The Last Romantics

Love is Within The Lines

I admit, that book sparked my interest more than my mathematics on that first night. I was stuck up in the library, as I so often was, though I hardly ever touched another book save for the one full of practice problems and obscure equations I was tasked to master. Mathematics had always come easy to me, and so the night was spent in some stagnation, tapping my pencil alone in the corner table, hidden away in the rows of books so as to preserve my solitude for as long as possible. I hadn't made any friends in university, and save for that one interaction with Gregson I'm sure I might not have. Amazing what a book could do, amazing what powers some short pages have on the soul. It was sitting amongst my scatted things, the corner of its bland white cover prodding out from under one of my half used notebooks, the one I filled with equations from the class and used to reference in the off hours. I sat for a moment, wondering if it would be worth it to take a little break from the calculations and read over a poem or too, perhaps to think about things that were not numbers, and take a stroll through someone else's brain for a while. I hadn't been at university for very long, though in the short amount of time I was there it seemed as though my creative processes were dwindling substantially. It had been a long while since I was able to pick up a book of my own, a long time since I had visited the mythical kingdoms I had enjoyed so much in my youth. The machine of a man had been long since established, and now the rigorous mathematical mind was being sculpted. Continuing along the path that I was on, surely I was destined to become the most boring creature alive. I would turn out to be just like my father and all of his industrial friends, bathing in the money secured to him by taking advantage of unfortunate souls, without a lick of empathy within his heart to understand the immorality of it all. And so, that very fateful night, I let the power of the world combine together and motivate me. I allowed myself to be wooed by the sound of the rain pouring down upon the black window panes, I allowed the soft lighting to find its way into my heart and make me feel much more humorous than I would in normal circumstances. I sought for a moment of quiet imagination, to soak in the romantic tones and sit for a moment in complete harmony with the soul of another. I dove for that book, and that night was the first that I examined the very complicated workings of Victor Trevor's heart. The first poem I read once over, and I understood each and every word provided. Taken individually I could pronounce and define each one, and even sentence by sentence I could perhaps make some sense of what had been left for me. Though together, as a whole unit, I could not see for a moment how they related. The poem was focused, from what I could tell, on his youth. Though from the lines he had scribbled down, from the congruent stanzas that were blocked together in a way that I could only struggle to comprehend...well for a moment I reconsidered the whole of my education, the whole of my understanding of the world. Was I really so bested by fourteen lines of emotion? Why could I not look into these words, stare into the describing of this one man's childhood, and see a mirror I mage of myself? I remembered what Gregson had mentioned, how he had read this book over and over and still could not understand each poem. As soon as my eyes scanned the thing the fourth time over I realized at last that I had seriously overestimated myself. Perhaps I could read all of the lines left for me within fifteen minutes, perhaps this book could turn page after page and last me no more than a class period of procrastination. But in the end, well I suppose I would not have absorbed a word of it! The writing was so complex; the words flowing over each other in such a pattern that Trevor ought to have been writing a song! The feelings were so immense...or so I later found them to be. Never have I seen myself so hidden, never have I really had to fight to examine not just the meanings behind words, but the relationship they suddenly had to myself. All of the sudden it was my own internal struggles, not those of the author, that were hiding in plain sight. It took me all night to read two of his poems, and I still fell to sleep wondering what I had just read, and what it might mean in the future. I knew as I let darkness overtake me that I needed to speak to Gregson in the morning, though I hadn't a clue where I might be able to find him. Before our encounter in the courtyard I had never noticed his face before, not in any of my classes, not in any perimeter of my lonely seat in the dining hall. I was lucky in those days, as my own obsession with where the boy might be seemed to be second only to his obsession in finding me, and before long I didn't need to do much work at all to place him in the crowd. The next morning at breakfast I sat in my usual spot, this time bent over my book before looking at random intervals at the crowd who was funneling in. My first class began at eleven, though I had decided to camp out in the dining hall from seven o'clock onwards, just to make sure that I wasn't missing any opportunity for overlap. It is unfortunately very like myself to get distracted, and while getting lost in his poetry book might seem like a compliment, a neglect in my true task was degrading mostly to myself if anyone at all. Tobias found me first; in fact his appearance took me so much by surprise that I nearly dropped that poor abused book into my oatmeal. Thankfully I had the mind to keep my grip, though when I jumped in surprise it brought quite the smile to the boy's face. He looked much more presentable this morning than yesterday in the courtyard, with his uniform up to snuff and his hair presented in a much more aggregable fashion. He looked like a proper student, plain enough that I certainly would have missed him in a large crowd though stunning enough that I appreciated a good second to look him over. Tobias taught me a lot about myself in those couple of weeks, and an appreciation of the human man was certainly one of them. Never had I met such a startling creature, never until my eyes were graced with his constant presence.
"I assume you're just finishing up, then? Said you'd have it back today." Gregson teased, leaning on the table so that he could look up into my preoccupied eyes, almost as if with the intentions of tilting the open book away and dominating my full attention. I snapped the thing shut immediately, trying to hide that I was only on the third poem of the book (and thus only a page in) and held my head up a little higher than I was entitled to.
"I find it...well it is just as you said. It's quite difficult." I admitted at last.
"Beautiful, though." He muttered with a little smile, his dark eyes fixed upon mine as if eye contact was going to help prove his point. "Have you tried to read it out loud? With the right rhythm it is truly magnificent, like a song bird, or a trickling stream."
"I've not tried that, I'm not usually comfortable with talking to myself." I admitted. The boy chuckled, for obvious he saw that for the invitation it was.
"I could read it to you sometime, if you would like. Trevor is...well he's an absolute artist. The most talented man of our generation by far."
"Do you know anything about him?" I wondered quietly, my interests now peaked to the man behind such complex statements and moving poems.
"I do, and so could you if you understand at all what you read." Gregson insisted, giving me that great big grin again, that grin that knew far too much about my progress than I would have liked.
"I meant about him as a person, certainly he's still alive? This is a recent publication." I corrected, not entirely sure if we were close enough for sarcasm or not. I figured it was best not to irritate the boy, not now that I found his presence so invaluable.
"He's alive, yes. In fact I'm sure he's not much older than us. Twenty three, I believe, when he wrote this." Gregson muttered, obviously having done some research into the topic.
"That's only five years older than I! And look at me, so incomprehensible to anything he could write. Some brains just work differently, I suppose." I muttered with some indignation.
"Brains don't work differently, they're trained differently. Sherlock, you've been taught how to think with only one side of your brain. Facts, figures...they're useless to men who want true knowledge. Unlearn what you know about truth, about the way of the world. Start looking into what has been provided to us, start seeing things beyond nature, staring seeing into your own eyes. Read his poetry, Holmes, I think you'll understand the world a lot better. Perhaps you'll know yourself, perhaps you'll know me." Tobias offered.
"I would like to know you." I agreed without a moment's hesitation, though of course a moment of hesitation might have been much better. For a moment I felt my cheeks blushing, wondering why I was so quick to embarrass myself in front of the only prospect for friendship that I had found thus far.
"I'll give you the opportunity to, Sherlock." Tobias assured. "So long as you offer me the same luxury."
"I'd be um...we'll I'd be honored." I managed rather pathetically. Though he smiled once more, assuring me in his own way that I wasn't making a complete fool out of myself. Perhaps he found me to be charming, so unknowing in social interactions and so lost in the world that was supposed to be familiar. He could tell that I was a lost soul; he could tell that I needed some guiding. Tobias offered me the first hand in the world, a hand to guide me through the years of confusion, a hand to help me see beauty. The problem was that his hand faded away; at the moment I wanted it most to stay clutched within my own.