Charteris had heard, one may presume, of my disastrous love-business; and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light upon thee, Mr. Townsend,--whatever a murrain may happen to be,--since you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living and entrancing fable."
"I may safely go as far," said I, "as to offer the proverbial penny."
"Done!" cried Mr. Charteris. He meditated for a moment, and then began, in a low and curiously melodious voice, to narrate
The Apologue of the First Conjugation
"When the gods of Hellas were discrowned, there was a famous scurrying from Olympos to the world of mortals, where each deity must henceforward make shift to do without godhead:--Aphrodite in her hollow hill, where the good knight Tannhauser revels yet, it may be; Hephaestos, in some smithy; whilst Athene, for aught I know, established a girls' boarding school, and Helios, as is notorious, died under priestly torture, and Dionysos cannily took holy orders, and Hermes set up as a merchant in Friesland. But Eros went to the Grammarians. He would be a schoolmaster.
"The Grammarians, grim, snuffy and wrinkled though they might be, were no more impervious to his allures than are the rest of us, and in consequence appointed him to an office. This office was, I glean of mediaeval legend, that of teaching dunderheaded mortals the First Conjugation. So Eros donned cap and gown, took lodgings with a quiet musical family, and set amo as the first model verb; and ever since this period has the verb 'to love' been the first to be mastered in all well-constituted grammars, as it is in life.
"Heigho! it is not an easy verb to conjugate. One gets into trouble enough, in floundering through its manifold nuances, which range inevitably through the bold-faced 'I love', the confident 'I will love', the hopeful 'I may be loved', and so on to the wistful, pitiful Pluperfect Subjunctive Passive, 'I might have been loved if'--Then each of us may supply the Protasis as best befits his personal opinion and particular scars, and may tear his hair, or scribble verses, or adopt the cynical, or, in fine, assume any pose which strikes his fancy. For he has graduated into the Second Conjugation, which is moneo; and may now admonish to his heart's content, whilst looking back complacently into the First Classroom, where others--and so many others!--are still struggling with that mischancy verb, and are involved in the very conditions--verbal or otherwise--which aforetime saddened him, or showed him a possible byway toward recreation, or played the deuce with his liver, according to the nature of the man.
"Eros is a hard, implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers fabled,--no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging nothingness; and not a scholar escapes at least a flick of it.
"I can fancy the class called up as Eros administers, with zest, his penalties. Master Paris! for loving his neighbor a little less than himself, and his neighbor's wife a little more. Master Lancelot! ditto. Masters Petrarch, Tristram, Antony, Juan Tenorio, Dante Alighieri, and others! ditto. There are a great many called up for this particular form of peccancy, you observe; even Master David has to lay aside his Psalm Book, and go forward with the others for chastisement. Master Romeo! for trespassing in other people's gardens and mausoleums. Master Leander! for swimming in the Hellespont after dark; and Master Tarquin! for mistaking his bedroom at the Collatini's house-party.
"Thus, one by one, each scholar goes into the darkened private office. The master handles his rod--eia! 'tis borrowed from the Erinnyes,--lovingly, caressingly, like a very conscientious person about the performance of his duty. Then comes the dreadful order, 'Take down your breeches, sir!'.... But the scene is too horrible to contemplate. He punishes all, this schoolmaster, for he is unbelievably old, and with the years' advance has grown querulous.
"Well, now I approach my moral, Mr. Townsend. One must have one's birching with the others, and of necessity there remains but to make the best of it. Birching is not a dignified process, and the endurer comes therefrom both sore and shamefaced. Yet always in such contretemps it is expedient to brazen out the matter, and to present as stately an appearance, we will say, as one's welts permit.
