It is not to be surmised that William Jordan, Junior, was in any
sense _persona gratissima_ in the distinguished society in which he
was called upon to move between the hours of eight and seven. In the
eyes of Mr. James Dodson, who, apparently, had annexed the entire
zone of practical wisdom as his province--at least, his range of lore
was amazing, his tactics on all occasions, in the office and out
of it, were masterly in the extreme, while his consummate address
and fertility of resource had long been the despair of all who had
been admitted to the honour of his intercourse--in the eyes of this
considerable scholar in the stern school of experience, William Jordan,
Junior, was no more than an object of contemptuous compassion. At the
hands of this austere master of “hard-shell” practicality he was the
daily recipient of much profound advice which probed the depths of
human wisdom, tempered by more or less severe personal chastisement to
help him to assimilate it.
“They say Nature gives one talent to every cove gratis,” Mr. Dodson
would say as he proceeded thoughtfully to administer reproof and
correction, “but this talent of yours takes a deal of finding, my son.”
During the first weeks of the boy’s servitude he had much to endure.
After the first flush of his triumph had faded, and it burnt itself out
almost as soon as it was born, there was nothing but dogged patience
and continual prayer to sustain him in the course of life which had
been marked out as his own. All too soon the exaltation that attended
the triumph over the apparently insurmountable was succeeded by a
profound dejection. A new and very poignant terror was added to an
existence which, from its first hour, had been over-freighted with
suffering.
He gained surprisingly in the practical sciences in the course of those
first weeks, as his father in the little room was forced to confess,
yet at what an expenditure of spirit, none--not even himself--might
estimate. And almost the first piece of vital knowledge that he
acquired in regard to the relation of that profoundly surprising
and deeply inscrutable enigma, William Jordan, Junior, to its own
surroundings, was that William Jordan, Junior, had a total lack of the
primary essential to a life in the great world out of doors. It was
necessary to act, to do; and as he lay in his bed through the long
watches of the night staining his pillow with a silent and bitter
anguish, he had to make the confession to himself that the capacity for
action was not his.
Sometimes when left quite alone, his hands and limbs and thoughts
would obey the dictates of his will; but at the behest of the cruelly
critical and unsympathetic street-persons, by whom he was encompassed,
he was unable to command his faculties. The simplest acts, the mere
carrying of a book from one desk to another, the addressing of an
envelope, the counting of a pile of letters, all such elementary duties
as these frequently lay beyond his power.
It was not that he did not strive to overcome his own contemptible
shortcomings. Every hour he passed in the counting-house of Crumpett
and Hawker he exerted his will to its fullest, yet the result only
brought down an ampler meed of censure, ill-temper, stern reproaches,
and what, as his knowledge increased and he came to understand it, hurt
him the most cruelly, wounding satire upon him. After he had spent a
fortnight at No. 24 Trafalgar Square, the long room with the clerks
on their high stools, and the quiet, bald-headed gentleman at the low
table in their midst, dominated his thoughts like a hideous dream.
Sleeping and awake this dreadful place darkened his mind. He would
lie all the night through living again all the tragic transactions of
the past day, or foreshadowing in his intensely vivid imagination the
doubtless more tragic transactions of the morrow.
As a rule, about an hour before it was imperative he should rise from
his bed if he were to be at No. 24 Trafalgar Square as the clock
struck eight, he would be worn out by sheer fatigue, and would fall
into a light, fitful doze. Then as the hour for rising came, he would
shudder with horror, although his brain was still half-dazed with the
pangs of weariness it could not satisfy, and he would creep with his
too-sensitive limbs from the grateful warmth of the blankets into the
bitter inclemency of a new and dreadful day.
The unremitting diligence he was called upon to exercise every day
of the week between the hours of eight and seven, to which was added
a degree of mental travail which none of the remorseless task-masters
about him could even suspect, began, ere the first month had run its
course, to tell visibly upon his physical powers. As night after night
he crept back silently into the little room, with his cheeks paler and
more hollow, his forehead more scarred, his eyes more sunken, and at
every one of these joyless returns a heavier hue of tragedy upon his
face, a keener pang would be born in the heart of the aged man who was
there to await him.
“You ask no questions now, beloved one,” his father would say
mournfully. “And you read no longer in the ancient authors. Can it be,
Achilles, that already you are well enough found in knowledge?”
“I begin to believe, my father,” said the boy, “that my knowledge is
already too great.”
His tone was such that his father had never heard before from his lips.
“I seem to know already, my father, that I am not of the blood royal,”
he said, with his speech falling thick; “I begin to feel that I shall
never be admitted into that most high company that holds festival with
Zeus. I am the craven-hearted one, my father; for such as me there is
no place in the great world out of doors.”
The boy laid his tired eyes to the wood of the table with a gesture of
despair.
“Courage, beloved one,” said his father, laying his hands about his
shoulders with a woman’s tenderness. “Every strong soul now in Hades
had its moment of repining. These mighty ones were often in tears.”
No words, however, would bring consolation to the boy.
“There is no place in the great world out of doors for the
craven-hearted,” he would say continually at this time.
Upon the evening of the last day of the fourth week his father
proposed to him that he should spare a frame that by now seemed no more
than a reed.
“I think I must tell you, Achilles,” he said, “that our little room is
in no immediate danger of being taken from us. I have been thinking
that perhaps it were better that you rested from your too-great labours
for a while.”
“No, no, my father,” said the boy almost fiercely for one of such
strange gentleness, “I was fearing that you would speak to me thus.”
“Other labours might be found for you,” said his father; “labours, my
noble Achilles, more consonant to your quality.”
“No, no, my father,” said the boy, “I would not have you speak thus to
a flesh that is frail with its weakness. And pray mock me with the name
of Achilles no more.”
“Is it a mockery, beloved one, to call a hero by the name he has always
borne?” said his father.
The boy rose from the table with haggard cheeks.
“I have no right to bear so great a name,” he said. “I usurped it upon
no better pretext than a false and beguiling ignorance. I pray you, my
father, do not mock me with that name. It is the badge of other clay
than this. My valour is too little. I am the constant sport of the
great world out of doors.”
“Art thou the first hero who has been despised, beloved one?” said his
father.
“I can wear no proud name,” said the boy, refusing all consolation,
“until I have won it at the point of the sword. In this little room of
ours I am Achilles; but in the great world out of doors I am another,
and him the great world out of doors accounts as less than nought.”
About the time the sixth week of his labours passed, he said one
evening to his father, when overcome with despair, “I think, my father,
I have learned too little or too much. I find that the great world out
of doors is not at all as the ancient authors have depicted it in
their writings; yet I cannot believe that they would play me false.
But it is all most strange. The world of men and things is not in the
least as rendered to me by the books in the shop. I cannot comprehend
it; and yet sometimes I seem to comprehend it beyond the measure of my
strength.”
“I think, beloved one,” said his white-haired father softly, “the time
is now at hand when you may be permitted to look into the volume yonder
upon the shelf. Who knows that it may not melt a little of the darkness
from your heart?”
Weak and spent as the boy now was, at these words his pulses thrilled
with expectation. From his earliest childhood this high moment had been
in his thoughts. And now it had come upon him suddenly in an hour when
least anticipated, and when the least merited. It was the evening of
Saturday of the sixth week, and it had seemed as he had crept over the
threshold of the little room that any prolongation of the term through
which he had passed would break him in pieces. To live through another
week like the one from which he had just emerged would be beyond the
strength of his frame.
But this proposal of his father’s, just as he felt his strength to be
failing, had endowed his veins with new life. How many times had he
feasted his imagination on that mysterious tome which was bound so
massively, wherein his father read! Would it ever be his happiness to
read in it too? And now the hour was at hand!
“Canst thou raise the volume from the shelf, Achilles?” his father
asked.
“If Achilles cannot, my father,” said the boy, “he is fit neither to
live nor to die.”
Yet the next moment, in dire anguish, he had made the discovery that
his frame was so weak that it could not lift the massive volume from
the shelf.
“It is as I feared,” he gasped; “I am fit neither to live nor to die.”
Three times he essayed to raise the mighty tome; three times he failed.
“I will raise it for thee, beloved one,” said his father.
“No, no, my father,” he cried wildly, “I am not fit to read in the book
until I have the strength to bear it in my arms.”
Totally vanquished in mind and body, he crept up the dark stairs to
his room. Without sufficient strength to remove his clothes he flung
himself down, burying his eyes in the pillows of the bed; and the next
day being Sunday, he slept deeply, dreamlessly, with entire abandonment
until six o’clock in the evening. He was awakened by the metallic
tinkling of bells.
When he awoke and walked down the stairs into the little room it seemed
that a pall had been lifted from his spirit. He discovered his father
to be reading in the mighty tome.
“First I will eat, my father,” he said, “and then I will try again.”
His father replaced the great book upon the shelf, and then set before
him a basin of food he had prepared with his own hands.
“There is flesh in it,” said the boy, making a gesture of repugnance.
“It may enable you, Achilles, to raise the book from the shelf,” said
his father.
It cost the boy infinite distress to swallow the gross food, but he
did so at last. For now he felt strong in mind and body, owing to the
wonderful refreshment of sleep. And having supped more resolutely than
for many weeks past, he said, “And now, my father, if it is the will of
the Most High I will bear the great volume in my hands.”
To his unspeakable joy the power was rendered to him to lift it from
the shelf. He placed it upon the table, and unlocked it with a curious
key his father gave him.
“Perhaps it were well to invoke the Most High, my father,” he said,
“that my eyes may prove faithful unto me.”
They knelt together in the little room.
The boy opened the volume at the first page of vellum. He could
scarcely breathe because of the beating of his heart. Yet the faded
red characters, a thousand years old, proved beyond the power of his
understanding. His learning was such that it could comprehend the
curious words that they formed; it could surmount the antique spelling;
but when with consummate skill he had rendered what was there written
into strange phrases, they bodied forth no meaning.
“Oh, my father, what is this?” he cried in consternation. “I see, but I
do not heed; I behold, but I do not understand.” The tragic hue of his
countenance grew deeper. “I beseech thee, gentle-hearted One,” he cried
aloud, “do not make me also the sport of the Most High!”
“Patience, Achilles,” said his father, with a smile of strange beauty.
His father himself turned over the crinkling parchments of the massive
volume. He turned to a middle page in the strange old book, and ever
smiling softly, placed his finger upon a particular passage.
“Look again, beloved one,” said his father.
The boy bore again his fearful eyes to the faded yellow page. Slowly he
spelt out the words and represented them to his mind. Then he paused
and gathered himself to his full height. His chin was upheld, his
hands were clenched, his eyes were closed, his slow-drawn breaths were
audible. Quite suddenly the ineffable look of his father’s appeared in
his face.
“Yes, yes, yes, I understand, I understand!” he muttered to himself.
“My father,” he broke out with a wild little cry, “these must be the
words of the first author in the world!”
He flung his arms about his father’s neck.
“How shall I ever requite thee, my father,” he cried, “for teaching me
to read in a book such as this!”
“Is it not meet, O Achilles,” said his father, “that thou shouldst read
in the book that the ages have wrought for their child?”
Like those of one entranced, the eyes of the boy sought the yellow page
again and again. He spelt out the antique words of all that was there
written, and pondered them with his finger raised to his lips. He then
saluted the parchment devoutly, and again he knelt.
“I am indeed Achilles,” he cried; “the magic page of the gods is spread
before me!”
“Wilt thou forswear thy birthright again, O Achilles?” said his father,
whose eyes were quick with many tender, yet grave, questionings.
“Never, never, O my father,” cried the boy, “lest it should not be
given to me to read in the Book of the Ages again!”