CHAPTER FIFTEEN




OF THE LOGOS THAT SPAKE NEVER, AND OF HIS WITNESSES.
 





   Now, by God wake up, if you have dozed! For here's the minute, sure enough. I don't know when, nor where, nor how; But 'twas one day or night, heartiest beauties, the Devil bless you all! I would I had Cervantes by my side, with his great quill like a plumed lance; or Blake, that made earth shake when Thel groaned. Ah! 'tis from Ossian, that trick; I've no such bravery of magick; my pen's no Mahalingam. And so when I've most bitter need of colour and size and light, I'm like a ghost i' the church yard, a scraped turnip with a candle, and a flapping sheet upon a pole.


   Yet who should tell how gay Sir Roger met with God's vicar but I? Alack -- I may not tell. But of his meeting with the herald? Amen, that will I.


   He was aware, Sir Roger Bloxam, of that pompous dwarf, fighting mad, the bantam soul of him afire, craning, straining, strutting stiff before him, the brave little fellow, a bare yard high, game, cocky, impudent, mocking, with his monk's hood drawn back from his bare poll, and -- since he was the Herald of God's vicar -- saying Nothing. Only he leapt and preened himself, and his followers swelled with pride. For he had attaches, this goodly cardinal ambassador, Signor Coglio the Florentine and brave Don Cojone of Logorno, stout and subtle they, secreting in themselves continually the mysteries of the Creation. No fear o' treachery there, by Zeus and his thunder! 'Twas their young sister Porphyria Poppoea, that with wantonness proclaimed herself, swinging her thurible whether ye would or no. Foul wench! What words are these? Art not ashamed? What heard I then? ``Asquith.'' Fie then! Sir Roger, canst thou not silence her? What's this mephitic borborygmus, this belch o' beastliness -- in a woman's mouth too? No Englishman within 3000 miles of me needs guess more than once what this word is -- God help him -- and me! There -- all our stomachs turn as the stench strikes our noses. I wish I could think of something utterly beastly, something worthy to mop its haemorrhoids, after a typhoid purge, with that pantomime flag, that barber's pole flag, that -- (``Of course, dear poet'' quoth Anita, suave and obscure, the gilt-toothed goddess from Japan, ``there's Woods'') (Hush! Hush! 'Tis true, dear girl, but I'll not think of him, please God). Amen, and Amen -- of Amen!