hop . . . fin- lot of spilled hand lotions. gers scruffling, a nest of birds, small Mathie twice mirrored, catarrhal waves ... all colors like crayons click hke a hght switch. "You re- falling out . . . fudgy smooth, berry covered nicely in the second move- bright . . . marbles hitting, giant ment. They'll charge up the rest to roaring . . . broken glass, bluebell debut nerves. Mozart has a way of fairies. . . . Mama had come up keeping us within the bounds of behind her and made her fingers go good taste, but watch the Cesar like v^alking, and said letters. Franck'-^don't let yourself get per- Self whenever she smoothed open cussive." a new piece of music, hers to dis- As Mama breathed over her, cover until the lesson. Winging tightening the pins in her hair, she beyond what the composer intended worked her hands supple for the was worse than blowing kisses . . . great chords of the Prelude, Aria "In this studio there are no per- and Finale. "White for a debut," formers, only musicians." Mama had to say, puffing out the Self could be the small key to a velvet sleeves, "the child should locked piano that she was scrab- have worn white." Yards and yards bling for on hands and knees with the audience waiting. She poured of chattering tulle, and crinohne in- herself a glass of water to put out terfering with the pedals if Mathie the fire in her throat. had given Mama her way, but what "Time, Miss Kalak," the attend- if she ever shopped without Mama ant called into her. She rose tall, and Mathie, what would she reaching into a nightmare she'd choose? been having of rising in a cloak that "Come Mrs. Kalak," Mathie was she tried to throw off before going saying hke a meter chcking off fare. on, only to have it wrap itself so 6 Four Quarters tigKt sKe couldn't breatke— couldn't Her bundled hair was loosening, get Ker hands free to play. pins rattling out. Let them, let her

Tke Cesar Franclc—roar it, storm hair fall. A lock came down that it— not jNIatKie's idea of Cesar she must tuck back at the pause.

Franck's idea, but self, play self. The next passage, they had worked No parlcway troolc witKin neat over and ^vorked over to bring out bounds—a torrent no banlcs could Franck's intention; her fingers hold— fire and flood. In a fury to- jogged along like the hooves of a ward the stage . . . hold hack, driverless horse taught the way tighten the pins in your hair. Loose home. The critics would vsTite off them, let your hair fall free about her performance as erratic. "Harsh, your shoulders. Self not so much percussive, " they'd be sure to say, in hair flying free as in fingers play- but all this would have meaning if ing, fingers a high running sea, ^vind they so much as whispered, "Occa- " through pines, de\v threads, rockets, sional flashes.

snow swirL . . . Hands in applause like june-bugs The stage \vas hers to cross. She bumbling against the window pane sat down at the keyboard, adjusting —no different for the Franck than the bench; shook out her hands to for the Mozart. Nothing but a the looseness those great chords claque, and the critics would write

needed. Let it be a big moment- . . . "blurred, distorted, lack of fi-

" let them wait. Isn't that what they nesse. She was butchering a debut came for? ... a performance not a that could have carried the Mathe- dedication. From here, the beams son guarantee of a concert career. of Mathie's glasses -were the feeblest The envied one of his studio, the glint of hummingbird wings. one with almost daily lessons, the Up in this eagle's nest, she urged one to go on to the capitals of the forward in what he'd call panting world, but they'd be Matheson capi- virtuoso style, spread-winged for tals as a Matheson pupil. great chords, power chords—self. Brahms' Ballade in G Minora All of her in those first chords but how had she first played it? Thun- her fingers were slipping back to derbolt. Thwacking, she was thwack- practiced ways, cautiously balanced ing—breaking up Matheson granite phrases, controlled dynamics, that to nothing, no vein of gold. sounded as harpsichord as the Scar- Applause stormed in tempo—* latti. Mathie could have his plucked debut applause— required. She harpsichord days, she'd play the swept it under the rug with the piano—'pianoforte-power in its per- Brahms Waltzes. Don't overplay cussion, danger in its percussion. them, Mathie's right, "Only fools Her tone getting jagged, elbows fly- give their all to lesser works and ing out, half lifting from her seat to have nothing left over for the great the great chords. Mathie would ones," but she could play them in have stopped her if this \vere concert all gayet>', play them as if they were class. "Unholy show, " he'd say, the first notes ever written, first notes "an unholy show." heard for the first time. In This Beginning 7

That strand of hair coming down zart, the confused Francic, the des- '—her playing hke her hair, half up, perate Brahms. Mathie had the in- half down. "Brusque, tasteless," chned head of hstening, what there they would write, "A massive pian- was of self in her playing, an insect ism quite uncalled for" . . . "just trapped in his ear, deafening him ' another debut launched too soon. beyond all reason for its tiny sound You can't take a leap into space box. after self . . . have to work as pa- Encores innocuous enough. She tiently at it as to be what somebody sat down to powder away their ap- wants of you. plause with the Schubert Im- Applause for everything all in one promptu, but her fingers wouldn't basket, end-of-concert applause for contract to it, they reached the the tense Scarlatti, the Mathie Mo- Campanile, stormed out the bells.

Variations on a Thetne of Pound^s

• Bronislaw Slawecki

Would I had died the night she came against my sight and I into her sway. The transient come before I was aware^- and away: the answer sent to some unphrased prayer.

Lord that she whose hardest gaze could but bid birds sing her praise and homage to her beauty make should my pleas so lightly take and with a laugh to naught my nightly vigils set: unsought.

NVhat hells through her despite have I not suffered? what gifts unoffered upon her altar? Who like a goddess true disdains compassion of my pains deriding my confession. Europe from the Reformation to the Revolution

• Christopher Dawson

I. BOURGEOIS AND BAROQUE [Continued^

reaction of the tremendous changes brought about by Luther and THECalvin also spread to the Mediterranean world. When Luther launched his revolt, the culture of humanist Italy had reached its maturity and Leo X, the son of Lorenzo de Medici, had made Rome the centre of a brilhant hterary and artistic culture. Centuries later men looked back on the Rome of Leo X as a golden age. Voltaire vvrites of it as one of those rare moments in the history of the world which vindicate the greatness of the human mind and compensate the historian for the barren prospect of a thousand years of stupidity and barbarism. To Luther, on the other hand, the Rome of Leo X was a sink of iniquity, its culture was pure materialism, and its religion was gross superstition. Neither of these extremes is justified. Leo the X generous patronage of culture cannot redeem his failures in his spiritual and international leadership. And the worldliness and moral laxity of Italian society do not prove that Italian religion was moribund. On the contrary its vitalitj'^ is sho\vn by the unbroken series of Saints and mystics and reformers who flourished throughout the Renaissance period and who are to be found not only among the representatives of the medieval tradition like Savanarola but among the leaders of humanist culture. At Rome itself in the age of Leo X, the Oratory of Divine Love, out of which the Theatine Order arose a few^ years later, formed a centre of spiritual renewal w^hich united leaders of the Catholic reform like St. Cajetan and Cardinal Carafa (after- wards Paul rV) with humanists and members of the Papal court, like Sadolet and Manetti, and later Reginald Pole, Aleander and Contarini. The spirit of this Italian reforming movement was at once more medieval and more modern than that of the German Reformation. It aimed at applying the interior spirituality of the Italian mystical tradition^- the Spirit of St. Catherine of Genoa-—and to the task of ecclesiastical reform and instead of revolting against the monastic and the ascetic traditions like Luther it sought to adapt them to the needs of the age by providing a corporate quasi-monastic way of life in which the clergy could carry on their pastoral work, while living by rule in community. This innovation proved extraordinarily popular and successful. It exerted its influence not only by training priests and bishops but even more by

* Second of four installments, in which FOUR QUARTERS presents the author's recent Oriel Lectures delivered at Oxford University. Europe from the Reformation to the Revolution g providing an example whicK was to be followed by a series of similar institutions, tbe Barnabites of St. Antonio Maria Zaccaria, the Somascbi of St. Jerome Emiliani, above all the Roman Oratory of St. Phihp Neri. It was this movement, even more than the Spanish Counter-Reformation which was the real source of the Cathohc revival and of the new forms and ideals of modern Catholicism.

Nevertheless it did not possess the dynamic quahty that was necessary to meet the challenge of the Reformation. The Christian humanists might have reason and authority and tradition on their side, but they were too civihzed to cope with the titanic forces which had been released by Martin Luther.

But the Mediterranean world also possessed a new source of spiritual energy which was still intact. The rising force of nationahty was making itself felt in the Iberian Peninsula no less than that in Germany, but in Spain, unlike Germany, it was directed and unified by a strong central power. After centuries of division and strife the Spanish Kingdoms had been united in 1474 by the Catholic Kings who set themselves to reorganize and reform the whole national order alike in Church and state. In this task they w^ere able to appeal to the age-long tradition of the crusade against the infidel which had always been the dynamic force in Spanish history, so that they could unite their peoples externally by the reconquest of the remaining Moslem territories in Southern Spain and internally by the liquidation of the non-Christian minorities through the tribunal of the Inquisition which was the organ of national unity as well as of Catholic orthodoxy and helped to identify the spirit of Spanish patriotism with Spanish religious ideals. Hence the conquest of Granada in 1492 instead of marking the end of the Spanish crusade only strengthened their sense of a national mission and transferred their crusading energy to new fields. At the same moment Spain became a great imperial power owning first to the discovery of America, secondly to the conquest of Naples and finally to the union with Burgundy and Austria, which brought Spain into association with the Empire and hence into collision with the German Reformation. While the Flemish advisers of Charles V followed a policy of moderation and were not unsympathetic to Erasmus' conciliatory ideas, the Spaniards saw the religious conflict as the opportunity for a new crusade. As early as the Spring of 1521. the Council of Castille wrote to the Emperor, reminding him of the sacrifices which the Catholic Kings had made for the faith and begging him to call "the w^arlike and Christian Germans" to arms in order to seize Luther and send him a prisoner to Rome for the judgment of the Holy Father.

It was this Spanish crusading spirit which was to become the motive force of the Counter Reformation. By degrees it communicated itself to Charles V and his advisers so that eventually, and still more under his lo Four Quarters

successor, the wKoIe resources of tke Spanish Empire were mobilized in a new holy war against European Protestantism. Nevertheless the mihtant aggressiveness was only one aspect of Spanish Cathohcism. Still more important was its internal spiritual mission for the reform of the Church and the restoration of Cathohc cuhure which found its expression in the work of St. Ignatius Loyola and the Society of Jesus. The beginnings of Ignatius were those of a Spiritual Quixote, a knight errant in search of a crusade. But his retreat at Manresa, which coincided with that of Luther at the Wartburg, transformed his character and his aims and revealed to him his true mission which was both internal and universal. The society which he created united the spirit of the Spanish counter reformation with that of the Italian movement of spiritual reform which was represented by the Theatines and later by the Oratory. Unlike the former it was essentially international in character

and vv^as directly dependent on the Papacy, but it also embodied the Spanish crusading ideal in a sublimated form as we see above all in the heroic achievements of St. Francis Xavier the apostle of the Indies. No less important however in the long run was the activity of the society of Jesus in education and culture. From the l6th century onwards the Jesuits set themselves to adopt the new methods of humanist education to Christian ideals, and their colleges which were established all on the Catholic world from Peru to Russia were the organs of a common type of humanist Catholic culture. Their work did more than anything else to restore the prestige of Catholic education which had been so much damaged by the assaults of the humanists against the old scholastic tradition. And at the same time the work of the Jesuits as directors of conscience and spiritual advisers brought the influence of the Catholic revival to bear on the courts and cabinets which were the key points of social influence and which had hitherto been the centre of the disintegrating movements which had undermined the unity of Christendom. But great as the contribution of the society to the Catholic revival was, it was only a part of a much wider development. For example the revival of the contemplative life and the new^ flowering of Christian mysticism which was the spiritual climax of the whole movement owed less to the Jesuits than to the Carmelite Reform which arose slightly later and did not attain its full influence on the Catholic world until the early years of the 17th century. St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, no less than St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier, are a proof of the extraordinary dynamism of the Spanish religious genius, and their achievement is even more representative of the Spanish religious tradition than that of the great Jesuits, since it is the culmination of a mystical tradition that was aheady flourishing especially among the Spanish Franciscans, like Fran- cisco of Ossuna, Bernardino of Laredo and St. Peter of Alcantara. Never- theless it would be a mistake to ascribe the mystical revival of the l6th century entirely to Spanish sources. It had its independent roots in Italy, Europe from the Reformation to the Revolution ii wKere one of the greatest of Catholic mystics, St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1497) had had a profound influence on the spiritual hfe of Renais- sance Italy through Christian humanists like Ettore Vernazza.

It is difficult to overestimate the share of the mystics in the Catholic revival and their influence on the new Catholic culture. The Protestant criticisms of Catholicism as a rehgion of external practices lost all their force when they were confronted with this new outpouring of divine grace and with the ideal of spiritual perfection manifested in the lives of the saints. At the same time mysticism provided the antidote against the rationalist and materialist tendencies in Western society and enlarged the range of humanist culture by a deeper and more sublime vision of spiritual reality, which inspired poets and artists as well as theologians and philosophers.

This too is an important factor in the Catholic Revival, for the centres of the Catholic renaissance were also the centres of artistic production so that Catholic art became one of the great channels for the diffusion of

Catholic culture. Thus it is that the new Baroque art has given its name to the new culture which became the last great corporate expression of Western religious ideals. For the expansion of the Baroque culture was not merely an ideological movement, like the Enlightenment in the 18th century or the diffusion of 19th century liberation. It appealed to the heart as well as the head and satisfied the emotional as well as the intellectual needs of human nature. And thus it was never merely the culture of an educated minority, since its religious ideals embodied in painting and archi- tecture and music were the common heritage of the people as a whole and not the exclusive possession of a privileged class.

Owing to this character the Baroque culture possessed exceptional powers of diffusion even among peoples of alien traditions. On the whole the modern expansion of European culture has been external and material. It has forced non-European peoples to recognize the superiority of Wêstern techniques and Wêstern scientific knowledge, but it has failed to bridge the spiritual gap between East and Wêst. But within the sphere of the Baroque culture this was not so. Mexico and Peru and the Portuguese settlements in Asia assimilated the Baroque culture and produced their ow^n local styles of Baroque art. Thus by the 17th century Europe and the new world were sharply divided between two apparently exclusive and antagonistic forms of culture. The Inquisition and the ecclesiastical of books and ideas, on the one hand, and the penal laws against Catholicism, on the other, seemed to create an impassable barrier which divided Catholic and Protestant Europe and

America into two closed worlds. How was it under these circumstances that the unity of Western culture survived? Why did not the Baroque culture of Catholic Europe and the Protestant culture of the North go their own ways and gradually diverge further and further from one another la Four Quarters until tKey became as mutually incompreKensible and as spiritually remote as CKristendom and Islam? The reason for this is to he found not so much in their common Chris- tianity hut in their common humanism. Both Catholic and Protestant Europe shared the same humanist education and the same classical literature so that in spite of their spiritual separation they still maintained a certain community of intellectual life which prevented the divergence between Catholics and Protestants from completely destroying the unity of Western culture.

I do not go so far as to say that the humanist culture of the Post Reformation world was one and the same in every part of Europe. Reli- gious differences had an even greater influence than national ones on its development, so that while Catholics and Protestants were alike influenced by their humanist education, it produced different points in art and thought and life in different spiritual environments. Thus while humanism had as strong an influence on education and literature in Protestant Europe as in

Catholic Europe it permeated the whole culture less deeply than did the Baroque culture of the South. It produced great scholars like Scaliger and Casaubon and great poets like Milton, but it remained the culture of a minority. The educated classes had all undergone the discipline of humane letters, but the people as a whole derived their moral ideas and their spiritual imagery not from the philosophers or the humanists or the artists but directly from the Bible and above all from the Old Testament. This Hebraistic tradition was characteristic of Protestant culture and has often been regarded, e.g. by Matthew Arnold as responsible for the anti-humanist Philistine character of middle class culture in England and America. It was naturally strongest among the sects whose whole intellectual life was nourished on the Bible and the Bible only. But even in representatives of the highest Protestant culture like Milton there is a hard core of unassimilated Hebraism which is in conflict with their humanist education and which in lesser men produced a sharp dualism between religion and culture. It was this dualism which prevented the development of religious drama and religious art in the 17th century and caused that partial secularization of culture which destroyed the medieval unity of religious and social life.

In Catholic Europe, this was not so. As I have said, the Baroque culture was not confined to the scholars and the men of letters. It permeated the life of the people as a whole through the religious art and music and drama which continued to play the same part in the Baroque world as they had done in the Middle Ages. Thus the drama instead of being banned by the Church was used deliberately as a means of religious instruction, so that in Spain, for example, religious and secular dramas were composed by the same authors, many of them priests, performed by the same actors and applauded by the same audiences. In the same way there was no sharp dualism in Catholic Europe from the Reformation to the Revolution 13

Europe between CKristian and humanist ethics. The synthesis of Cathohc and Aristotehan ethics which was perhaps the most important of all the achievements of St. Thomas remained the basis of Catholic teaching and provided an ideal foundation for the creation of a Christian humanism which could integrate the moral values of the humanist tradition with the transcendant spiritual ends of Christian theology. In Protestant Europe the influence of humanist ethics is considerable as we can see in the Cambridge Platonists. Nevertheless the influence of the Old Testament was far stronger especially in Calvinist countries and it was this Hebraist ethos which explains both the strength and the weakness of Protestant culture. Alike in Calvin's Geneva and in Puritan New England, among Cromwell's Ironsides and among the Scottish Covenanters it produced a type of character and a way of life that were harsh and unattractive when judged by humanist standards but were as hard as iron and as irresistible as a steam hammer. This was the spiritual power behind the new economic order which was destined to transform Europe and the world. Against the rich communal life of Baroque Europe with its external magnificence and its internal poverty, its palaces and its monasteries, its saints and its beggars, there arose a society of Godly mer- chants and shopkeepers and craftsmen who worked hard and spent little, who regarded themselves as God's elect, and who were ready to fight to the death against any attempt of king or bishop to interfere with their religion or their business. No two forms of European culture could have been more different and more irreconcilable with one another. And yet both of them were intensely religious, and both alike were equally hostile, though in different ways, to the secularization of culture which was the dominant characteristic of the 18th century. In fact this process of secularization did not originate with either of them. It had its source in a third type of culture which was intermediate between the Baroque and the Calvinist w^orlds and which I shall discuss in my next lecture. Chatzkel

Charles Ango£f

SUPPOSE we are all, in a way, curious and seeking for answers. Dewilaered ^vancêê^s in tKis life. His brothers and sisters and cousins I When we tkink of it at all, many looked upon him as something of a of us are puzzled by the entire plappler and a mesnuggener and a scheme of things . . . where wê came drayhop, and those who had done from, why we are here, and where some reading in their earher days we are going to. Sometimes it seems dubbed him der Yiddisher Schopen- as if we were playthings in the hauer, because Chatzkel did talk hands of some outer group of forces, considerable pessimism. But, as I wholly indifferent to human dreams recall, they all enjoyed his company and desires. Other times, it seems . . . and they all seemed relaxed as if we were the sole architects of when listening to him . . . and they our fortunes. . . . But, I guess, most all, perhaps despite themselves, re- people are so occupied with their spected him. But what sticks in my own affairs that they have httle time memory most was Chatzkel's general to consider the ultimate mysteries tranquillity of spirit despite his be-

. . . and advancing age dulls their wilderment and despite his pessi- curiosity . . . and soon they become mism. Apparently being perpetually resigned to a sort of over-all resig- lost was good for his soul . . . and I nation that comes upon all people begin to think, in my own advanc- now and then, and more so as the ing age, that perhaps Chatzkel's sort inevitable infirmities and disap- of pessimism ought to be encour- pointments of age make their ad- aged. vances upon our physical selves. . . . This sounds like a foolish idea,

But there are some people, a very but maybe it's really not so foolish. few, true enough, who never, so to Chatzkel was always "sad " and

speak, give in . . . they keep on being "finding fault with the world," but curious, and being curious they keep he had no ulcers and no itches and on being disappointed, and they no headaches and he seldom took persist in seeking some answers to medicines . . . and I know and you their puzzlements . , . and, when know people who are "always seeing now and then, they forget their puz- the bright side of things " and make zlements they keep on seeking pleas- quite a to-do about their "cheerful- ures and joys that will endure for a ness " and even belong to Optimist while, and not disappear hke the Clubs and Tranquillity Societies pleasures of youth, which bring as yet who are always sick and always much heartbreak as joy in recollec- running to doctors and psychoan- tion. alysts and joining new churches that Chatzkel was the only one of my promise to "get them out of them- relatives who never gave up being selves " and put them "in touch with

14 Chatzkel 15

All Goodness" and stuffing them- much questioning leads to atheisin." selves with pills and liquias ana Chatzkel refused to be quieted with reading little paper books filled with this line of argument. "God gave

"lessons to lift the aching heart and us a head," he said, "to ask ques-

." " gladden the soul. . . tions, not to bury them. But he

I learned about Chatzkel's early didn't espouse atheism. "Only life from my father. He had been a grobbe yungen," he said, "believe brilliant pupil in cheder and he was in nothing. One must believe, I one of the most able students who admit. But a man who is a rabbi had ever attended the local yeshivah.. should believe a little more than an Even before the time of his ordina- ordinary man, and I don't. So I'll tion for the rabbinate he had been be an ordinary man, and I won't promised a very fine position as a talk from the pulpit. I'll only listen rabbi in a shul in a neighboring to what comes from the pulpit. town, but he was never ordained. After all, a sin it isn't not to feel " Exactly what happened I never worthy of being a rabbi. could make out, because my father, He w^as so obviously sincere in \vho was a very pious man, always everything he said that he remained managed to evade telling me the a respected member of the commu- whole story on the ground that nity and on friendly terms with the "about such sad things it is better local rabbis and the teachers at the one shouldn't talk. It's bad enough yeshivah. And the mothers of eli- what happened. " But I gathered gible daughters continued to look that Chatzkel had scandalized the upon him favorably and to invite Jewish community and the tradition him to their homes. After he left of the yeshivah. by getting into an the yeshivah he worked at various argument with no less a person than trades, shoe-making, match-manu- the head of the yeshivah on the facturing, brush-manufacturing. As problem of evil, which bothered before, he read almost everything he Chatzkel no end and which caused could get his hands on, Hebrew, him to refuse to be ordained. He Yiddish, Russian, and both religious simply couldn't believe completely and worldly. The more knowledge in an All-Merciful Omniscient he amassed the more bewildered he Deity Who permitted pogroms and became and the more pessimistic, tuberculosis and cancer and sudden yet he found deep spiritual pleasure death. in both his bewilderment and pessi- The head of the yeshivah, who mism. He became a sort of walking w^as a very learned and honest man, university and fountain of general didn't claim he had the answer to wisdom and his company was this problem, but he pleaded with sought after by almost everybody. Chatzkel not to allow himself to be "Ah, Chatzkel is a klooger," said overly troubled with it: "Human his neighbors. "A good head he reason is not divine reason. Man has and an eidele neshome (liter- must be humble, and leave some ally, gracious soul)." problems to the Uppermost. Too He was also very attractive to i6 Four Quarters

\vomen, and there was not an un- secretly in their souls and that they married girl in tlie town who would revealed only to each other in the not have been dehghted to become delicious hours of their aloneness, his \vife. Chatzlcel ^vas polite to all especially in the still, warm hours of of them, and to their parents, who the night. Many years later, when wished that he Nvould marry into Chatzkel had become fully aware of their famihes if only to assure them this streak in him, he said, "A the privilege to talk to him often. woman is as satisfying as good There was something so gentle bread, but she can also be delicious and so sweet about him even when as the wine that is made slowly from he expressed the most disturbing ripe grapes. Yes, a woman can be thoughts: "Ah, the world about us a torment, but if tended properly^-

is beautiful. After all, what is so and tending a woman is largely a beautiful as a flower or the smile of matter of luck and instincts-she can

a child? And a joy it is to sing be a blessed forgetfulness. Maybe praises to the Uppermost, the Cre- that is what the Uppermost meant

" ator of all this beauty. But life is woman chiefly to be. also one long struggle, from the mo- Chatzkel and his Miriam emi- ment of birth, through growing up, grated to America, as did so many and even death is a struggle more other Je\vs of Russia in those days.

often than not. Nu, what is, is, and He took all sorts of jobs, from bottle vv'hat has to be, has to be." washing in a brewery to driving a

He didn't marry till relatively late w^agon for a junk dealer, and then for those days—he was already thirty slowly^-he didn't know just how^-- .—and the girl he married had moved he slid into running a little station- into the town only a few weeks be- ery store of his own. He got to like fore. She was barely seventeen and this business very much^-'as if the a real "devil," as some of the older Uppermost had picked it out for women enviously called her. She me," he said to his wife and to all was the last girl in the world, as the others who would listen. Had any- saying went, that people expected he body else made such a remark, he would marry, for the girl, Miriam, would have been suspected of athe- v^^as interested only in having a good istical leanings, but nobody had time and cared nothing at all for such suspicions about Chatzkel. As books or ideas, and everybody won- even my own pious father said, "Eh, dered how they could stand each all the young Jewish men and other. But apparently they were women who are so tzunitzt about very much in love. People didn't Socialism and other such meshu- know that when they were together gaasen should be such apikorsim as they talked only joyous hlaynikeiten Chatzkel is. He talks, but his heart (little things), and even Chatzkel is in the Torah, and what he knows and Miriam didn't know that what about the Talmud and the Gemarra drew^ them together was a streak of some of our American rabbis should gay and glorious irresponsibility, a know. About him I have no wor- sort of emotional anarchism that lay cHATZKEL 17

What pleased Chatzkel about Kis needs and also their newspapers and shop was that he not only sold pen- magazines. Sometimes there was so cils and erasers and envelopes and much business that Chatzkel could note hooks, hut also newspapers and devote very little time to his read- magazines and hooks in Enghsh and ing, and that bothered him. As he Yiddish and Hehrew, and as he said, "God forbid I should be a suc- said, smihng, "I have my Harvard cess and a grobber yung." And I College right in my store, and it once heard him sigh with annoyance costs me nothing." He read every- when a group of youngsters stam- thing and every free moment he had. peded into his store to make some He cared just enough for his busi- purchases. "Always bothering me ness to make a hving. Friends and and interrupting me," he mumbled. relatives gently hinted that if he I got to know^ him very well and made an effort he could make "a visited him often when I went to real, halehattishe business" out of college and later, after I went to his httle store. But he always pooh- w^ork as a bookkeeper in a clothing poohed such suggestions with the factory. I liked to listen to him, and remark: "No, my Miriam and I are I guess he liked me because, unlike happy enough with our potato latkes so many others whom he knew, I and a httle boiled beef and some had little ambition to make money chicken once in a while, and maybe and he sensed that I enjoyed his spe- a moving picture for Miriam and the cial brand of philosophical pessi- children, and some ice cream. If mism combined with romanticism. the Uppermost grants us this stead- No matter how much sadness he ily, and," he w^ould add smihng, and aroused in me, he also somehow with just the right amount of daring made me feel exhilarated. The sub- in the rehgious realm to add spice stance of many of his remarks come to what he was saying, "there is back to me across the years, and really no reason why He should not they seem just as sensible to me now

grant us what we desire. . . . Eh as they did then—far more so than beyond that, I leave all financial do the remarks of men high in aca- worries to Rockefeller. He is used demic life, or in the literary world or to them and he is welcome to them. in the world of politics. Chatzkel, I

Life is too s-weet for such worries, now see, was the Common Man at and there are too many better things his very best, shrewd, honest, sympa- to wôrry about, anyway, than thetic, of good instincts, kindly, and money." filled with an unquenchable lyri- Perhaps the only thing about his cism, even as he complained most store that disturbed Chatzkel was sharply about the world and its that even without any special effort ways. on his part, it was doing better than Woman suffrage puzzled him. "I he wanted. Most of the children don't understand such women," he of the neighborhood bought their said. "W^hy should a woman vsânt school supphes from him, and most a vote? If she loves her husband, of the adults bought their stationery she thinks the way he does. If she i8 Four Quarters doesn't, sKe generally doesn't know came. "Oh, no, my young friend," Kow to vote most of the time, and if he said to me, "that is not Paradise. sKe knows, she probably has trouble That is a prison, one of the worst home with her husband, and she's ever devised by man. That is slav- too nervous for her opinion to have ery to powêr, to materialism. That any value. It displeases me to see makes gods out of the lowest, poli- women even think about pohtics, as ticians. That puts the stomach it would displease mie to see flowers above the soul, the heiligge ne- or the sun or the grass think about shome. That puts economic security politics. A warm, smiling, loving above freedom, and without free- woman is the crown of God's crea- dom there is no real economic secur- tion. Why should she besmirch ity, there is nothing. Man then be- herself? Women are people, too, comes a stone, a piece of wood, a these suffragettes say. I say women nothing. Czar Nicholas II, may he are better than people, or should be rot in hell, was bad, of course. But proud to be better, for God made in his Russia there was more free- them that way. Ah, such a meshu- dom, more chance for literature, for gass this suffrage talk is!" talking, for being people than in this Russia, Bolshevism, Socialism, thing that Lenin and Trotsky and Eugene V. Debs, Lenin, profit-shar- Kamenev and Tchitcherin and the ing, the cooperative movement^he others are building. It makes me put little store by all of them. shiver when I look ahead into the "What worries me," he said, "is future. From Russia as it is now that people will make a religion out will come a blackness that will curse of all these things. Sure, some of the world. Remember what I tell them are good. We have all be- you." come too fargrohht (vulgarized) in Chatzkel's face turned livid as he making a living. Day and night talked on and on about Communist working and sleeping badly and Russia. Only when talking about working again. Animals have more Russia did he lose his usual calm sense. And that's what I mean. Wê . . . and this was nearly thirty years should spend more of our efforts to ago, when so many American intel- be like animals^to enjoy the world lectuals were succumbing to the more, nature, trees, the sky . . . we propaganda about "the Russian ex- spend all our days cooped up in periment"! shops and at night we are tired . . . Once I was in the store when eh, a dog leads a more sensible life. Chatzkel was telling me how much It says in the cJioomesh that man he liked and disliked Upton Sin- was made in God's image, but all clair's The Jungle. He wâs one of man does with his life is to deny the most objective critics I have ever this. God's image should enjoy encountered, and one of the most God's plenty." ceaselessly inquisitive minds I have Chatzkel was especially critical of ever known. The winds of varying Russian Communism. The more he intellectual fashions never touched read about it the more bitter he be- him. He went on his direct and Chatzkel 19

Konest way. He liked The Jungle (gabble) and waste my time with because it did so mucK to expose tKe your foolishness? I am here to be " hideous conditions in Chicago. "So waited on. it's a good book, " Ke said, "but it's Chatzkel stopped talking. Slowly also not so good. WKen I read a he turned around to face the man. book I want the whole sad truth. He looked at him closely, then he Right. It's the way it should be. walked to within a foot of nim, and But the whole sad truth also has a he said, "I would rather waste my little silver bell in it, and the silver time talking foolishness than wait bell makes a sweet sound. There's upon a chazer (pig) like you. I

" alv^^ays somebody or something sing- don't want your business. ing. Like some writer said, or maybe The man left the store . . . and it was a philosopher, as I get older there was a silence between Chatz- I don't remember so vv^ell, this WTiter kel and me. I had never seen him or philosopher said that this singing so rude to anybody, and that dis- is what makes religion. With all turbed me, for I began to fear that reverence I say it, this singing is the the Chatzkel whom I enjoyed so

Uppermost. The rabbis said this in much was changing . . . and at the their own ways, all the great think- time he was very important to me, ers and artists say it. That is why for I w^as going through what seemed there is so much singing in shul. at the time to be very serious and

Singing is truly divine. The whole tragic emotional experiences . . . and world sings. Judaism is a singing just being with Chatzkel was very rehgion. That's what makes it so comforting. ... I continued to beautifuh All books are really, in worry about Chatzkel for weeks and

a sense, and without meaning dis- months thereafter. . . . respect, little choomoshim (Bibles), But I learned in time that I had and so they, like the real choomesh, little to worry about. Chatzkel was

should have song in them. Nu, still, so to speak, his pessimistic- maybe I'm talking an old man's fool- optimistic-constantly-inquiring self. ishness, but I feel it deep within He found more and more in con-

" me. temporary life to disturb him, espe- Neither of us had noticed that a cially the growing concern with man was waiting to be tended to. physical comforts and what he The man coughed to get Chatzkel's looked upon as the lessening concern attention, but Chatzkel went on to with spiritual matters. Though he praise books, and he told a long had refused to become a rabbi be- story about Chassidic life to illus- cause of his doubts, he remained trate what he meant by religion deeply religious in the ultimate sense being music. Again the man of the word. To him the word coughed, and again Chatzkel ig- Godliness meant something unutter- nored him, but kept on talking en- ably lovely and ultimate and mys- thusiastically. Finally, the man lost tic, bearing all that is true and beau- patience and exclaimed, "How much tiful in life. He said, "Aye, auto- longer are you going to plappel mobiles are good, motion pictures 20 Four Quarters are good, but only if getting tKem I felt a little silly doing so, for I had doesn't make people forget Godli- never fed pigeons before, but then it ness, and I'm afraid that tKey are occurred to me that it was very

forgetting it for tlie time being. Nu, pleasant to feed pigeons, that it was the Bible and its beauties have sur- very relaxing, and I said so to vived in the past and will survive Chatzkel . . . and he said, chiding now^ too." He smiled, "I guess me pleasantly, "Ah, my friend, we King David was wiser than I am. have all strayed too far from nature, He didn't worry. His Psalms will far from communion wiih animals, " outhve everything. and they have much to teach us, a And yet despite his faith in God- great deal, how^ to live without worry ." hness, he still was perturbed by the . . . they have a lot to teach us. . . problem of evil which possessed him And we talked on and on about as a young man and continued to this and that, and soon I felt almost possess him all these years. 'With- as calm and relaxed as he did. . . . out meaning disrespect, I wish I only Soon he stopped feeding the pi- knew a little of the purpose of the geons, for he had no more peanuts, Uppermost in permitting so much and he seemed sorry, and so did I, disease and trouble in general in the for feeding the pigeons seemed to world, " he said. "Sometimes I try say whatever we wanted to say to to leave such problems to the Up- each other, and it said it far more permost, but I wish I knew, I wish I eloquently than we could say it. knew just a little. Nu, what He Then he said, "You knovv^, I wish wants to keep a secret. He will keep I were a bird, any kind of bird. I a secret. A man who sells pencils once said it to my wife, and she " and erasers must have humility, I kissed me. guess. At the time I was still unmarried, Some weeks later I saw him sit- but I sensed that he had revealed an ting on a bench in the Boston Com- uncommonly happy marriage, and I mon. It was a spring day and very was vaguely envious . . . and my re- lovely in every way^sunny, just gard for him mounted and mounted.

. I warm enough for comfort, quiet . . And he went on, "While was Chatzkel was feeding a group of feeding the pigeons I thought how pigeons, obviously happy and obliv- wonderful the Uppermost is about ious to what was going on about life, human life and life in general." of him. I imagined his wife or one He hesitated, looked into the dis- his children was taking care of his tance, as he often did w^hen speak-

shop . . . and I was also sure that he ing. Then he said, "Think of it. If didn't much care what was happen- you work a machine, it w^ears out. ing to his business . . . other things Hit it, bang it, and it is damaged. were far more important to him, for But a living thing is different. Take example, feeding pigeons. . . . a human being. Take his brain. I greeted him and we talked . . . he gave me some peanuts and urged The more you use it, the better it me to feed the pigeons with him. . . . gets. The same with his soul. The Chatzkel 21

more experiences it nas the nobler my moutb to say anything ... or to it gets. Not always, but many mumble anything polite. . . . times. Now, why is that? Why Not long afterward I bad to leave is a buman being different from a town, and I did not return to Boston macnine? I II tell you. It s tbe for almost five years. Toward the Godliness in tbe buman soul. Yes, end of tbat time I got word that tbe Godliness. Tbat is tbe great, Chatzkel had died suddenly one unending mystery, tbe great, unend- Sunday afternoon in the very same ing wonder of all life. I wisb I Icnew^ Boston Common where be had more about it, its purpose. But tbe moved me so much with bis remarks older I get, tbe more do I get to feel about Godliness in all tbat lives. . . . tbat, well, I never will know tbe I just couldn't understand his death purpose, but I can feel tbe -wonder, ... it presented to me the same tbe unending wonder. It's all in problem of evil that had troubled

. . . but then I Genesis, my friend. And God said, him remembered what he had told me about Godli- all tbat He bad created was good. ness, and I felt somewhat comforted Yes, it is good and so wonderful . . .

. . . and throughout tbe years since and so terribly, unendingly myste- then I have often thought about rious. Nu, tbe David of tbe Psalms Chatzkel, and always the memory was rigbt. We sbould forever sing of him has brought me profound " tbe praises of tbe Uppermost. peace and a delight in all about me I was so moved by tbe poetry of that I am sure that be would have bis remarks tbat I could not open agreed with. . . .

The Three Graces

% Geoffrey Johnson

Tbe first of tbe three Graces in tbe wood Peeped on tbe musing poet, w^ho w^as trying In lab^Tintbs of light to capture flying Tbe joy which brushed bis temples while he stood.

"Beaten ", she whispered with low^ Cyprian laughter To tbe other two enlinking hands behind. The second peeped on ageless hour thereafter: He seemed to stare on nothing, like tbe blind. "Idle", she w^hispered. "weaving fool's dream-fancies

" Of vague tomorro^vs to rigbt this day defeated. Then the third peeped, when light was rich as pansies: Asleep he lay. "Asleep", their laughs repeated. Then stopped. They looked. His page had caught all threes- White, peeping, linked in golden greenery. A Time To Die

• Daniel De Paola

PIERSALL FLEMING put his sounds coming from those faces lost briefcase on the empty seat be- their soothing tones and grew harsh. side him and took up his news- Even the clicking of the wheels be- paper. The 7:22 was fairly empty neath him seemed to Fleming more as usual and as he unfolded his portentous now than just a rhythm. newspaper he looked around at Somehow^, Fleming couldn't go the other commuters and shoppers. back to reading the new^spaper. He Some he knew^ by sight but never sat there, his eyes ranging about as got to talk to; he saw them each he wondered why the lights had had evening and nodded. They did the such an effect on him. His eyes same and the need for talking never turned to the telephone poles going came up, not unless the seating de- by outside his window. His eyes manded it. rose to the wires which raced con- The column headings -were as current with them, rising and fall- usual, too. Something about the ing, but always there with effortless national budget, the Far East, and speed. The lighted reflection of the the latest affairs in Washington. car ran along beneath the wires, Fleming read them one by one, re- cutting through houses and shrubs, laxing in the soft seat while the floating over passing fields wraith- train moved smoothly toward home. like.

Every time he finished an item and As it grew^ darker outside, Flem- went to the next, he heard the soft ing could better discern the reflec- hum of talk and the rustling of other tion which sat outside his window. newspapers. He looked up once or He could make out the people and twice out the window to see how^ what they were doing. He watched far they had gone. The sun was one man who talked forcefully while gone and the first shades of twihght waving a hand about; the man next w^ere dipping the scene into dimness. to him kept shaking his head, and

He turned the page and read on. each motion of it slipped through After a few moments, the hghts trees and fences that went by. Flem- were turned on in the car. Only ing watched these reflections on one now did Fleming notice it had been side as their sounds came to him getting dark in the car and that he from the other. The merging made had brought his nev^spaper closer to it all seem more unreal. Then he the window for more hght. The noticed in the reflection, in front of pages lay on his chest as he looked these two men, what looked like a around at the stilted light which sat soldier. garishly on all the people and parts He turned to look across the aisle of the car. Faces now were drained and saw it was a soldier. He was of color and looked strange; the surprised he hadn't noticed the boy

22 A Time to Die 35 before. The soldier was asleep and countryside and made Fleming think Fleming could see from the service as he had before, at several odd mo- stripes on tKe left sleeve that he had ments, of the strange combinations seen quite a bit of service. Fleming which often struck his eye. These noted how the boy slept easily as the oddities were often followed, lately, motion of the train shook him occa- by visions of remote ports; names sionally; he saw the boy had some like Singapore, Macao, Sumatra ribbons on his chest, and though he and Port Moresby repeated them- didn't Icnow their meaning, he could selves in his mind. see that the boy had probably trav- The farthest he had ever traveled eled quite a bit, too. was to Chicago once a few years As he sat there looking across the back. It had been mixed business aisle at the sleeping soldier who sat and pleasure and, looking back on

facing toward him, Flem^ing began it now, seemed to Fleming to be re- to take stock. He was forty-five, as- calling just another bit of business sistant manager at a good bank; he that was lost in the jumble. Gazing owned his own home with a good at the reflection, he knew now that wife and two fine children; he was he would never get to see any of secure, content and hadn't any wor- those far-sounding places. His daily ries; and yet the sleeping soldier round of life would spiral into the

across the aisle wakened in him a future and it looked impregnable.

feeling of envy stronger than he had To him it seemed that his life was ever known before. He tried to min- spread out sadly before him and imize the feehng as he noted the there was nothing he could do about

boy had thick-set features and it. looked untidy, making it seem he As he kept watching the boy's re- was from a lower class. Probably flection, Fleming thought that boy joined up to get away from home, soon will have passed through his Fleming thought. The service stripes youth and left all those far places on his sleeves made Fleming think and odd things behind. That boy the boy had probably re-enlisted will soon be forty- five, settled and after his time was up. Perhaps he then just a little lost. He too will lives in a dingy house with a large have the feeling of being just on the dirty family, no privacy and solitude, fringe of life; watching while others, Fleming mused. more fortunate than himself, con- The boy was shaken awake and struct and bask in this core just out looked around for a few seconds. He of his reach. caught Fleming's eye then looked Fleming's wife, Harriet, was wait- away and went back to sleep. The ing at the station with the car as he

ease with which he did it aroused got off the train. It had just turned the envy in Fleming who turned dark so that the lights about the once more to look out the window. railway depot were still illusory. He could see the boy's reflection in Figures getting on and off the train the darkness; the tousled figure in were suggestive of more intent than the light sped through the dark they sho\ved. The sound of the steam M Four Quarters release from tKe engine drowned out "I just thought you looked a little the sound of cars and talk and worried, " she met his eyes. crickets. "That's getting to be one of your Fleming gave Kis wife a quick kiss favorite expressions," he said. and got into tKe car. SKe drove "What is?" " " away and tKey vs^ere into dark quiet I just thought,' he grinned at streets. her. She smiled too. "How are you, tonignt?" she After supper, the mood of the twi- asked. light stayed with Fleming as he sat "Tonigfit?" He turned to look at to read. Harriet and Joyce were Ker. doing the dishes and he could hear "I just tliougKt you were a little the rattle of china as he tried to con- quiet." centrate on the words before him. He looked out tke windsKield as He put the book down and looked Ke said, "What did you do this around at the furniture; the lamps afternoon?" blocked off the living room into "Nothing much, cleaned the spare shadows and turned strange, the room, and wrote a letter to Lusette fireplace and the picture on the wall. Careau. She's in British Columtia A model ship on the mantel caught no^v, you know." his eye: its sails were tinted in "Is she?" he asked, and the name gloom as the spars and top masts echoed inside him. shone in the electric glare. Fleming "Yes," Harriet continued. "She again felt the subtle despair flowing says it is the most beautiful country through him when the phone rang. in the -world." "Hello, Dad? " It was Dick's After a moment, Fleming asked, voice. "How're the kids?" "Hello, Dick." "Joyce is home setting the table, "I'm over to the NVilson's. I guess " Dick is over at the Wilsons." She Mom told you, didn't she? " turned once and added, "He w^ants "Vles. to stay there overnight. Do you "Is it all right. Dad, if I stay the " think we should let him?" night? "W^hy not?" said Fleming. "I guess so. Did you bring your ?" Harriet shrugged as she drove. pajamas

"Sometimes I think it's best not to "Fred'll lend me his. But we're get too friendly with families. They not goin' to bed for a while. Gonna get too meddlesome." have a weenie roast and all later out

." " "Oh, let him, he'll only . . back. I'll call you again later, said Fleming fell silent as he looked Dick. ahead. He'd started to point out Fleming could hear sounds of that his son would only be young talk and laughter behind Dick's once. voice. Then he hung up and was "Is something wrong? ' Harriet once more in the silence of his own asked, after a pause. room. There came to him the long "No, why? " He looked at her. sad sound of a train whistle which A Time to Die 35 seemed to Kang about the house for Harriet started to say something some moments before it faaea into and stopped. Finally she asked, the nigKt. At the open window, Ke "W^hat will you be doing while listened to tlie light tapping of crick- we're gone?" " ets' legs and the rustling of leaves in "Thought Id play some music, the wind; and it came to him that he said and wondered to himself if these sounds seemed to abound in they weren't being just a little too the night, that they would be there polite to each other. long after he wouldn't be able to "There's more roast in the refrig- hear them. There was a harshness erator if you want it," she said and in that innocence, the naturalness then went out. was unforgiving, making him cow Alone now, he shut all but one before it. lamp and put Tchaikovsky's Fifth He was deep in thought when on the phonograph. He sat back Harriet and Joyce came in later. He and soon the soft slow theme drifted looked up and saw they had their into the room; the soulful dirge coats on. reached right inside him, into his "Where are you going? " he unrest, and it appeared that he was asked. prolonging the mood that had fallen "Church Club," said Harriet. on him earlier. He soon lost the " "You know we go every Thursday. thread of the music but fell instead He nodded. Harriet kept looking into the fancies woven by it. at him and then turned to Joyce. He recalled the time he tried to "You go on and call Mrs. Reid, go to sea. It was shortly before he'd

Joyce. I'll catch up with you." met Harriet and the urge was strong Joyce waved her hand at Fleming. upon him to be moving. He in- "So long, Daddy. " She walked out quired and wrote letters, he hung and Fleming noted the fine young about shipping halls and docks grace of her body. where the large dirty freighters sat "Are you ill? " Harriet asked awkwardly in the water. Though when they were alone. he knew it would be filthy hard "Me? No. " He got up and filled work, he yearned to get a place on his pipe. "Had a ragged day and I one of them. But the routes were " guess I'm a little tired. slow and the hiring slower so that

"If you'd rather I didn't go, I the closest he ever came to far places wont, " said Harriet. was listening to stories by men who "Why not? Of course, you go shipped out and came back. His ahead." While he told her this, it hopes were fed by these tales and he did seem that everything was con- stuck it out; but his money began to spiring to leave him alone with his dwindle and he forsook it. He got thoughts. a job in his bank and stayed on. After a pause, she asked, "W^hat After his marriage, the yearning about Dick?" never got as strong again. He had "He called before, " said Fleming. little time for it, what with his "He's staying there tonight." wife and new home, then the chil- 26 Four Quarters dren and promotions at tke bank. heaviness inside him that he hadn't Through the years of domesticity, really lived as fully as he should the idea lay at the back of his mind have. He wondered if anyone ever nke some faint echo; sometimes it lived clear up to his capacity. It was hke some mysterious irritant in was an impossibility, he thought. his blood and made him uncomfort- He got up to turn the records over able, but its actual presence hardly and then stood near the mantel. He ever broke through to him. At times recalled reading somewhere that the he bought a copy of a boating maga- wiser man lives day by day; he zine or took a walk toward the knows he is allotted so much sor- docks, but there was actually no row and so much contentment, thus compulsion; it was as though he he takes each in its turn. But the was acting out a part and should domestic man can't do it that way, keep up appearances. mused Fleming. He is always ahead Afterward, the only times he ever in the future somewhere; the pay- thought of it were when he was re- ments that have to be met, the plans minded of it by someone or by a for his children, the idea of retire- passing word. Throughout the strug- ment. While his eyes are always gle of raising his family and getting ahead, his life slips by quietly until the house paid for, this long-lost the day he stops and looks about wish was like a luxury which had him to find himself entering into old held his mind for a while, but age. which, in reality, was not practical. The sad train whistle, the rough There were a few people who were ship's horn that sounds over the meant to travel and be independent, liquid stillness of the water, the but they in turn missed out on the sharp burst of an airplane propeller fineness of home and family. He all were now sounds of nostalgia to bolstered himself again and again him, of mockery. A great wave of as the years went by with this last self-pity began to descend over him thought. Thus when the final years so that he sat in his chair, amid the approached, the lone man was left music, and was close to tears when with nothing to see him through, in the doorbell rang. contrast to the father and grand- When he opened the door, he father who could live out his last saw^ his next-door neighbor, Mrs. years in affection and security. Carin. Fleming had come to accept this "Mr. Fleming," she said; tears idea more and more in the past were streaming down her cheeks and years, now that his youth was gone. she clutched his arm. "Help me, " He had been nearing immunization it's Henry. He's dying. until this afternoon on the train Fleming let himself be led over to with the lights and the soldier. Now the next house. As they entered, he he sat dully in his chair, lulled by could hear Carin moaning, a dull the sad music. His young- and mid- drawn-out moan that sounded false years were gone and as he turned and foolish. W^hen they reached the last bend, he realized with a him, Fleming saw him lying on the A Time to Die 27 divan, Kolding Kis cKest, Kis mouth Mrs. Carin nodded. Her dull open, letting out the childish noise. eyes, smeared by tears, stayed on "Did you call the doctor?" asked the face of her sleeping husband. Fleming. "He was suffering so," she said "Yes, he is coming," said Mrs. listlessly. Carin. She Icneh at her husband's "Your husband has a very bad side and caressed his hands which heart, you know that," said the doc- gripped the clothing at his chest. tor. "He must be very careful, do Fleming wondered what he should you understand?" do; maybe feel the pulse, or try to Mrs. Carin turned to the doctor quiet Carin down. then back to her husband. "Yes, "Is it his heart again?" he asked I'll try to keep him quiet." Mrs. Carin. She nodded, still cry- While the doctor went to tele- ing as she kept gazing into her phone for a nurse, Mrs. Carin turned husband's face. to Fleming. "I do hope you will

' "Is it any better, dear? she asked forgive the way I acted," she said. as his moaning stopped and he lay "I am sorry; I must've seemed such there looking at the ceiling. Carin a fool to you." didn't answer, nor did he show any Fleming made some reassurances sign of recognizing his wife and and fled. Back in his living room, Fleming. His eyes never blinked as the symphony was still playing. He they looked straight ahead; they went to the phonograph and turned were as though hardened and life- it off. The silence, as though con- less. His body was not much differ- tained up until then, spread and en- ent from one lying on its bier; there gulfed the room of light and of was the stricture and tensions of the shadows. limbs along with the impersonal air Fleming sat and stared at the through which Mrs. Carin could not model ship, feeling as though he had reach. Fleming was made to think come to the point where he would of waxen figures that one sees in have to decide just how to go about museums, with their likenesses to it. How was he going to meet, face people; they intimidated one and to face, with It? And yet he knew made one stop and wonder. he couldn't stand about keeping his By now, Mrs. Carin w^as slumped eyes averted to avoid the shock. He over her husband and crying freely. felt somehow cheated, as though he Fleming stood there helpless, want- hadn't been warned about this fear- ing to flee. He couldn't move ful test which lay before him. He though, until the doctor came and thought of Mr. Carin and the way gave Carin an injection while the his eyes were set, transfixed, as w^ife and Fleming looked on. In a though the sight had paralyzed him. few moments Carin was asleep and wasn't like Carin; he wasn't the doctor led them away. But he about "He'll have to stay in bed," said sick and he need not worry the doctor, "and you'll have to get all that. Not yet. a nurse to stay with him." He slipped on his jacket and went a8 Four Quarters

out. He didn't know wkere Ke would he better to Kave Kim at wanted to go; maybe meet Harriet borne; all of tbem sbould try to and Joyce on tbeir way bome. Or maintain tbe family unit. It was maybe go get Dick and bring bim tbe main, tbe one important tbing in bome. Perbaps Harriet was rigbt tbeir bves, and tbe cbildren sbould not to let bim stay overnigbt. It be made to understand tbat.

Mistorieai Novel

Stephen Morris

"Wby weep along tbe, bay, lady? Wby weep along tbe bay?

I'll wed you to my oldest son Wbo baunts your bridle-way. And you sball be bis bride, lady, Tbe fairest man can seek."^--

But still ber tears kept falling down For Jack of Cbesapeake.

"Now stop your tears, my lady fair, And dry your face so pale; Young Artbur owns tbe big estate At Conestoga-dale.

His ball is famed tbe county round.

' His quarterings, unique.

But still ber tears kept falling down For Jack of Cbesapeake.

"A ring of gold you sball not lack. Nor trinkets for your bair; Nor dappled steed nor city bouse Nor coacb witb triple pair; And you, tbe fairest of tbe tow^n, Sball minuet tbe week."

But still ber tears kept falling down For Jack of Cbesapeake. Historical Novel 29

The churcK is packed on Whitsunday. The candles glitter fair; Deacon and bridegroom wait the bride. Burgess and squire are there. They call for her on every floor And high and low they seek. She's out of town and well away With Jack of Chesapeake.

Strong bells in evening s Suburb have found retreat Against the day. Rough thief of dark From sinner's door and heart.

Here their spin and clang Spread black and webbed Against the day A web the spider Anguish had devised.

Here their spin and clang Snare bright Law,

Deaf with echo, chalked by fire.

If day is stopped. The Law impaled, W^hat sting of ire Can cauterize the night?

His, and here is praise enough: How behind their belfried now Of harsh phorescent dusk His judge, whore, weary clown Hang us for the dawn Toll us for the morning white Of Leonardo's last wild dove In mutilated flight. The Professor Steals the Shoiv

LeGarde S. Doughty

RUN into tKe odd-looking lit- All tKis Kappened during August; I'Dtle old man as he sat on tKe and time was getting on. steps of tKe Library -winding Maybe my subconscious mind cKewing-gum off Kis Keel witK a Kad been lulling me witK tKe assur- matcK. He looked Kke a sKaggy, ance tKat time is long. My con- scrawny dog scratcKing its ear. But scious mind was beginning to spur I'd never seen a genius before; and me tKougK. It was tKe second Sun- tKere was genius in tKose eyes, so I day in September, and up to now, did obeisance by picking up Kis Janice was still Miss Hood, tKe li- furled umbrella wKen it fell over brarian. I Kad seen Ker once more from wKere Ke'd gouged it uprigKt at Ker place of business, under pre- in tKe eartK under tKe steps. TKat tense of looking up some data in started it. We talked, tKen ex- Who's W/io. I must Kave let some- cKanged cards. His sKowed Prof. tKing slip; maybe some inflection, Rufus Treowth, witK tKe Prof, struck some inevitable glance^sometKing. out. Later I asked tKe librarian if AnyKow sKe knew it wasn't just tKe sKe knew Kim. SKe did; told me book I'd come to look at. WKen Ke'd been kicked off tKe U. faculty sKe Kanded me Wife's W^o and because Ke'd taugKt social science we were speaking tKe conventional as sometKing Kuman, not aritKmetic few v^^ords about tKe cool nigKts, -—a pink, tKey'd said. SKe told me tKere wasn't tKat look in Ker eyes Ke'd got a job as nigKt watcKman at tKat came into tKem wKen I returned a fertilizer plant; tKat for a living tKe book. SometKing Kad slipped, after twenty years at tKe U. because wKen Ker slender wKite TKe librarian Kappened to be an Kand came up from tKe dark green exquisite brunette^-^but tKere was no cover of tKe desk to take tKe book I umbrella to pick up for Ker. I'd tKougKt of a water lily. Natural made up my mind to follow up my tKougKt; tKe green cover of tKe desk acquaintance witK tKe little old man was covered witK glass, and it all witK tKe eyes of a genuis; now I Kad a liquid look. And Ker Kand made up my mind Ke'd make me did look like a water lily. (Have acquainted witK Ker. you ever seen one growing out of

Some nigKts after tKat I called on tKe dark green pads in a still pond?)

Mr. TreowtK at tKe plant; Kad a It could Kave been tKat tKougKt long conversation witK Kim; but all wKen I saw Ker Kand. For wKen I

I got in relation to tKe librarian was said, "TKanks for Who's W^^io," Ker name, Janice Hood. SomeKow tKe look in Ker eyes made tKe

I couldnt' come out and tell Kim I amused question "WKo?" TKat wanted to meet tKe girl formally. occurred to me just as I've told it;

50 The Professor Steals the Show 31

and I answered in my mind-—almost few kept up the old front, a forlorn said it^"You." show of vigor and prosperity in that

I never could strut with tne assur- contagion of slow collapse. But ance of a radio advertising man who some of the serene old oaks were says to every -woman he meets: still there, bulged out like great dark "Hyuh, kid! Howbout a hi hght globes over the whole width, ever wickedness?"—says it all offhand as shading, ever green. they run in or out of Radio City in The house in which Mr. Treowth a terrific hurry to do a hell of a lot lived was an old brick place that that in the final score adds up to had lost all residential look. The exactly nothing. And of course the front was straight down, and on the cute httle wench misses one chck of first floor a show window ran all the gum-chewing to say, "Hokay, say- way across. John Clive, Awnings wen." and Upholstering. A frayed edge Maybe I was in New York in a of the street light reached the sign wrong season.'—Am I rather smug? with a sallow touch. But the show Well, I can tell somehow that Jan- w^indow had its own illumination. ice is only a woman^—not a wench. Awning cloth spread out looked All this was going through my head over-gay in the setting, especially when I was on my way out to Pro- that with the red stripes; and amid fessor Treowth's. I'd made up my these coarse banners, two ponderous mind to marry Janice if she'd have overstuffed chairs, placed half facing

me, even that; and so far I hadn't each other, looked like fat old ladies even met her really; and nothing hut sitting. that could stay on my mind very Mr. Treowth had the rear of the long. upper floor. John Clive lived in the The street was dingy. You could front. You got to Treowth's by an see that in the dark. Laurel Street. outside staircase, at the top of which I guess it got the name from the sat a palm in a sea-green urn. A laurel oaks that had lined it on Loth quiet light hung under the door

sides in the old days. I used to go frame, a mauled tin letter box hung along that street to the baseball to one side, and an iron knocker

park when I was around fifteen. I hung on the door. checked back—about fifteen or six- I knocked. The professor opened teen years ago. It was different the door. "Franklin," he said, "so then, just in its bourgeois flourish; glad you've come. These Sunday not garish though; a little preten- nights off the job are good for sober tious here and there with bay win- talking." He rubbed his hands vig- dows and something like Corinthian orously together when he'd closed nightmare, milled from pine, under the door. "Sober talking—when the eaves; but only here and there. dialogue's more erudite than the Many of the houses had been turned universal theme of sales and profits." into shops and stores; many had He laughed. "And sitting, for a been delivered over to poverty and change, is better than walking." were sagging into dignified ruin; a It was the first time he'd called "

32 Four Quarters me by my first name, and I don't He threw a critical look around. think he reahzed he hadn't said It s comfortable. But there's a per-

"Mr. Peele." It was the turning versity about it, too. For instance, point. That is, the fact that he called when I look up something the source me by my first name and the un- is usually at the bottom of a pile- demonstrative but emphatic wel- Perhaps that's the dregs of this wine come made a clearer indication that you discover. Incidentally, will you acquaintance had mellowêd to have port or coffee?" friendship than boolcs of words I'd had four bourbon highballs in could have made. My pleasure the afternoon, and a cap of sweet must have been as obvious as his, port did not appeal. Besides, I for when we'd got into chairs, say- could hear the coffee percolating, ing nothing, he looked at me, and and the aroma was already begin- suddenly his lips turned in a quar- ning to float in from the kitchenette. ter-smile of benevolence. "Coffee, " I said. His tumbling brown hair thatched At the door he turned. "If you're with gray wâs not tumbling at the ready for supper now^-- moment. He'd plastered it straight "Quite," I said. back with water. It revealed the He apologized for the kitchen- fine shape of his head. The sleek- dining room, which actually was a ness of his plastered hair vsâs be- large closet with a window. There ginning to crinkle in spots, though, was a small gas stove, a pine cabi-

and I knew that a few minutes and net, and a walnut table. one characteristic toss of his head "I never cook, " he said; "only would tumble his hair into a shaggy heat cooked foods and make coffee. mop of rings. But we have club sand^wiches and Books lined the walls, half of apple pie with cheese. It all came them on shelves and half stacked up from Mock's, and I've never been in slanted piles. The desk was of disappointed yet by Mock's." heavy oak, stained enough with time "Is that the place across the street to give the impression of full ripe- with the crazy sign, Mock's (Not

" ness. Papers all over it were neither Mack's)? I asked. stacked nor jumbled. The ink bot- He straightened up from the unlit tle was crusty around the neck. The oven with the sandw^iches. pen, with half the green paint worn "That's the place. I'll tell you about that sign. The craziness is off it, and a clogged tip, gave you only an appearance. There's an oc- the notion that if you watched it a cult significance. It's like an es- while it would somehow dip into cutcheon. You can't take it by the the bottle. The room had the mo- look of its bearings; you've got to tile, living warmth of an unposed " probe into the meaning of them. snapshot. He had put down the sandwiches "Makes me think of old wine," I and made a dramatic sweep of arms said, with a gesture that took in the to conjure up that escutcheon. The whole room. subject had brought on one of those The Professor Steals the Show 55

playfully eloquent moods I'd found rest of the story is precisely what in him before. you see on that new sign. Mock's "Be warned, sir: Drink deep or {Not Mack's)." touch not ..." By the way, won't "So," I said, "the sign's not as you change your mind and have a crazy as it looks." " glass of port? "There's a sequel, crazier than " I said no, so he poured the coffee, volume one.

" and we sat to the table. The sand- "Tell me the sequel. wiches were really old-fashioned "Mock was half blind to his own club sandwiches. inspiration. The curious sign be- "The story is short, " he said, mat- came a tow^n topic. His business ter-of-fact-ly now^. "Mock is a portly virtually doubled, and he has been individual with a lot of pride. The a good enough restauranteur to hold " background, roughly, is this: Mock's the increase. father was a successful man, a hotel "He's damn good," I said, "if he owner in Virginia. That was a long can be judged by this sandwich. time ago. The old man died, and You don't often find a decent club Mock lost all the money in the early sandwich these days." thirties. The best he has been able "The apple pie will confirm it,"

to do since is the little restaurant. the professor said. "You'll find it How he happened to come to Wind- flaky, dry, and succulent all at the sor City he hasn't told me. same time."

"But the reason for that fascinat- I was thinking I'd never known ing sign is this: It was simply pie to be honored with such words Mock's until some two years ago. before. "You know. Professor, " I Probably you recall a notorious event said, "that doubling of the business

in a quick-lunch place—that is, joint gives a fellow^ a good look at adver- ^-in which the owner, his common- tising. It was an accidental ad, but law wife, and another woman had a ad it was just the same. A nutty midnight brawl, and an innocent thing like that made a better ad than customer was shot to death in the he could have bought for a thou- scramble. Remember?" sand dollars." "Sure. I remember. The joint "Or two thousand. It was the " was called Mack's, wasn't it? kind of thing that arouses curiosity. "Yes. That's the point. The case Curiosity is interesting. On one got such notoriety, and Mack's was level it makes a man learned; on in the papers so much, it -was in- another it makes him gullible. It evitable that somebody would make touches all levels. Most levels are the error of confusing Mack's with low, bunched like guitar strings.

Mock's. When it came to Mock's These are easily excited all at once notice that that error had slipped by the merest finger stroke of stim- into the nasty affair, he tore his wig ulus to curiosity.—The bearded lady, in vicarious shame a day or two, anything that contradicts a usual then, with a touch of inspiration, thing; therefore. Mock's {Not had his sign hauled down, and the Mack's)." A

54 Four Quarters

Just then the professor arrested Congratulations to Rufus, who, the first forkful of flaky, dry, succu- already burdened with a Litt.D., lent apphe pie an inch from his now lifts a Ph.D. to his none-too- mouth. He tilted his head toward powerful shoulders.—But how will the partition. I could hear some- he carry a spouse upon all that, thing too, a heavy, booming voice as he has promised to do in June? coming in slow, deep-sea rolls. With all my love,

"Tch-tch-tch. It's begun again," Molly (Maybe I the professor said. He joined the should sign "Molly McClintock, voice with his own, hke catching A.B.")-Feb. 8. 1916. step. "... 'along with them from Heaven and strikes the sultan's tur- Below that, there was a masculine ret with a shaft of light.' . . . You scrawl: can't make out the words. I can. I'm used to it. Old Clive starts on The burden would have been as his bottle every Saturday, and ends a gay-colored feather, Molly. But up Sunday night with The Ruhai- the memory is a burden that yat. Listen. I'll pick it up again." makes me doubt my shoulders. He cocked his ear. "... 'And, as Rufus—June 14, 1916. the cock crew, those who stood before the tavern shouted, "Open then I put the book back in place. I the door. You know how little felt that I'd violated a sacred thing. while we have to stay, and, once de- I'd expected the script to be merely parted, may return no more.' "... a Christmas greeting or something Aha! Old Clive's gone again.— like that. I wondered w^hether his good old man, though. He'll stop message meant that she'd thrown me on my way to work tomorrow him over or that she had died. In evening, with shame and apology. either case, she hadn't seen the mes- I'll say, 'It Avas grand, John. You're sage. I had the feeling that only a poet, man. Only a poet could ex- Treowth and I had. press Omar as you do.* And he'll W^hen he returned we sat on the look sheepish. It's the same each back porch. The canary cage, cov- time. I can't decide whether work- ered with a piece of plaid blanket, ing in canvas turned John to Omar looked like a Scotch bell. It hung or Omar turned John to working in beside a screen of jasmine that was canvas." The neighbor's voice rolled growing out of a large pot. on. Treowth lit his pipe. My ciga- rettes seemed inadequate. The pipe When the professor took the had personality. The glow in the scraps down to the yard for the dog bowl when the muscles of his jaw I looked around his walls of books. tightened slightly in the in-draft I pulled out a large Shahespeare was like a heartbeat. bound in dark-red leather. Turning There was much silence. I tried the cover, I found this on the flyleaf to see him as he had been thirty-odd in faded ink: years ago. An agile, eager, wiry "

The Professor Steals the Show 35 framework of electric energy, con- him in his silence. He'd made the trolled against wasting itself in fe- effort at gaiety in that "musical

" brile motion, yet always ready to shock in this dead night. But I put him in action at its own light could feel the real meaning of the touch of its own button. He must silence as if I d suddenly got inside have been about thirty then, when him. I knew he was thinking of the he got that Ph.D. And Mollys University days. what was she like? She must have He made a low, chuckling laugh. been a small, vigorous girl, athletic, 'When I left the University— with reddish hair, large shapely (Ah, I knew he was thinking of it.) breasts, laughing brown eyes, a ^^ "Perhaps you know that I was in- small nose turned up in fascinating vited out because I insisted upon a impudence; a girl who had gone philosophic attitude toward society " through college not to be learned, and economics. but only to answer the challenge of I told him I had heard. I added learning, only to bowl her vigor into that I realized the regents were likely the tenpins of the classroom. to call anything progressive some

I looked at Treowth's features, sort of ism. vague in the gloomy light that "Pusillanimous dolts," he said in- seeped out from the room. It oc- tensely. It was bitter, the way he curred to me that his silence was said it. It was the first time he'd actually himself; that his nimble shown any bitterness. Bitterness. wit, his humor, his theatrical spurts He checked it immediately and of gaiety^-all this Avas the deftly ex- chuckled again. "Well, I was say- posed part of him, that under it this ing, when I left I was in panic. I man w^as a far-away river in his was like—like a maestro dragged heart. away from his orchestra and facing The clock in the college tower the traffic with his baton. But it did struck; long, low, resonant sounds not last an hour, the panic. All my in the still night. It struck ten, and life I had thought of the night seemed half an hour in striking. The watchman as the real possessor of sound was like the mossy old tower the earth. All time was his, off from which it came, filling with duty and on duty. He had only to mossy time the black September air; walk, and to poke keys into a little September, turning point, the feel of hole in a clock—no more than going, unwilling. breathing.

' My, my, said the professor. ' It s "In less than an hour I had set- a poor host who lets conversation go tled on it. I'd be a night watchman dumb.^-The old clock, a mile away, and possess the whole of time; mon- was a somber musical shock in this arch of the infinite. Paradox, eh?

" dead night; eh, wasn't it? Monarch of all, and at the same

I d have bet a thousand dollars it time, a mere, innocuous, simple, ar-

" was a shock to him every time it dent liberal. struck. It was the first time Id seen Why hadn't I had the good sense 36 Four Quarters

'" to see it tliat \vay? His job was a ian. Miss—er— I fumbled deliber- luxury, not the low last fringe of all ately, as if her name hadn't been tlie ways of making a living. with me every minute. "Miss Hood. "It s a grand thing, Professor," I Good librarian. You know her " said with an enthusiasm that made pretty well, no doubt. him perk up in his chair. "But you "Well enough to ask her to din- used one Avord that s Avrong./--You re ner with you," he said. He saw into a hell of a long way from innocuous. everything. The truth was out. An innocuous mian is a mouse. "Dinner with you and me?" I You're a lion who will not tear asked, flustered. things apart just to prove your "Three?' His eyes went wide. strength." "Absurd: dinner for two." He was He blinked his eyes and almost having a malicious lot of fun. "Din- rose from the chair. "Such a com- ner for her and you. " He stuck up pliment amazes mie, really. I am two fingers together. "For her, for " very grateful to you." thee. And he was amazed. "Well, thank you," I said. "Please It had perked him up completely. do." He said, "Tlie \vorst, I think, is that the change knocked me from Lon- The next day I went to The News don Dock to Bond Street." office and searched the files. Tre-

I \vas puzzled only a second. owth's inscription in the Shake- "Oil, you're talking about tobaccos." speare was dated the day set for the

"Yes." wedding, I was sure. If Molly had

"Well, ^vhat's the distance from died, it could have happened any

" dock to street? day betw^een the dates of the two "About two dollars or so a inscriptions. pound," he said. I turned the yellowing pages,

I waited until I was almost to the looked at the obituaries. I came to door and the long straight steps. I it finally. Molly McCIintock was wanted it to seem to come out dead. Poor Treowth. She had died casually. at the age of twenty- five^—and on the

"By the way, " I said, "this librar- first day of spring. —

What is Song?

• Raymond Roseliep

. . . and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

-H-l Corinthians x. 4

I asked a river, "What is song?"

And it replied, "The sea!"

I put the question to the hills "The winds!" they answered me.

i probed the shores, "Tell, what is song?" They echoed back, "The tide!"

I flung my query to the skies "The stars, the stars!" they cried.

I met a lover: "What is song?"

He mused: "Song is the tone

But murmured in the blue-deep night Between two hearts alone."

I asked a poet, "What is song?" He said: "Below the brink

Of one tall irrigating Rock

Men thirst: song is their drink."

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