The Sailor Part 35

Mr. Esme Horrobin presents his compliments to Mr. Rudge, and will be glad if he can find employment on his staff, or on that of any bookselling friends, for the bearer, whom he will find clean, respectful, obliging, and anxious to improve himself.

The letter was composed with much care and precision, and written in a hand of such spiderlike elegance as hardly to be legible, notwithstanding that every "t" was crossed and every comma in its place. Then came the business of sealing it. Mr. Horrobin produced a tiny piece of red sealing wax from some unsuspected purlieu of himself; a prelude to a delicately solemn performance with a wax vesta, which he took from a silver box at the end of his watch chain, and a signet ring which he gracefully removed from a finger of his right hand.

III

The next morning, before nine o'clock, armed with a red-sealed doc.u.ment addressed in a kind of ultra-neat Chinese, "To Mr. Rudge, Bookseller, Charing Cross Road," the Sailor set out upon one phase the more of an adventurous life.

It was not easy to find the Charing Cross Road, and when even he had done so, Mr. Rudge was not there. Booksellers were in abundance on both sides of the street. Mr. Hogan was there, Messrs. Cook and Hunt, Messrs. Lewis and Grieve; in fact, there were booksellers by the score, but Mr. Rudge was not of these. In the end, however, patience was rewarded. There was a tiny shop on the right near the top of the long street, which bore the magic name on its front in letters so faded as to be almost undecipherable.

Only one person was in the shop, a small and birdlike man to whom Henry Harper presented Mr. Horrobin's letter. The recipient was apparently impressed by it.

"Mr. Horrobin, I see," said Mr. Rudge the bookseller--the small and birdlike man was not less than he--in a tone of reverence as he broke the seal.

A man of parts, Mr. Rudge was proud of an acquaintance which might almost be considered non-professional. When out of funds, Mr. Horrobin would sell Mr. Rudge a cla.s.sic at a very little below its original cost, and when in funds would buy it back at a price somewhat less than that at which he had sold it. Mr. Rudge did not gain pecuniarily by the transaction, but in the course of the deal Mr. Horrobin would discourse so charmingly upon the cla.s.sics in general that Mr. Rudge felt it was as good as a lecture at the Royal Inst.i.tution. Although not a scholar himself in the academic sense, he had a ripe regard for those who were. In the mind of his bookseller, Mr. Horrobin stood for Culture with a very large letter.

Mr. Rudge was not in urgent need of an a.s.sistant. But he had felt lately that he would like one. He was getting old. It seemed a special act of grace that Mr. Horrobin should have sent him this young man.

Perhaps it was Mr. Rudge's reverence for Mr. Horrobin which committed him to a bold course. It was stretching a point, but Mr. Horrobin was Mr. Horrobin, and in the special circ.u.mstances it seemed the part of homage for pure intellect to do what he could for the bearer. Thus, after a few minutes' consideration of the matter, Henry Harper was engaged at a salary of twenty-five shillings a week to be in attendance at the shop from eight till seven, and eight till two Sat.u.r.days.

This was a stroke of real luck. A special providence had seemed to watch over the Sailor ever since he had left the _Margaret Carey_. The situation that had been offered was exactly the one he would have chosen. The mere sight of a shop crammed with treasures ancient and mysterious was like a glimpse of an enchanted land. The previous day he had bought a copy of the "Arabian Nights" for a shilling. Such facility had he now gained in reading that he had dipped into its pages with a sharp sense of delight. No. 249, Charing Cross Road, was a veritable Cave of the Forty Robbers.

These endless rows of shelves were magic cas.e.m.e.nts opening on fairyland. The Sailor felt that the turning point of his life had come. A cosmos of new worlds was spread before him now. Moreover, it was his to enter and enjoy.

He had come, as it seemed, miraculously, upon a period of expansion and true growth. His duties in the shop were light. This was one of those quiet businesses that offer many intervals of leisure. Also Mr. Rudge, as became one with a regard for the things of the mind, gave his a.s.sistant a chance "to improve himself" in accordance with Mr.

Horrobin's suggestion. Perhaps that happy and fortunate phrase had a great deal to do with the new prosperity. Mr. Rudge had been flattered by such a request coming from a man of such distinction; he felt he must live up to it by allowing Henry Harper to improve himself as much as possible.

The Sailor had entered Elysium. But he had the good sense to walk warily. He knew now that it was over-reading, the danger against which Ginger had solemnly warned him, that had brought about the Blackhampton catastrophe. He must always be on his guard, yet now the freedom was his of all these magic shelves, it was by no means easy to stick to that resolve.

Mr. Rudge dwelt at the back of the shop. Most of his time was pa.s.sed in a small, dark, and stuffy sitting-room, where he ate his meals and applied himself to Culture at every reasonable opportunity. Now that he had an a.s.sistant, he was able to bestow more time than ever upon the things of the mind. He spent half his days and half his nights taking endless notes, in a meticulous hand, for a great work he had conceived forty-two years ago when he had migrated from Birmingham to the metropolis. This _magnum opus_ was to be called "A History of the World," and was to consist of forty volumes, with a supplementary volume as an index, making forty-one in all. Each was to have four hundred and eighty pages, which were to be divided into twenty-four chapters. There were to be no ill.u.s.trations.

Four decades had pa.s.sed since the golden hour in which this scheme was born. In a spare room above the shop were a number of large tin trunks full of notes for the great work, all very carefully coded and docketed. These were the fruits of forty-two years' amazing industry.

Every year these labors grew more comprehensive, more unceasing. But the odd thing was that only the first sentence of the first volume of the opus was yet in being. It ran, "'In the beginning,' says Holy Writ, 'was the Word.'" And even that pregnant sentence had yet to be put on paper. At present, it lay like the text of the History itself, in the head of the author.

With Henry Harper to mind the shop, the historian was able to devote more time to the work of his life. This was a fortunate matter, because Mr. Rudge was already within a few months of seventy, and forty volumes and an index had yet to be written. As a fact, considerable portions of the index were already in existence; and during Henry Harper's first week in the front shop it received a valuable accession in the form of "Bulrushes, Vol. IX., pp. 243-245. Moses in, Vol. III., p. 120." Careful and voluminous notes upon Bulrushes, based upon an unknown work that had lately arrived in a consignment of second-hand books from Sheffield, went to line the bottom of yet another large trunk which had been added recently to the attic above the shop.

IV

The day soon came when Henry Harper said good-by to Mr. Horrobin and Bowdon House. Mr. Rudge took a fancy to him from the first. It may have been his high credentials partly; no one could have been equipped with a better start in life than the imprimatur of such a scholar and such a gentleman as Mr. Esme Horrobin. But at the same time there was much to like in the young man himself. He was diligent and respectful and his heart was in his work; also, and perhaps this counted more with Mr. Rudge than anything else, he was very anxious to improve himself.

And Mr. Rudge, who was an altruist as well as a lover of Culture, was very anxious to improve him.

Sometimes Mr. Rudge had a feeling of loneliness, notwithstanding the immense labor to which he had dedicated his life. This was due in a measure to the fact that a nephew he had adopted had taken a sudden distaste for the Charing Cross Road, and had now been twelve months at sea. A bedroom he had occupied above the shop was vacant; and the use of it was presently offered to Henry Harper.

The young man accepted it gratefully. It was one more rare stroke of luck; he was now free to dwell in the land of faerie all day and all night. It seemed as if this was to be a golden time.

In a sense it was. Aladdin's lamp was fed continually and kept freshly trimmed. The Sailor began to make surprising progress in his studies, and his kind master, when not too completely absorbed in his own t.i.tanic labors after supper, would sometimes help him. In fact, it was Mr. Rudge who first introduced him to grammar. Klond.y.k.e had never mentioned it. Miss Foldal had never mentioned it. Mr. Horrobin had never mentioned it. Mr. Rudge it was who first brought grammar home to Henry Harper.

Reading was important, said Mr. Rudge, also writing, also arithmetic, but these things, excellent in themselves, paled in the presence of grammar. You simply could not do without it. He could never have planned his "History of the World" in forty volumes excluding the index, let alone have prepared a concrete foundation for such a work, without a thorough knowledge of this science. It was the key to all Culture, and Culture was the crown of all wisdom.

On the shelves of the shop were several works on the subject. And Mr.

Rudge soon began to spare an hour after supper every night from his own labors, in order that Henry Harper might acquire the key to the higher walks of mental experience.

The young man took far less kindly to grammar than he did to reading, writing, arithmetic, or even geography, which Miss Foldal considered one of the mere frills of erudition. He could see neither rhyme nor reason in this new study; but Mr. Rudge a.s.sured him it was so important that he felt bound to persevere.

Moreover, these efforts brought their reward. They kept him certain hours each day from the things for which he had a pa.s.sion, so that when he felt he could turn to them again his delight was the more intense.

The books he read were very miscellaneous, but Mr. Rudge had too broad a mind to exercise a censorship. In his view, as became a bookseller _pur sang_, all books were good, but some were better than others.

For instance, works of the imagination were less good than other branches of literature. In Volume x.x.xIX of the "History of the World"

a chapter was to be devoted to Shakespeare, pp. 260-284, wherein homage would be paid to a remarkable man, but it would be shown that the adulation lavished upon one who relied so much on imagination was out of all proportion to that received by Hayden, the author of the "Dictionary of Dates." Without that epoch-making work the "History of the World" could not have been undertaken.

Ill-a.s.sorted the Sailor's reading might be, but this was a time of true development. Day by day Aladdin's lamp burned brighter. There was little cause to regret Blackhampton, dire tragedy as his flight must ever be. When he had been a fortnight with Mr. Rudge he tried to write Ginger a letter.

To begin it, however, was one thing; to complete it another. It seemed so light and callous in comparison with his depth of feeling that he tore it up. He was disgraced forever in the sight of Ginger and his peers.

Therefore he decided to write to Miss Foldal instead. But when he took pen in hand, somehow he lost courage. He could have no interest for her now. It would be best to forget Blackhampton, to put it, if possible, out of his life.

Still he felt rather lonely sometimes. Mr. Rudge was wonderfully kind, but he lived in a world of his own. And the only compensations Henry Harper now had for the crowded epoch of Blackhampton were the books in the shop which he devoured ravenously, and the daily visits of the charlady, Mrs. Greaves.

For many years she had been the factotum of Mr. Elihu Rudge. Every morning she made his fire, cooked his meals, swept and garnished his home, and "did for him" generally. She was old, thin, somber and battered, and she had the depth of a bottomless abyss.

Mrs. Greaves was a treasure. Mr. Rudge depended upon her in everything. She was an autocrat, but women of her dynamic power are bound to be. She despised all men, frankly and coldly. In the purview of Mrs. Caroline Agnes Greaves, man was a poor thing. Woman who could get round him, who could walk over him, who could set him up and put him down, merely allowed him to take precedence in order that she might handle him to better advantage. She had a great contempt for an inst.i.tution that was no "use any way," and to this law of nature it was not to be expected that "a nine pence to the shilling" creature like Mr. Henry Harper would provide an exception.

V

One evening the Sailor made a discovery. At first, however, he was far from grasping what it meant. Like many things intimately concerned with fate, it seemed a trivial and commonplace matter. It was presently to change the current of his life, but it was not until long after the change was wrought that he saw the hand of destiny.

After a week of delight he turned the last page of "Vanity Fair" by the famous author, William Makepeace Thackeray, the rival and contemporary of Charles d.i.c.kens, the author of the "Pickwick Papers." It was within a few minutes of midnight, and as Mr. Rudge, engaged upon copious notes of the life of Charles XII of Sweden, made no sign of going to bed, Henry Harper determined to allow himself one more hour.

Therefore he took a candle and entered the front shop with a sense of adventure. First he put back "Vanity Fair," Volume II, on its shelf, and then raising his candle on high, with the eagle glance of stout Cortez, he surveyed all the new worlds about him. With a thrill of joy he stood pondering which kingdom he should enter. Should it be "The Origin of Species," by Charles Darwin, which his master said was an important work and had been laid under contribution for the History?

Should it be the "Queens of England," by Agnes Strickland, also several times to be quoted in the History? Or should it be Volume CXLI of _Brown's Magazine_, 2_s._ 9_d._, re-bound with part of the July number missing?

By pure chance the choice fell upon _Brown's Magazine_, incomplete as it was, and in its outward seeming entirely commonplace. He took the volume from its shelf, beat the dust out of it, and carried it into the sitting-room.

He began to read at the first page. This happened to be the opening of a serial story, "The Adventures of George Gregory; A Tale of the High Seas," by Anon. And the tale proved so entrancing that that night the young man did not go to bed until it was nearly time to get up again.

Without being aware of it he had found his kingdom. Here were atmosphere and color, s.p.a.ce and light. Here was the life he had known and realized, set forth in the vicarious glory of the printed page.

For many days to come he could think of little save "The Adventures of George Gregory." This strange tale of the high seas, over which his master shook his head sadly when it was shown to him, declaring it to be a work of the imagination and therefore of very small account, had a glamour quite extraordinary for Henry Harper. It brought back the _Margaret Carey_ and his years of bitter servitude. It conjured up Mr.

Thompson and the Chinaman, the Old Man and the Island of San Pedro.