Responsibilities Part 8

The Master has come.

FOOL

Will anybody give a penny to a fool?

[_One of the pupils draws back the stage curtain showing the Master sitting at his desk. There is an hour-gla.s.s upon his desk or in a bracket on the wall. One pupil puts the book before him._

FIRST PUPIL

We have chosen the pa.s.sage for the lesson, Master. 'There are two living countries, one visible and one invisible, and when it is summer there, it is winter here, and when it is November with us, it is lambing-time there.'

WISE MAN

That pa.s.sage, that pa.s.sage! what mischief has there been since yesterday?

FIRST PUPIL

None, Master.

WISE MAN

Oh yes, there has; some craziness has fallen from the wind, or risen from the graves of old men, and made you choose that subject.

FOURTH PUPIL

I knew that it was folly, but they would have it.

THIRD PUPIL

Had we not better say we picked it by chance?

SECOND PUPIL

No; he would say we were children still.

FIRST PUPIL

I have found a sentence under that one that says--as though to show it had a hidden meaning--a beggar wrote it upon the walls of Babylon.

WISE MAN

Then find some beggar and ask him what it means, for I will have nothing to do with it.

FOURTH PUPIL

Come, Teigue, what is the old book's meaning when it says that there are sheep that drop their lambs in November?

FOOL

To be sure--everybody knows, everybody in the world knows, when it is Spring with us, the trees are withering there, when it is Summer with us, the snow is falling there, and have I not myself heard the lambs that are there all bleating on a cold November day--to be sure, does not everybody with an intellect know that; and maybe when it's night with us, it is day with them, for many a time I have seen the roads lighted before me.

WISE MAN

The beggar who wrote that on Babylon wall meant that there is a spiritual kingdom that cannot be seen or known till the faculties whereby we master the kingdom of this world wither away, like green things in winter. A monkish thought, the most mischievous thought that ever pa.s.sed out of a man's mouth.

FIRST PUPIL

If he meant all that, I will take an oath that he was spindle-shanked, and cross-eyed, and had a lousy itching shoulder, and that his heart was crosser than his eyes, and that he wrote it out of malice.

SECOND PUPIL

Let's come away and find a better subject.

FOURTH PUPIL

And maybe now you'll let me choose.

FIRST PUPIL

Come.

WISE MAN

Were it but true 'twould alter everything Until the stream of the world had changed its course, And that and all our thoughts had run Into some cloudy thunderous spring They dream to be its source-- Aye, to some frenzy of the mind; And all that we have done would be undone, Our speculation but as the wind.

[_A pause._

I have dreamed it twice.

FIRST PUPIL

Something has troubled him.

[_Pupils go out._

WISE MAN

Twice have I dreamed it in a morning dream, Now nothing serves my pupils but to come With a like thought. Reason is growing dim; A moment more and Frenzy will beat his drum And laugh aloud and scream; And I must dance in the dream.

No, no, but it is like a hawk, a hawk of the air, It has swooped down--and this swoop makes the third-- And what can I, but tremble like a bird?

FOOL

Give me a penny.

WISE MAN

That I should dream it twice, and after that, that they should pick it out.

FOOL