The boy had now been a week in the service of Messrs. Crumpett and
Hawker. And although every minute of the weary hours he passed daily at
that dread place, No. 24 Trafalgar Square, had grown already to be one
long and unceasing tribulation; although he could not sleep at night
for thinking of what the remorseless morrow had in store; although he
was nearly debarred altogether from his lifelong intercourse with the
ancient authors; although he was so weary with labour and humiliation
by the hour of seven that he could scarcely drag his limbs along the
streets, he was yet sustained continually by the thought that he was
gaining pieces of silver to maintain that sanctuary which awaited him,
in the midst of millions upon millions of street-persons, for the
purpose of affording a solace for his distress.
When the first week’s wages were put into his hand, three dull florins
and four worn shillings, the quick tears sprang into his eyes. He
placed the coins in his pocket with trembling fingers. There and then
he longed to run out into the streets of the great city to shout his
joy. Such an achievement as this was too wonderful to realize; the
dreams of his wildest avarice had been exceeded. How those pieces of
silver burnt in his pocket throughout the interminable hours of the
afternoon! How he longed for the hour of seven to strike that he might
run back to the little room and lay them before his father!
He was still more severely censured that afternoon by Mr. Dodson.
He even suffered the ignominy of being summoned to the table by Mr.
Walter Pater Walkinshaw, and of being admonished publicly for his
incompetence. He was spoken to so sternly, and he felt the position
in which he stood to be one of such humiliation, that in spite of the
frantic efforts he put forth to conquer his weakness in the presence of
others, the tears came again into his eyes.
“I--I will do better, sir,” he said, in such a tone of distress that it
seemed to soften the smiles of those who heard the words. “I--I will do
better. I am praying continually that I may do better.”
“What can one do with a fellow like that?” said Mr. Walkinshaw
subsequently, in an eloquent aside to his second in command, Mr.
Aristophanes Luff. “I suppose he suffers from a form of religious
mania; at least a child could see that he is mentally weak. I am
sure he ought to be complained of; he is not anything like up to our
traditions; how Mr. Octavius could have fallen into such an error
heaven only knows; but really I haven’t the heart to say so.”
“There can be no doubt he is a little deficient mentally,” observed Mr.
Aristophanes Luff, “but perhaps we might give him another week.”
Seven o’clock struck at last, and the clerks discarded their pens
and went home. The boy was always the last to go forth, not because
he had been told to remain; it was simply that his curiously innate
sense of the fitness of things, which was out of all harmony with his
development in the practical sciences, declared that he must never seek
to take precedence of his elders. To-night a fire was kindled in his
veins. It seemed as though the others would never close their desks and
go. He could hardly curb his desire to rush out before them all. But
at last they had all left the counting-house, and he was at liberty to
carry the treasure to his father in the little room.
Like one possessed he ran home with the pieces of silver making wild
music in his pocket. He seemed almost delirious with joy as he threaded
his way through the press with a heedlessness which seemed almost
contemptuous. It was truly astonishing with what ease and lightness he
had already come to move about the great world out of doors. To-night
he did not fear the crossings in the least. He felt no desire to shrink
from the ever-pressing crowd of street-persons who formerly had elbowed
him into the gutter. To-night he could bear his part with all who
walked abroad in that vast city.
When he reached the little room his father was still occupied in the
shop. With a remarkable suppression of his all-mastering desire, he
determined to wait until eight o’clock until the shop was closed for
the night before he laid out his treasure before his father. It must
be a solemn ceremonial. There must be no disturbing influence; his
father must be his alone when he confided to his keeping the first
pieces of silver he had won by the sweat of his brow and the travail of
his spirit.
Just as it had seemed that seven o’clock would never come, it now
seemed that eight o’clock would never come either. The pieces of
silver appeared to be playing strange tricks in his pocket. But with a
concentration of the will, which he felt to be stupendous, he set about
preparing the frugal supper for them both. If the repression of his
feeling of triumph were to kill him he must not let it gain expression
until his father had closed the shop.
Perversely enough his father, all unconscious, did not come into the
little room until a quarter-past eight. They sat down together at their
evening meal. The man looked with a curious wistfulness into the face
of the boy. The eyes were almost weird in their brightness; the pale
cheeks were strangely flushed. He rose and took from the hearth a pot
of warm broth, which he placed before the boy. Involuntarily the boy
drew away from it with a little gesture of repugnance.
His father besought him to eat the broth.
“Oh no, no, my father,” said the boy, with a shudder, “there is flesh
in it!”
By a supreme effort of the will the boy swallowed his milk and ate
his bread, and cleared the table, and trimmed the hearth before he
disclosed his pieces of silver. He even contrived to clothe his
unseemly and vainglorious eagerness with a kind of humility as he laid
each piece side by side upon the tablecloth.
“Behold, my father!” he said in a choking whisper, “I have won my first
pieces of silver!”
His father enfolded him in tender arms. The slight frame was quivering
like that of an imprisoned bird.
“Kiss me, my father,” he said, with that simplicity which his father
could only obey.
The man pressed a caress upon the gaunt cheek.
“Let us kneel, my father, together before these pieces of silver,” said
the boy.
They knelt together.
“Thou dost not rejoice as do I, O my father!” said the boy, searching
the eyes of the white-haired man. “These pieces of silver do not seem
to bring you gladness. And yet I have shouted my joy. To-night I know
the pangs of happiness that Hannibal and Cæsar and Alexander felt.
To-night I am fit to woo the priestess of Delphi.”
“We lose the Promethean fire as age falls about us,” said his father.
“We do not dance nor pipe, neither do we sing. But I salute thee,
Achilles. Ave, ave, my brave one!”
“I never thought to see this hour,” said the boy, gathering up the
pieces of silver and placing them in his father’s hand. “I know not
what they have cost me, my father, but now I would that the cost were a
hundred times more.”
“Is it not a pious thought, beloved one,” said his father, “that that
which we render is given to us again?”
“I have wrought greatly in the practical sciences during the week past,
my father,” said the boy. “My power increases hour by hour; the persons
in the streets are nothing like so mysterious to me as they were; and
yet still there are great waste places. There is, indeed, much to
learn, my father, much to learn.”
To-night his mood was one of rare expansion. He spoke unceasingly of
what the future bore. The ten pieces of silver acted like a wine of
great potency upon the too-delicate strings of the mind.
“Every day, every hour, every minute I am growing in stature,” he said.
“Every time my heart beats, my father, I am more than I was. To-night I
feel a royal courage stirring in my flesh. There is much to learn, my
father, much to learn, but one day I feel sure I shall learn it all.”
“And when thou hast learnt it all, Achilles?” his father asked.
“Why--why of course, my father, when I have learnt it all I shall
commence author,” said the boy.
That evening, for the first time in his life, he showed his contempt
for the darkness by going up-stairs to bed without a candle. His father
continued to sit at the table in the little room all the night through,
consulting one page after another of the aged tome, which was bound
so massively, until the chill morning light crept over the top of
the shutters. He then walked out bare-headed, slow of gait, into the
vapours of the dawn.