IV
Thenext few years of the boy’s existence were passed almost entirely in the society of his father in the little room behind the shop. He attended no other school, but devoted many hours in the day to the faded and timeworn volumes which so seldom found a purchaser. He read deeply in books of all kinds, of all ages and countries, for his great hunger for information seemed to grow on what it fed. In the evening, when the shop was closed for the night, and his father came to bear him company,he would spend many hours in putting questions to him. To many of these his father would smile in the secret and beautiful manner of the aged school-master, but would vouchsafe no answer.
On high days and holy days they would walk abroad together. Sometimes they would explore the quarters of the great city; at other times they would seek the country lanes. The boy’s partiality was for these latter excursions. He could never divest himself of the nameless dread that seized him in mingling with these vast acres of bricks and mortar, of immitigable noise, of unfathomable dirt, and, above all, of his horror of the mighty multitude that rendered the streets so terrible. One day as their steps were pointed towards the heart of the great city, and he was filled with misgiving, he ventured to say, “How I wish, my father, we could walk always where we walked yesterday.”
“As it pleases you, beloved one,” said his father.
A little afterwards his father hailed an omnibus. They climbed together to the roof, and were borne away by the sturdy horses through nests of cheerless houses, and hives of dismal human creatures, until green fields and tall trees came into view. As they walked in these groves already spread in the mantle of spring, and their feet felt the sweet and bright earth responsive beneath them, the boy said, “Why is it, my father, that we sometimes choose the dirt, the noise, and the darkness, when fair Elysium is so close about us?”
“I have observed, beloved one,” said his father, “that you do not always turn to the easy and pleasant authors.”
The boy blushed vividly.
“How I wish,” he said, with vehement lips, “that I had never asked to come here! We will forsake these groves, my father, which are spread with flowers, which are quick with the songs of birds, and not return to them for many days.”
“As you will, Achilles,” said his father gently.
In the spring and summer months the boy sometimesrose at dawn to sally out alone into the streets. They were almost free of traffic and street-persons at this time, and when his courage mounted high he was not afraid to move among them. But later in the day, when the press became so great he could only move abroad mistrustfully, and when the darkness came he only dared to do so in his father’s company.
He determined to celebrate his fifteenth birthday with an adventure. On the eve of that anniversary he made up his mind that on the following morning he would buy a newspaper. When it came he went forth soon after dawn, and remained in the streets until nearly eight o’clock. Then it was he encountered a boy standing by the kerb with a newsbill spread out before it. He had a bundle of newspapers under his arm, and was bawling lustily. The boy approached with many misgivings, but finding that the newsboy was taller, and that his voice was louder than he had at first suspected, he moved away without venturing to speak to him. However, a little farther off was a second newsboy who was very ragged, who was not so tall, and whose voice was not so loud. This boy he spoke to with an inflexible determination in his heart.
“I-if you p-please for w-what p-piece of m-money will you give me one of your n-newspapers?” he said.
“Hay?” said the newsboy, looking at him in amazement.
With infinite difficulty the boy stammered through his question again.
“Why, a ha’penny, o’ course!” said the newsboy gruffly as he scratched his head, for an uneasy suspicion lurked in it that the question was a jest at his personal expense. “Did yer fink they was a quid apiece?”
“I—I w-will purchase one if you please,” said the boy. “T-this is a halfpenny, is it not?”
He produced a shilling, and handed it to thenewsboy, who gave him a newspaper in exchange.
“I am much obliged to you,” said the boy, lifting his cap and moving away hurriedly.
The newsboy stared with open mouth after the rapidly receding figure. He then bit the shilling, spat on it, and inserted it carefully in a hole in his somewhat nondescript nether garment.
“Law lummy!” he said.
The boy hurried back to the little room with the newspaper. Within him was a glowing sense of physical achievement which he tried to repress. As he sat down to take breakfast with his father, he said excitedly, “Thou wilt never guess what I have done, O my father!”
“I am sure, Achilles, I cannot,” said his father; and he added, as he placed an arm round the fragile form that was all shaken with excitement, “Whatever you have done, beloved one, I pray that you have not overtaxed your strength.”
“I have purchased one of those newspapers they sell in the streets of the great city, my father,” said the boy. “See, it is here. I trust, my father, there is no reason why I should not address my mind to that which is written therein. I am fifteen years old to-day.”
“As you will, beloved one,” said his father sombrely.
After the meal, when the boy had removed the breakfast things from the table, had cleansed them and laid them by, he sat down to read the newspaper, full of an excited curiosity. As he did so a kind of proud bewilderment came over him that his own personal initiative had brought a thing of such mysterious import into the little room.
He began to read the newspaper at the first word of the first page, at the top corner of the left hand. He read slowly and carefully every word the page contained. He then turned to the next, and continued to go word by word through each one of the twelve pages. When he had finished, he found tohis consternation that he had not been able to draw a single ray of meaning out of all that vast assemblage of words. After a period of reflection, in which he refrained zealously from mentioning the subject to his father, he proceeded very carefully to read it again. His failure to understand it proved just as lamentable. In his chagrin and dismay he read it a third time, and a fourth; he committed portions of it by heart; he committed other portions to paper. In the evening he said to his father, with a blank face, “Why, my father, dost thou know that I have not the strength of understanding to comprehend a phrase of what is written in the newspaper!”
His father smiled in his secret manner.
“Can it be, Achilles,” he said, “that here is a bow that you cannot bend?”
“My mind is as grass, my father, before the words in this newspaper,” said the boy woefully. “I am fifteen years old to-day; I have been able to gather the inmost meanings of some of the authors I have read, and even in diverse tongues, my father, from that which is spoken by you and me. For what reason is it that I do not gather that which is written in the newspapers the street-persons are always reading as they walk the streets of the great city?”
“Is it not, beloved one,” said his father, “that these newspapers are composed in the strange tongues of those curious beings who walk the streets of the great city?”
“You would say, my father,” said the boy, “that only street-persons can comprehend that which is written in these newspapers of theirs?”
“At least, beloved one,” said his father, “to comprehend their newspapers we must become familiar with their language, their nature, and their ideas.”
“How I wish,” cried the boy, “that I had never purchased a newspaper! How I wish I had never dared to bring it into this little room of ours!”
With a curious repugnance in his face, the boy rent the newspaper in the middle.
This, however, was not the conclusion of the matter. Although the boy did not refer again to the subject for three days, it was constantly in his thoughts. At the end of that period he said, “He that has a passion, my father, to understand all things, must even understand the contents of a newspaper, must he not? Yet, if he would understand that, must he not first learn all that these street-persons, who darken the great city, are doing and thinking and talking about?”
“The penalty is dire, beloved one,” said his father softly, “for all passions that are imperious.”
“And why these street-persons walk so fast, my father,” said the boy, “and why they look so cruel?”
“He who would converse with the book of their wisdom must not shrink from their knowledge, beloved one,” said his father.
“Yet one such as I must learn to understand all things, my father, must he not?”
“Truly, Achilles,” said his father, “the god-like one who aspires to enfold himself in the mantle of heroes must wear the robe of a wide and deep knowledge of all that is under the sun.”
“I knew it, my father, I knew it!” cried the boy with gaunt eyes.
He sank his head to the table, breathing heavily.