It flashed into her mind that an absolutely shameless subscriber had
retained Miss Proctor's collected poems for three weeks now, and she
made a hasty note of the fact on a small pad that hung from her belt.
Then she set the _Age of Fable_ in its place and went on about her
work, the incident dismissed.
The next afternoon as she was sorting out from the department labelled,
"Poetry, Miscellaneous Matter, etc.," such books as Mr. Littlejohn had
found himself unable or unwilling to classify further, shaking down
much dust on the further side of the shelves in the process, she was
startled by a faint sneeze. Her assistant was compiling a list of fines
at the desk, and this sneeze came from her very elbow, it seemed, so
she hastily dismounted from her little ladder and peered around the
rack. There sat the little boy of yesterday, the same brown book spread
across his knees. She looked severe.
"Is this Jimmy Reese?" she inquired stiffly.
"Yes'm," he answered, with a polite smile. He had an air of absolute
unconsciousness of any offence.
"Well, don't you remember what I told you yesterday, Jimmy? This is not
the reading-room. Why don't you go there?"
"I like it better here."
The librarian sighed despairingly.
"Perhaps you don't know who I am," she explained, not crossly, but with
that air of detachment and finality that many people assume in talking
with children. "I am Miss Watkins, the new librarian, and when I give
an order here it must be obeyed. When I tell any one to do anything,
I expect them to do it, because--because they must," she concluded
lamely, a little disconcerted by the placid stare of the brown eyes.
"You see, if all the little boys came in here, there would be no room
for us to work."
"But they don't--nobody comes but me," he reminded her.
"Suppose," she demanded, "that someone should call for that book you
are reading. I shouldn't know where to look for it."
"Nobody ever wants it but me," he assured her again.
"I have no time to argue," she said irritably, "you must do as I tell
you. Put the book up and run away."
Without another word he laid the book on the broad base-shelf, picked
up his crutch, and went out. As she watched his retreating figure, a
little uneasy feeling troubled her usual calm. He seemed so small, so
harmless a person.
A little later it occurred to her to see how he had entered the
library, and stepping through the two smaller rooms at the back, choked
and dusty with neglected piles of old magazines, she noticed a door
ajar. Picking her way through the chaos, she pulled the knob, and saw
that it gave on a tiny back porch. On the steps sat the janitor, as
incompetent, from the librarian's point of view, as his late employer.
"I thought you were sweeping off the walks, Thomas," she suggested,
coughing as the wreaths from his pipe reached her.
"Well, yes, Miss Watkins, so I was. I just stopped a minute to rest,
you see," he explained, eyeing her distrustfully. Since her advent life
had changed greatly for the janitor.
"I see Thomas, does that little lame boy come in this way?"
"Jimmy? Yes, ma'am. 'Most always he does. In fact, that's why I keep
the door unlocked."
"Well, after this I prefer that you should keep it locked. There is no
reason why he should have a private entrance to the library that I can
see; and anyway it's not safe. Some one might----"
"Oh, Lord, Miss Watkins, don't you worry. Nobody ever came in here yet,
and I've been here eight years. Jimmy's all right. He's careful and
still's a mouse, and he won't do a mite of harm. He comes in regular
after school's out, and it's just like a home to him, you may say. He's
all right."
Miss Watkins frowned.
"I have no doubt that he is a very estimable little boy," she said;
"but you will please see that no one enters the library by this door. I
see no reason for favouritism. You understand me, I hope."
And she returned to her work. The assistant, weary of her unprecedented
labour, had laid aside the list of fines, and was openly crocheting. No
sound of broom or lawn-mower proclaimed Thomas worthy of his hire, and
Miss Watkins, vexed beyond the necessity of the case, labelled Fiction
angrily, wondering why such a town as this needed a library, anyway.
Two little old ladies, plump and deprecatory, entered in a swish of
fresh, cambric morning-dresses. One of them fumbled in her black-silk
bag for a book, and leaning on the little gate, coughed lightly to
attract the assistant's attention.
"Yes, indeed, Miss Mather, a lovely day. Sister and I enjoyed this very
much. I don't know about what we'll take, exactly; it's so hard to
tell. I always look and look, and the more I look the more anxious I
get. It always seems as if everything was going to be too long, or else
we've read it. You see we read a good deal. I wonder--do you know where
the little boy is?"
Miss Mather smiled triumphantly. "You'll have to ask Miss Watkins," she
said.
"The new librarian, my dear? Oh, I hardly like to disturb her. They say
she's very strict. My cousin told me she charged her nine cents for a
book that was out too long. You ask her, my dear!"
"Miss Watkins," said the assistant meekly, "there is a lady here would
like to see Jimmy. Do you know where he is?"
"I do not," the librarian returned briefly. "Anything I can do----"
"Oh, no, not at all!" cried the flushed old lady, "not for the world!
Don't disturb yourself, please--Miss--Miss--I'll just wait till he
gets in. He picked this out for me. You see, he knows pretty well
what we want. I always like something with a little travel in it, and
sister won't hear of a book unless it ends well. And it spoils it so
to look ahead. So the little fellow looks at the end, and sees if it's
all right for sister, and then he assures me as to the travel--I like
European travel best--and then we know it's all right. I'll just wait
for him."
"I have no reason to suppose that he will be here," Miss Watkins said
crossly.
"Oh, yes, he'll be here," the old lady returned comfortably. "He'll be
here soon. We can wait."
The librarian pressed her lips together and retired into her work.
The minutes passed. Presently the outer door opened softly, and the
irregular tap of a crutch was heard. Jimmy's head peered around
the partition into the ante-room. The old ladies uttered a chirp
of delight, and slipped out into the hall for a brief, whispered
consultation, returning with a modest request for "_Griffith Gaunt_, by
Charles Reade." The elder of the two shut it carefully into her bag,
remarking sociably, "I wanted to read the _Cloister and the Hearth_, by
the same author, I'd heard there was so much travel in it, but he said
sister never could bear the ending."
Going into the reading-room later, on some errand, the librarian was
surprised to find the magazines neatly laid out in piles, the chairs
straightened, the shades pulled level, and a fresh bunch of lilacs in
the jar under the window. She guessed who had done it, but Jimmy was
not to be seen. Once, during the next afternoon, she thought she saw a
small, grey jacket disappearing into the waste-room, but much to her
own surprise, forbore to make certain of it. During the next few days,
when her time was entirely taken up with the catalogue in the front
of the library, and the assistant transacted all business among the
shelves, she was perfectly convinced that somewhere between sections A
and K a little boy with a brown book was concealed, but found herself
too busy to rout him out.
Even when a red-faced, liveried coachman presented her with a note,
directed in a sprawling, childish hand to "Mr. Jimmy Reese, Esq.,"
she only coughed and said severely, "There is no such official in the
library."
"It's just the little boy, ma'am, that's meant," the man explained
deferentially. "Master Clarence is back for the summer--Mrs. Clarence
Vanderhoof, ma'am--and he always sends a note to the little fellow.
There was some book he mentioned to him last year as likely that he
would enjoy, and Master Clarence wants it, if it's in. I was to give
him the note."
"I will send a list of our juveniles to Mrs. Vanderhoof," said the
librarian, in her most business-like manner, "and I will give you, for
Master Clarence, the new Henty book. He will probably like that."
"I beg pardon, ma'am," persisted the coachman, "but Master Clarence
says that there was a book that the little boy particularly recommended
to him, and I was to be very special about it. He goes a good deal by
the little fellow's judgment. I'll call in again when he's here, after
my other errands."
Miss Watkins sighed, and gave way. "Will you see, Miss Mather, if Jimmy
Reese is in the library?" she inquired, and Miss Mather, smiling,
obeyed her.
He was never formally enfranchised, but he took up his place in the
department of Travel and Adventure, and held it unchallenged. All the
long, spring afternoons he sat there, throned on the books, leaning
against them, banked safely in from the tumult of the world outside, a
quiet little shadow among the shadowy throngs that filled the covers.
Whatever he might read, for he turned to other books as one travels,
for the joy of coming home again, the old brown book lay open on his
knees, and he patted the pages with one hand, absently, as his eyes
travelled over the print. Sooner or later he came back to the yellowed
leaves--perhaps to the story of Dryope.
"_Now there was nothing left of Dryope but her face. Her tears still
flowed and fell on her leaves, and while she could, she spoke. 'I am
not guilty. I deserve not this fate. I have injured no one. If I speak
falsely, may my foliage perish with drought and my trunk be cut down
and burned. Take this infant and give it to a nurse. Let it often be
brought and nursed under my branches, and play in my shade; and when
he is old enough to talk, let him be taught to call me mother, and to
say with sadness, "My mother lies hid under this bark." But bid him be
careful of river-banks, and beware how he plucks flowers, remembering
that every bush he sees may be a goddess in disguise. Farewell, dear
husband and sister and father. If you retain any love for me, let not
the axe wound me nor the flocks bite and tear my branches. Since I
cannot stoop to you, climb up hither and kiss me; and while my lips
continue to feel, lift up my child, that I may kiss him. I can speak
no more, for already the bark advances up my neck, and will soon shoot
over me. You need not close my eyes; the bark will soon close them
without your aid.' Then the lips ceased to move, and life was extinct;
but the branches retained, for some time longer, the vital heat._"
In fancy he walked by that fatal stream. He saw the plant dripping
blood--the flower that was the poor nymph Lotis. The terrible,
beautiful revenge, the swift doom of those wonderful Greeks, that
delights even while it horrifies, he felt to the fullest measure. He
had no more need to read them than a priest his breviary, for he knew
them all, but he followed the type in very delight of recognition.
Through the window came the strong scent of the purple lilacs, that
grew all over the little New England town. Faint cries of children
playing drifted in with the breeze. The organ in the church nearby
crooned and droned a continual fugue. Someone was always practising
there. The deep, bass notes jarred the air, even the little building
trembled to them at times. And since it had been at this season of
the year, when he had first found the book, the lovely broken myths,
elusive sometimes, and as dim to his understanding as the marble
fragments that still bewilder the enchanted artist, he always connected
with that throbbing, mournful melody, that haunting lilac odour.
Sometimes the organ swelled triumphantly and cried out in a mighty
chorus of tone: at those times Ulysses shot down the false suitors,
or Perseus, hovering over the shrieking sea-beast, rescued the white
Andromeda. Sometimes a minor plaintive strain troubled him vaguely, and
then he listened to poor Venus, bending in tears above the slain Adonis.
"_'Yet theirs shall be but a partial triumph; memorials of my grief
shall endure, and the spectacle of your death, my Adonis, and of my
lamentation, shall be annually renewed. Your blood shall be turned into
a flower; that consolation none shall envy me.' Thus speaking, she
sprinkled nectar on the blood; and as they mingled, bubbles rose as in
a pool, on which rain-drops fall, and in an hour's time there sprang
up a flower of bloody hue, like that of the pomegranate. But it is
short-lived._"
The peculiar odour of much leather on pine shelves was confused, too,
with the darling book. He had never read it elsewhere; he had not money
enough for a library-ticket. Old Mr. Littlejohn, quickly recognising
the invaluable services that this little acolyte might be counted upon
to render, had readily granted him the freedom of the shelves, and
smoked his pipe in peace for hours together, thereafter, in the back
room, sure of his monitor in front.
Miss Watkins needed no such assistance, but she found herself, to
her amazement, not wholly ungrateful for the many steps saved her
by Jimmy's tactful service to the children. At first she would have
none of it, and groups of shy boys and girls waited awkwardly and in
vain before the little gate, hoping for a glimpse of their kindly
counsellor. She thrust lists of juveniles into their unwilling hands,
led them cautiously into an inspection of Nature Lessons for Little
Learners, displayed tempting rows of bound _St. Nicholas_--but to no
purpose.
"Where's Jimmy?" they demanded stubbornly.
"What on earth do they want of him?" she asked of her assistant one
day. "That stupid Meadows child--is she going to ask his opinion of the
Dotty Dimple Books?"
"Not at all," Miss Mather replied tranquilly. "But he always gets
her a Mary J. Holmes novel, and I stamp it and let it go. You always
argue with her about it, and ask her if she wouldn't prefer something
else--which she never would."
Little by little he grew to wait on the children as a matter of course.
He was even allowed to keep the novels desired by the Meadows child in
the juvenile shelf, where he insisted they belonged.
"Only the girls in Number Seven want 'em," he explained, when his
superior complained of his audacity in removing them from adult fiction.
And so the little girl who had reached that period of little girlhood
when every well-regulated young person is compelled by some inward
power to ask the librarian, tremblingly, if she has a book in the
libr'y called _St. Elmo_, was spared all embarrassment, for Jimmy
handed it out to her almost before she asked.
Not that he lacked the discrimination to exercise a proper authority
on occasion. Miss Watkins remembered long a surprising scene which
she witnessed from the top of a ladder in the Biography and Letters
Section. A shambling, unwholesome boy had asked Miss Mather in a husky
voice for the works of Edgar A. Poe, and as she blew off the dust
from the top and extended two fat volumes toward him, a rapid tapping
heralded the youngest official.
"Don't you give 'em to him, don't you!" he cried, warningly. As she
paused instinctively he shook his finger with a quaint, old-fashioned
gesture at the boy.
"You ought to be ashamed, Sam Wheeler," he said reprovingly. "You
shan't take those books a step. Not a step. If you think you're going
to scare Susy to death you're mistaken. If you want to read 'em, come
here and do it. But you aren't a-going to read 'em to her nights,
again. So you go right off, now!"
Without a word Sam turned and left the library, and Miss Watkins from
her ladder remonstrated feebly.
"Why, Jimmy, if that boy has a ticket you haven't any right----"
"Do you know what he does with those books, Miss Watkins?" replied the
dauntless squire of dames. "He reads 'em after supper to his little
sister Susy. That one where the house all falls down and the one where
the lady's teeth come out and she carries 'em in her hand! And she
don't dare take her feet off the rungs, she sits so still. And she
don't go to sleep hardly ever. Do you s'pose I'd let him take 'em?"
The librarian threshed the matter over, and finally thought to stagger
him by the suggestion that it would be difficult for him to ascertain
the precise intention of everyone drawing out books. "How do you know,"
she asked, "that other people may not be frightening each other with
various stories?"
"There aren't many fellows as mean as Sam Wheeler," he replied
promptly, "and then I was sure that he was going to. I happened to
know."
She turned again to her work and he went back to his corner, the brown
book under his arm.
The syringa was out now, and the mournful, sweet odour blew in from
the bushes around the church. In the still June air he could hear the
bees buzzing there. He turned the beloved pages idly. Should it be poor
Psyche, so sweet and foolish, or Danaë, the lovely mother, hushing
her baby in the sea-tossed chest? He found the place of Proverbial
Expressions at the back of the book, and read them with a never-failing
interest. Around them he wove long stories to please himself.
"_Their faces were not all alike, nor yet unlike, but such as those of
sisters ought to be._"
This one always pleased him--he could not have said why.
"_Here lies Phäton, the driver of his father's chariot, which if he
failed to manage, yet he fell in a great undertaking._"
The simple grandeur of this one was like the trumpet tone of the organ.
He thrilled to it delightedly.
The third he murmured to himself, entranced by the very sound of the
words:
"_He falls, unhappy, by a wound intended for another; looks up to the
skies, and dying remembers sweet Argos._"
Ah, why would Thomas never consent to the witchery of these words:
"----_and dying remembers sweet Argos._"
He sighed delightedly and dreamed into the dusk. Almost he thought he
had known that man, almost he remembered sweet Argos....
In the middle of June the Vanderhoof's coachman brought bad news:
Master Clarence was quite ill. No one knew what it was exactly, but if
there was any exceptionally fine book that Jimmy could suggest, he'd be
glad to be read to from it.
For the first time the little librarian parted from his darling.
"If you'll be especially careful of it, William, and I've put in slips
of paper at the best ones. And as soon as he gets better, I'd be glad
if he'd send it back--if he's through with it."
The days seemed long without it. The heat was intense, and when Miss
Mather stayed at home a day or two, and all the summer people came in
for books, he had a great deal to do. Miss Watkins was very glad of his
help, now.
One hot Saturday afternoon he did not return to the library, but began
a resolute journey to the Vanderhoof's big house on the hill. It was
almost two miles, and he went slowly; now and then he stopped to rest
on the stone horse-blocks. It took him an hour to get there, and at the
door he had to stop to wipe his forehead and get his breath.
"I came to ask how Clarence was," he said to the maid.
"He's better, thank you, but it's dreadful sick he's been. 'Twas
scarlet fever, dear," she answered, with a pitying glance at the
crutch. "Not that you need be worried, for the half of the house is
shut off, and we've not been near it," she added.
"I'm glad he's better, and--and is he through with the book?" he asked
eagerly.
"The book? What book is it, my dear? Sure the nurse does be reading a
hundred books to him."
"A brown book: Stories of Gods and Heroes. I--I'd like it, if he's
through with it. I stay at the libr'y, and I sent it to him--" he sank
on the step, exhausted.
The kind-hearted girl dragged him into the hall. "Come out with me,
dear, and get a glass of cold milk," she said. "You've walked too far."
Seated on a chair in the kitchen, his eyes closed, he heard, as in a
dream, his friend's voice raised in dispute with some distant person.
"And I say he shall have it, then. Walking all this way! And him lame,
too! Tell Emma to put it on the tray, and leave it in the hall. The
child's well enough now, anyway. I'll go get it myself--I'm not afraid.
The whole of us had the fever, and no such smelling sheets pinned up,
and no fuss at all, at all. I'm as good as a paid nurse, any day, if
you come to that. A book'll hurt no one."
Later he found himself perched beside the coachman, who was going
to meet a train, the beloved book tight in his arms. He fingered it
lovingly; he smelled the leaves like a little dog. For the first time
in his life he took it to his home, and clasped it in his arms as he
lay in bed.
For days he did not appear, and it was Thomas, the janitor, who went
finally to look him up, troubled by the children's reports of his
illness. He returned grave-faced.
"It's the fever, Miss Watkins, and they say there's little chance for
him, the poor little feller! He was worn out with the heat. They don't
know how he got it. He's out of his mind. To think of Jimmy like that!"
The librarian's heart sank, and her assistant put her head on her arms
and cried. Thomas sat sadly on his little porch, his unlighted pipe in
his mouth. The library seemed strangely empty.
The little Meadows girl brought them the news the next morning.
"Jimmy's dead," she said abruptly. "He got it from a book up at the
Vanderhoof's. His aunt feels awful bad. It was a libr'y book. They say
he held it all the time."
The librarian put away the book in her hand, envying the younger woman
her facile tears. She was not imaginative, but she realised dimly for a
moment that this little boy had known more of books, had got more from
them, than she, with all her catalogues.
They sat together, she, Miss Mather, and Thomas, a strange trio, at the
simple funeral service in the church nearby. So far as daily living
went, they were as near to him as the aunt who cared for him.
Coming back to the library, they lingered awhile in the reading-room,
trying to realise that it was all over, and that that little, quick
tapping would never be heard again among the books. At last Thomas
spoke:
"It don't seem right," he said thickly, "it don't seem right nor fair.
Here he was, doting on that book so, tugging it round, just living on
it, you might say, and it turned on him and killed him. Gave it up, and
a sacrifice it was, too--I know--and as a reward, it killed him. Went
back to get it, brought it home, took it to bed--and it killed him.
It's like those things he'd tell me out of it--they all died; seemingly
without any reason, the gods would go back on 'em, and they'd die. He's
often read it out to me."
"It will be lovely to have that Children's-room memorial," said Miss
Mather, softly, "with all the books and pictures and the little chairs.
It was beautiful in Mrs. Vanderhoof, I think. It wasn't her fault. I
wish--I wish we'd had a little chair in there for Jimmy."
The librarian got up abruptly and moved around among the magazines, a
mist before her eyes. Only now did she realise how she had grown to
love him.