Part 6

“But, dear Lady Pomeroy,” said the man with grey hair, speaking very slowly and with his eye fixed on the man opposite, “sympathy is not necessarily barren, even if it is not fertile of visible result.”

Upon the utterance of these words, an extremely intellectual looking police constable, who was stationed in the centre of the crowded room, broke into a sudden and totally unexpected guffaw of laughter, which he turned into a cough with equal suddenness and great dexterity. His action incited the row of gaily dressed females to give vent to a little melodious cackle. These in turn seemed to incite the man who had been sharpening the lead pencil to write furiously. And all these portents having assured the man with grey hair that his memorable utterance had passed into history, he composed his features into a form of polite expostulation that words so trivial should have achieved that destiny.

Much passed between the woman with the loud voice and the man with the grey hair and the impressive manners. All, however, went unheeded by the boy; for during the whole of the time he stood clutching at the wooden rail by which he was surrounded, in order to save himself from measuring his length on the floor. To every other person in the court, however, the intercourse of the woman with the loud voice and the man with grey hair seemed to be fraught with a high significance.

Presently the constable who stood beside the boy gave him a sharp nudge.

“Now then,” he whispered truculently. “Pull yerself together. His washup is a-speaking to you.”

The boy was able to observe that the man with grey hair and impressive manners was wagging a short and fat forefinger in his direction. He also appeared to be speaking with a kind of stern deliberation, but the boy failed to appreciate a word that he said.

This homily, however, proceeded for some time; and in the course of it all present were much impressed. The man with grey hair and impressive manners concluded his discourse somewhat in this fashion: “Owing to the humane clemency which has been exhibited by Lady Pomeroy, a clemency, I may say, which is so familiar among all grades of society as to stand in need of no advertisement from this court”--(“Hear, hear,” in a suppressed but perfectly audible whisper from a voice at the back)--“there is no undue desire to press this charge. William Jordan, as this seems to be the first occasion on which you have appeared before this court, and as I am informed that no record of a previous conviction stands against your name, you will at the express desire of Lady Pomeroy”--(“Hear, hear,” from the voice at the back)--“be dealt with under the First Offenders Act. After entering into recognizances to come up for judgment if called upon, you will be discharged. It is deemed advisable, however, that you should have an interview with the police court missionary. In conclusion I hail this opportunity of tendering the most sincere thanks of the public to Lady Pomeroy”--(“Hear, hear,” from the back)--“for the public-spirited manner in which she has come forward to discharge a duty which must have been peculiarly distasteful to her.”

While the row of gaily dressed women rose wreathed in smiles, and formed a cordon round the man with grey hair and impressive manners, in order to shake hands with him, the boy was led into an adjoining room. In the next instant he was shuddering convulsively in the arms of his father.

A sad-looking man with cadaverous cheeks and sunken black eyes came up to them. With an odd kind of compunction he laid his hand on the boy’s sleeve.

“What is _he_ doing here?” he said.

The boy’s father enfolded the questioner in his secret and beautiful smile.

“You ask a question which admits of no answer,” he said.

At the sound of the voice of the boy’s father, the man with the cadaverous cheeks recoiled a step. His sallow face flushed a little. With the _naïveté_ of a child he peered into the eyes of the boy’s father.

“I think, sir,” he said, with a curiously humble gesture, “I think you are perfectly right.”

VIII

From that time forward and for many days the boy did not venture again out of the little room behind the shop. And at night he could not bear to be out of his father’s company, so that he never went to bed without him, but sat reading in the ancient authors, or staring into vacancy with his chin propped on his hands. On some evenings after the shutters of the shop had been put up at eight o’clock, and each had partaken of his frugal supper, his father would take down from the shelf on the wall the old and massive volume in which he read so diligently.

The boy had never sought to read in this volume, because although he had always viewed it with the greatest curiosity, and had even seen when it lay open for his father’s perusal, that its pages of vellum were covered in close and faded, and almost undecipherable writing in red ink, he had felt instinctively from his father’s manner in regard to it that the contents were only for his father’s eyes.

One night, however, long after the hour of midnight had chimed out from the clocks of the neighbouring churches, and his father had been reading in the old volume with a fidelity that seemed even greater than his wont, the boy could stifle his curiosity no more. This was owing to a strange incident that befell. Towards the dawn of the summer morning, his father, who had not allowed his eyes to stray from the book for many hours, rose from the table suddenly. There was an expression upon his face that the boy had never seen before.

His father went to the cupboard which was let into the wall, into which, owing to some occult reason that had never even shaped itself in his mind, the boy had never sought to peer. Therefrom he took a knife which was contained in a case that was very old and chased curiously, a chalice for the reception of ink, and a stylus.

Setting out these articles upon the table, his father took off his threadbare coat, and laid his right arm naked to the elbow. He then took the knife from the case and plunged it into the flesh. As the red blood spurted forth and dripped into the chalice, the boy gave an exclamation of horror and dismay.

“If you have not yet the power, Achilles, to withstand this spectacle,” said his father in that voice which never failed to calm his most instant fears, “pray turn your eyes away.”

Although the boy was on the verge of swooning, for such a sight bereft him of his strength, he continued to look at his father in sore distress.

After his father had allowed a quantity of blood to pass into the chalice, he swathed the wound in his arm in a linen band, opened a blank page in the book, and sat down before it, stylus in hand.

He dipped the pen in the red fluid; he poised it over the page. For a long time he maintained this attitude, yet not a mark of any kind did the fingers trace on the vellum. At last with a gesture of profound anguish, which filled the youthful witness with terror, he rose, and a kind of moan came from his lips.

“It is not to be!” he muttered.

The fire in the grate was still smouldering, and into this the boy’s father cast the contents of the chalice. Then with a religious care he cleansed each of the articles he had taken from the cupboard, and replaced them there.

“Is it that you cannot write in the book, my father?” asked the boy, whose lips were pale.

“Yes, beloved one, it is not yet given to me to write in the book,” said his father, with an expression of indescribable agony upon his face. “And yet my years are now beyond three score.”

“Is it that you have never written in the book, my father?” asked the boy in his consternation.

“I have never written in the book, Achilles,” said his father. “And I dare not measure the failures I have made.”

“Is it the book of the Fates, my father, in which every human person must write his destiny?” asked the boy.

“No, beloved one,” said his father. “It is not the book of the Fates. Only the bearers of our name can write in this book. And these have written in it for a thousand years past.”

“What is our name, my father?” said the boy. “I have been asked for it on several occasions by the persons in the streets.”

“Our name is William Jordan--yours and mine.”

“William Jordan, William Jordan,” repeated the boy softly. A look of strange disappointment crept into his face. “William Jordan!” he said, “William Jordan!”

“What’s in a name, beloved one?” said his father, with his secret and beautiful smile.

Under his father’s patient eyes the look of strange disappointment passed from the boy’s face.

“And each bearer of our name, my father, must write in this book?” said the boy.

“It is so decreed,” said his father. “And for a thousand years past each of our dynasty has done so, with the exception, Achilles, of you and me.”

The boy’s heart began to beat wildly.

“Then I, too, must write in it, my father?”

As he spoke the frail and gaunt form shook like gossamer.

“We can but fulfil our destiny, beloved one,” said the boy’s father. “And it is written that when a bearer of our name ceases to write in the Book of the Ages our dynasty is at an end.”

IX

One day the boy discovered that a small brown volume, the Phaedo of Plato, had disappeared from one of the shelves in the shop.

“I bartered it yesterday, beloved one, in exchange for seven shillings and sixpence in silver,” said his father in reply to his inquiries.

This unexpected and disconcerting answer made many anxious questions necessary.

“Why, my father, for what reason?” said the boy.

“In order to provide the means of life, beloved one,” said his father.

“The means of life, my father?” said the boy.

“The food we eat,” said his father. “Our clothes, the roof that protects us, the coals for the fire in the winter months.”

“Are all these things obtained with pieces of silver, my father?”

“Yes, beloved. We are called upon to pay in substance for all that we enjoy.”

The boy grew profoundly silent for a while.

“Does that mean, my father,” he said at last, in a choking voice, “that because we enjoy this little room of ours, we purchase the priceless hours we spend in it by pieces of silver--you and me?”

“Truly,” said his father.

“And yet, my father,” said the boy, “I have no pieces of silver of my own except those you used to give me when I went forth into the streets of the great city to the school. Neither have I books of my own to yield in exchange for pieces of silver. Can you tell me in what manner I must gain these things? You know, my father,” he added very anxiously, “it may befall that this little room might one day be taken away from me, as it once was before, if I do not obtain some pieces of silver of my own.”

“There is but one means of obtaining pieces of silver, beloved one,” said his father mournfully, “and that is by going forth to seek them in the streets of the great city.”

The boy was smitten with stupefaction by these words. They were charged with an import that he did not know how to sustain. But at least they caused a cloud to dissolve which had long pervaded his mind.

“I see, I see,” he said weakly; “now it is that I understand, my father, what all these street-persons are doing when they walk so furiously up and down the streets of the great city. They are seeking for pieces of silver.”

“Yes, beloved,” said his father.

“And it is for that reason that they look so fierce and so cruel, my father. They know that if they don’t find some pieces of silver their little rooms will be taken away from them.”

“Yes, beloved one,” said his father.

“How unhappy they must be, my father, those persons in the streets of the great city,” said the boy. “We ought to give them our pity instead of our fear and our hatred. But”--his voice seemed to perish--“does it not mean, my father, that I also must go forth once more into the great city and become a person in the streets?”

As he framed this sinister question he peered into his father’s eyes with a look of entreaty, as though he besought him not to answer in the manner that he feared to be inevitable.

“You have spoken truly, Achilles,” said his father gently.

The words of his father seemed to embody a sentence of death. His father perceived in what manner he was stricken.

“You see, beloved one,” he said, holding the slight frame against his bosom, “nothing whatever can be obtained in this world which for a term we are doomed to inhabit, except by the medium of pieces of silver. The food that sustains us, the clothes that shield us, the roof that defends us, can only be purchased by pieces of silver. Even these heroes, whom you and I consider the first among created things, had to collect many pieces of silver before they could acquire the materials, and the leisure to perform their most signal acts.”

“And, my father,” said the boy, “had they not always to have their little rooms in which to read the ancient authors and to seek their knowledge?” He shuddered with a kind of passion. “Yes, indeed, I must go out into the streets of the great city and find some pieces of silver,” he said.

X

The boy was visited by little sleep that night and for many nights to follow. The necessity of adventuring forth again into those streets, the recollection of which ever haunted him like a diabolical vision, was at first more than he could endure. Many were the attempts he made to fare forth yet again, but on every occasion he would turn back all stricken by distress after essaying less than a hundred yards. Yet at each failure the stern need of conquering this deplorable frailty would address him like a passion; and sometimes with a sense of dire humiliation he would be moved to take counsel of his father.

“How, my father, can I make myself obey myself?” was a question he asked many times.

It was not until his father had pondered deeply on this subject that he vouchsafed a reply. And then at last he said, “I fear, beloved, that in your present phase there is only one answer I can give to your question. I fear it will be necessary for you to obtain a little knowledge in the practical sciences before the power will be furnished for you to move out in courage and security into the streets of the great city. Beloved, we will devote a whole year to this study, and we will conduct it together.”

During that evening, to the boy’s astonishment, his father went out into the street and brought back a newspaper, an article the boy had never seen in his hand before.

“This is the Alpha and the Omega, beloved one, of that strange world whose mysteries you deem it to be your duty to penetrate,” said his father, with his secret and beautiful smile.

From that time forward the boy’s evenings were no longer given up to desultory readings in the ancient authors. He bestowed many painful and irksome hours upon the newspaper; and these would have been intolerable had not his labours had the sanction of his father’s patient exposition. Day by day its most obscure mysteries were unfolded to him. Yet the more knowledge he acquired the greater his repugnance became. “I hate it! I hate it!” he cried sometimes, with tears in his eyes.

There was another means also by which his father sought to increase his knowledge of the practical sciences. He would accompany him daily into the streets at all hours of the morning, afternoon and evening. He made him familiar with many labyrinths among the highways and byways of the great city. He gave him an insight into many obscure methods of acquiring pieces of silver. He would denote the character of individual persons as they passed by; and above all, he strove to make the boy familiar with the language that was in daily use about him, and with the plane of ideas of those who used it.

In the course of one of these daily lessons his father pointed out a boy kneeling at the edge of the pavement with a box before him, some brushes and a pot of blacking.

“That boy, beloved one,” said his father, “maintains his place in the scheme by removing the mud from the boots of the passers-by. Observe him now cleansing those of the man in the tall bright hat. For so doing he will be rewarded with a small piece of silver, and with that piece of silver he will obtain food and a roof for his head.”

“I don’t understand, my father, I don’t understand,” said the boy in deep perplexity. “If the man in the tall bright hat gives away to others the pieces of silver he possesses because he is too proud to bear a little mud on his boots, how can he obtain food for himself, and how can he sustain the little room in which he dwells?”

“We will follow in the footsteps of that man,” said his father, “and seek to find out the means by which he gains his own pieces of silver in such profusion.”

For many weeks the boy’s education in the practical sciences was conducted in this fashion; and although at first he lived in a state of deep perplexity, and was often overcome by the feeling that he would never find a key to these bewildering enigmas that made up the life of the great world out of doors, which now for some inscrutable purpose he was called upon to enter, perseverance, study and devout patience furnished him at last with some kind of reward.

Not less than two years of concentrated effort was necessary ere the boy began to make real progress in the least subtle of the astonishing complexities of that potent civilization of the West as evolved in the latter days of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. But as one slight piece of knowledge after another rewarded his intense application, he seemed to derive some ground of certainty from his successes, so that by the time he was nearly eighteen years of age he had pieced together these hard-won fragments of experience in such numbers that they wove themselves into a kind of fabric of lucid ideas. Endowed with this basis upon which to stand, he felt the hour to be at hand when the courage and the capacity would be his to make some sort of an entrance into the life of men and things, in the actual and visible out-of-doors world.

One evening he said to his father with an almost proud air: “To-morrow, my father, I intend to put to the test all this knowledge that has come to me during my many days of study--that is, of course, my father, if you think I speak the language well enough.”

“Yes, beloved one,” said his father, with a mournfulness which was in strange contrast with the exaltation of his own mood. “I think by now you speak the language well enough to do so.”

“And I am growing very learned in the newspaper, am I not, my father?” he said almost joyfully, for although in his heart he still loathed the newspaper, the sense of achievement in being able to read and to understand the less inscrutable of its mysteries was very high.

“Yes, beloved one,” said his father, “I consider your progress is wonderful.”

“I observe, my father,” said the boy proudly, “that according to the newspaper we purchased this morning--no, no, that is not the true way of speaking--no, I meant merely to say that according to this morning’s paper, ‘a bright boy is wanted at No. 12, Webster’s Buildings in the City.’ It is my purpose, my father, to present myself at No. 12, Webster’s Buildings in the City to-morrow morning at the hour of nine.”

“This is indeed Achilles,” said his father. He peered wistfully at the wan cheeks now brilliant with the excitement of resolve.

“If you will embrace me, my father,” said the boy, “I will go now to my chamber all alone by myself. I am grown so powerful with the knowledge I have gained that I feel as if I may do almost anything.”

The white-haired man took the frail form into his embrace.

“I beseech you,” he said, as he held him in his arms, “not to demand too much of the strength that Nature has lent you. I would urge you not to go out among the life of the great city if you have a single misgiving.”

“I have not a single misgiving, my father,” said the boy. “I am able to read and to write and to speak the English tongue. I know how to ask the con--the conductor to stop the horses of the omnibus. I can do sums--compound fractions. I am acquainted with most of the streets in the great city. Have I not walked therein alone several times?”

“Well, well, Achilles,” said his father softly, “if you have really made up your mind!”

“You do speak the language beautifully, my father,” said the boy. “If you have really made up your mind! Why, those are the very words I heard a woman street-person use in Piccadilly yesterday.”

The boy took a lighted candle and went up the stairs. This was the first occasion on which he had ventured to do this unattended since the night he had passed in the cell at the police station. But now a new-born sense of power was upon him, the fruit of knowledge. Of late he had made an amazing advance in his studies. He was already beginning to move about the great world out of doors in freedom and security. He had even begun to carry his capacity in his bearing. Only that afternoon a small girl of ten with a basket on her arm had asked him to tell her the time, and also the nearest way to High Holborn. And the proud consciousness was his that he had performed both these offices with perfect satisfaction to them both.