XV
Itwas in this fashion that the boy entered upon a new and curious phase of his existence. In the hours that intervened between the moment of his entrance into that strange place and seven o’clock that evening, when he was at liberty to return to the great world out of doors, and thereby to his father in the little room, he walked on air and moved in a dream.
Even when he had resigned his hat and overcoat and gloves, and had been shown where to place them; even when he had climbed a high stool in the mercifully secluded left-hand corner of that dreadfully public place at the side of the wizened boy, whose name was Mr. James Dodson, who henceforward was to be his mentor in many things, even then he could not realize what had happened to him. He could not realize that his prayers had been answered; that in sober truth he had become a conqueror.
For the remainder of that strange, terrible, yet entrancing day he was not an apt pupil, but he did his best. His thoughts were merged in a devout sense of wonder at finding himself there. Many and surprising were his vagaries on this first day in those interminable hours which kept him from the little room. They filled his mentor with pain, incredulity, and protest.
“We do find ’em, we do!” Mr. Dodson communicated in his second or unofficial manner to one of his fellow-labourers in the vineyard before the end of the day. “That d——d fool, Octavius, must be up the pole. This kid has got about as much savvy as a bottle-nosed hornet.”
When at last came the hour of his release the boy returned in a state of great exaltation to his father in the little room. A week ago it had seemed impossible that he would ever be able toobtain pieces of silver by the work of his hands, but now that miracle was come to pass.
However, the glamour of achievement passed all too soon. Disillusionment began on the morning of the following day. It was then that the full measure of nervous bewilderment at all the strange things about him descended upon him; it was then that the sense of his natural impotence was communicated to him first.
It called for all his fortitude to sustain that long term between eight o’clock in the morning and seven o’clock at night. The minutes passed so tardily that it seemed they would never admit of his release. Long before the end of the day it was as much as he could do to refrain from running away from it all in the horror of sheer nausea. He longed to flee anywhere—anywhere so long as he could escape from this strange servitude to which he had committed himself.
The clerks staring at him from their tall stools; his curious surroundings; their publicity; the curt and uncompromising manner in which he was addressed; and above all the many and remarkable duties he was called upon to perform—duties which somehow did not seem to coincide with the peculiar form of “handiness” upon which he had been wont to plume himself—all these circumstances made calls upon his courage as he scarcely knew how to meet. Yet not once during the day did he allow to escape his thoughts the paramount necessity of proving himself worthy of his good fortune. The need of obtaining pieces of silver had grown to be as great as that of drawing the breath of life.
Only too soon was it apparent to those trained minds in whose midst he was now placed that he was woefully deficient in natural ability. But his intense anxiety to do all that was required of him; his innate courtesy, which was curiously disarming to old and young alike, although sometimes it did not save him from sharp words, and even from tricks and hardships being put upon him; hisalmost ridiculous docility; his unceasing endeavours to be of service to others, misguided though they were; his unprecedented blindness to his own personal interests; and above all his painfully, ridiculously obvious mental deficiencies, which by general consensus “he could not help,” saved him from being complained of openly to the highest quarters as “hopelessly incompetent,” which all about him during the early days of his servitude considered him to be.
“He is about as capable of sitting a stool in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker,” said Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw, that august gentleman to whose charge he had been committed in the first instance by the head of the firm, and who occupied a low chair at a small table in the middle of the room, and who also exuded “the traditions of the firm” at every pore, “as he is of editing an edition of Thackeray. I shall be compelled to make a complaint if he does not bring a little common intelligence to bear on the most elementary duties. Here he has actually sealed the Lady Rowena Montmorency’s prose poem—accepted prose poem—in yellow, in spite of the fact that prose poems stand in a class by themselves and must be sealed in pink; and further he has omitted to stamp the parcel with the monogram of the firm, although it expressly lays down on page four of the printed rules of procedure, that the MSS. of the daughters of peers must in all cases be so treated. Mr. Dodson, please have the goodness to inform him that if this occurs again I shall be compelled to bring it to the notice of Mr. Octavius. And if such a thing should come to the ear of Mr. Octavius I cannot answer for the consequences.”
“I will, sir,” said Mr. Dodson respectfully.
Thereupon Mr. Dodson returned to the high stool in the left-hand corner, which had been allotted to Mr. William Jordan, Junior. He was engaged in trying to wrap up a novel of portentous length, which had received a somewhat uncompromisingquietus at the hands of Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker. Mr. Dodson watched hisprotégésomewhat grimly as he wrestled not very effectually with the leaves of this production and endeavoured to encase them in brown paper and string.
“Look here, lunatic, you want it tighter,” said Mr. Dodson, having rendered him who sought to tie the parcel excessively unhappy by his presence. “Slew it round a bit, and turn over the corners like I showed you yesterday. Pa’s been talking about you. He says if you don’t do better you will get the boot.”
“I—I b-beg your p-pardon, sir,” stammered the boy.
“Don’t be so d——d polite, you lunatic!”
The boy had already made the surprising discovery that his mentor possessed two manners,i. e.that of public life which approximated to the dignity of the house of Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker; and also that of private intercourse, which was apt to be so idiomatic as sometimes not to be intelligible. “If you’d use a little less butter,” said Mr. Dodson, “and show a little more brightness at your work, you and I would get on better. You know what I told you about the Lady Rowena Thingumbob’s accepted prose poem?—well I might never have said anything for all the notice you take. I can’t be always at your elbow. To-morrow you had better bring your nurse.”