"He was one of the Spanish mystics.
He's one of the best poets they've ever had.
I thought it would be worth while translating him into English."
"May I look at your translation?"
"It's very rough," said Athelny, but he gave it to Philip with an alacrity which suggested that he was eager for him to read it.
It was written in pencil, in a fine but very peculiar handwriting, which was hard to read: it was just like black letter.
"Doesn't it take you an awful time to write like that? It's wonderful."
"I don't know why handwriting shouldn't be beautiful."
Philip read the first verse:
In an obscure night
With anxious love inflamed
O happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest…
Philip looked curiously at Thorpe Athelny.
He did not know whether he felt a little shy with him or was attracted by him.
He was conscious that his manner had been slightly patronising, and he flushed as it struck him that Athelny might have thought him ridiculous.
"What an unusual name you've got," he remarked, for something to say.
"It's a very old Yorkshire name.
Once it took the head of my family a day's hard riding to make the circuit of his estates, but the mighty are fallen.
Fast women and slow horses."
He was short-sighted and when he spoke looked at you with a peculiar intensity.
He took up his volume of poetry.
"You should read Spanish," he said. "It is a noble tongue.
It has not the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language of tenors and organ-grinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in flood."
His grandiloquence amused Philip, but he was sensitive to rhetoric; and he listened with pleasure while Athelny, with picturesque expressions and the fire of a real enthusiasm, described to him the rich delight of reading Don Quixote in the original and the music, romantic, limpid, passionate, of the enchanting Calderon.
"I must get on with my work," said Philip presently.
"Oh, forgive me, I forgot.
I will tell my wife to bring me a photograph of Toledo, and I will show it you.
Come and talk to me when you have the chance.
You don't know what a pleasure it gives me."
During the next few days, in moments snatched whenever there was opportunity, Philip's acquaintance with the journalist increased.
Thorpe Athelny was a good talker.
He did not say brilliant things, but he talked inspiringly, with an eager vividness which fired the imagination; Philip, living so much in a world of make-believe, found his fancy teeming with new pictures.
Athelny had very good manners.
He knew much more than Philip, both of the world and of books; he was a much older man; and the readiness of his conversation gave him a certain superiority; but he was in the hospital a recipient of charity, subject to strict rules; and he held himself between the two positions with ease and humour.
Once Philip asked him why he had come to the hospital.
"Oh, my principle is to profit by all the benefits that society provides.
I take advantage of the age I live in.
When I'm ill I get myself patched up in a hospital and I have no false shame, and I send my children to be educated at the board-school."
"Do you really?" said Philip.
"And a capital education they get too, much better than I got at Winchester. How else do you think I could educate them at all?
I've got nine.
You must come and see them all when I get home again.
Will you?"
"I'd like to very much," said Philip.
LXXXVII
Ten days later Thorpe Athelny was well enough to leave the hospital.
He gave Philip his address, and Philip promised to dine with him at one o'clock on the following Sunday.
Athelny had told him that he lived in a house built by Inigo Jones; he had raved, as he raved over everything, over the balustrade of old oak; and when he came down to open the door for Philip he made him at once admire the elegant carving of the lintel.