I
It had been raining all day in London. The beating of water, cold,
monotonous and heavy upon the streets, had now acquired mystery from
the darkness of a November night. The vague forms floating here and
there through the haze of the lamps, which a few hours ago were easy
to define, were full of strangeness, while the noise of the water as
it gurgled into the sewers, and slopped from the spouts over the dark
fronts of the shops had a remote significance. Now and again odd shapes
would emerge from the curtain of the shadows: a wet policeman, a dog, a
bedraggled walker of the streets, a sullen cabman, a lame horse. Over
and above, round and about these phantasmal appearances, was the sound
of continual water falling upon the great roar of London.
In one of the narrow purlieus leading from the City to the eastern
wilderness, night had erased the actual like a wet cloth drawn across
writing in chalk upon a board. Two rows of sopping shuttered walls
were only able to emit an occasional smear of lamplight, by which the
pageant of the individual consciousness could embody itself. Here and
there a signboard would be half-disclosed over some deserted shop;
and in the middle of a long and very dismal thoroughfare was one that
seemed to take a quality from the fact that a faint gleam of light was
stealing through a chink in the shutters of a door. Above this door,
in faded letters which the film of shadows rendered barely visible,
was the legend, “Second-hand Bookseller.” It seemed to be centuries
old. The light, however, frail as it was, somehow appeared to make it
memorable. Yet the source of this talisman was not the shop itself, but
a little room that lay behind.
This small shop in which a thousand and one volumes huddled, like
corpses in a chasm, seemed almost to form an intermediary between the
real on the one hand, and the chimerical on the other. On its shelves,
in a limbo of darkness and neglect, lay the dead, the dying, and the
imperishable. Buried in dust and decay, in covers that could hardly
hold together, were pregnant annotations upon the human comedy. On the
upper shelves were tomes whose destiny it had been to hold back the
hands of time, and had duly fulfilled it. Below these were a thousand
formulas which had proved disconcerting to man. Still, however, as in
the sodden and shadow-fraught chimera beyond the shutters, even here
darkness did not reign inviolate. There were tiny lamps on this shelf
and that: like those in the street without the power to offer more than
a flicker of light, yet able to suggest that the blackest night is
susceptible of challenge. A candle shone here and there in the gloom,
faint yet invincible, like a will-o’-the-wisp that hops about the
mounds in a cemetery.
Opening out of the shop was a little inner room. It was from this that
the thread of light proceeded. This tiny chamber, some twelve feet by
sixteen, had little furniture. In the centre was a quaint old table. A
curious tome of yellow parchments was spread open upon it. Built into
the outer wall was a cupboard. Its heavy oak door was studded with
nails and strongly secured. In the grate the fire was bright; the bare
floor and walls were spotless; and from the low ceiling depended a lamp
in the form of a censer whose light was soft yet clear.
The room had two occupants: a man whose hair was almost white and a
boy. Each was immersed in a book: the man in the tome outspread on the
table, whose yellow leaves, venerable binding, and iron clasps, gave it
a monastic appearance; the boy was reading in the ancient authors.
The countenance of each was remarkable. The eyes of the man were those
which age does not darken; yet his cheeks were gaunt, and the lines
of his frame seemed to be prematurely old; but the ample forehead
and every feature was suffused with the luminosity by which a high
intelligence reflects itself. The face of the boy, pale, gentle and
mobile, was too rare to describe. His eyes, vivid in hue and very
deeply set, were bright with a kind of veiled lustre; his form was
of elfin slightness; his hands looked as frail as gossamer. Yet the
countenance, although full of the solemn wonder of childhood, and
angelic beauty, was marred by a gross physical blemish. Every feature
appeared to have been touched by the wand of a fairy, yet in the middle
of the right cheek was an open wound.
There was not a sound in the little room except the ticking of the
clock, and an occasional creak from the fire. Now and again the man
would pause in his scrutiny of the old yellow page. Uplifting the
finger which pursued every word of the faded and almost illegible
writing, he would seem to consider it with secret thoughts shaping
themselves upon his lips. Then he would smile a little and sigh faintly
and turn to it again.
Presently his gaze sought the boy. Within it was a look of
indescribable solitude, for as the boy crouched over the old volume
printed in black letter which he held upon his knees, great tears
dripped softly from his eyes. The white-haired man addressed him in a
low voice that was like a caress.
“Ah, my brave one! thou dost not fear the drama.”
The boy looked up with a startled face. He gave a little shiver.
“What is that, my father,” he asked, “that you speak of as the drama?”
“What is that, beloved one,” asked his father, “that afflicts you with
dismay?”
The boy pressed his palms against his thin temples.
“I think--I think it is the words, my father,” he said, “the something
in the sound of the words.”
“Truly,” said his father, “the something in the sound of the words.
That which is given is taken away--the something in the sound of the
words.”
“Did you not say, my father,” said the boy, “that the drama was--was
what you call a ‘play’?”
“Yes, a play,” said his father, “a bewildering and curious play--a
haunting and strange play. It is almost terrible, and yet it is
beautiful also.”
“I don’t understand,” said the boy, his eyes growing dark with
perplexity.
His father was quick to read his distress, and a mournful compassion
came into his face. The boy left his book and came to his father’s
side. The man folded the frail and excitable form to his bosom.
“Patience, patience, agile spirit!” he exclaimed as he pressed his lips
upon the gaunt cheek upon which lay the wound.
“I must understand all things, my father,” said the boy, who was
composed a little by his father’s arms. “I--I must know something more
about the drama, for I--I must understand it all.”
“It is that which we feel,” said his father. “It is sometimes in the
air. If we listen we can hear it. I hear it now.”
The boy lifted his face with all his senses strung.
“I can only hear the ticking of the clock, my father, and the creaking
of the fire.”
“There is something else.”
The boy walked to the shutters of the little room, pressed his ear
against them, and listened with great intensity.
“There is only the gurgle of water,” he said, “and the little voice of
the wind.”
“And,” said the man with faint eyes.
“And--and! And the mighty roar of the streets of the great city.”
“That is the drama, beloved one.”
The boy sprang away from the shutters with a little cry.
“Yes, now I know,” he said excitedly. “Now I know what it is. And it
_was_ the something in the sound of the words. That which is given is
taken away. It is what I am always dreaming about this little room of
ours. I am always dreaming, my father, that it has been taken from
us, that we have been cast out of it, that we have it no more. I have
even dreamt that we wandered all day and all night in the cold and
dreadful streets of the great city, among all those fierce and cruel
street-persons, and that they looked upon us continually with their
rude eyes. Then it is that I shiver so much in my fear that I awaken;
and I could shout with joy when I find it is ours still, and that it
has all been a dream.”
The look of compassion deepened in the man’s face.
“Dost thou never grow weary of this little room?” he said.
“Never, never, my father,” said the boy. “I can never grow weary of
this little room. I almost wish sometimes we did not venture to leave
it, lest one day we should lose our path in the great city, and not
find our way back. I sometimes think I would like to stay in it every
moment of my earth-life, so that I might read every one of those
authors in the shop. How I wish, my father, that I understood all the
hard words and all the strange tongues like you do. But at least I
understand one more very difficult word now that I know what is the
meaning of the drama.”
“That is to say, beloved one,” said his father, “now that you
understand the meaning of the drama you hold the key to many other
words that are also very difficult.”
“Yes, yes, my father--and how quickly I shall learn them!”
“You are indeed wonderful at learning.”
“Yet sometimes, my father, I hardly dare to think how much there is to
know. Sometimes when I lie by your side in the darkness, my father,
and something seems to have happened to the moon, I almost feel that I
shall never be able to know all.”
“Thou art quite resolved, my brave one, to know all?”
“Oh yes, my father,” said the boy, and his eyes grew round with
surprise at the question.
“Wherefore, beloved?”
“I must, I must!” said the boy, and his eyes grew dark with
bewilderment. “Dost thou not know, O my father----” He checked his
words of surprised explanation shyly and suddenly.
“I know,” said his father gently, “thou art one of great projects.”
“I had forgotten, O my father,” said the boy, a little timorously,
“that I had not revealed them unto you.”
“Pray do so, my beloved,” said the man softly.
The boy faltered. A shy blush overspread the pallor of his cheeks.
“I am to be one of the great ones of the earth, my father,” he said,
with the sensitive gaze of a girl.
“Truly,” said his father, with a glance of grave tenderness; “destiny
declared it so in the hour that you were born. And I doubt not you will
be called to great endeavours.”
“Oh yes, my father,” said the boy, with strange simplicity. “I am to
walk the path of heroes.”
The white-haired man averted his glance.
“It is for that reason I must be well found in knowledge, my father,”
said the boy.
“True, beloved one,” said the man through pale lips.
“And the meaning of every thing, my father,” said the boy; “bird, beast
and reptile, and the moon and stars, and why the street-persons walk
the streets of the great city; and why the earth is so many-coloured;
and why the sky is so near and yet so far off; and why when you clutch
the air there is nothing in your hand. Must not such as I know all
this, my father?”
“True.”
“And why a man has two legs, and a horse four, and a crocodile I know
not how many, and why a serpent crawls upon its belly.”
“True, true,” said his father. “But I fear, beloved one, that all this
knowledge is not to be acquired in this little room of ours. If you
wish to learn the meaning of all things, will you not have to go to
school?”
A shiver passed through the boy’s frame. His face had the pallor of
great fear.
“Dost thou mean, O my father,” he said, “that I must leave this little
room of ours and go out among the street-persons in the endless streets
of the great city?”
“He who would understand the meaning of all things,” said his father,
“must certainly go to school.”
“Yet are not all things to be learned from the ancient authors, my
father?” asked the boy eagerly. “Is not every secret contained in those
hundreds of books in the shop that it is not yet given to my mind to
grasp?”
“There are many secrets, beloved, which no book has the power to
reveal.”
“Not even those among them, my father, which are wrought of the great
souls of heroes?” said the boy in dismay.
“Not even they.”
“Yet have I not heard you say, my father, that there were few things
they did not understand?”
“True, beloved, but they had not the power to commit the whole of their
knowledge to their writings.”
“But did you not say, my father, that each of these great ones communed
with his peers constantly and faithfully in his little inner room?”
“What a prodigious memory is yours! But I ought to have made it
clear to you that before these heroes could commune with their peers
faithfully, they were compelled to leave their little rooms, adventure
out among the streets of the great city and go to school.”
“Then, my father, I also will go to school.”
The boy clasped his frail hands, and strove to conceal the abject fear
in his eyes.
“When, my brave one?”
“To-morrow I will go, my father.”
“So be it then, beloved one.”
In the silence which followed the tense breathing of the frail form
could be heard to surmount the ticking of the clock, the creaking of
the fire, the little voice of the wind, the gurgle of water, and the
great roar of London.
“Are all heroes in bitter fear, my father, when first they go to
school?” asked the boy.
“Indeed, yes.”
“Do they ever tremble like cravens, and do their eyes grow dark?”
“Yes, beloved one.”
“Have not these great ones a strange cowardice, my father?”
“Is not the cowardice of heroes the measure of their courage?”
“Can it be, O my father,” said the boy, with a deepening pallor, “that
these great ones derive their valour from their craven hearts?”
“Truly, beloved, if they learn the secret.”
“The secret, my father?”
“The secret which is only to be learned in the school which is in the
streets of the great city.”
The face of the boy grew like death. “To-morrow then, my father,” he
said in a faint and small voice, “Achilles will adventure forth to this
school which is in the streets of the great city, that he too may learn
this secret. He should have known that one like himself should not only
have great learning, wisdom and constancy, but also a noble valour.”
“True, a thousand times! This is indeed Achilles!”
“I give you good-night, my father. Pray remember me in your vigil.”
The boy threw his arms round the man’s neck, and pressed his cheek
against him. It seemed to burn like a flame.
The boy took a candle from the chimney-piece, lighted it, and in his
great fear of the darkness, was accompanied by his father up the
stairs. When the white-haired man had enveloped the frail form in the
blankets with a woman’s tenderness, he left the light in the chamber
burning at its fullest, and returned to the little room. It was then
near to midnight.
The massive old tome in which he had been reading was open still upon
the table. He knelt before it, pressing his eyes upon the yellow
parchments. On the clock in the little room the hands made their tardy
circuit: midnight passed; one o’clock; two o’clock; three o’clock.
Throughout these hours the man remained thus, not heeding that all
about him was darkness; for the lamp and the fire had burned themselves
out long ago.
Near to the hour of four a ghostly figure, pale but luminous, crept
into the silence of the room. It was the boy, clad in a white gown and
bearing a lighted candle. He touched the kneeling figure softly.
“My father,” he breathed; “how you tremble, my father, and how cold you
are!”
The man rose to his feet with a slight shiver.
“The fire is low,” he said. “Are we not ever cold when the fire is low?”
“The fire is out, my father,” said the boy.
“Is the fire ever out, beloved,” said his father, “while one ember is
still faintly burning? May we not draw it into flame perhaps?”
The man knelt again and breathed upon the embers, so that presently
they began to glow.
“I could not rest, my father,” said the boy, “and I grew so afraid of
the loneliness that I have come to be near you. I do not think it is
raining now, but the wind is speaking bitterly. I wish the stars would
shine. I am not so craven-hearted when the stars look at me with their
bright eyes.”
“May there not be one among all those millions,” said his father, “who
knows that to be so, and shines out to comfort you? Let us look.”
With eager hands the boy helped his father to unfasten and cast back
the shutters. Through heavy masses of walls and chimney-stacks a
fragment of the void was to be seen. Across it the broken clouds were
scudding, and a single star was visible. It emerged faint but keen and
clear.
“It is Jupiter,” cried the boy in a voice of joy and excitement. “Hail,
mighty prince of the heavens! Ave, ave, great lord of the air!”
The patient white-haired figure at the boy’s side was peering also
towards the star. In his eyes shone the entrancement of many thoughts.