Part 26

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.”