“I’ve met him in the Latin Quarter in
Paris, and I’ve met him in pensions in Berlin
and Munich. He lives in small hotels in Perugia
and Assisi. He stands by the dozen before the
Botticellis in Florence, and he sits on all the benches
of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In Italy he drinks
a little too much wine, and in Germany he drinks a
great deal too much beer. He always admires the
right thing whatever the right thing is, and one of
these days he’s going to write a great work.
Think of it, there are a hundred and forty-seven great
works reposing in the bosoms of a hundred and forty-seven
great men, and the tragic thing is that not one of
those hundred and forty-seven great works will ever
be written. And yet the world goes on.”
Weeks spoke seriously, but his gray eyes twinkled
a little at the end of his long speech, and Philip
flushed when he saw that the American was making fun
of him.
“You do talk rot,” he said crossly.
Weeks had two little rooms at the back of Frau Erlin’s
house, and one of them, arranged as a parlour, was
comfortable enough for him to invite people to sit
in. After supper, urged perhaps by the impish
humour which was the despair of his friends in Cambridge,
Mass., he often asked Philip and Hayward to come in
for a chat. He received them with elaborate courtesy
and insisted on their sitting in the only two comfortable
chairs in the room. Though he did not drink himself,
with a politeness of which Philip recognised the irony,
he put a couple of bottles of beer at Hayward’s
elbow, and he insisted on lighting matches whenever
in the heat of argument Hayward’s pipe went
out. At the beginning of their acquaintance Hayward,
as a member of so celebrated a university, had adopted
a patronising attitude towards Weeks, who was a graduate
of Harvard; and when by chance the conversation turned
upon the Greek tragedians, a subject upon which Hayward
felt he spoke with authority, he had assumed the air
that it was his part to give information rather than
to exchange ideas. Weeks had listened politely,
with smiling modesty, till Hayward finished; then
he asked one or two insidious questions, so innocent
in appearance that Hayward, not seeing into what a
quandary they led him, answered blandly; Weeks made
a courteous objection, then a correction of fact,
after that a quotation from some little known Latin
commentator, then a reference to a German authority;
and the fact was disclosed that he was a scholar.
With smiling ease, apologetically, Weeks tore to pieces
all that Hayward had said; with elaborate civility
he displayed the superficiality of his attainments.
He mocked him with gentle irony. Philip could
not help seeing that Hayward looked a perfect fool,
and Hayward had not the sense to hold his tongue; in
his irritation, his self-assurance undaunted, he attempted
to argue: he made wild statements and Weeks amicably
corrected them; he reasoned falsely and Weeks proved
that he was absurd: Weeks confessed that he had
taught Greek Literature at Harvard. Hayward gave
a laugh of scorn.
