Part 21

The man was frankly pleased by this address.

“Come to-night to the mission at half-past eight,” he said brusquely, “and we will find work for your hands. See, there is the mission.” He pointed across the street to a grimy building of mean exterior, with a lamp over the door.

Accompanied by James Dodson, who left him at the door, the young man came to the mission at half-past eight that evening. Thenceforward every night of the week, he came there at the same hour and in the same company. At the end of a month, the stalwart man, who was somewhat grim of aspect, and rather rough of manner, and who was spoken of as “The Boss,” said: “I don’t know whether you are aware of it, Jordan, but already you have made a difference to us. We other fellows will be getting jealous. You have something that has been given to none of us.”

“I think it is,” said William Jordan, “that I am come among my own people.” And he added wistfully, “I would that the time was not so brief.”

In the little room he was now saying to his father constantly, “My knowledge has such increase, my father, that now it begins to bear upon me. If only the strength were given to my right hand I would commence author immediately.” And sometimes he would add almost with petulance, “This delay begins to press upon me like a stone. The time is so brief.”

At this period he seemed to have journeyed far from the high-wrought excitement and terror which had made his early years so dark. As he said to his father one day: “I walk now upon the seas and the mountains. I live by the light of the sun.”

Yet now and again the excitements of his former days would return upon him, not perhaps in the same degree, but in such a manner as to shake and wear a frame which every day appeared to grow more frail.

One evening when he returned from the mission the fever of his youth seemed to be burning in his veins. His pallor was intense; his eyes had never looked so eerie in their lustre.

“My father,” he said in a strange voice, and his gaunt form quivered like gossamer; “to-night I looked upon my mother’s face.”

His father peered at him with eyes of almost horrified perplexity.

“I saw,” said the young man, “a wretched unhappy woman, all bent and bedraggled, creep from a gutter, and pass through a narrow and filthy alley leading to the darkest of the slums.”

His father’s bewilderment changed to an expression of singular poignancy.

“Do you ask, Achilles, for the history of your birth?” he said.

“Yes, my father,” said the young man. “I will hear that wonderful story. Perchance it may help me to inscribe my page in the book.”

His father took the hands of the young man within his own.

“It happened, O Achilles,” said his father, “that I was sitting in this little room one bitterly inclement winter’s night, in which the rain and sleet came down in a flood, and I was reading that page in the book wherein it says we are to cherish the weak, when I heard a faint knocking upon the shutters of the shop. It was a very late hour, yet I went forth to open the door; and a poor ragged woman, all bedraggled and unkempt, and with great eyes haunted by fear, flung herself upon my kindness, crying that she was faint with hunger and that she had not known food and security all that day.

“I allowed her to enter the shop; but in a moment of unwariness, in the excitement that her strange coming had provoked in my veins, I turned and entered this little room to procure a box of matches to obtain a light, never dreaming that so poor a creature would have the temerity to follow upon my steps. But as I took the box of matches off the chimney-piece where, as you know, they are always kept, and as I turned again, I beheld to my horror and consternation that the poor creature had entered the room.

“There was only one thing then that I could do, Achilles; it was to permit her to sit and eat and learn the warmth of this little hearth. And no sooner had she done this than she fell asleep, and leaned her youthful head upon this little table, which for so many years has supported the burden of the mighty book. And as she lay there, Achilles, sleeping the grateful sleep of weariness, her breathing presence appeared to expand the walls of this small apartment, and as I looked again into the book, full many a page which previously had had no purport, gave up its secret to my bewildered eyes.

“It was not until it was broad noon that the poor creature awoke, and she said in almost the voice of a small child, ‘I like this little room of yours; it is a sweet and pleasant room; I think I will stay in it for ever.’

“‘This room can have only one occupant,’ I said to the woman.

“‘It is so nice,’ she said, speaking in the strange tongue which you have heard in the streets of the great city, ‘it is so nice.’ Yet she shivered so dismally that I was driven again to the Book.

“And from one of the pages that had been newly revealed to me, I saw that he who would write in the book must first continue the dynasty; and he who would continue the dynasty must not live to himself.

“Now, Achilles, already the passion had been long in my veins to write in the book of my fathers, where all the primal wisdom of the ages had been garnered; and as it was revealed suddenly to my gaze in what manner I must equip myself for the task, I let the woman stay.

“For a whole year the delicate and youthful creature stayed in this little room; yet all through those wonderful months her great eyes were ever haunted by fear. Sometimes in the midnight hours she would listen there against the shutters, as so many times, Achilles, you have also listened, at the wind in the chimneys and the great roar of London, and she would say in a voice that thrilled with terror, yet half-choked by the beatings of her heart, ‘I am thinking of that night in which the streets of the great city will call to me. For I was born in the streets of the great city, and my blood must ever obey their cry.’

“To myself, Achilles, that year in which the woman remained with me in the little room was crowded with an experience that was rich and rare, which my mind, widely furnished as it was with the ancient and modern authors, and fortified also with the infinite wisdom of the Book of the Ages, had never known before. But as the months passed, and the delicate and frail creature grew beautiful in my sight--so beautiful that I would pray sometimes that I might die before her beauty faded--I began to understand that it was not in the power even of this little room of ours to retain the possession of a thing so exquisite.

“I would lie with her all night with her hand in mine, fearful lest all unknown to me she should hear the cry of the streets in the never-ceasing voice of the great city, and that I should awake in the morning and find her gone. And many times did I turn to the Book for solace and counsel; and the Book declared that he who would retain his treasure must first write his page therein.

“Now although I kept my knees unceasingly to the floor of this little room, polished smooth by many kneelings, it was not given to me to write in the Book. And the fear mounted in my heart that when the streets of the great city uttered their cry, this little room would not be able to resist it. And the frail and delicate creature knew it also; for she would sit there in that old chair in which you, my beloved Achilles, have been wont to sit so long at the ancient authors, and I have seen the grey tears course down her thin and pale cheeks. ‘The cry of the streets of the great city will soon be heard now,’ she would say mournfully, ‘it may summon me at any moment now.’

“As her time came near, in my despair and my anguish I took a vainglorious vow. I swore upon the Book of the Ages that my child should be born here in this little room. Night and day I kept vigil over that frail and beautiful form, lest it should be spirited away with that cry which it could not resist. As each new day seemed about to herald the pangs of her labour, only to postpone them ere it was out, I sought by all the means in my power not to fail for a single instant in my vigil. I took potent drugs to banish sleep from my eyes. For I came to know that the instant sleep overpowered me, the streets of the great city would utter their cry.

“And so it was. For more than a week had I with my frantic vigilance kept my weariness at bay, when one night as I was still conning the Book for the sustenance in which I had never stood in such dire need, and the frail, unhappy creature sat there in the chair weeping softly, with her eyes haunted by an ever-deepening terror, she cried out despairingly, ‘Hark, I hear the voice of the streets rising above the roar of the great city. I must go, I must go; I can never bear a man-child in this little room of yours. It is written in my heart that I must bear it in the streets.’

“The wildly terrified creature rose from the chair. Her eyes were such that I dare not look upon.

“‘The streets are calling to me,’ she wailed piteously. ‘I must bear my man-child in the streets of the great city.’

“And as I rose to take her in my arms, and to withhold her by main force from her purpose, for her slender fingers were already upon the door, I was overcome by the decree of nature. Stupefied by the fatigues of many days, I sank back in my chair, with my head sunk upon the open pages of the Book, asleep.

“When I awoke the sun was high in the heavens of a bright and beautiful winter’s day. There was a thick mantle of snow on the tiles and the chimney-stacks, and the untrodden pavement of the little yard without the door. I found myself to be shivering in every limb; the fire had passed many hours from the grate in the little room; but the chill that was upon everything was as nought to that which bound the strings of my heart. For the unhappy creature had gone forth into the snow of the streets of the great city, so that her man-child might there be born.

“I never looked to see her again, for when I turned to the Book of the Ages I found it written therein that I should not do so. But further it exhorted me to be jealous of my man-child, for it was written therein that he would be one of the great ones of the earth.

“And so hour by hour I went out to search the streets of the great city for that which had been born to me, but for many days my labour was vain. Yet once, as I returned at midnight from my fruitless search, dejected in mind and weary in limb, my feet touched a soft bundle that had been deposited upon the threshold of the shop. You, Achilles, were that bundle, but it has never been given to me to look again upon her that bore you.”

The young man listened to the story of his birth with the calm passiveness which is the crown of great knowledge. He yielded to none of the emotions that so strange a recital was likely to arouse. When it was at an end he said softly, “I think you have done well, my father, to defer the recital of my birth until I have entered upon my third phase. Much that had otherwise been dark now stands revealed.”

“I would cherish the assurance from your lips,” said the white-haired man, with a look piteous to behold, “that I have done well to reveal this history unto you. Canst you forgive, my brave son, the frail and blind agent of Destiny?”

With a swiftness of answer that caused the eyes of the old man to brim with tears, the young man took him to his bosom.

“This is indeed Achilles,” said the aged man, “this is indeed Achilles. And yet--and yet, although this is he whom I begot, it has not been given to me to write my page in the Book.”

“And should you fail to write your page in the Book, my father,” said the young man, “is it not that our dynasty is at an end?”

“It is written so,” said his father.

The young man stood with bowed head and close lips.

“I read your thought, valiant one,” said the old man, with a dull anguish in his eyes.

“Perchance it is not my final thought,” said the young man. “I am not yet through the third phase.”

XL

As the days passed all too soon, the young man’s former sense of the need for action returned upon him.

“The minutes melt,” he was saying constantly, “yet the strength has not yet been given to my right hand.”

Once he cried to his father, almost in despair, “Soon my veins will open and the life within me will melt, and yet my labours are scarcely begun. I have already gathered rare and great knowledge for my authorship, yet alas! I cannot lift the pen.”

“In this matter, I am barren of all counsel,” said his father, “for my right hand also, although nurtured in wisdom, has never received the strength to grasp the pen.”

“The swift minutes speed headlong away,” cried the young man anxiously, “yet I tarry over-long upon my path.”

Day by day the dire need of achieving his destiny burned in his veins. Yet the fleet hours sped, and his mighty task was no nearer to fulfilment. All day he would traverse the streets of the great city, and when the evening came he would labour in its slums. But at last as the spring of the year came again, and the sky grew more clement, and the trees and the earth began to shine with green, a new passion came upon this labourer even as he toiled.

It happened that one evening, just as the fœtid little mission-room had been cleared for the night, the young man turned abruptly to his co-worker, that stalwart, the sight of whom had first drawn him there.

“Farewell, my kind friend,” he said, “I pass from among you to-night.”

“My dear Jordan,” said his fellow-worker, “you will be wise to refrain from working among us for a while. You are one who burns the candle too freely. You will do well to learn to husband your strength.”

“In order,” said William Jordan, with his secret and beautiful smile, which many had learned to watch for, but none to understand, “that I may achieve that which lies before me?”

“That is true,” said the chief of the mission. “You must know that you are a worker of miracles in this parish.”

“And yet,” said William Jordan, “this is the last time the worker of miracles can enter this parish of yours.”

His stalwart and somewhat grim companion seemed to stagger at these words.

“Why--why, Jordan,” he said, “does this mean that you are going to desert us altogether?”

“I fear so,” said William Jordan. “To-night as I sat among you I heard a voice in my ears. To-morrow at dawn I go upon my way.”

“But, Jordan,” said his fellow-worker, “I beg you, I beseech you to return to us. We cannot part from you; we cannot do without you down here.”

“Alas!” said William Jordan, “I heard the voice as I worked among you to-night. A term has been placed to my days; it has almost expired; and yet my destiny is only half complete.”

The chief of the mission took the frail hands of the young man in the grip of a giant.

“We cannot possibly let you go from among us,” he said sternly. “We shall not; we need you; we need you. You have a touch of the magic; you are a born evangelist; you go into regions where none can follow.”

“Nature has spoken,” said William Jordan softly. “At dawn I obey her decree.”

“No, no, no!” cried his comrade, “your work lies here. You were born for this. Nature formed you to labour for your kind; and you must labour for them all your days.”

“You speak truly,” said William Jordan, “but then my labours are not yet begun.”

“Are not these your labours?” cried his fellow-worker. “Can you not wield your power upon those whom we others know not how to approach? Have you not worked wonders among us during the few short months in which you have laboured?”

“Wonders,” said William Jordan, with a tender melancholy in his voice. “Can you tell me what are these wonders in comparison with those that I have still to perform?”

“I do not understand you, I do not follow you,” said the other.

“No,” said William Jordan, “you do not understand, yet perhaps it is well.”

“But I swear to heaven,” cried his fellow-worker, with hoarse passion, “you shall not go from among us like this.”

The passion of this stalwart man was such that all unthinkingly he seized the frail form of the young man, and in the might of his conviction shook it fiercely.

Immediately William Jordan, for the first time in that place, was attacked by a violent frenzy of coughing. A spray of bright red blood was cast upon his lips. He spat it upon the floor.

His fellow-worker recoiled from the sight of it with a cry of dismay.

“Arterial blood,” he gasped.

“Nature’s mandate,” said the young man, with his secret and beautiful smile.

His fellow-worker in the noble prime of his manhood, gave a low cry and sank back against the wall of the room.

“Oh,” he cried wildly, pressing his hands across his heart, “I wish now you had never come among us at all!”

XLI

Outside the mission-hall in the gently-raining April night, James Dodson, with his coat collar turned up over his ears and his hat pulled down over his eyes, lay in waiting for his friend. Upon beholding this woe-begone figure William Jordan gave a start of surprise.

“Why, Jimmy,” he said, “why do you come here now?”

“As I was half-way through the performance at the Alcazar,” said Jimmy Dodson apprehensively, “I had a sort of presentiment. Something seemed to tell me, Luney, that after to-night I might never see you again. Something seemed to tell me that you were going away.”

“Nature has certainly spoken to me,” said William Jordan.

“That doesn’t mean, Luney, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson in a voice not the least like his own, “that you intend to desert an old friend?”

“To-morrow at dawn I obey her decree,” said William Jordan.

“You don’t mean to say you are going away!” cried Jimmy Dodson.

“Yes--for a little while.”

“But--but,” said Jimmy Dodson, “I don’t think I could bear it if you were never to come back. You see, Luney, old boy--well, you see--well, somehow, I can’t explain it--_but--if--you--were--never--to--come --back_!”

The voice of Jimmy Dodson was slow-drawn like a wail. It pierced William Jordan to the heart. Tears leaped to the eyes of the young man, but in the darkness his stricken companion could not see them.

“Luney,” said Jimmy Dodson, “will you promise that you will come back?”

“I promise,” said the young man.

“Honour bright, you know, honest Injun,” said Dodson anxiously.

“Honest Injun, Jimmy,” said William Jordan, with a strange smile in his eyes.

“Give me your hand on it, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson; “although I am sure you wouldn’t play it low down on an old pal.”

William Jordan yielded to his friend’s importunity.

Dodson shuddered.

“Why, old boy,” he said, “it is so cold--so cold. Ugh, it is like ice.”

William Jordan kissed his friend in the darkness.

“And--and,” cried Dodson, “your lips burn like a fire.”

The two friends walked along in a silence. After they had proceeded a long distance in this fashion through the wet midnight streets, the thin and high-strung tones of Jimmy Dodson were heard again in the darkness.

“Luney,” he said in a voice that seemed to over-tax his powers of utterance, “I always used to wonder what made me take up with a chap like you; but since you came out of prison I have done nothing but wonder what made you take up with a chap like me.”

“You are one of the links in the chain,” said William Jordan, “one of the stages in the journey.”

“I don’t understand you at all,” said Jimmy Dodson.

“Perhaps it is well,” said William Jordan.

“And yet you know, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “when I first knew you, I didn’t understand you then. But I always accounted for it by the fact that you were not quite all there. Well, I don’t understand you a bit better now, although I have come now to account for it by the fact that I am not quite all there. I don’t know why I have come round towards you like I have. At first I thought you were rather less than the ordinary, and that you didn’t count at all; but now I consider you to be the finest chap I’ve ever known, and that you have got something about you that more than makes up for what you lack.”

“May you not have entered upon another phase?” said William Jordan.

“I don’t quite know what you mean, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “unless you mean that I’ve changed. At least I had that kind of thought as I sat this evening at the Alcazar. The wrestling bored me, the songs were rotten, and I didn’t think much of the ballet. And I thought the band was out of tune--all except John Dobbs. In fact, I began to wonder why I came. And then suddenly I thought of that night, old boy, when you sat at my side, and I took you round to see Hermione----”

“Ah, the goddess!” exclaimed William Jordan softly.

“I have often thought since,” said his friend, “that it was not right to play it on you as we did. And what Hermione said about you afterwards, old boy, rather turned me against her. But she was pretty low down, was Hermione; yes, she doesn’t dance in the ballet now-a-days. All the same she rather knocked you, old boy, didn’t she?”

“I thought her to be divine,” said William Jordan simply.

The two friends stayed their steps under a flickering gas-lamp in the City. The steady rain continued. The clock of a neighbouring church told the hour.

“It will be a long and wet walk to Peckham, Jimmy,” said William Jordan.

“It will, old boy,” said his friend; “but what do you suppose I care, now that you have given me your promise to come back? By the way, old boy, do you think it would be asking too much, as a special favour, for you to write me a line now and then just to say that you are alive?”

The gaze of William Jordan grew heavy with a darkness that was veiled from his friend.

“You must forgive me, Jimmy, if I don’t,” he said.

“As a special favour,” pleaded his friend. “You know, old boy, I have never had a line of yours. I have always been meaning to ask you for your autograph--that is before the trouble came--and--and now the trouble has come I intend to ask you for it. Send me a line, old boy, to say you are alive.”

“I cannot promise to do that,” said William Jordan, “because the strength has not yet been given to my right hand. But I do promise to return; and when I do return I shall listen for your tap upon the shutters; and then I will let you in as far as the threshold of the little room.”

The friends said their last farewells as the clocks chimed the hour of two.

XLII

When in the middle of the night, William Jordan regained the little room, he found the aged man, his father, seated there. The Book was on the table open. The dagger, the chalice, and the stylus were also displayed. But in the face of the aged man was the mute despair which was ever upon it when these articles came to be brought forth.

The chalice was half-full of the red blood; the quill was dipped therein and held in the hand. But not a stroke had been committed to the virgin page of vellum.

“Will it never be done?” said the old man tremulously, “will it never be accomplished? Answer me, Achilles.”

“I know not, my father,” said the young man. “I am not so learned in the Book as I once was.”

“Yet our knowledge of the Book increases with our years and our stature,” said the old man, as if in amazement. “Answer me, Achilles, is it not so?”

“Yes and no,” said the young man. “The Book of the Ages, my father, is an expression of the invisible forces of nature. And I am unfit to discourse thereupon until I have spoken with my mother the Earth, who is wise and of their kin. As my veins rapidly devour this third and last phase upon which I am entered, they draw me nearer and nearer to her. Never have I been so near to her as I am to-night. As soon as the bright east announces the dawn I go to lie at the soft brown bosom of my mother. If she will give suck to the first of her children, perhaps it may be that the strength will come into his right hand.”

As the young man spoke these words, he walked to the window of the little room and drew back the shutters.