第23章

His longish golden hair had no doubt its share in the effect, as likewise the soft yellow silk tie that fluttered like a flame in the speed of his going.His blue eyes were tragically fresh and clear,--as though they had as yet been little used.There were little wings of haste upon his feet, and he came straight to me, with the air of the Angel Gabriel about to make his divine announcement.For a moment I thought that he was an apparition of prophecy charged to announce the maiden of the Lord for whom Iwas seeking.However, his brief flushed question was not of these things.He desired first to ask the time of day, and next--here, after a bump to the earth, one's thoughts ballooned again heavenwards--"had I seen a green copy of Shelley lying anywhere along the road?"Nothing so good had happened to me, I replied--but I believed that I had seen a copy of Alastor! For a moment my meaning was lost on him; then he flushed and smiled, thanked me and was off again, saying that he must find his Shelley, as he wouldn't lose it for the world!

He had presently disappeared as suddenly as he had come, but he had left me a companion, a radiant reverberant name; and for some little space the name of Shelley clashed silvery music among the hills.

Its seven letters seemed to hang right across the clouds like the Seven Stars, an apocalyptic constellation, a veritable sky sign;and again the name was an angel standing with a silver trumpet, and again it was a song.The heavens opened, and across the blue rift it hung in a glory of celestial fire, while from behind and above the clouds came a warbling as of innumerable larks.

How strange was this miracle of fame, I pondered, this strange apotheosis by which a mere private name becomes a public symbol!

Shelley was once a private person whose name had no more universal meaning than my own, and so were Byron and Cromwell and Shakespeare; yet now their names are facts as stubborn as the Rocky Mountains, or the National Gallery, or the circulation of the blood.From their original inch or so of private handwriting they have spread and spread out across the world, and now whole generations of men find intellectual accommodation within them,--drinking fountains and other public institutions are erected upon them; yea, Carlyle has become a Chelsea swimming-bath, and "Highland Mary" is sold for whiskey, while Mr.Gladstone is to be met everywhere in the form of a bag.

Does Mr.Gladstone, I wonder, instruct his valet "to pack his Gladstone"? How strange it must seem! Try it yourself some day and its effect on your servant.Ask him, for example, to "pack your ----" and see how he'll stare.

Coming nearer and nearer to earth, I wondered if Colonel Boycott ever uses the word "boycott," and how strange it must have seemed to the late MacAdam to walk for miles and miles upon his own name, like a carpet spread out before him.

Then I once more rebounded heavenwards, at the vision of the eager dreamy lad whose question had set going all this odd clockwork of association.He wouldn't lose his Shelley for the world! How like twenty! And how many things that he wouldn't lose for the world will he have to give up before he is thirty, Ireflected sententiously,--give up at last, maybe, with a stony indifference, as men on a sinking ship take no thought of the gold and specie in the hold.

And then, all of a sudden, a little way up the ferny grassy hillside, I caught sight of the end of a book half hidden among the ferns.I climbed up to it.Of course it was that very green Shelley which the young stranger wouldn't lose for the world.