Tempted

“It’s always the same. I’m too stupid or I wouldn’t understand. Nobody thinks I know anything.”

“Would you be willing to read some for us tonight?” Evan suggested. “I’m sure I won’t understand them, either, but I would like to.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Lord Mountjoy grumbled under his breath.

“Oh, but it’s not,” Evan said spontaneously. “Everything we do—the wars we fight, the work, the struggle to farm the land—everything is done to make such things as poetry and art possible.”

“Well, I know that,” Lord Mountjoy said. “I stay here and work like a laborer to keep that young lounger in school so he can write poetry.”

“I’m sure Lord Mountjoy would not want to hear my poetry,” Ralph mumbled.

“Of course I do. Haven’t I just said I do? You will read for us tonight. I should get something for my money.”

Ralph had taken the request quite seriously and scurried to his room after dinner, to meet them all in the library with a sheaf of papers. Lady Mountjoy was there and so pointedly ignored Evan that he wasn’t sure if it was better than being hated. As soon as the women had settled to their work, Lord Mountjoy looked expectantly at his stepson, and Ralph stood, with more relish for the task than Evan would have expressed under similar circumstances.

“‘The Torn Soul,’” he read.

“Another bitter morning.

The full moon sees me to my classes

With a smudge of blue across his face

As though he has been tending my fire.

I go where they send me to learn

Prudent lines of language,

The science of machines and

The vagaries of politics and wars,

When all I really want to think about is the moon.

But there is always the night.”

“Is that it, then?” Angel broke the silence to ask.

“Yes. What do you think?”

“Well, it’s bit short, isn’t it?”

“The length has nothing to do with it,” Ralph said defensively. “It’s the meaning—”

“It doesn’t rhyme,” Lord Mountjoy rumbled.

“I know it doesn’t rhyme. I do know how to make a rhyme. But there is a difference between rhymes and poetry.”

“I like it,” Evan vowed. “I’m not quite sure why I like it. Maybe because it does not rhyme. Too much of the singsong is distracting from the meaning for me. Now that I think of it, I’m quite sure that’s why poetry usually makes me nod off.”

“You mean, like when you say, ‘Nothing, Father’?” Lord Mountjoy asked.

Evan glanced at his father in amused surprise.

“The moon is always a woman,” Terry said a little blearily, but with great conviction.

“It needn’t be,” Ralph maintained.

“In every poem I have ever read, the moon is feminine.”

“He’s got you there, Ralph,” Lord Mountjoy said with satisfaction.

“Let me see,” said Judith, taking the sheet and reading it over. “You know, Ralph, I like it already, but perhaps it works even better with the moon as a woman.”

Ralph thought through the poem in his mind and finally took the paper and made a note with a stub of pencil he pulled from his pocket. “I think you’re right. It does read better.”

“Aha, so we are right,” Lord Mountjoy said.

“An intelligent man is always open to good ideas, no matter who they may come from,” Ralph said. Terry smiled crookedly, and Lord Mountjoy looked at Ralph a little suspiciously.

“Why a woman?” Angel asked. “Why would the moon always be a woman?”

“Tradition,” said Ralph. “It was the smudge of dirt that threw me. One does not think of a woman with a smudge of dirt on her face, but I suppose she might have if she were tending a fire.”

“That’s no answer,” Angel complained.

“It has to do with the changeableness of woman,” stated Lady Mountjoy. “They are well-known for their inconstancy, whereas men are so reliable,” she added without looking up from her work.

Evan chuckled in spite of himself. “Poetry and satire in the same evening,” he said. “My cup runneth over.”

Lady Mountjoy’s mouth softened, not into anything approaching a smile, but at least she did not glare at him.

“I don’t understand,” Angel protested.

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Ralph declared.

“You know so much just because you have been to school. Why does it cut off like that? What do you mean by ‘There is always the night’?”

“I mean I may be at someone else’s beck and call to study and learn what they please in the daytime, but at night I can dream or write whatever I please, that they can’t kill the romance in me.”

“You see,” said Judith helpfully, “the moon is a metaphor, for dreams, romance, whatever you will.”

“A what?”

Ralph turned back to Angel. “It means it stands in place of just saying those things—”

“It would be much simpler all around if you did just say those things without all the bother. I don’t like your poem at all,” Angel said defiantly.