Part 19

The limp figure of Sweeney took on something of a stately and majestic air. With a graceful and commanding gesture of the hand, he advanced a step or two; then, after a pause of some seconds duration, in which the lifted face grew pale, as it seemed, and the eyes a denser black, he said:

"But yesterday I looked away O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay In golden blots, Inlaid with spots Of shade and wild forget-me-nots."

The voice was low, but clear, and even musical. The Professor started at the strange utterance, looked extremely confused, and, as the boisterous crowd cried "Hear, hear!" he motioned the subject to continue, with some gasping comment interjected, which, if audible, would have run thus: "My God! It's an inspirational poem!"

"My head was fair With flaxen hair--"

resumed the subject.

"Yoop-ee!" yelled an irreverent auditor.

"Silence! silence!" commanded the excited Professor in a hoarse whisper; then, turning enthusiastically to the subject--"Go on, young man! Go on!--'Thy head was fair with flaxen hair----' "

"My head was fair With flaxen hair, And fragrant breezes, faint and rare, And, warm with drouth From out the south, Blew all my curls across my mouth."

The speaker's voice, exquisitely modulated, yet resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself to draw and hold each listener; while a certain extravagance of gesticulation--a fantastic movement of both form and feature--seemed very near akin to fascination. And so flowed on the curious utterance:--

"And, cool and sweet, My naked feet Found dewy pathways through the wheat; And out again Where, down the lane, The dust was dimpled with the rain."

In the pause following there was a breathlessness almost painful. The poem went on:

"But yesterday I heard the lay Of summer birds, when I, as they With breast and wing, All quivering With life and love, could only sing.

"My head was leant Where, with it, blent A maiden's, o'er her instrument: While all the night, From vale to height, Was filled with echoes of delight.

"And all our dreams Were lit with gleams Of that lost land of reedy streams, Along whose brim Forever swim Pan's lilies, laughing up at him."

And still the inspired singer held rapt sway.

"It is wonderful!" I whispered, under breath.

"Of course it is!" answered my friend. "But listen; there is more:"

"But yesterday! . . . . O blooms of May, And summer roses-where away? O stars above; And lips of love, And all the honeyed sweets thereof!--

"O lad and lass, And orchard pass, And briered lane, and daisied grass! O gleam and gloom, And woodland bloom And breezy breaths of all perfume!--

"No more for me Or mine shall be Thy raptures--save in memory,-- No more--no more-- Till through the Door Of Glory gleam the days of yore."

This was the evident conclusion of the remarkable utterance, and the Professor was impetuously fluttering his hands about the subject's upward- staring eyes, stroking his temples, and snapping his fingers in his face.

"Well," said Sweeney, as he stood suddenly awakened, and grinning in an idiotic way, "how did the old thing work?" And it was in the consequent hilarity and loud and long applause, perhaps, that the Professor was relieved from the explanation of this rather astounding phenomenon of the idealistic workings of a purely practical brain--or, as my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later, in a particularly withering allusion, as the "blank- blanked fallacy, don't you know, of staying the hunger of a howling mob by feeding 'em on spring poetry!"

The tumult of the audience did not cease even with the retirement of Sweeney, and cries of "Hedrick! Hedrick!" only subsided with the Professor's high-keyed announcement that the subject was even then endeavoring to make himself heard, but could not until utter quiet was restored, adding the further appeal that the young man had already been a long time under the mesmeric spell, and ought not be so detained for an unnecessary period. "See," he concluded, with an assuring wave of the hand toward the subject, "see; he is about to address you. Now, quiet!--utter quiet, if you please!"

"Great heavens!" exclaimed my friend stiflingly; "just look at the boy! Get on to that position for a poet! Even Sweeney has fled from the sight of him!"

And truly, too, it was a grotesque pose the young man had assumed; not wholly ridiculous either, since the dwarfed position he had settled into seemed more a genuine physical condition than an affected one. The head, back-tilted, and sunk between the shoulders, looked abnormally large, while the features of the face appeared peculiarly child- like--especially the eyes--wakeful and wide apart, and very bright, yet very mild and very artless; and the drawn and cramped outline of the legs and feet, and of the arms and hands, even to the shrunken, slender-looking fingers, all combined to convey most strikingly to the pained senses the fragile frame and pixy figure of some pitiably afflicted child, unconscious altogether of the pathos of its own deformity.

"Now, mark the cuss, Horatio!" gasped my friend.

At first the speaker's voice came very low, and somewhat piping, too, and broken--an eery sort of voice it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure golden, and at times fell echoless. The SPIRIT of its utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran an undercadence through it like a low-pleading prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic little changeling thus began:--

"I'm thist a little crippled boy, an' never goin' to grow An' git a great big man at all!--'cause Aunty told me so. When I was thist a baby onc't I falled out of the bed An' got 'The Curv'ture of the Spine'--'at's what the Doctor said. I never had no Mother nen--fer my Pa runned away An' dassn't come back here no more--'cause he was drunk one day An' stobbed a man in thish-ere town, an' couldn't pay his fine! An' nen my Ma she died--an' I got 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!"