Wilderness of Spring Part 22

_Chapter Three_

The builder had intended a storeroom off the kitchen, with no heat and one narrow window, where Gideon Hibbs in these days wrestled with Ben and Reuben across the rackety battlefield of the cla.s.sics. When the boys came to Roxbury John Kenny, in a genial phase of turning things upside down, had hired a mason to build a fireplace in this austere chamber, and had purchased a magisterial new desk and high-backed chair for Mr.

Hibbs. Then with his own hands he fetched from the attic two small old desks, trusting only Ben to help him worry them downstairs, and grew dreamy at the marred and squeaky things, chuckling over jokes superseded forty-odd years before.

In the house of the Reverend Mr. Elias Kenny of Boston, these desks had sustained the squirmings of John Kenny and his brother George, whose young hands left a network of schoolboy carvings now black with age. The satiny pine held room for Reuben and Ben to add a number of their own: arrows, circles, cabalistic squiggles; on Ben's a rising sun with a questioning eyebrow, on Reuben's a portrait of Mr. Eccles that did scant justice to his second-best ear.

One other chair stood at the rear of the schoolroom, sacred to occasions when Uncle John strolled in to listen, owl-tufts c.o.c.ked like secondary ears alert for a false quant.i.ty. At such times Mr. Hibbs became grave and slow-spoken. Hibbs was not an obsequious man: he merely found it important to satisfy Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury. It was at one of those times that Reuben witnessed Uncle John's discovery of the new carvings, a pale crinkled hand descending to the desk, groping at B--R newly incised. Reuben saw only the hand, fearing to look up lest he find Uncle John sad or annoyed. After all the desk was a chip of history; having served John Kenny when he was a boy of twelve, it must have been made at least as early as 1649, and from a pine tree that would have sprung up in the wilderness before the planting of Plymouth Colony. The blue-veined hand lingered feather-light, restless like that of a blind man encountering something formidably new in the pattern of the known.

Then it rose and pa.s.sed gently through Reuben's hair, and the door of the schoolroom closed.

This Thursday morning spring was a.s.sailing the house with lazy reminders, a ripple of breeze at the window Mr. Hibbs had sternly closed, a muted hammering from the shed where Rob Grimes was mending a chicken coop at great leisure; earlier Reuben had heard the lonesome Sundayish clamor of the meeting-house bell nearly a mile away, warning that Thursday was Lecture Day, when decent citizens take thought for their souls.

"Very well, Reuben." Mr. Hibbs sniffed. "Lines twenty-one and twenty-two, and pray note that you are not to stress the caesura in line twenty-two, seeing there is no break in the thought."

"quid fuit, ut tutas agitaret Daedalus alas, Icarus immensas...."

"What's the matter? Are you considering, Mr. Cory, whether the caesura be intended by the poet to indicate a pause for daydreaming?"

"Icarus immensas nomine signet aquas."

"You have the quant.i.ties correct, and may now construe."

"'Why should Daedalus have----'"

"'Should'? 'Should'? I see no subjunctive, Mr. Cory."

"I was construing freely, sir."

"Why?"

"I thought it sounded smoother so, in English."

"Fiddle! _Fuit_, not being subjunctive, cannot be so translated."

"'Why was it that Daedalus safely moved his wings----'"

"Mr. Cory, one light fugitive moment if you please. Concerning the word _tutas_: is this an adverb?"

"No, sir."

"If Ovid had wished an adverb he would have written----?"

"_Tuto_, sir."

"Yet he used this strange word _tutas_, which is----?"

"An adjective, sir. _Tutas_, _-a_, _-um_, meaning 'safe.'"

"Light breaks." Mr. Hibbs filled his clay pipe, deliberately maddening his tortured nose. "The source, incidentally, of a dreadful English word, 'tutor'--I suppose from some woeful misguided conceit to the effect that a tutor can hold his charges in safety, Master Reuben, from the perils of error--_wharrmphsh!_--within and without. An adjective, then, and plural, I presume. The case, Mr. Cory?"

"Objective, Mr. Hibbs."

"Could it by any remote chance agree with--hm----"

"It agrees with _alas_, sir."

"Oh! How we do see eye to eye at times! _Tutas alas._ I could even imagine it meant 'safe wings,' 'uninjured wings,' something like that, if an adverb had not gone flying past my aging benighted head. Now concerning this word _agitaret_. Did I hear you translate it as 'moved'?"

"I did, sir."

"Had you considered the word 'agitate'?--excellent, _I_ should have thought, and taken direct from the mother Latin."

"I did, sir, but the present-day meaning seemed unsatisfactory."

"Why?"

Reuben discovered he had pulled down his underlip. Mr. Hibbs had striven for three years to break him of the habit, but Reuben, as now, was often unaware he had done it until it was too late. He let it back gently without the usual comforting pop. "To me," Reuben said, "the word 'agitate' suggested fluttering. I might translate: 'Why was it that Daedalus fluttered safe wings?'" He glanced up, honestly feeling as apologetic as a puppy caught _in flagrante_ with a ravished shoe. "To me, sir, Daedalus was no b.u.t.terfly."

Ben knocked his Ovid on the floor and scrambled after it. Reuben guessed he was trying to divert the lightning, but Mr. Hibbs paid the uproar no heed at all, staring at Reuben with a twitching nose. You could never quite predict Gideon Hibbs: the next moment might be h.e.l.l, or sudden sunshine, or merely another sneeze.

It was sunshine. Mr. Hibbs relaxed, a wrestler overcome, and laughed, a large generous bray. "You have a point, Reuben. Oh yes!" He fumbled for a kerchief and blew the inflamed organ mightily. "Well, but I'm not content with so flat a word as 'moved.' Benjamin? Considering the wriggles you perform at your desk (and I declare only a young backside could endure it) you ought to be able to offer some word conveying the sense of a sustained and powerful motion."

Shining with relief, Ben said: "'Plied'?"

"Why, excellent!" Mr. Hibbs tensed in astonishment. "'Why was it Daedalus plied uninjured wings?'--mph, comes out in English as iambic pentameter, bless me if it doesn't. Satisfactory, Reuben?"

"Yes, sir, I like that. 'Why was it Daedalus plied uninjured wings, but Icarus marks with his name the enormous waves?'"

Out of a suspended hush, Mr. Hibbs sighed. "Benjamin, proceed. If possible, without b.u.t.terflies. Let us leave the b.u.t.terflies to Reuben."

Reuben thought with care: _He means no harm by that, none at all...._ His eyes idly compelled the carved B--R to grow immense and blurred, and he listened to Ben's voice:

"nempe quod hic alte, demissius ille volabat; nam pennas ambo non habuere suas."

"Quant.i.ties correct, Benjamin. Construe."

"'Surely it was because Icarus flew high, and Daedalus lower; for both wore wings that were not their own.'"

"Eh, Benjamin, doing uncommon well today. High time of course--I am not prepared to consider this the millennium." Mr. Hibbs could seldom bear to leave a compliment undiluted. "Well, gentlemen, I suggest to you, these particular lines are something more than an exercise in grammar and prosody. I think, no more of the _Tristia_ today. Your grammars if you please--this afternoon it shall be Cicero of course."

"Sir"--startled, Reuben saw his brother rising, not quite knocking over his little desk--"sir, may I ask a favor?"

Mr. Hibbs' lank features froze, but not completely. "Yes, my boy?"

"Last night, sir, I wrote out a translation of the lines in _De Finibus_ that you a.s.signed us for this afternoon. I--wished to know if I could do so without aid. I mean, sir--Ru hath helped me often at other times, being swifter at these things, so I--so I didn't tell him of it. And if it be satisfactory, Mr. Hibbs, may I go to Boston this afternoon?"