William Jordan, Junior

It had been raining all day in London. The beating of water, cold, monotonous and heavy upon the streets, had now acquired mystery from the darkness of a November night. The vague forms floating here and there through the haze of the lamps, which a few hours ago were easy to define, were full of strangeness, while the noise of the water as it gurgled into the sewers, and slopped from the spouts over the dark fronts of the shops had a remote significance. Now and again odd shapes would emerge from the curtain of the shadows: a wet policeman, a dog, a bedraggled walker of the streets, a sullen cabman, a lame horse. Over and above, round and about these phantasmal appearances, was the sound of continual water falling upon the great roar of London.

In one of the narrow purlieus leading from the City to the eastern wilderness, night had erased the actual like a wet cloth drawn across writing in chalk upon a board. Two rows of sopping shuttered walls were only able to emit an occasional smear of lamplight, by which the pageant of the individual consciousness could embody itself. Here and there a signboard would be half-disclosed over some deserted shop; and in the middle of a long and very dismal thoroughfare was one that seemed to take a quality from the fact that a faint gleam of light was stealing through a chink in the shutters of a door. Above this door, in faded letters which the film of shadows rendered barely visible, was the legend, “Second-hand Bookseller.” It seemed to be centuries old. The light, however, frail as it was, somehow appeared to make it memorable. Yet the source of this talisman was not the shop itself, but a little room that lay behind.

This small shop in which a thousand and one volumes huddled, like corpses in a chasm, seemed almost to form an intermediary between the real on the one hand, and the chimerical on the other. On its shelves, in a limbo of darkness and neglect, lay the dead, the dying, and the imperishable. Buried in dust and decay, in covers that could hardly hold together, were pregnant annotations upon the human comedy. On the upper shelves were tomes whose destiny it had been to hold back the hands of time, and had duly fulfilled it. Below these were a thousand formulas which had proved disconcerting to man. Still, however, as in the sodden and shadow-fraught chimera beyond the shutters, even here darkness did not reign inviolate. There were tiny lamps on this shelf and that: like those in the street without the power to offer more than a flicker of light, yet able to suggest that the blackest night is susceptible of challenge. A candle shone here and there in the gloom, faint yet invincible, like a will-o’-the-wisp that hops about the mounds in a cemetery.

Opening out of the shop was a little inner room. It was from this that the thread of light proceeded. This tiny chamber, some twelve feet by sixteen, had little furniture. In the centre was a quaint old table. A curious tome of yellow parchments was spread open upon it. Built into the outer wall was a cupboard. Its heavy oak door was studded with nails and strongly secured. In the grate the fire was bright; the bare floor and walls were spotless; and from the low ceiling depended a lamp in the form of a censer whose light was soft yet clear.

The room had two occupants: a man whose hair was almost white and a boy. Each was immersed in a book: the man in the tome outspread on the table, whose yellow leaves, venerable binding, and iron clasps, gave it a monastic appearance; the boy was reading in the ancient authors.

The countenance of each was remarkable. The eyes of the man were those which age does not darken; yet his cheeks were gaunt, and the lines of his frame seemed to be prematurely old; but the ample forehead and every feature was suffused with the luminosity by which a high intelligence reflects itself. The face of the boy, pale, gentle and mobile, was too rare to describe. His eyes, vivid in hue and very deeply set, were bright with a kind of veiled lustre; his form was of elfin slightness; his hands looked as frail as gossamer. Yet the countenance, although full of the solemn wonder of childhood, and angelic beauty, was marred by a gross physical blemish. Every feature appeared to have been touched by the wand of a fairy, yet in the middle of the right cheek was an open wound.

There was not a sound in the little room except the ticking of the clock, and an occasional creak from the fire. Now and again the man would pause in his scrutiny of the old yellow page. Uplifting the finger which pursued every word of the faded and almost illegible writing, he would seem to consider it with secret thoughts shaping themselves upon his lips. Then he would smile a little and sigh faintly and turn to it again.

Presently his gaze sought the boy. Within it was a look of indescribable solitude, for as the boy crouched over the old volume printed in black letter which he held upon his knees, great tears dripped softly from his eyes. The white-haired man addressed him in a low voice that was like a caress.

“Ah, my brave one! thou dost not fear the drama.”

The boy looked up with a startled face. He gave a little shiver.

“What is that, my father,” he asked, “that you speak of as the drama?”

“What is that, beloved one,” asked his father, “that afflicts you with dismay?”

The boy pressed his palms against his thin temples.

“I think--I think it is the words, my father,” he said, “the something in the sound of the words.”

“Truly,” said his father, “the something in the sound of the words. That which is given is taken away--the something in the sound of the words.”

“Did you not say, my father,” said the boy, “that the drama was--was what you call a ‘play’?”

“Yes, a play,” said his father, “a bewildering and curious play--a haunting and strange play. It is almost terrible, and yet it is beautiful also.”

“I don’t understand,” said the boy, his eyes growing dark with perplexity.

His father was quick to read his distress, and a mournful compassion came into his face. The boy left his book and came to his father’s side. The man folded the frail and excitable form to his bosom.

“Patience, patience, agile spirit!” he exclaimed as he pressed his lips upon the gaunt cheek upon which lay the wound.

“I must understand all things, my father,” said the boy, who was composed a little by his father’s arms. “I--I must know something more about the drama, for I--I must understand it all.”

“It is that which we feel,” said his father. “It is sometimes in the air. If we listen we can hear it. I hear it now.”

The boy lifted his face with all his senses strung.

“I can only hear the ticking of the clock, my father, and the creaking of the fire.”

“There is something else.”

The boy walked to the shutters of the little room, pressed his ear against them, and listened with great intensity.

“There is only the gurgle of water,” he said, “and the little voice of the wind.”

“And,” said the man with faint eyes.

“And--and! And the mighty roar of the streets of the great city.”

“That is the drama, beloved one.”

The boy sprang away from the shutters with a little cry.

“Yes, now I know,” he said excitedly. “Now I know what it is. And it was the something in the sound of the words. That which is given is taken away. It is what I am always dreaming about this little room of ours. I am always dreaming, my father, that it has been taken from us, that we have been cast out of it, that we have it no more. I have even dreamt that we wandered all day and all night in the cold and dreadful streets of the great city, among all those fierce and cruel street-persons, and that they looked upon us continually with their rude eyes. Then it is that I shiver so much in my fear that I awaken; and I could shout with joy when I find it is ours still, and that it has all been a dream.”

The look of compassion deepened in the man’s face.

“Dost thou never grow weary of this little room?” he said.

“Never, never, my father,” said the boy. “I can never grow weary of this little room. I almost wish sometimes we did not venture to leave it, lest one day we should lose our path in the great city, and not find our way back. I sometimes think I would like to stay in it every moment of my earth-life, so that I might read every one of those authors in the shop. How I wish, my father, that I understood all the hard words and all the strange tongues like you do. But at least I understand one more very difficult word now that I know what is the meaning of the drama.”

“That is to say, beloved one,” said his father, “now that you understand the meaning of the drama you hold the key to many other words that are also very difficult.”

“Yes, yes, my father--and how quickly I shall learn them!”

“You are indeed wonderful at learning.”

“Yet sometimes, my father, I hardly dare to think how much there is to know. Sometimes when I lie by your side in the darkness, my father, and something seems to have happened to the moon, I almost feel that I shall never be able to know all.”

“Thou art quite resolved, my brave one, to know all?”