Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/77

 young—standing in a group at the pavement's edge. They chattered, they stared with bright derisive eyes at the passers by, they commented in audible whispers, they burst into irrepressible shrill laughter as Spiller and Gregory approached, were spied by one of the three, who nudged her fellows.

'Oh, Lord!'

They giggled, they laughed aloud, they were contorted with mockery.

'Look at old Golliwog!' That was for Spiller, who walked bare-headed, his large grey hat in his hand.

'And the nut!' Another yell for the monocle.

'It's that magnetic power,' said Spiller, quite unaware of the lovely derision of which he was the object, 'that power of organizing mental chaos into a pattern, which makes a truth uttered poetically in art, more valuable than a truth uttered scientifically, in prose.'

Playfully reproving, Gregory wagged a finger at the mockers. There was a yet more piercing yell. The two men passed; smilingly Gregory looked back. He felt jauntier, and jollier than ever; but the suspicion was ripening to a certainty.

'For instance,' said Spiller, 'I may know well enough that all men are mortal. But this knowledge is organized and given a form, it is even actually increased and deepened, when Shakespeare talks about all our yesterdays having, lighted fools the way to dusty death.'

Gregory was trying to think of an excuse for giving his companion the slip and turning back to dally with the three. He would love them all, simultaneously.

The Mallarméan phrase came back to him, imposing on his vague desires (old man Spiller was quite right, old imbecile!) the most elegant of forms. Spiller's words came to him as though from a great distance.