Part 10

“May I ask, Mr. Walkinshaw,” said Mr. Octavius Crumpett, “are the duties of an arduous nature which are incident to the career of a handy youth? I am afraid I have no first-hand knowledge.”

The simper of Mr. Octavius Crumpett was of a most winning character.

“No, sir, I dare say not,” said Mr. Walkinshaw, taking the extreme course of permitting himself to lapse sufficiently from the deportment of his model as to indulge in a hearty laugh. But the circumstances seemed to demand it. “I think I am correct, sir,” continued Mr. Walkinshaw, “in saying that the duties usually incident to the career of a handy youth are not in any sense of the word light ones. But in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker they may admit of mitigation.”

“Could you tell me, Mr. Walkinshaw, what would be asked of one who sustained that character in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker?” said the head of that great house with a sweetness that was a happy mingling of the cherub and the seraph.

“His chief duty would consist, sir, in pasting labels on rejected manuscripts,” said Mr. Walkinshaw; “and he would be called upon to fill in his time by addressing envelopes, carrying ledgers, copying letters, keeping the counting-house tidy, and in trying to be of general service.”

“Do you feel that you could sustain these responsibilities?” said Mr. Octavius Crumpett to the applicant.

“I will not fail, sir,” said the boy.

The manner in which he expressed this determination seemed favourably to impress both gentlemen.

“I think, Mr. Walkinshaw,” said Mr. Octavius Crumpett, in a voice that was charged with emotion, “in the circumstances we shall be almost justified in introducing Mr. William Jordan, Junior, into the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker.”

“I concur, sir,” said Mr. Walkinshaw, in a voice whose own emotion was attuned with supreme good breeding to that of his chief. “I concur.”

“I hope, Mr. Jordan,” said Mr. Octavius Crumpett, whose beautiful and vibrant tones had acquired a paternal inflection, “that you will contrive to maintain the excellent impression you have already created. For let me assure you, Mr. Jordan, it is easier for the average youth to become an Extension Lecturer than it is for him to occupy a stool in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker. Good-morning, Mr. Jordan.”

Mr. Octavius Crumpett concluded by thrusting out his right hand so suddenly and so unexpectedly, that the boy shrank away from him as though he were expecting to receive a blow.

“Shake it,” whispered Mr. Walkinshaw in his ear.

The boy grasped the firm white hand with a timidity that would not have been out of place had it been the fore-paw of a polar bear. However, his trepidation seemed further to prepossess him in the favour of both gentlemen. It was not always that those of his callow years had this nice but lively discrimination of the fine shades of the social cosmogony into which unsmiling Fate had projected them.

Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw conducted in person down the steep stairs the latest addition to the clerical staff of Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker. He led him into the counting-house, into the midst of that concourse of fellow-labourers in what was now to be his vineyard through which he had already passed.

As Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw did this he said, with an impressiveness of which the occasion seemed to be worthy, “Above all, Mr. Jordan, it behoves you to remember that the humblest occupant of a stool in the counting-house of Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker is _ab ovo_ a candidate for election to the Athenæum Club under the rule _honoris causâ_.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Jordan’s limited acquaintance with the practical sciences did not permit him to realize the golden vista which thus early in life had come to unfold itself before him.

With this exhortation Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw relinquished his charge into the safe keeping of the undersized and wizened boy.

“Mr. Dodson,” said Mr. Walkinshaw, “be good enough to assume responsibility for Mr. William Jordan, Junior. Be good enough to inspire him, as far as in you lies, with the particular tone that tradition exacts from all who are associated, even in the humblest capacity, with this eminent and old-established publishing house. His main duty, Mr. Dodson, will, as you know, consist in tying up, sealing, and labelling rejected MSS. See to it that he observes particular care in using black wax in all cases of rejection. In the less frequent, the much less frequent instances of acceptance, he will, of course, observe the rule of using red sealing wax. That is, of course, for fiction only. For biography and travel he will, of course, use yellow, and I need not remind you that for poetry and _belles lettres_ he will invariably use purple.”

“Oh yes, sir,” said the wizened boy, with an air of great intelligence, “Mr. Jordan shall be initiated into everything.”

XV

It was in this fashion that the boy entered upon a new and curious phase of his existence. In the hours that intervened between the moment of his entrance into that strange place and seven o’clock that evening, when he was at liberty to return to the great world out of doors, and thereby to his father in the little room, he walked on air and moved in a dream.

Even when he had resigned his hat and overcoat and gloves, and had been shown where to place them; even when he had climbed a high stool in the mercifully secluded left-hand corner of that dreadfully public place at the side of the wizened boy, whose name was Mr. James Dodson, who henceforward was to be his mentor in many things, even then he could not realize what had happened to him. He could not realize that his prayers had been answered; that in sober truth he had become a conqueror.

For the remainder of that strange, terrible, yet entrancing day he was not an apt pupil, but he did his best. His thoughts were merged in a devout sense of wonder at finding himself there. Many and surprising were his vagaries on this first day in those interminable hours which kept him from the little room. They filled his mentor with pain, incredulity, and protest.

“We do find ’em, we do!” Mr. Dodson communicated in his second or unofficial manner to one of his fellow-labourers in the vineyard before the end of the day. “That d----d fool, Octavius, must be up the pole. This kid has got about as much savvy as a bottle-nosed hornet.”

When at last came the hour of his release the boy returned in a state of great exaltation to his father in the little room. A week ago it had seemed impossible that he would ever be able to obtain pieces of silver by the work of his hands, but now that miracle was come to pass.

However, the glamour of achievement passed all too soon. Disillusionment began on the morning of the following day. It was then that the full measure of nervous bewilderment at all the strange things about him descended upon him; it was then that the sense of his natural impotence was communicated to him first.

It called for all his fortitude to sustain that long term between eight o’clock in the morning and seven o’clock at night. The minutes passed so tardily that it seemed they would never admit of his release. Long before the end of the day it was as much as he could do to refrain from running away from it all in the horror of sheer nausea. He longed to flee anywhere--anywhere so long as he could escape from this strange servitude to which he had committed himself.

The clerks staring at him from their tall stools; his curious surroundings; their publicity; the curt and uncompromising manner in which he was addressed; and above all the many and remarkable duties he was called upon to perform--duties which somehow did not seem to coincide with the peculiar form of “handiness” upon which he had been wont to plume himself--all these circumstances made calls upon his courage as he scarcely knew how to meet. Yet not once during the day did he allow to escape his thoughts the paramount necessity of proving himself worthy of his good fortune. The need of obtaining pieces of silver had grown to be as great as that of drawing the breath of life.

Only too soon was it apparent to those trained minds in whose midst he was now placed that he was woefully deficient in natural ability. But his intense anxiety to do all that was required of him; his innate courtesy, which was curiously disarming to old and young alike, although sometimes it did not save him from sharp words, and even from tricks and hardships being put upon him; his almost ridiculous docility; his unceasing endeavours to be of service to others, misguided though they were; his unprecedented blindness to his own personal interests; and above all his painfully, ridiculously obvious mental deficiencies, which by general consensus “he could not help,” saved him from being complained of openly to the highest quarters as “hopelessly incompetent,” which all about him during the early days of his servitude considered him to be.

“He is about as capable of sitting a stool in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker,” said Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw, that august gentleman to whose charge he had been committed in the first instance by the head of the firm, and who occupied a low chair at a small table in the middle of the room, and who also exuded “the traditions of the firm” at every pore, “as he is of editing an edition of Thackeray. I shall be compelled to make a complaint if he does not bring a little common intelligence to bear on the most elementary duties. Here he has actually sealed the Lady Rowena Montmorency’s prose poem--accepted prose poem--in yellow, in spite of the fact that prose poems stand in a class by themselves and must be sealed in pink; and further he has omitted to stamp the parcel with the monogram of the firm, although it expressly lays down on page four of the printed rules of procedure, that the MSS. of the daughters of peers must in all cases be so treated. Mr. Dodson, please have the goodness to inform him that if this occurs again I shall be compelled to bring it to the notice of Mr. Octavius. And if such a thing should come to the ear of Mr. Octavius I cannot answer for the consequences.”

“I will, sir,” said Mr. Dodson respectfully.

Thereupon Mr. Dodson returned to the high stool in the left-hand corner, which had been allotted to Mr. William Jordan, Junior. He was engaged in trying to wrap up a novel of portentous length, which had received a somewhat uncompromising quietus at the hands of Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker. Mr. Dodson watched his _protégé_ somewhat grimly as he wrestled not very effectually with the leaves of this production and endeavoured to encase them in brown paper and string.

“Look here, lunatic, you want it tighter,” said Mr. Dodson, having rendered him who sought to tie the parcel excessively unhappy by his presence. “Slew it round a bit, and turn over the corners like I showed you yesterday. Pa’s been talking about you. He says if you don’t do better you will get the boot.”

“I--I b-beg your p-pardon, sir,” stammered the boy.

“Don’t be so d----d polite, you lunatic!”

The boy had already made the surprising discovery that his mentor possessed two manners, _i. e._ that of public life which approximated to the dignity of the house of Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker; and also that of private intercourse, which was apt to be so idiomatic as sometimes not to be intelligible. “If you’d use a little less butter,” said Mr. Dodson, “and show a little more brightness at your work, you and I would get on better. You know what I told you about the Lady Rowena Thingumbob’s accepted prose poem?--well I might never have said anything for all the notice you take. I can’t be always at your elbow. To-morrow you had better bring your nurse.”

XVI

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.

XVII

During the week which followed, the behaviour of William Jordan, Junior, was very closely scrutinized by his fellow-labourers in the vineyard of No. 24 Trafalgar Square. One and all were freely inoculated with the “traditions of the house.” Each member of the counting-house staff, from Mr. Dodson, who might be of any age and standing, to Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw, Mr. Aristophanes Luff, Mr. Leslie Stephen Sandars, and Mr. T. B. Macaulay Jenkins, who unmistakably were of one particular period and degree, were infected by a generous jealousy for the name and fame “of the first publishing house in London, and therefore of the civilized world.”

“It ain’t, you know,” Mr. James Dodson communicated to William Jordan, Junior, in his second or unofficial manner, “but Octavius thinks so, and what Octavius thinks the staff has got d---- well to believe.”

Mr. William Jordan, Junior, was honoured with this confidence while proceeding to a luncheon to be partaken of in Mr. Dodson’s company, and by his express invitation, at the refreshment buffet annexed to the Brontë Hotel, which was situated in a by-street off Trafalgar Square. Mr. Dodson, who needless to say selected this house of refreshment and led the way thereto, ordered of a gorgeous lady in a scarlet blouse and large yellow earrings, whom he addressed as “Chrissie” with that inimitable _flair_ that never forsook him on public occasions, “two lean ham-sandwiches and two tankards of half-and-half with plenty of top.”

The reception accorded by Mr. William Jordan, Junior, to these viands, for which the buffet of the Brontë Hotel was justly famous, filled Mr. Dodson with astonishment and Chrissie with consternation not unmingled with protest.

“Your fat friend needn’t look as though he’s tasted vitriol,” said the lady in the scarlet blouse, as the boy recoiled with horror at the moment he was saluted by the fumes from the tankard. “That’s the best half-and-half in London, young man, and he who says it is not is a perverter of the truth.”

“Is--is it h-hemlock?” gasped the boy, as tragically he replaced the tankard upon the marble slab.