When at last Jimmy Dodson had gone to catch his train to Peckham,
William Jordan, who still held the large pile of manuscript upon his
knees, proffered it to his father, saying: “My father, I would have you
read to me this little treatise upon human life.”
The old man, who had not as yet looked upon the labours of his son,
received the mass of papers from his hands; and in his peering,
half-blind eyes was an extraordinary concentration. His feeble frame
possessed by tremors, he sat down at the opposite side of the hearth to
peruse that upon which he hardly dared to gaze.
In the face of William Jordan, although there was a remarkable
composure and self-security, there was also an expectation amounting
almost to anguish, and in the great eyes, which no longer had lustre,
there was the intentness that is seen in the eyes of the blind.
As soon as the old man began to read in his weak quavering voice, his
face, which was so bloodless and ascetic, broke out into a suffusion of
stern and almost uncontrollable joy. The poet, who could not discern
this remarkable expression, bent his head to listen; and as the roll
and cadence of the lines he had wrought came upon his ears he drew in
his breath sharply with half a sob and half a sigh.
All through the night the aged man, his father, read aloud the poem in
his weak quavering voice. As he did so, not he only, but the author of
it sat with the inanimation of statues. They seemed neither to breathe
nor to move; yet sometimes the tears would flow from the eyes of both.
At other times every kind of emotion would pass across their faces:
terror, joy, pity, laughter, bewilderment, protest, acceptance.
Hour after hour sped, and the passion engendered by the reading seemed
to mount in the veins of each. At last towards the afternoon the old
man’s voice failed him, and through sheer physical weakness he could
read no more.
“Pray continue, O Achilles,” said the old man. “I am now old, and
Nature fails me.”
“Nay, my father,” said the poet, “Nature has failed me also. I would
have you repose a little, and then I would have you continue in your
task.”
In obedience to the poet’s request, the old man laid his reading aside
for a while, yet a few hours hence he resumed. And thus it befell
that when Jimmy Dodson knocked upon the shutters of the shop at eight
o’clock, no heed was paid to his summons. He knocked again and again;
his blows were so loud that they echoed all about the street; yet
although he could discern a thread of light stealing from the room
behind the shop his demand met with no answer.
He tried the door of the shop, but it was secure. However, his
imperious need armed him with resources; for climbing up by means of
a niche in the shutters, he peered through an aperture at the top. He
owed it to an infinite good fortune that the door of the little room
was open wide; and he who looked was able to observe its two occupants
sitting either side of the hearth. The white-haired old man with a
great pile of papers upon his knees was reading aloud to his son; and
as revealed by the shadows of the lamp the faces of both were suffused
by a most singular emotion.
The evening following at the same hour Dodson returned again to the
shop; yet again to his profound astonishment admittance was denied
to him. Climbing up for the second time to peer over the top of the
shutters he found the cause of his exclusion to be the same.
On the third evening, however, when he knocked upon the shutters he was
admitted by the old man.
When Jimmy Dodson crossed the threshold of the little room, William
Jordan, who still sat by the side of the fire with the great pile of
his writings once more upon his knees, lifted his dull eyes towards
his friend, and said with his lips yielding in a smile of exquisite
mobility, “Embrace me, my dear friend, embrace me!”
In the gestures of William Jordan was a calm authority that his friend
did not seek to withstand. With a somewhat disconcerted bewilderment he
deferred to the poet.
“Luney, old boy,” he said nervously, “I have been making a few
inquiries about the publication of poetry. Octavius says there is not a
publisher in London who would touch your--your poem, unless it happened
to be something quite out of the way.”
The faces of father and son seemed to embody a single yet occult
meaning, yet the eyes of the poet now held no lustre.
“Fear not, good friend,” said William Jordan in his soft, clear speech,
yet in a tone of such curious sombre irony as Jimmy Dodson had never
heard upon his lips before. “I do not think you need fear to carry my
little treatise on human life to the house of Crumpett and Hawker at
No. 24 Trafalgar Square.”
The poet laughed a gentle laughter which caused his friend to look at
him in bewilderment.
“Luney, old boy,” he said, “what has happened to you lately? I always
used to say, you know, that no power on earth would cause you to laugh.
You always used to be so serious.”
“I laugh now, Jimmy, because I am so happy,” said the poet.
“And what has made you so happy, old boy?” said his friend.
“The knowledge, Jimmy, that I am a prince of the blood.”
Jimmy Dodson gave a gasp of bewilderment. In mute astonishment he
gazed at him who made this inordinate statement; who sat so grave and
so composed, and whose singularly clear voice uttered the words with
a sincerity which made them seem rational. “I can’t understand him,
I can’t understand him!” muttered Jimmy Dodson in dismay. “His words
and his acts are totally wrong, yet I never saw a man who seemed so
marvellously right.”
Jimmy Dodson turned to the father of the poet in an incredulous aside.
“What _does_ he mean?” he said. “He says he is happy because he is a
prince of the blood.”
“Would he be of that estate if he were not happy?” said the old man,
with a quietude that increased Jimmy Dodson’s dismay.
“Ye-es, I suppose not,” said Jimmy Dodson in a kind of despair. He
looked from the father to the son, from the son to the father, yet in
vain he sought to read the riddle of their words.
The white-haired man laid his hand on the great pile of writings which
the poet held upon his knees.
“You would not doubt,” said the old man in a tone of mild
expostulation, “that the creator of this was of the blood royal?”
Jimmy Dodson did not know how to dissemble his surprise. Yet even as he
stood confronting the silent, but almost stern interrogations of the
father and the son, he knew that an answer was necessary; and further
it was borne in upon him what the nature of that answer must be.
“Oh no,” said the young man, and with an assumption of carelessness
that sat upon him ungracefully, “I should not doubt it for a moment--of
course not, not for a moment, because--well, because, you see, I happen
to know the author. But some chaps--some chaps who don’t happen to
know the author might doubt it unless they had the proof.”
“Here, O friend, is the proof of the infinite power of my right hand,”
said the poet, caressing almost proudly with his frail fingers that
which he had wrought. “You yourself shall examine it; and then as I
know you to be worthy of trust you shall carry it to the house of
Crumpett and Hawker; and you shall desire them to print it, but of
course, as I say, you will not divulge the name of the author.”
“Yes, yes, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson faintly, “of course I will
not divulge the name of the author. But suppose Crumpett and
Hawker--suppose, old boy, Crumpett and Hawker take it into their
heads--take it into their fat heads--you never know what publishers
will do, old boy, do you?--suppose they take it into their fat heads to
refuse your novel, or your poem, or your treatise, or whatever you call
it?”
The poet smiled.
“Courage, faithful one,” he said. “You have yet to read this little
treatise, have you not? You have yet to learn the infinite power of
this right hand. And those worthy street-persons, Messrs. Crumpett and
Hawker, will not their eyes glow with a proud joy when they learn it
also?”
Jimmy Dodson did not dare to look upon the rapt gaze of the sightless
poet.
“Ye-es, old boy,” he said miserably, “ye-es, old boy, I suppose they
will.”
“Their eyes will dazzle,” said the poet, “when they behold that which
has been wrought for them and theirs, and for ages unborn. A man-child
has been wrought out of the soul of Man. Once more the cycle has
completed itself. Fact and Speculation, Reason and Imagination stand
together in a more intimate relation. In all humility I say to you,
dear friend, a new dignity has been given to human nature.”
With an ineffable gesture the poet gave the first pages of his poem
into the hands of his friend.
“I--I really, old boy,” stammered Jimmy Dodson, “I--I am nothing like
good enough scholar to have an opinion about it.”
A divine self-security overspread the gaunt features of the poet.
“It is its merit,” he said, “that it is not food only for the proud. It
is wrought in the simple English speech that is the birthright of the
humblest of our countrymen. It is not wrought for him who sits only in
his little room; it is wrought for all those dear and sweet people who
throng the pavements of the great city. Earth, my mother, issued her
mandate; I obeyed it; many days I sojourned in the soft brown bosom
of the mighty one; I communed with her children; I walked with all
the fair things she had wrought from her own bowels; and in her good
pleasure she touched my lips with speech, and she gave the strength
to my right hand. All who are simple and gentle of heart will take
sustenance from this little treatise upon human life. Scan the first
lines, faithful one, you who are simple and gentle of heart, and then
the pressure of your hand shall tell me that my labours are not vain.”
With indescribable pangs, Jimmy Dodson deferred to the insistence of
the glazed eyes, which, although as lifeless as those of a statue,
seemed to possess the power to hold him in thrall.
Dodson yielded a mournful obedience. In spite of the firm conviction
that his poor friend was now hopelessly overthrown, such an imperious
power seemed to reside in a face that was formerly the mansion of
an exquisite gentleness, that he could not summon the resolution to
resist. But even as the unhappy young man took the first page in his
hand and his eyes met the ordered rows of firm but delicate writing
with which it was covered, he knew how correct was his prophecy. Hardly
a phrase, hardly a word that there was written addressed his reason in
any aspect of coherence or good sense.
There was a long pause, a crucifying silence, in which the poet, his
aged father, and the unhappy reader confronted one another in passive
bewilderment.
The poet seemed to devour the face of his friend with his sightless
eyes.
“W-what shall I tell him?” said Dodson to the old man in the extremity
of anguish.
“Speak only the truth,” said the old man. “Let nought be concealed.
Nature who has vouchsafed to him all things, will preserve the first of
her sons from the stroke of joy.”
“Oh, I can’t speak the truth,” said Dodson. “It would be worse than
hitting him in the face.”
“Can it wound Achilles to receive the affirmation of his quality?” said
the old man, whose voice was like a knell.
Dodson’s veins felt a sharper chill.
“They are both mad,” he muttered, “hopelessly mad!”
The old man took Dodson’s arm in a grip of which none could have
suspected him to be capable; and his pale and wasted features had now
become as imperious as those of the sightless poet.
“You must tell him the truth,” said the white-haired man, whose
countenance was so strangely transfigured, “you must deny nothing to
one who is consumed by the divine hunger for recognition. It is meet
that the creator should be told that his work is good. It is the crown
of his superhuman labours that they should receive the sanction of
those for whom they have wrought.”
“You do not speak to me,” said the poet, in a voice that was rare and
strange. “Is it, friend, that you are no longer----? No, I will not
doubt one whom I love.”
“Speak,” said the old man in the voice of a raven. “The days of
Achilles are now few. Speak, that the faithful may render that which
he needs.”
Dodson felt his own silence to be destroying him.
“I will speak,” he said in terror and despair. “I--I am no scholar,
old boy, as you know. I don’t understand Greek; I know hardly a word
of Latin; but I’ll just say this----” The unhappy Dodson clenched
his hands in desperation. “I’ll just say this--to my mind there is
nothing--there is nothing in the whole of the world----”
The dying poet, whose eyes were sightless, quivered like a stricken
bird.
“Courage, Achilles!” he muttered faintly, pressing his frail hands to
his heart. Then, stretching them forth, he turned his gaunt and grey
face upon his friend. “Give to me those honest hands which I know to be
trembling violently,” he said.
Dodson yielded his hands to those of the blind poet.
“How they tremble, how they tremble!” said the poet. “They have a rarer
eloquence than your lips, my friend. Let them embrace me; let them
embrace me.”
As the unhappy Dodson clasped the frail broken form in his strong arms,
he seemed to learn quite suddenly why those once so lustrous eyes had
the hard glare of stone.
“Oh, Luney, Luney!” he cried in a kind of wail as the truth revealed
itself, “do not tell me that you have been blind all these days and
that I have not known it!”
“A man’s blindness is no affliction,” said the dying poet, “if only
he be secure in his friends. The sight of his eyes is as nothing in
comparison with that which is given to his right hand. My great labours
are near to their fruition, and I have a friend. And I am very happy,
O my friend, and it is in this: the gentle and beneficent Earth, my
mother, who has smitten her son with her caresses, bids me commit to
your care the little treatise I have wrought on human life, on the
life of man, on the life of the proudest of her children. Faithful
friend and servant, I ask you to be the good angel of the public need.
These eyes of mine are now void, as were those of my peers long ago;
and the aged man, my father, is infirm and white-haired and unlearned
in the ways of men--therefore, I confide to your care this which I have
wrought. I ask you to take it away and print it immediately, and spread
it broadcast among all the streets of the great city; and when all the
street-persons have looked on what a lost soul in Hades has fashioned
out of blood and tears, in order that they may find new sustenance,
this weak and frail implement which has revealed the will of the Most
High, shall return again to Earth, his mother, and weary with his great
labours, she shall take him gently upon her breasts.”
The blind poet uttered these strange words with a noble simplicity
which yet filled his friend with dismay. As the great bulk of writing
was committed by the poet into the care of the unhappy Dodson, the
young man, powerful and materialistic as he was, seemed almost to faint
under their intolerable burden.
“Take it, friend,” said the dying poet. “Keep it jealously; it is a
thing without price. And remember that I now count my days. And further
remember my task is not accomplished until your own is fulfilled. Take
this treatise straightway to that great house of publishers, which is
the first of this country, wherein I, a slave, spent seven years of my
existence upon the earth; and see that it is printed and bound with all
the haste possible, and further that it is spread broadcast among all
the persons in the streets of the great city, because until that is
done, I cannot lie at peace.”
The unhappy Dodson stood as one all broken with pain.
“Y-yes,” he said feebly, “I will take them to the office
to-morrow--and--and, old boy, I will tell them to set it up at once.
I--I will tell them that the author is impatient--that he has not much
time--that--that his time is nearly up--and--and that he wants to know
that others know what he has done for them before he goes.”
With a sinking heart the unhappy Dodson made the great pile of
manuscript into a parcel with the aid of brown paper and string,
in precisely the fashion that in former days he had instructed his
_protégé_. As suddenly he recalled his demeanour towards one who had
now acquired a transcendent sanctity, his own eyes grew blind with
their tears. Yet over and above his intolerable emotion, that which
dominated his thoughts, was the knowledge that the mission to which he
was pledged was foredoomed to fail.
“I don’t know much about literature--don’t pretend to,” said the
unhappy young man, as he slipped the string round the parcel in a kind
of dull anguish, “but it wouldn’t surprise me at all, old boy, if this
doesn’t turn out to be the longest poem in the English language.”
“I believe it is a little less than three times the length of the
_Paradise Lost_,” said the poet, with absolute composure, yet touched
by that curious irony that his friend had never understood. “And I am
reminded that I would have them print it with great clearness in three
honest tomes. Each volume should coincide with a phase of the poem;
you will observe that there are three phases to our little treatise,
which correspond with those of human life--three phases through which
the soul of man must pass in its terrestrial journeyings. On the first
page, only the name of the poem must be set forth; the name of the poet
must not appear. And further, good friend, I urge you to observe the
profoundest secrecy as to the authorship of this treatise upon human
life. The identity of the author must never be disclosed.”
“Why must the identity of the author never be disclosed, old boy?”
asked Jimmy Dodson, whose bewilderment and consternation were ever
increasing.
“I am fearful,” said the dying poet, with that curious smile that was
at once proud, gaunt, and melancholy. “I am fearful lest my countrymen
should incur the mockery of future ages by seeking to re-embody the
life of the first among their authors.”
L
Days passed ere Jimmy Dodson returned again to the little room. They
were fraught with dire anxiety for the blind poet and the aged man, his
father. In his heart the old man was filled with despair, and he knew
not how to obtain the strength wholly to conceal his fears. What if he
to whom they had entrusted their priceless treasure should never return
to them again! He had neither the devotion nor the blind faith of the
dying man.
“They are printing it, they are printing it!” the poet would exclaim
many times in the day as he kept the chair beside the hearth.
“What if that strange street-person were never to return to us?” the
old man was moved to ask in his despair on the evening of the sixth day.
“Ah, thou dost not know that brave and faithful one, my father,” said
the dying poet. “He will overcome fire and the sword rather than his
ministry should fail in these last hours of our necessity.”
And on the evening of the seventh day there came a gentle tapping upon
the shutters of the shop. With a cry of eagerness the old man opened
the door in response, and the forlorn figure of Dodson was seen upon
the threshold, his face all drawn with suffering.
“Welcome, welcome,” cried the old man in tones that were thin and
overwrought. “Have you brought back the printed book?”
Dodson recoiled from the old man in a kind of harsh rage. He laid one
hand upon his coat, and said in a morose whisper, “You will have to
know the truth!”
“The truth,” said the old man, with an unsuspectingness which seemed to
exasperate the man from the street. “The truth! Why fear to tell it?”
“The truth is this,” said Dodson. “There is not a publisher in London
who would print poor Luney’s poem.”
The old man fell back against the door of the shop with a little cry.
“But--but the first mind of the age lies at the point of dissolution!”
he exclaimed. “They owe it to themselves that they cherish its fruits.
Do they not know that death itself respects his labours, and awaits
some token of homage from those for whom he wrought?”
“Yes, yes,” said Jimmy Dodson mournfully. “I know all that, my good old
man; I have heard it all before; but you and I must not be high-flown.
We must look the facts in the face. We must deal with things as they
are. A week ago I carried it to Octavius--Octavius, you know, is the
head of our firm, which is the chief, in fact the _only_ publishing
house in London, and therefore, you know, in the world. Well, as soon
as Octavius saw the first page he said, ‘I am afraid, Mr. Dodson, this
will never do,’ I am giving you the precise words he used; it is no use
for you and me to deceive ourselves, is it?”
“Oh, oh,” said the old man incredulously. “But that is the verdict of
only one man, a single street-person, an ignorant man who is neither
gentle nor simple.”
“You may be right,” said Dodson, “and yet again you may be wrong. But
I must tell you, old man, that the house of Crumpett and Hawker has
nothing to learn. What they think to-day, the trade thinks to-morrow.
What they don’t know is not business. And you must understand that
I did not rest content with the opinion of Octavius. I took it
down-stairs and showed it to W. P. Walkinshaw, a highly cultivated
man. And although he does sit down-stairs, he has had a large and
varied experience. And as soon as I had told him what it was, he said,
‘Really, Dodson, one has no need to look. A poem in blank verse, three
times the length of _Paradise Lost_--why, really, my good fellow, there
is not a publishing house in this country who would take the string off
the parcel.’”
“No, no, no,” said the old man, beating his fingers upon the counter
of the shop. “These unbelievers must not be permitted to speak in
ignorance. Is it possible that the human soul can remain insensible to
the nobility of its god-like power?”
“Well, as it happens,” said Dodson mournfully, “I did ask Pa to be kind
enough to pay particular attention to it. But as soon as Pa cast his
eyes over it, he used the identical words that were used by Octavius.
‘I am afraid, Dodson,’ he said, ‘this will never do.’”
“Can it be possible,” cried the old man, “the noblest achievement of
the modern world to be thus discarded!”
“And I didn’t stop at Octavius, and I didn’t stop at Pa,” said the
mournful emissary. “I went up-stairs again to Robert Brigstock, who
gives Octavius a hand with the _belles lettres_, and who is on the
staff of the _Journal of Literature_. And as soon as Robert Brigstock
read that accursed first page, he said, ‘May I ask, Mr. Dodson, has the
writer of this an established reputation?’ ‘Oh, no,’ I had to confess,
‘he is quite a young chap who has never published anything at all.’
‘Well, then, Mr. Dodson,’ said Robert Brigstock, who as I say is on the
staff of the _Journal of Literature_, ‘no one deprecates more firmly
than I do the amazing presumption that is here revealed. The writer
sets out to write a treatise on human life--a somewhat timeworn theme,
Mr. Dodson--which is three times the length of _Paradise Lost_’--I am
telling you word for word what Robert Brigstock said--‘and he does
this in a metre which Homer and Virgil would certainly not have used
had they had to deal with the English language. Can anything be more
presumptuous, than that an unknown writer--who surely has been to
neither of our universities, or most certainly he would never have
proposed to perpetrate such a gratuitous piece of effrontery--that a
man who has not received a regular education should attempt that which
would give pause to all the foremost of our English poets, from Chaucer
to the Poet Laureate, poets, Mr. Dodson, whose reputations have long
been established beyond the range of controversy?’ And if you had seen
Robert Brigstock, who as a rule is the mildest and most amiable and
most polite of all fellows imaginable, who is a bit of a poet himself,
begin to work himself up into a kind of frenzy over that first page,
you would have understood, old man, far more clearly than I can hope to
make you understand, how hopeless it is to get any publisher--I don’t
care who--to undertake poor Luney’s effort on his own responsibility.”
The aged father of the dying poet gave a groan of despair. He lifted up
his feeble arms, which seemed to be smitten with palsy, and uttered a
high quavering cry of imprecation.
“Are these the tidings we must bear to the dying Achilles!” he cried.
“Must we thus affront that mighty warrior who lies all spent and broken
from his great labours!”
“Well, old man,” said Dodson, who could not forbear to pity such a
distress as this, yet whose robust common-sense in the crisis they had
reached had never been so valiant, “well, old man, there is only one
thing we can do if we are to bring poor Luney’s poem to the public
notice. We must print it and publish it at our own expense.”
“Yes, yes,” said the old man eagerly, “of course we must do that. And
we must do it immediately because the sands of life are running out.”
“Yes, I have thought of all that,” said Dodson, “and I have made some
inquiries of the firm. But of course it is going to cost money.”
“Money!” said the old man.
“A lot of money. I have talked to Octavius about it. I am on very good
terms with Octavius, and as a sort of special favour to me, Octavius
says Crumpett and Hawker will break through their invariable rule of
not publishing on commission; and they are prepared to place their
imprint--their very valuable imprint--on poor Luney’s poem, providing
it is written grammatically--you know Crumpett and Hawker would not
publish the Laureate himself if he failed to write grammatically--and
also, providing that its tendency is not too agnostic, that is to say,
agnosticism impinging on paganism, that is to say that it contains a
definite idea of God--these are Octavius’s own words I am using--and
further that it is not open to the charge of immorality in any shape or
form, in other words, as Octavius says, that it is the kind of thing
that any young girl may place in the hands of her grandmother. Well,
now, everything being all right, Crumpett and Hawker are prepared to
put it in hand at once, and to print two hundred and fifty copies--they
won’t do less--and to issue the poem in three volumes at one guinea
net. The cost, however, will be two hundred pounds, which must be borne
by the author. For this sum they will use good paper, clear type, and
they will bind it in superior cloth, and they will send out fifty
copies for review to the leading London and provincial journals; but
Octavius assures me that Crumpett and Hawker will touch the book only
on these terms, and on no other.”
The old man gave a gasp of consternation.
“Two hundred pounds,” he said weakly, “two hundred pounds!”
“Yes,” said Dodson, “two hundred pounds is a lot of money; but it will
have to be found if poor Luney is to hold his book in his hands before
he dies.”
“I have not a tithe of that great sum among the whole of my worldly
possessions,” said the old man forlornly.
“Nor I,” said Dodson. “I have hardly a red cent. laid by, because you
know I have now to support my people; but if I could lay my hands at
this moment on two hundred pounds, poor Luney’s book should be through
the press before he hears his name called.”
“Come into the shop,” said the old man feebly, “and tell me if you
think some of the venerable tomes on the shelves might produce
that--that large sum.”
Dodson entered the shop and the old man struck a match and lit the
gas. A very brief examination of what Dodson conceived to be a useless
mass of lumber, for all the volumes were very black, faded, dusty, and
stained with time, sufficed to enable him to form a verdict.
“I don’t suppose,” said he with a candour which numbed the old man’s
veins, “the whole lot together would fetch two hundred pence. I never
saw such a collection--never!”
“I must pray for a miracle to happen again,” said the old man. “One
happened to us on a day.”
“Did it indeed?” said Dodson.
“Yes,” said the old man. “The great Achilles was threatened with
expulsion from his little room. Unless I, his custodian, could obtain
the sum of twenty pounds by a certain day, it was ordained that he
should be cast out into the streets of the great city. Yet on the eve
of that day, when all hope had been abandoned, a man out of the street,
a street-person, walked into this shop, looked upon all these shelves,
and took down one after another of these venerable tomes, and paying
over to me the sum of two hundred pounds, walked out of the shop with
one of these old volumes in his care.”
“What was the old volume?” said Dodson, with an air of keen interest.
“A Shakespeare of the first folio,” said the old man.
Dodson gave a low whistle.
“Oh, was it?” he said. “Then I should think that that street-person
was not such a bad judge after all.” James Dodson turned his attention
again to the shelves, in which were many gaps, with a livelier
curiosity. “There don’t appear to be many first-folio Shakespeares left
now,” he said in a tone of keen disappointment. “But it is no good
supposing that there would be; these things have been pretty well gone
through. Some street-person has picked all the pearls these many years,
I expect. All that is left is hardly worth carting away. As I say, all
that remains on your shelves, old man, would barely fetch two hundred
pence.”
“Can we do nothing to obtain the sum of two hundred pounds?” said the
old man. “Surely in this extremity a miracle must happen to us again.”
“I am no believer in miracles myself,” said James Dodson. “I have no
faith in ghosts, spiritualism and sea-serpents either. But it is clear
to my mind that that two hundred pounds has got to be found somehow;
yet it looks as though a miracle _will_ have to happen before it turns
up.”
“And the hours are so brief,” said the old man in his impotence. “Each
day is beyond price; the great Achilles grows frail.”
For a space Dodson was plunged in deep thought. He was not of the
mettle that yields lightly to despair.
“By the way,” he said, “what was that very funny-looking old volume I
saw on the table in your little room--you know, the funny old volume
that seemed to have its pages scrawled over in red ink? Well, now it
has struck me that those pages--I didn’t look at them carefully--were
of the finest vellum of the sort they don’t make now-a-days. If that is
the case a dealer might be willing to pay a good price for it, if the
red scrawl was nicely cleaned off.”
At these words, uttered with singular carelessness, the old man
staggered back against the counter of the shop. He trembled in every
limb, his face was piteous to see.
“You mean the Book of the Ages,” he said. His voice seemed unrelated to
anything in nature.
“I don’t know what you call it,” said Dodson, “but it looks very heavy
and well-bound, and I dare say it is valuable in its way. Vellum of
the old monastic sort fetches a rare good price now-a-days if you know
where to take it. I shall send a chap with a handcart for it to-morrow,
and he shall take it to Temple and Ward, the dealers in Bond Street,
and we will see what can be raised.”
“The Book of the Ages!” said the old man hoarsely; “the Book of the
Ages!”
“Yes,” said Dodson indifferently, “the Book of the Ages--rather a good
name for it. If that vellum is as old as I think it is, and that red
scrawl is nicely got off, and the edges are trimmed, and the surface
is cleaned up a bit, there may be money in it. People do buy such rum
things now-a-days by way of curios, and they don’t seem to mind paying
fancy prices for them either.”
“The Book of the Ages!” the old man repeated. In his peering eyes were
a horror and a consternation that were truly dreadful, yet they were
totally unnoticed by his visitor.
“Of course, you know,” Dodson continued, pursuing this new idea, which,
remote as it was, seemed to afford the only prospect of obtaining two
hundred pounds, “I shall have to pitch a tale about it to the dealers.
I must fix up some sort of a history, you know, about its being found
in the tomb of the Pharaohs, or its being the very identical sheepskin
upon which the Scriptures were written. But you must leave that to me.
I shall go round and see Temple and Ward to-morrow, and you can lay to
it, old man, that I shall have thought of something by then. But, in
the meantime, if you really do believe that miracles happen--I wish I
could believe it myself--you had better think about it, old man, as
much as you possibly can, for I’ve read somewhere that when you do want
a thing to happen, it is a good plan to keep your mind on it all the
time.”
Before the old man could consent to a suggestion which he did not know
how to derive the power to sanction, the voice of him who sat in the
little room was heard to summon James Dodson.
“Why don’t you come to me?” said the voice from within. “I can hear the
voice of my friend. Why don’t you come to me with the printed sheets?”
In some trepidation Dodson obeyed a summons, which sounded almost
imperious upon the lips of him from whom it proceeded.
“The printed sheets,” said the dying poet, stretching out his hands.
“Please place the printed sheets into my hands. I would have my father
read what is printed there, because this little treatise must go forth
without fault or sully.”
“They have not started to print it yet, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson
dismally.
“Why--why is that?” cried the dying poet, with a consternation that was
almost petulant. “Do they not know that a term has been placed to my
days, that the sands of life are running out in the glass?”
“Yes, old boy, they know all about that,” said Jimmy Dodson; “they know
all about that, and--and----”
“And--and!” said the stricken poet with an imperiousness that was
regal. “Are these the words that are brought to me by one whom I love?”
In a controlled excitement, that was almost stern, the stricken man
raised himself in his chair. “Your arm, Jimmy,” he said, with a look
of such authority that it filled the unhappy Dodson with dismay. “Lead
me to the printers. I must speak to them myself.”
The poet sank back in his chair in the tender arms of his friend. The
little strength that remained to him was no longer sufficient to bear
his frame.
“Yes, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “be quite calm, and sit there
quietly. There is no need for you to excite yourself. I--I will go
round to the printers early to-morrow and--and I--I will tell them just
what you say. I will see that they hurry, although by nature, old boy,
printers, as you know, are dreadfully slow.”
“So be it,” said the poet, with an expression of noble magnanimity upon
his beautiful face; “do not think that I reproach you--it would break
my heart.”
At these words Dodson, who, throughout his interview with the father,
had remained so calm and self-secure, now turned away hastily from him
who was sightless, with a half-strangled sob.
“You do not tell me in what manner Crumpett and Hawker received our
little treatise,” said the poet.
Dodson found it a great matter to recover his wise self-possession, but
by the time the poet had repeated the question he had regained it.
“Why--why, in what manner could they receive it, old boy?” said Jimmy
Dodson. “What _could_ they say to it? What does a religious chap say to
the Bible? What does a scholar say to Homer? What does everybody say to
Shakespeare?”
“It is almost more than I can realize,” said the poet, with a look of
rapture that seemed to sear the veins of his unhappy friend.