XX
“Luney, my son,” said Mr. James Dodson one afternoon, “young Davis’s days are numbered. This morning Octavius found him smoking in his room.”
Notwithstanding the manner in which Mr. Dodson imparted this item of news, it failed to promote the curiosity of which it was undoubtedly worthy.
“Yes, Luney,” Mr. Dodson proceeded, “young Davis has numbered his days. He’ll come down from up-stairs. He is not geared up to a position of that kind. He hasn’t got the—the intellectual quality. You can get anything by a fluke; but you can keep nothing without you’ve got this.”
Mr. Dodson laid a finger on the centre of his forehead with a significance that was almost sinister.
“And whom do you suppose, Luney,” Mr. Dodson continued, “will succeed that young upstartwhen he comes down from up-stairs? Give a guess, my son.”
William Jordan, Junior, did not accept his mentor’s cordial invitation, for the sufficient reason that the point involved was too abstruse for his knowledge of the practical sciences.
“Between you and me and the paste-pot, my worthy lunatic,” said Mr. Dodson, “there is only one candidate in the running at present. And he is the deadest of dead certainties. And the name of that dead certainty, my son, is Matthew Arnold Dodson, known familiarly out of office hours as Jimmy.”
Even this announcement, although it exacted William Jordan, Junior’s courteous attention, as every announcement did, failed to stimulate his feeble faculties to divine all that it implied.
“There is also another dead certainty, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, “and that is that William Jordan, Junior, will never rise in this world, whatever he may do in the next.”
However, upon the following morning, during the luncheon hour, this drastic opinion underwent a modification as serious as it was unexpected. It occurred in the following manner. Of late the boy had refrained from going forth to seek his luncheon in public places, being content with a few pieces of bread-and-butter which he brought from home in his pocket, and with a glass of water which he obtained on the premises. From this method of procedure, although it exposed him to the scorn of Mr. Dodson, and others eminent in the world, he derived several advantages. Foremost, and beyond all things, he was spared actual contact with the ever-surging crowd of street-persons, and from the necessity of plucking, as it were, his food from the cannon’s mouth of shops and restaurants, a feat which, if attempted by himself, invariably ended in total failure and annihilation; and if undertaken in the company of Mr. Dodson, as it sometimes was by an act of condescension on the part of thatgentleman, was apt to prove expensive. Again, it enabled him to bestow more time on his duties, which seemed to demand so much; while again, so far had he been initiated already into the meaning of “what two and two made”—in the phrase of Mr. Dodson—that he divined that the less he went out to luncheon the more pieces of silver would there be for the service of the little room in the grave hour which he felt that Fate was so inexorably devising. Further, it happened in the days subsequent to his first entrancing insight into what he called “the Book of the Ages,” he occasionally took the courage to carry in his pocket a small volume of the ancient authors, that he might receive sustenance in the thrice-blessed hour between one and two, when he was left to his own devices in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker.
It was this habit that so unexpectedly shattered the faith of the eminent worldling in whose charge he still was. It befell that he was immersed in a small black, time-stained, musty-smelling volume, with his hands over his ears, as he sat on his high stool, and his eyes pressed close to the page, when all of a sudden, he received a smart blow on the cheek which made him start with surprise and wince with pain.
“None of that,” said the stern voice of Mr. Dodson, who had crept up behind him, he having returned by a special dispensation on the part of providence, which took the form of a lack of means, some twenty minutes before his usual time. In consequence, the philosophic calm, upon which Mr. Dodson justly prided himself, was a little ruffled. “If Pa sees you there’ll be trouble,” he said, taking his charge by the ear for due admonishment. “Dick Deadeye, The Adventures of Jack Sheppard, and that sort of truck, doesn’t do in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker. I am surprised at you, Luney, I really am.”
Each of these sentences was punctuated by a solemn blow on the ear, which made the recipient gasp.
“Why, what the dooce is it?” said Mr. Dodson, as his eye fell on the curious old black volume. “It looks like a Bible for the blind, or a privately printed copy of Magna Charta. Give it to me!”
The boy, oppressed with a dreadful sense of guilt and humiliation that he should be detected in the act of reading in the ancient authors almost on the first occasion he had attempted to do so outside the little room, yielded his treasure with a sinking heart into the ruthless grasp of his mentor.
“I k-k-knew it was w-wrong, wicked,” he gasped, “to b-b-ring the ancient authors into the great world out of doors, but—but they give me such a great s-s-strength in my veins that——”
“What are you burbling about, you lunatic?” said Mr. Dodson truculently. “Stow it; and tell me the name of this very fishy-looking volume. Is it a Russian hymn-book, or a bit of Chinese, or a copy of the last will and testament of Omar Khayyam, or what the dooce is it? I hope there is nothing in it there shouldn’t be, that’s all.”
“It is theAdventures of Odysseus,” said the boy, with the blood springing to his cheeks. Even as he spoke he speculated as to what dire fate would overtake him for having dared to expose his sacred intercourse with heroes to the scorn of the great world out of doors; yet he was fain to marvel also that one such as his mentor should not recognize at a glance the nature of his crime.
“Who’s he?” said his mentor sternly. “Who in the name of thunder is Odys—— Stars above! I never saw such rum-looking stuff in my life. I should say it is a pretty fair imitation of a bad dream.”
“I k-k-know it is an offence against the gods,” said the culprit, with a scared face, “to bring the sacred words of Homer into the great world out of doors; but you do not know how he sustains me in my heavy tasks.”
“Homer, did you say?” inquired his mentor incredulously. “Homer; why then, that’s Greek!”
“Oh y-y-yes,” said the boy, his fear yielding somewhat to bewilderment that one of his mentor’s attainments should ply him with a question so unnecessary.
“You are not going to come it over James Dodson, my son, that you read Greek,” said that gentleman, renouncing his own magisterial air for one of protest and astonishment.
“I b-b-bear every word of all the sacred writings of Homer imprinted in my heart,” said the boy, with only a partial understanding of Mr. Dodson’s very visible surprise. “P-p-perchance after the callow days of our childhood have passed, when the mind is like sand, it is a violation of the dream knowledge that has grown up all about our hearts to turn yet again to those pages in which the great wonders were first revealed to us. But even to this hour I love to gaze on the printed pages which these long years have lain in my soul.”
Mr. Dodson paid no heed to the strange and incoherent phrases which proceeded from the lips of William Jordan, Junior. He was too greatly preoccupied with an examination of the curious volume that was now in his hands. After turning it over and inspecting it inside and out a look of immense perplexity settled upon his wizened countenance.
“My aunt!” he said, “itisHomer.”
He looked from the book to the boy, from the boy to the book.
“Luney,” he said, with slow-drawn solemnity, “you beat cock-fighting, you do.”
The boy quailed under a gaze, whose blank surprise he misinterpreted as some more truculent emotion.
“Why, do you know, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, “it takes Pa himself all his time to read Homer without a crib.”
This contribution to national biography awoke no response in the breast of the boy.
“And yet, Luney,” said Mr. Dodson, in a voicethat had a thrill of emotion in it, “here are you in your dinner hour reading it as naturally as I read theSporting Times. Let me look at you, you lunatic.”
Mr. Dodson grasped hisprotégéby the chin in the manner in which a veterinary surgeon grasps a horse, and peered somewhat aggressively into the gentle and pale countenance of William Jordan, Junior.
“Well, all I can say is, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, after he had conducted his researches with a thoroughness which made the subject of them tremble, “all I can say is you can’t be such a blighter as you look.”
William Jordan, Junior, could frame no reply to this profound judgment.
“How old are you, Luney?” Mr. Dodson inquired.
“E-eighteen years and f-fifty-nine days, sir,” stammered William Jordan, Junior.
“My aunt!” said Mr. Dodson, with incredulity, “you don’t look a day more than twelve and a half. You might travel half-fare on the District Railway.”
Suddenly Mr. Dodson clenched his hands.
“Luney,” said he vehemently, “do you suppose ifIwere youIshould be sitting down-stairs on a high stool? Not me. You ought to go far, my son, you ought. But you never will. You haven’t got it about you; and,” concluded Mr. Dodson grimly, “it is a good thing for some of us you ain’t.”
Having permitted himself a freedom of speech which he felt to be highly injudicious, Mr. Dodson returned Homer to the boy without seeing fit to administer further physical correction, and retired to the fire-place to stand with his back thereto and his coat-tails outspread, that favourite attitude of so many searching intellects, and proceeded, in his own phrase, “to take his bearings.”
Mr. Dodson’s first and most natural instinct wasto heighten his already considerable reputation as an after-luncheonraconteur, by advertising this new facet to the character of him upon whom he had bestowed the title of “The Marvel.” But however great his thirst for the notoriety of a little brief applause, the mature outlook of the man of the world was soon able to correct it. “Mum is the word, my son,” said the philosopher, as the warmth of the fire communicated itself pleasantly to his being. “Mum is the word. If it should come to the ears of Octavius that that kid reads Greek in his luncheon hour for his own amusement, he will go up-stairs and no earthly power can prevent it. And,” he added, “if that kid does go up-stairs where will you be, Matthew Arnold Dodson?”
The philosopher did not deem it necessary to frame a reply to these reflections, but sauntered across the room to the high stool on which was seated the subject of them.
“Luney,” he said, slowly and impressively, “you are a highly-educated youth, I quite recognize that, but it is not considered the thing to read Greek in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker. I have only one word of advice to give you. If by any chance you shouldeverlet Pa catch you reading it, it will mean serious trouble for you, my son, for you must not forget that it is as much as Pa himself can do to read Homer in the original.”
It reassured Mr. Dodson’s sense of propriety to observe that the boy had already returned the opprobrious volume to his pocket. “Let us hope he will keep it there,” he said under his breath piously.
That evening, as the clock told the hour of seven, William Jordan, Junior, was honoured by the most signal act of condescension on the part of his mentor that had as yet been vouchsafed to him.
“Luney,” said Mr. Dodson, “your best wayto Milton Street, E.C., is to go down the Strand and to take a ’bus from Ludgate Circus. I am going down the Strand myself; if you like we will toddle down together.”
A few minutes later William Jordan, Junior, might have been discerned walking down the Strand in association with his mentor. The eminent worldling had his arm within that of hisprotégé.
“Luney,” he said, “out of office hours you can call me Jimmy.”
As they went their way, with the whole of the conversation furnished entirely by one only of the parties to it, Mr. Dodson produced an elaborate silver case.
“Smoke?” he said.
“Oh n-n-no,” said the boy, startled in much the same way as he would have been had he been asked whether he committed murders.
“Pity,” said Mr. Dodson, as he selected a cigarette from the silver case with the unmistakable air of the connoisseur. “Ought to. Great thing for the nerves. Though perhaps you are not troubled with ’em. I shouldn’t say myself that you lived at very high pressure.”
At the end of Fleet Street master and pupil parted company.
“Ta ta, old boy,” said Mr. Dodson, with a genial wave of the hand. “I go round the corner to the station. Nice time for the 7.50 to Peckham. That’s your ’bus—the green one. Ta ta; one of these days we will do a music-hall together.”
Mr. Dodson stood to watch the frail figure enter the green ’bus.
“Absolutely the rummest kid I ever struck,” said he. “Fancy a thing like that able to read Homer in the original! Well, I will say this—he don’t put on side about it like most chaps would.”
With this reflection the philosopher turned the corner, immediately to engage in a war of words, in which he did not come off second best,with the driver of a “growler,” who nearly ran over him as he stepped somewhat unwarily off the pavement.