Part 28

“Whatever that infernal writing was,” said Dodson, “it was the cause of my not being able to get the two hundred pounds I asked for from the dealers. Do what I would, say what I would, it was only by sheer good fortune that I was able to get one. They happened to take a fancy to the clasp of that infernal volume; and as I had the presence of mind to tell them it was formerly the clasp of an ancient Roman libellus, they wrote out a cheque for one hundred pounds, less five per cent. for cash. And after that I had enormous difficulties to raise the other hundred. Talk about the labours of Hercules; what are they to the labours of one who attempts to raise a hundred pounds upon no security in this Christian country? I lied to my aunt; I put my name to an instrument that may land me in gaol; I lied to Octavius; I cheated an insurance company; and, as a consequence of all this, the great house of Crumpett and Hawker have undertaken to send out this three-volume poem for review on the twelfth of January. And let me tell you, old man, that in all the long and honourable history of that world-famous publishing house, James Dodson is the only man who has ever caused it to betray signs of what you might call undignified haste.”

“No words of mine can requite you, sir,” said the white-haired man, whose eyes welled with gratitude. “But yet the proud consciousness is yours that unborn ages will be your debtors.”

“Their monickers on a note of hand or on a three months’ bill don’t go for much at this hour of the day,” said James Dodson. “I too, like poor Luney, appear to have made the mistake of being born before my time. And it seems to me that of all the mistakes a man can commit, there is none quite so bad as that.”

However, no sooner had Jimmy Dodson come again into the presence of him who kept the little room, than all these tribulations to which he had given so free an expression in the shop, yielded immediately to that solicitude, mingled with awe, with which he had come to regard him.

“Ah, friend,” said the dying poet, “so here are the printed pages at last.”

“Yes, old boy, here they are at last,” said Jimmy Dodson.

“Give them to me,” said the poet, extending his left hand, which he could scarcely raise.

Dodson placed a few of the printed sheets upon the extended palm, which shook like gossamer; and as the poet, with a look of composed passion, held them up before his sightless eyes, it seemed almost that those dead orbs were again endowed with life.

“The paper is good,” said the poet, rubbing the pages against his cheek in order that he might know its quality. “I hope the printing is clear.”

“Yes, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “a brand new fount, beautifully clear.”

“Liberal margins, such as are beloved of the gentle reader?”

“Yes, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “beautiful wide margins. It will make a fine page.”

“And they are printing the poem in three volumes?” asked the poet, “with a new phase in each; and also they are omitting the name of the author from the title page?”

“Yes, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “they are doing all that. All your instructions are being carried out to the letter. By the way, would you like a frontispiece in the first volume of the Wayfarer communing for the first time with Earth, his Mother? I could get a chap I know to draw it; last year he had a picture accepted at the Academy; and Octavius would raise no objection.”

“No, no,” said the poet almost sternly.

“It was only a suggestion, you know, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson with nervous humility. “You are not offended, old boy, are you?”

In answer the poet extended that weak left hand which he could hardly raise. Dodson’s first impulse was to clasp the fragile fingers in his own, which were of such power; but a glance at the countenance of the blind poet caused this impulse to yield to a finer instinct. Without in the least knowing why, Dodson sank to his knees and saluted the extended hand with a reverence he could not have exceeded had it been that of his sovereign.

LIV

Every evening thenceforward until the third volume had been set up in type, James Dodson would return to the little room with further instalments of the printed pages, newly from the press. And full many weary hours did the poet’s aged father labour through the day and night to compare the manuscript with the printed work. Weak and frail as the old man now was, half sightless as were his eyes, he yet addressed himself to this task with a joyful rapture. Sometimes, in the stress of the gladness that overcame him, he would read aloud to the poet in his thin, quavering tones, some of those passages whose quality he could not forbear to acclaim.

At these times the blind poet, ever sitting by the hearth, would listen, breathing deep, with head uplifted, and with strange emotions flitting across his inexpressibly beautiful face. And then when through sheer weariness the voice of the aged man had ceased to utter the wonderful music, he himself, in his rich and rare tones, would take up the theme; and he would speak the lines of ineffable majesty with a justice so delicate that his aged father needed no longer to look at the manuscript, but was able to verify the printed page by the poet’s voice.

Sometimes these labours would even be conducted in the presence of James Dodson. And although that robust denizen of the great world out of doors, whenever he found himself in his natural element, could never bring himself to believe that the labours he was undertaking with such an all-consuming zeal were being conducted in the cause of reason and sanity, no sooner did he enter the little room of an evening than his scepticism fell from him like an outer garment.

It was not for him to understand the words that the poet and his father recited with such a holy submission; they had no meanings for his unaccustomed ears; but the dominion of the poet’s presence, which sprang from that which was now upon his face, the wonderful serenity of that sightless aspect filled the young man with an awe and a credulity which he could not recognize as belonging to himself.

“I am going wrong,” he would say in his perplexity as he went his ways about the great city, “and, of course, they are as wrong as they can be--yet the marvellous thing is that they make you feel that all the world is wrong, and that they are the only reasonable people in it!”

One evening, after Jimmy Dodson had sat in a kind of entrancement for several hours while the poet had recited many passages, he was moved to ask with dry lips, “I say, old boy, Homer and Milton were blind, weren’t they?”

“Tradition has it so,” said the poet, and his sightless aspect was suffused with that secret and beautiful smile that had come to haunt poor Dodson in his dreams. “But what is ‘tradition’ but an adumbration of the light that never was?”

On the evening that the last line of the poem had been passed for the press with an astonishing thoroughness and celerity by the co-operation of two minds which had to be almost independent of the use of the eyes, the poet committed these final pages to the care of his faithful emissary with further injunctions for their prosperity in the great world out of doors.

“Let our little treatise have reticence, chastity, sobriety,” he said.

“I wish you could see the binding I have chosen,” said Jimmy Dodson. “Octavius calls it very chaste indeed--you can’t think what an interest Octavius is taking in the publication. Octavius made one error in his life, which we will not refer to now, but he has turned out trumps over this. He would give his ears to know the name of the author!”

“That is a secret you are pledged to respect,” said William Jordan in his voice of soft irony.

“You can be quite easy about that, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson. “Wild horses shall not drag it from me; and, of course, there is not a soul in the world who would ever suspect that the author is you.”

“I trust you,” said the poet simply. “And there is only one further charge with which I shall tax our friendship. I shall ask you to collect all the papers that bear the impress of my hand, and lodge them at the English Museum, in the custody of the English nation.”

James Dodson contrived to dissemble his bewildered surprise.

“Of course I will do so, old boy,” he said gravely and promptly. “I will make a parcel of the manuscript now. It is too late to take it round there to-night; but the first thing to-morrow I will take an hour off from the office, and I will carry it to the English Museum myself.”

“Thank you, thank you,” said the poet. “I thank you in the name of truth and of ages yet to be.”

LV

Some time during the forenoon of the following day the unprepossessing outline of an undersized young man with a short black bristling moustache, who wore a bowler hat, a pair of smart brown boots, and trim overcoat of blue melton cloth with a velvet collar, might have been observed in conference with one of the stalwart custodians of the portals of a massive building in the purlieus of Bloomsbury. The young man, who was somewhat pale and rather excited in his manner, bore under his right arm a brown-paper parcel of not inconsiderable bulk.

“Can’t deal with it ’ere,” said the custodian of the portals, without any display of amiability that would have incurred the charge of excessive. “Better take it round to Mr. Tovey. First to the left, second to the right when you come to the top of the second flight of stairs.”

In the course of a few minutes the bearer of the brown-paper parcel had made his way into the presence of Mr. Tovey--a bald-headed and black-coated gentleman whose mien was one of determined and unalterable impassiveness.

Mr. Tovey viewed the bearer of the parcel, and particularly the parcel itself, with a polite disfavour, which, however, did not in any sense transcend the bounds indicated by an official courtesy.

“The English Museum Authorities,” said Mr. Tovey, as his visitor took the liberty of depositing the brown-paper parcel upon a table without seeking permission to do so, “the English Museum Authorities are not empowered to undertake the care of the written manuscripts or typescripts of living persons.”

“Yes, but you see,” said the bearer of the parcel anxiously, “but you see, the poor chap happens to be dying.”

“I am afraid, sir,” said Mr. Tovey, with a sympathy that was very nicely poised, “that even that unfortunate contingency is not sufficient to justify the Museum Authorities from breaking through their fixed rule. That rule is perfectly explicit; it cannot admit the manuscripts or typescripts of living persons.”

“Are there no exceptions?” said the bearer of the parcel.

“If exceptions there are,” said Mr. Tovey impressively, “and as I speak there are none I can call to mind, they would only be in favour of persons of such remarkable distinction that they would form no precedent.”

“That is all right, then,” said the bearer of the parcel with an air of relief, “because it happens that this is the work of the greatest poet in the world.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Tovey with a very well-bred air.

The bearer of the parcel repeated his assertion.

“Is not that a somewhat comprehensive claim to advance on behalf of a living person?” said Mr. Tovey, enunciating his words very delicately.

“Well, he seems to think so, at any rate,” said the bearer of the parcel, “and I suppose he ought to know.”

“Would you mind informing me of the name of this accomplished person?” said Mr. Tovey, with an effective combination of polite interest and equally polite deprecation.

“His name is to be kept a secret,” said the bearer of the parcel. “He doesn’t want it to be known.”

“I assume that his poems have been published?” said Mr. Tovey.

“Not yet,” said the bearer of the parcel; “but,” he added, with an air of weight that was not without its effect, “they are going to be published by Crumpett and Hawker on the twelfth of January.”

“Curious, curious,” said Mr. Tovey.

However, the announcement itself seemed in some measure to reassure this very courteous black-coated gentleman, since he requested the bearer of the parcel to untie the string that he might take a glance at the manuscript. This the young man proceeded to do; and it must be said that for one whose proud boast had once been that his self-possession was invincible, his heart began to beat with a preposterous violence, as soon as Mr. Tovey came to examine the contents of the parcel.

Jimmy Dodson narrowly scrutinized Mr. Tovey’s impassive countenance as he ran his fingers through the pages of the manuscript, all stained and defaced by contact with compositors’ pencils and with printers’ thumbs.

“Rather incoherent, is it not?” said Mr. Tovey mildly, as he turned the pages over. “Is it not somewhat pagan in tone--that is, as far as there is a tone--there does not appear to be any very definite conception of Deity--and rather incoherent--rather incoherent. I am afraid this will never do.”

The last by now familiar phrase seemed to pierce the heart and brain of James Dodson.

“I--I suppose, sir,” he said with scared eyes, “you occupying a responsible position in the English Museum, you would be rather a judge of poetry?”

“I am not accustomed to make such a claim on my own behalf,” said Mr. Tovey, in whose well-regulated bosom a sympathetic chord seemed to have been touched, for at least he seemed to unbend a little and he seemed to do it very nicely, “but perhaps I am entitled to say that the Oxbridge Press paid me the compliment of inviting me to edit their Chaucer, their Spenser, their Keats, their Felicia Hemans, and their James Russell Lowell. And I have also competed for the Newdigate Prize.”

Jimmy Dodson strangled a groan. He clenched his hands in desperation.

“Well, all I can say is,” he said, breaking out with a violence which was so unexpected that it somewhat alarmed the courteous and self-possessed Mr. Tovey, “I don’t care what you’ve done or what you haven’t done; I don’t care what you think or what you don’t think, you’ve got there the manuscript of the greatest poem ever written--ab-so-lute-ly the greatest ever written, mark you--and you’ve got to have it whether you want it or not. Mind you, I know nothing about poetry myself--never cared for it--never had time to read it--but whether you believe it, or whether you don’t, I know I am speaking the truth. I promised the poor chap who wrote this poem--he has been blind for weeks and he is dying by inches--that I would carry his manuscript to the English Museum--and here it is. And now you’ve got it you had better take care of it--and just see that you do. Good-morning.”

Before the astonished Mr. Tovey could interpose a word of expostulation and remonstrance, this somewhat ill-favoured and rather vulgar person who had waxed so vehement all at once had passed from his ken; and he descended the stairs and passed out of the doors of the building with a violence of demeanour which not only scandalized the austere custodians of its portals, but caused them to reprove him as he went by.

Mr. Tovey, when at last his very natural and proper astonishment had permitted him to realize that this vulgarian had gone away, and further, that his trimly kept domain had been encumbered with a piece of brown paper and string and a thousand or so pages of foolscap all smudged and dishevelled by contact with the printers, he rang his bell.

The summons was heeded by a young middle-aged gentleman who in years might have been five-and-twenty, but who in manner, demeanour and cultivated deference to all the things that were, foremost of whom was Mr. Tovey himself, was of no particular period of life.

“Mr. Toplady,” said Mr. Tovey, with a well-bred concealment of what his feelings had recently undergone, “I shall be grateful if you will ask Mr. Bessy to ask Mr. Fairservice to ask Mr. MacFayden to ask Perry to ask one of the porters to remove this parcel.”

Mr. Toplady bowed, thanked Mr. Tovey and withdrew delicately.

In a little while there came a knock on the door of Mr. Tovey’s domain, and in response to that gentleman’s invitation, a stalwart son of labour, six feet six inches high and broad in proportion, clad in a bright brown uniform with a liberal display of gold braid, entered the room, and removed the brown paper, the string, and also the manuscript in a remarkably efficient, solemn, and dignified manner.

A quarter of an hour after his feat had been performed with such admirable success, this same impressive gold-braided figure knocked again on Mr. Tovey’s door and entered his domain.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the stalwart, “but what is us to do with that there parcel?”

Mr. Tovey looked up from his weekly perusal of the _Journal of Literature_, to which he was a constant and esteemed contributor.

“The parcel?” he said. “What parcel, Wordsworth? Oh, yes, I think I remember.” And then with a slightly humorous deprecation which had cost him two-thirds of a lifetime to acquire, “Suppose, Wordsworth, you light the fires with that parcel--and, Wordsworth, suppose you don’t make a noise when you close the door.”

LVI

At eight o’clock in the evening of the same day when Jimmy Dodson made his nightly pilgrimage to the little room, he was greeted eagerly by him who kept the chimney-side.

“Our little treatise is in worthy hands at the English Museum?” he said. “But, good friend, I am so persuaded of it that I do not ask you to answer.”

“I do answer all the same, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson with a fervour which was born of careful preparation. “I took it to the chief, the head man, the curator or whatever they call him--you see, old boy, I thought if I left it to an understrapper it might get mislaid.”

“It might, it might,” said the poet with a smile of approval. “This little world of ours is so strange in its ways.”

“And what is more,” said Jimmy Dodson, “I told him what it was. I told him it was absolutely the greatest poem in the world.”

“That was doubtless wise,” said the poet with his curious simplicity.

“Yet, what do you think, old boy?” said Jimmy Dodson with indignation. “He as good as said he didn’t believe it. He as good as called me a liar.”

“Ah,” said the poet, breathing deep. “And then--and then, in what manner did you answer him?”

“Why, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson proudly, “I did precisely what you would have done yourself. I whipped the string off the parcel; I handed him the first page of the manuscript, and I said, ‘There it is; now look at it for yourself!’”

“Oh good, oh brave!” cried he who was sightless. “And--and----?”

As his lips shaped the question, the breath of the dying poet came in great heavy gasps. The face of the unhappy Dodson was set like a piece of marble, but there was a curious intensity burning in his eyes.

“And--and? Why, what do _you_ think, old boy?” said the faithful emissary, and he paused dramatically.

“He was silent,” said the poet. “He did not speak.”

“No, old boy, that is just where you are wrong,” said Jimmy Dodson with an air of triumph. “He spoke right enough. You see, that chap couldn’t help himself. At first I felt sure he would go clean out of his mind. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘tell me who is the author of this?’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘the authorship is to remain a dead secret.’ ‘_You_ are not the author at any rate,’ he said, ‘a common, vulgar little chap like you.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘and it is no use pretending that I am; but all the same I have promised the author that I would keep his secret; and what is more I am going to keep it.’ ‘I shall see the publishers,’ he said. ‘The world has a right to know who is the author of this.’ ‘By all means see them if you like,’ I said, ‘but you will be none the wiser. They don’t know any more than you do.’ Well, after that the poor old fellow--highly respectable, too--University man, and so on--behaved as though he was fairly up the pole. He swore he would know the author; he swore he wouldn’t let me go out of that room until I had told him your name. You see, that chap was simply mad keen on poetry; he had edited Chaucer and Keats and those chaps for the Oxbridge Press. But no, I stood firm; and when I left him, he said, ‘Well, sir, even if you won’t tell me the name of the author, I may tell you that this priceless manuscript will be placed among those we have of Shakespeare and Milton, for’--and these are his very words, Luney, old boy--‘for,’ said he, ‘this brown-paper parcel is a national possession.’”

When Jimmy Dodson had concluded his account of this remarkable scene at the English Museum, and he ventured to look at the blind poet through the tears that rendered his own eyes so dim, he was overcome by horror. The sightless eyes of the poet were closed; his head was thrown back in the chair; his breathing could no longer be heard. The illusion of death was so complete that for an instant Dodson felt that he had entered its presence, and that by his own too-faithful hand he had slain his friend.

However, almost immediately the poet uttered a sigh. He then raised his head, and opened his sightless eyes again. “Courage, Achilles!” he could be heard to mutter faintly.

An hour of silence passed ere the voice of the poet was heard again. He then addressed his unhappy friend in the manner that became the true prince.

“Jimmy,” he said, “the world will never know what it owes to one strong and faithful soul.”

Yet again the dying poet held forth his hand, which yet again received the homage of his unhappy friend.

LVII

A divine patience sustained the poet through those weary days until there came the hour in which the miracle of miracles was consummated, and the printed and bound volumes of his labour, emerging at last from all the vicissitudes of the press were at last laid on his knees.

The right hand he could not raise; and the left had no longer the power to support the weight of the three volumes of _Reconciliation: A Poem_. Therefore were they poised upon the poet’s knees, and his hands dangled upon their covers helplessly.