This translation of a favourite romance into terms of the servants’ hall chilled Maud like a cold shower. She recoiled from it.
“Wouldn’t you like to get a good education, Albert,” she said perseveringly, “and become a great poet and write wonderful poems?”
Albert considered the point, and shook his head.
“No, m’lady.”
It was discouraging. But Maud was a girl of pluck. You cannot leap into strange cabs in Piccadilly unless you have pluck. She picked up another book from the stone seat.
“Read me some of this,” she said, “and then tell me if it doesn’t make you feel you want to do big things.”
Albert took the book cautiously. He was getting a little fed up with all this sort of thing. True, ‘er ladyship gave him chocolates to eat during these sessions, but for all that it was too much like school for his taste. He regarded the open page with disfavour.
“Go on,” said Maud, closing her eyes. “It’s very beautiful.”
Albert began. He had a husky voice, due, it is to be feared, to precocious cigarette smoking, and his enunciation was not as good as it might have been.
“Wiv’ blekest morss the flower-ports Was-I mean were-crusted one and orl; Ther rusted niles fell from the knorts That ‘eld the pear to the garden-worll. Ther broken sheds looked sed and stringe; Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn their ancient thatch Er-pon ther lownely moated gringe, She only said ‘Me life is dreary, ‘E cometh not,’ she said.”
Albert rather liked this part. He was never happy in narrative unless it could be sprinkled with a plentiful supply of “he said’s” and “she said’s.” He finished with some gusto.
“She said – I am aweary, aweary, I would that I was dead.”
Maud had listened to this rendition of one of her most adored poems with much the same feeling which a composer with an over-sensitive ear would suffer on hearing his pet opus assassinated by a schoolgirl. Albert, who was a willing lad and prepared, if such should be her desire, to plough his way through the entire seven stanzas, began the second verse, but Maud gently took the book away from him. Enough was sufficient.
“Now, wouldn’t you like to be able to write a wonderful thing like that, Albert?”
“Not me, m’lady.”
“You wouldn’t like to be a poet when you grow up?”
Albert shook his golden head.
“I want to be a butcher when I grow up, m’lady.”
Maud uttered a little cry.
“A butcher?”
“Yus, m’lady. Butchers earn good money,” he said, a light of enthusiasm in his blue eyes, for he was now on his favourite subject. “You’ve got to ‘ave meat, yer see, m’lady. It ain’t like poetry, m’lady, which no one wants.”
“But, Albert,” cried Maud faintly. “Killing poor animals. Surely you wouldn’t like that?”
Albert’s eyes glowed softly, as might an acolyte’s at the sight of the censer.
“Mr. Widgeon down at the ‘ome farm,” he murmured reverently, “he says, if I’m a good boy, ‘e’ll let me watch ‘im kill a pig Toosday.”
He gazed out over the water-lilies, his thoughts far away. Maud shuddered. She wondered if medieval pages were ever quite as earthy as this.
“Perhaps you had better go now, Albert. They may be needing you in the house.”
“Very good, m’lady.”
Albert rose, not unwilling to call it a day. He was conscious of the need for a quiet cigarette. He was fond of Maud, but a man can’t spend all his time with the women.
“Pigs squeal like billy-o, m’lady!” he observed by way of adding a parting treasure to Maud’s stock of general knowledge. “Oo! ‘Ear ’em a mile orf, you can!”
Maud remained where she was, thinking, a wistful figure. Tennyson’s “Mariana” always made her wistful even when rendered by Albert. In the occasional moods of sentimental depression which came to vary her normal cheerfulness, it seemed to her that the poem might have been written with a prophetic eye to her special case, so nearly did it crystallize in magic words her own story.
“With blackest moss the flower-pots Were thickly crusted, one and all.”
Well, no, not that particular part, perhaps. If he had found so much as one flower-pot of his even thinly crusted with any foreign substance, Lord Marshmoreton would have gone through the place like an east wind, dismissing gardeners and under-gardeners with every breath. But–