When William Jordan returned again to the little room his father
greeted him in silence. The aged man whose hair was now snow-white,
whose eyes were dim, whose limbs were enfeebled, looked upon the
returned wayfarer without speech and without question.
“I observe, my father,” said the young man, peering into the failing
eyes, “that you were of good faith.”
“I had your assurance, Achilles, that you would return,” said the aged
man.
“You have no curiosity, my father,” said the young man. “You do not ask
whether my journeyings, like those of Odysseus of old, were fraught
with hazard and great vicissitude.”
“With that measure of sight that still remains to me, beloved one,”
said his father, “I observe that to be the case.”
The young man smiled with a kind of submission.
“I am entered upon the third phase,” he said, “the third and the
last. The time is brief. I hear already the first faint lappings
of the waters of oblivion in my ears. But I have acquired a store
of knowledge. I went out in anguish and bewilderment; I return in
self-security. If only the strength be given to my right hand in these
last days I shall commence author.”
“Will you write in the book, beloved one?” said the old man, whose
enfeebled frame had now scarce the power to lift the great volume from
the shelf.
The young man looked the pages through with a patient scrutiny.
“There are many blank pages,” he said. “There are many to be filled.”
“Their number is infinite,” said the old man. “As long as our dynasty
continues there will always be a page to be filled.”
“Yet he who fails to write therein,” said the young man, “places a term
to the dynasty, does he not, my father?”
“Verily, beloved,” said his father, “it is written so.”
“I must go out into the wilderness again, my father,” said the young
man with the new glamour in his large bright eyes. “It may then be
given to me to write in the book.”
From this day forth the young man spent his outdoor hours in many and
strange places, without pain, without trepidation, without his previous
hurry of the spirit. He walked fearlessly among the crowded streets,
reading the faces of those he found therein. Sometimes he would go
afield and enter the country lanes and the woodland places and read the
face of Nature.
Under the cover of the darkness his friend Dodson would sometimes tap
upon the shutters of the shop. The young man would immediately leave
his books, for he had returned to those companions of his early days,
and would go forth with his friend into the streets of the great city.
On the side of each there was an odd fear: James Dodson would never
venture abroad upon these excursions without turning up his coat collar
and pulling down his hat over his eyes, and he earnestly besought
William Jordan to follow his example.
“If it leaks out that we still walk out together,” said Jimmy Dodson,
“I am done for socially, and I shall lose my three hundred a year.”
On the other hand William Jordan’s constant fear was lest his friend
in a moment of unguarded impetuosity should pass through the shop and
penetrate over the threshold of the little room.
“Jimmy,” he said, with that directness of speech which was his recent
possession, “I would urge upon you never to pass beyond the threshold
of the little room in which I and my father dwell, until that hour
should come wherein you are told to enter.”
“I promise, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, assenting readily, “and I ask
you not to breathe it to a living soul that we still walk out together.
Really I don’t know why we do. I seem to be taking my life in my hand,
yet I feel as though I haven’t the power to help myself. The fact is I
can’t do without you, Luney.”
However, the time was at hand when these evening excursions were much
curtailed. In the course of his daily wanderings abroad, the young
man in his new and high courage, found himself on one occasion in a
dreadful slum in the eastern part of the great city. Once before in the
early days of his childhood when, holding the hand of his father, he
was wont to go forth to seek knowledge, he had found himself in this
dismal place. And such was the terror it aroused in him that his dreams
were haunted for many nights. But this day he traversed these regions,
which he had never thought to dare to enter again, calmly, fearlessly
and alone.
And in the middle of the most noisome part of the slum, he observed a
stalwart man in a shabby black coat, and a very old hat, and trousers
frayed at the end, and ugly and misshapen shoes with their strings
hanging loose, talking to two ragged and filthy urchins whose bare legs
were plastered with mud, who were revelling in the gutter.
The young man stood a little apart watching these three until the
boys went away, and then he approached the man and said as he took
off his hat: “I beg your pardon, sir, but I would like to help you in
your labours. I would like to instruct those children in reading and
writing, and in other simple arts in which they seem to be deficient.”
The man was frankly pleased by this address.
“Come to-night to the mission at half-past eight,” he said brusquely,
“and we will find work for your hands. See, there is the mission.” He
pointed across the street to a grimy building of mean exterior, with a
lamp over the door.
Accompanied by James Dodson, who left him at the door, the young man
came to the mission at half-past eight that evening. Thenceforward
every night of the week, he came there at the same hour and in the same
company. At the end of a month, the stalwart man, who was somewhat
grim of aspect, and rather rough of manner, and who was spoken of as
“The Boss,” said: “I don’t know whether you are aware of it, Jordan,
but already you have made a difference to us. We other fellows will be
getting jealous. You have something that has been given to none of us.”
“I think it is,” said William Jordan, “that I am come among my own
people.” And he added wistfully, “I would that the time was not so
brief.”
In the little room he was now saying to his father constantly, “My
knowledge has such increase, my father, that now it begins to bear upon
me. If only the strength were given to my right hand I would commence
author immediately.” And sometimes he would add almost with petulance,
“This delay begins to press upon me like a stone. The time is so brief.”
At this period he seemed to have journeyed far from the high-wrought
excitement and terror which had made his early years so dark. As
he said to his father one day: “I walk now upon the seas and the
mountains. I live by the light of the sun.”
Yet now and again the excitements of his former days would return upon
him, not perhaps in the same degree, but in such a manner as to shake
and wear a frame which every day appeared to grow more frail.
One evening when he returned from the mission the fever of his youth
seemed to be burning in his veins. His pallor was intense; his eyes
had never looked so eerie in their lustre.
“My father,” he said in a strange voice, and his gaunt form quivered
like gossamer; “to-night I looked upon my mother’s face.”
His father peered at him with eyes of almost horrified perplexity.
“I saw,” said the young man, “a wretched unhappy woman, all bent and
bedraggled, creep from a gutter, and pass through a narrow and filthy
alley leading to the darkest of the slums.”
His father’s bewilderment changed to an expression of singular
poignancy.
“Do you ask, Achilles, for the history of your birth?” he said.
“Yes, my father,” said the young man. “I will hear that wonderful
story. Perchance it may help me to inscribe my page in the book.”
His father took the hands of the young man within his own.
“It happened, O Achilles,” said his father, “that I was sitting in this
little room one bitterly inclement winter’s night, in which the rain
and sleet came down in a flood, and I was reading that page in the
book wherein it says we are to cherish the weak, when I heard a faint
knocking upon the shutters of the shop. It was a very late hour, yet I
went forth to open the door; and a poor ragged woman, all bedraggled
and unkempt, and with great eyes haunted by fear, flung herself upon my
kindness, crying that she was faint with hunger and that she had not
known food and security all that day.
“I allowed her to enter the shop; but in a moment of unwariness, in the
excitement that her strange coming had provoked in my veins, I turned
and entered this little room to procure a box of matches to obtain a
light, never dreaming that so poor a creature would have the temerity
to follow upon my steps. But as I took the box of matches off the
chimney-piece where, as you know, they are always kept, and as I turned
again, I beheld to my horror and consternation that the poor creature
had entered the room.
“There was only one thing then that I could do, Achilles; it was to
permit her to sit and eat and learn the warmth of this little hearth.
And no sooner had she done this than she fell asleep, and leaned
her youthful head upon this little table, which for so many years
has supported the burden of the mighty book. And as she lay there,
Achilles, sleeping the grateful sleep of weariness, her breathing
presence appeared to expand the walls of this small apartment, and as I
looked again into the book, full many a page which previously had had
no purport, gave up its secret to my bewildered eyes.
“It was not until it was broad noon that the poor creature awoke, and
she said in almost the voice of a small child, ‘I like this little room
of yours; it is a sweet and pleasant room; I think I will stay in it
for ever.’
“‘This room can have only one occupant,’ I said to the woman.
“‘It is so nice,’ she said, speaking in the strange tongue which you
have heard in the streets of the great city, ‘it is so nice.’ Yet she
shivered so dismally that I was driven again to the Book.
“And from one of the pages that had been newly revealed to me, I saw
that he who would write in the book must first continue the dynasty;
and he who would continue the dynasty must not live to himself.
“Now, Achilles, already the passion had been long in my veins to write
in the book of my fathers, where all the primal wisdom of the ages
had been garnered; and as it was revealed suddenly to my gaze in what
manner I must equip myself for the task, I let the woman stay.
“For a whole year the delicate and youthful creature stayed in this
little room; yet all through those wonderful months her great eyes were
ever haunted by fear. Sometimes in the midnight hours she would listen
there against the shutters, as so many times, Achilles, you have also
listened, at the wind in the chimneys and the great roar of London, and
she would say in a voice that thrilled with terror, yet half-choked
by the beatings of her heart, ‘I am thinking of that night in which
the streets of the great city will call to me. For I was born in the
streets of the great city, and my blood must ever obey their cry.’
“To myself, Achilles, that year in which the woman remained with me in
the little room was crowded with an experience that was rich and rare,
which my mind, widely furnished as it was with the ancient and modern
authors, and fortified also with the infinite wisdom of the Book of
the Ages, had never known before. But as the months passed, and the
delicate and frail creature grew beautiful in my sight--so beautiful
that I would pray sometimes that I might die before her beauty faded--I
began to understand that it was not in the power even of this little
room of ours to retain the possession of a thing so exquisite.
“I would lie with her all night with her hand in mine, fearful lest
all unknown to me she should hear the cry of the streets in the
never-ceasing voice of the great city, and that I should awake in the
morning and find her gone. And many times did I turn to the Book for
solace and counsel; and the Book declared that he who would retain his
treasure must first write his page therein.
“Now although I kept my knees unceasingly to the floor of this little
room, polished smooth by many kneelings, it was not given to me to
write in the Book. And the fear mounted in my heart that when the
streets of the great city uttered their cry, this little room would not
be able to resist it. And the frail and delicate creature knew it also;
for she would sit there in that old chair in which you, my beloved
Achilles, have been wont to sit so long at the ancient authors, and I
have seen the grey tears course down her thin and pale cheeks. ‘The cry
of the streets of the great city will soon be heard now,’ she would
say mournfully, ‘it may summon me at any moment now.’
“As her time came near, in my despair and my anguish I took a
vainglorious vow. I swore upon the Book of the Ages that my child
should be born here in this little room. Night and day I kept vigil
over that frail and beautiful form, lest it should be spirited away
with that cry which it could not resist. As each new day seemed about
to herald the pangs of her labour, only to postpone them ere it was
out, I sought by all the means in my power not to fail for a single
instant in my vigil. I took potent drugs to banish sleep from my eyes.
For I came to know that the instant sleep overpowered me, the streets
of the great city would utter their cry.
“And so it was. For more than a week had I with my frantic vigilance
kept my weariness at bay, when one night as I was still conning the
Book for the sustenance in which I had never stood in such dire
need, and the frail, unhappy creature sat there in the chair weeping
softly, with her eyes haunted by an ever-deepening terror, she cried
out despairingly, ‘Hark, I hear the voice of the streets rising above
the roar of the great city. I must go, I must go; I can never bear a
man-child in this little room of yours. It is written in my heart that
I must bear it in the streets.’
“The wildly terrified creature rose from the chair. Her eyes were such
that I dare not look upon.
“‘The streets are calling to me,’ she wailed piteously. ‘I must bear my
man-child in the streets of the great city.’
“And as I rose to take her in my arms, and to withhold her by main
force from her purpose, for her slender fingers were already upon the
door, I was overcome by the decree of nature. Stupefied by the fatigues
of many days, I sank back in my chair, with my head sunk upon the open
pages of the Book, asleep.
“When I awoke the sun was high in the heavens of a bright and
beautiful winter’s day. There was a thick mantle of snow on the tiles
and the chimney-stacks, and the untrodden pavement of the little yard
without the door. I found myself to be shivering in every limb; the
fire had passed many hours from the grate in the little room; but the
chill that was upon everything was as nought to that which bound the
strings of my heart. For the unhappy creature had gone forth into the
snow of the streets of the great city, so that her man-child might
there be born.
“I never looked to see her again, for when I turned to the Book of the
Ages I found it written therein that I should not do so. But further it
exhorted me to be jealous of my man-child, for it was written therein
that he would be one of the great ones of the earth.
“And so hour by hour I went out to search the streets of the great city
for that which had been born to me, but for many days my labour was
vain. Yet once, as I returned at midnight from my fruitless search,
dejected in mind and weary in limb, my feet touched a soft bundle that
had been deposited upon the threshold of the shop. You, Achilles, were
that bundle, but it has never been given to me to look again upon her
that bore you.”
The young man listened to the story of his birth with the calm
passiveness which is the crown of great knowledge. He yielded to none
of the emotions that so strange a recital was likely to arouse. When it
was at an end he said softly, “I think you have done well, my father,
to defer the recital of my birth until I have entered upon my third
phase. Much that had otherwise been dark now stands revealed.”
“I would cherish the assurance from your lips,” said the white-haired
man, with a look piteous to behold, “that I have done well to reveal
this history unto you. Canst you forgive, my brave son, the frail and
blind agent of Destiny?”
With a swiftness of answer that caused the eyes of the old man to brim
with tears, the young man took him to his bosom.
“This is indeed Achilles,” said the aged man, “this is indeed Achilles.
And yet--and yet, although this is he whom I begot, it has not been
given to me to write my page in the Book.”
“And should you fail to write your page in the Book, my father,” said
the young man, “is it not that our dynasty is at an end?”
“It is written so,” said his father.
The young man stood with bowed head and close lips.
“I read your thought, valiant one,” said the old man, with a dull
anguish in his eyes.
“Perchance it is not my final thought,” said the young man. “I am not
yet through the third phase.”