The History of David Grieve Part 29

Whereupon David, his eye kindling, ran out Benjamin Franklin and the 'Vegetarian News,' his constant friends from the first day of his acquaintance with the famous autobiography till now, in spite of such occasional lapses into carnal feeding as he had confessed to Daddy. In a few minutes Ancrum found himself buried in 'details'

as to 'flesh-forming' and 'bone-forming' foods, as to nitrogen and alb.u.men, as to the saving qualities of fruit, and Heaven knows what besides. Long before the enthusiast had spent his breath or his details, the minister cried 'Enough!'

'Young materialist,' he said growling, 'what do you mean at your age by thinking so much about your body?'

'It wasn't my body, sir,' said David, simply, 'it was just business.

If I had got ill, I couldn't have worked; if I had lived like other chaps, I couldn't have saved. So I had to know something about it, and it wasn't bad fun. After a bit I got the people I lodged with to eat a lot of the things I eat--and that was cheaper for me of course. The odd thing about vegetarianism is that you come not to care a rap what you eat. Your taste goes somehow. So long as you're nourished and can do your work, that's all you want.'

The minister sat studying his visitor a minute or two in silence, though the eyes under the care-worn brow were bright and restless.

Any defiance of the miserable body was in itself delightful to a man who had all but slain himself many times over in the soul's service. He, too, had been living on a crust for months, denying himself first this, then that ingredient of what should have been an invalid's diet. But it had been for cause--for the poor--for self-mortification. There was something just a little jarring to the ascetic in this contact with a self-denial of the purely rationalistic type, so easy--so cheerful--put forward without the smallest suspicion of merit, as a mere business measure.

David resumed his story. By the end of another six months it appeared that he had grown tired of his original shop, with its vast ma.s.ses of school stationery and cheap new books. As might have been expected from his childish antecedents, he had been soon laid hold of by the old bookstalls, had read at them on his way from work, had spent on them all that he could persuade himself to spare from his h.o.a.rd, and in a year from the time he entered Manchester, thanks to wits, reading, and chance friendships, was already a budding bibliophile. Slates and primers became suddenly odious to a person aware of the existence of Aldines and Elzevirs, and bitten with the pa.s.sion, then just let loose on the book-buying world, for first editions of the famous books of the century. Whenever that sum in the savings bank should have reached a certain height, he would become a second-hand bookseller with a stall. Till then he must save more and learn his trade. So at the end of his first year he left his employers, and by the help of excellent recommendations from them got the post of a.s.sistant in Purcell's shop in Half Street, at a rise of two shillings, afterwards converted into four shillings a week.

'And I've been there three years--very near,' said David, straightening himself with a little nervous gesture peculiar to him. 'If you'd been anywhere about, sir, you'd have wondered how I could have stayed so long. But I wanted to learn the trade and I've learnt it--no thanks to old Purcell.'

'What was wrong with him?'

'Mostly brains!' said the lad, with a scornful but not unattractive conceit. 'He was a hard master to live with--that don't matter. But he is a fool! I don't mean to say he don't know a lot about some things--but he thinks he knows everything--and he don't. And he'll not let anyone tell him--not he! Once, if you'll believe it, he got the Aldine Virgil of 1501, for twenty-five shillings--came from a gentleman out Eccles way--a fellow selling his father's library and didn't know bad from good,--real fine tall copy,--binding poor,--but a _stunner_ take it altogether--worth twenty pounds to Quaritch or Ellis, any day.

Well, all I could do, he let a man have it for five shillings profit next day, just to spite me, I believe, because I told him it was a good thing. Then he got sick about that, I believe, though he never let out, and the next time he found anything that looked good,--giminy!--but he put it on. Now you know, sir'--Mr. Ancrum smiled at the confidential eagerness of the expert--'you know, sir, it's not many of those Venice or Florence Dantes that are worth anything. If you get the first edition of Landino's 'Commentary,' or the other man's, Imola's, isn't it--'

The minister lifted his eyebrows--the Italian came out pat, and, so far as he knew, right--

'Well, of course, _they're_ worth money--always fetch their price. But the later editions are no good at all--n.o.body but a gentleman-collector, very green, you know, sir'--the twinkle in the boy's eye showed how much his subject was setting him at his ease--'would be bothered with them. Well, if he didn't get hold of an edition of 1540 or so--worth about eight shillings, and dear at that--and send it up to one of the London men as a good thing. He makes me pack it and send it and _register_ it--you might have thought it was the Mazarin Bible, bar size. And then, of course, next day, down comes the book again flying, double quick. I kept out of his way, post-time! But I'd have given something to see the letter he got.'

And David, rising, put his hands in his pockets, and stood before the fire chuckling with irrepressible amus.e.m.e.nt.

'Well, then you know there's the first editions of Rousseau--not a bit rare, as rare goes--lucky if you get thirty shillings for the "Contrat Social," or the "Nouvelle Heloise," even good copies--'

Again the host's eyebrows lifted. The French names ran remarkably; there was not the least boggling over them. But he said nothing, and David rattled on, describing, with a gusto which never failed, one of Purcell's book-selling enormities after another. It was evident that he despised his master with a pa.s.sionate contempt. It was evident also that Purcell had shown a mean and unreasoning jealousy of his a.s.sistant. The English tradesman inherits a domineering tradition towards his subordinates, and in Purcell's case, as we know, the instincts of an egotistical piety had reinforced those of the employer. Yet Mr. Ancrum felt some sympathy with Purcell.

'Well, Davy,' he said at last, 'so you were too 'cute for your man, that's plain. But I don't suppose he put it on that ground when he gave you the sack?'

And he looked up, with a little dry smile.

'No!' cried David, abruptly. 'No! not he. If you go and ask _him_ he'll tell you he sent me off because I would go to the Secularist meetings at the Hall of Science, and air myself as an atheist; that's his way of putting it. And it was doing him harm with his religious customers! As if I was going to let him dictate where I went on Sundays!'

'Of course not,' said Ancrum, with a twist of his oddly shaped mouth. 'Even the very youngest of us might sometimes be the better for advice; but, hang it, let's be free--free to "make fools of ourselves," as a wise man hath it. Well, Davy, no offence,' for his guest had flushed suddenly. 'So you go to the Hall of Science? Did you hear Holyoake and Bradlaugh there the other night? You like that kind of thing?'

'I like to hear it,' said the lad, stoutly, meeting his old teacher's look, half nervously, half defiantly. 'It's a great deal more lively than what you hear at most churches, sir. And why shouldn't one hear everything?'

This was not precisely the tone which the same culprit had adopted towards Dora Lomax. The Voltairean suddenly felt himself to be making excuses--shabby excuses--in the presence of somebody connected, however distantly, with _l'infame_. He drew himself up with an angry shake of his whole powerful frame.

'Oh, why not?' said Ancrum, with a shrug, 'if life's long enough'--and he absently lifted and let fall a book which lay on the table beside him; it was Newman's 'Dream of Gerontius'--'if life's long enough, and--happy enough! Well, so you've been learning French, I can hear. Teaching yourself?'

'No; there's an old Frenchman, old Barbier--do you know him, sir?

He gives lessons at a shilling an hour. Very few people go to him now; they want younger men. And there's lot's of them about. But old Barbier knows more about books than any of them, I'll be bound.'

'Has he introduced you to French novels? I never read any; but they're bad, of course--must be. In all those things I'm a Britisher and believe what the Britishers say.'

'We're just at the end of "Manon Lescaut,"' said David, doggedly.

'And partly with him, partly by myself, I've read a bit of Rousseau--and a good lot of Diderot,--and Voltaire.'

David threw an emphasis into the last name, which was meant to atone to himself for the cowardice of a few minutes before. The old boyish feeling towards Mr. Ancrum, which had revived in him when he entered the room, had gradually disappeared again. He bore the minister no real grudge for having forgotten him, but he wished it to be clearly understood that the last fragments of the Christian Brethren yoke had dropped from his neck.

'Ah! don't know anything about them,' said Ancrum, slowly; 'but then, as you know, I'm a very ignorant person. Well, now, was it Voltaire took you to the secularists, or the secularists to Voltaire?'

David laughed, but did not give a reply immediately.

'Well, never mind,' said the minister, 'All Christians are fools, of course--that's understood.--Is that all you have been learning these four years?'

'I work at Latin every morning,' said David, very red, and on his dignity. 'I've begun Greek, and I go to the science cla.s.ses, mathematics and chemistry, at the Mechanics' Inst.i.tute.'

Mr. Ancrum's face softened.

'Why, I'll be bound you have to go to work pretty early, Davy?'

'Seven o'clock, sir, I take the shutters down. But I get an hour and a half first, and three hours in the evening. This winter I've got through the "Aeneid," and Horace's "Epistles" and "Ars Poetica." Do you remember, sir?'--and the lad's voice grew sharp once more, tightening as it were under the pressure of eagerness and ambition from beneath--'do you remember that Scaliger read the "Iliad" in twenty days, and was a finished Greek scholar in two years? Why can't one do that now?'

'Why shouldn't you?' said Mr. Ancrum, looking up at him. 'Who helps you in your Greek?'

'No one; I get translations.'

'Well, now, look here, Davy. I'm an ignorant person, as I told you, but I learnt some Latin and Greek at Manchester New College. Come to me in the evenings, and I'll help you with your Greek, unless you've got beyond me. Where are you?'

The budding Scaliger reported himself. He had read the 'Anabasis,'

some Herodotus, three plays of Euripides, and was now making some desperate efforts on Aeschylus and Sophocles. Any Plato? David made a face. He had read two or three dialogues in English; didn't want to go on, didn't care about him. Ah! Ancrum supposed not.

'Twelve hours' shop,' said the minister reflecting, 'more or less,--two hours' work before shop,--three hours or so after shop; that's what you may call driving it hard. You couldn't do it, Richard Ancrum,' and he shook his head with a whimsical melancholy. 'But you were always a poor starveling. Youth that _is_ youth's tough. Don't tell me, sir,' and he looked up sharply, 'that you don't amuse yourself. I wouldn't believe it. There never was a man built like you yet that didn't amuse himself.'

David smiled, but said nothing.

'Billiards?'

'No, sir.'

'Betting?'

'No, sir. They cost money.'

'n.i.g.g.ardly dog! Drink?--no, I'll answer that for myself.'

The minister dropped his catechism, and sat nursing his lame leg and thinking. Suddenly he broke out with, 'How many young women are you in love with, David?'

David showed his white teeth.

'I only know two, sir. One's my master's daughter--she's rather a pretty girl, I think--'

'That'll do. You're not in love with her. Who's the other?'

'The other's Mr. Lomax's daughter,--Lomax of the Parlour, that queer restaurant, sir, in Market Place. She--well, I don't know how to describe her. She's not good-looking--at least, I don't think so,' he added dubiously. 'She's very High Church, and fasts all Lent. I think she does Church embroidery.'