XLIX
Whenat last Jimmy Dodson had gone to catch his train to Peckham, William Jordan, who still held the large pile of manuscript upon his knees, proffered it to his father, saying: “My father, I would have you read to me this little treatise upon human life.”
The old man, who had not as yet looked upon the labours of his son, received the mass of papers from his hands; and in his peering, half-blind eyes was an extraordinary concentration. His feeble frame possessed by tremors, he sat down at the opposite side of the hearth to peruse that upon which he hardly dared to gaze.
In the face of William Jordan, although there was a remarkable composure and self-security, there was also an expectation amounting almost to anguish, and in the great eyes, which no longer had lustre, there was the intentness that is seen in the eyes of the blind.
As soon as the old man began to read in his weak quavering voice, his face, which was so bloodless and ascetic, broke out into a suffusion of stern and almost uncontrollable joy. The poet, who could not discern this remarkable expression, bent his head to listen; and as the roll and cadence of the lines he had wrought came upon his ears he drew in his breath sharply with half a sob and half a sigh.
All through the night the aged man, his father, read aloud the poem in his weak quavering voice. As he did so, not he only, but the author of it sat with the inanimation of statues. They seemedneither to breathe nor to move; yet sometimes the tears would flow from the eyes of both. At other times every kind of emotion would pass across their faces: terror, joy, pity, laughter, bewilderment, protest, acceptance.
Hour after hour sped, and the passion engendered by the reading seemed to mount in the veins of each. At last towards the afternoon the old man’s voice failed him, and through sheer physical weakness he could read no more.
“Pray continue, O Achilles,” said the old man. “I am now old, and Nature fails me.”
“Nay, my father,” said the poet, “Nature has failed me also. I would have you repose a little, and then I would have you continue in your task.”
In obedience to the poet’s request, the old man laid his reading aside for a while, yet a few hours hence he resumed. And thus it befell that when Jimmy Dodson knocked upon the shutters of the shop at eight o’clock, no heed was paid to his summons. He knocked again and again; his blows were so loud that they echoed all about the street; yet although he could discern a thread of light stealing from the room behind the shop his demand met with no answer.
He tried the door of the shop, but it was secure. However, his imperious need armed him with resources; for climbing up by means of a niche in the shutters, he peered through an aperture at the top. He owed it to an infinite good fortune that the door of the little room was open wide; and he who looked was able to observe its two occupants sitting either side of the hearth. The white-haired old man with a great pile of papers upon his knees was reading aloud to his son; and as revealed by the shadows of the lamp the faces of both were suffused by a most singular emotion.
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 thetop 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.
“Whatdoeshe 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 knowthe 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 thefirst 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 writtenaddressed 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 littletreatise 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 tellthem 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 hisprotégé. 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 theParadise 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, whosebewilderment 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.”