Or, the apprenticeship of Lemuel
Barker.
On their way back to the farm-house where they were
boarding, Sewell’s wife reproached him for what
she called his recklessness. “You had no
right,” she said, “to give the poor boy
false hopes. You ought to have discouraged him—that
would have been the most merciful way—if
you knew the poetry was bad. Now, he will go
on building all sorts of castles in the air on your
praise, and sooner or later they will come tumbling
about his ears—just to gratify your passion
for saying pleasant things to people.”
“I wish you had a passion for saying pleasant
things to me, my dear,” suggested her husband
evasively.
“Oh, a nice time I should have!”
“I don’t know about your nice time,
but I feel pretty certain of my own. How do you
know—Oh, do get up, you implacable
cripple!” he broke off to the lame mare he was
driving, and pulled at the reins.
“Don’t saw her mouth!” cried Mrs.
Sewell.
“Well, let her get up, then, and I won’t.
I don’t like to saw her mouth; but I have to
do something when you come down on me with your interminable
consequences. I dare say the boy will never think
of my praise again. And besides, as I was saying
when this animal interrupted me with her ill-timed
attempts at grazing, how do you know that I knew the
poetry was bad?”
“How? By the sound of your voice.
I could tell you were dishonest in the dark, David.”
“Perhaps the boy knew that I was dishonest too,”
suggested Sewell.
“Oh no, he didn’t. I could see that
he pinned his faith to every syllable.”
“He used a quantity of pins, then; for I was
particularly profuse of syllables. I find that
it requires no end of them to make the worse appear
the better reason to a poet who reads his own verses
to you. But come, now, Lucy, let me off a syllable
or two. I—I have a conscience, you
know well enough, and if I thought—But pshaw!
I’ve merely cheered a lonely hour for the boy,
and he’ll go back to hoeing potatoes to-morrow,
and that will be the end of it.”
“I hope that will be the end of it,”
said Mrs. Sewell, with the darkling reserve of ladies
intimate with the designs of Providence.
“Well,” argued her husband, who was trying
to keep the matter from being serious, “perhaps
he may turn out a poet yet. You never can tell
where the lightning is going to strike. He has
some idea of rhyme, and some perception of reason,
and—yes, some of the lines were
musical. His general attitude reminded me of Piers
Plowman. Didn’t he recall Piers Plowman
to you?”
“I’m glad you can console yourself in
that way, David,” said his wife relentlessly.
The mare stopped again, and Sewell looked over his
shoulder at the house, now black in the twilight,
on the crest of the low hill across the hollow behind
them. “I declare,” he said, “the
loneliness of that place almost broke my heart.
There!” he added, as the faint sickle gleamed
in the sky above the roof, “I’ve got the
new moon right over my left shoulder for my pains.
That’s what comes of having a sympathetic nature.”
