The Call of the Town Part 2

Henry was profoundly moved, but like all great people in their great moments, he was deplorably commonplace.

"I thank you, sir," was all his genius prompted. He was gravelled for a Latin s.n.a.t.c.h to cap the vicar's, and the Rev. G.o.dfrey Needham stood supreme.

"Eh, but _tempus_ do _fugit_, pa.s.son," Edward John broke in at this juncture. "It's only loike yesterday that 'Enry was a-startin' school, and 'ere 'e's a-goin' out into the great world to carve out a name for hisself--'oo knows 'e ain't?"

"With youth all things are possible." returned Mr. Needham. "We shall be proud of Henry yet. He certainly has my best wishes for his success.

_Sursum corda_, my friend, as the Latin hath it. And to you, Henry, _Deus vobisc.u.m_. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye, and thank you, sir," said the overwhelmed Henry.

In a moment more the white-socked calipers had carried Mr. Needham out of Henry's life for some years to come.

When the great morning arrived, the whole house was turned upside down.

The village itself was agitated. Henry was quite the hero of the moment, despite the sniffing disapproval of Miffin. But one can't destroy a coat and retain a friendly feeling for the cause of the catastrophe.

"Merk moi werds," he said to his apprentice, as together they watched from behind the door the preparations across the street. "Young Che'les will never do nowt. He'll come to a bed end, and Ed'ard John will rue this day. Merk moi werds." And he emphasised his wisdom with a skinny forefinger.

Henry's mother cried over him a little, and impressed upon him that the three pots of blackberry jam--her own making--were at the bottom of his trunk, away from the s.h.i.+rts and linen, in case of accident. His sisters, one by one, threw their arms around him, and said commonplace things to him to hide the less common thoughts in their mind.

At length Henry took his seat on the carrier's waggon, after receiving a luminous impression of London--modern London, not the Edward-John London--from Mr. Jukes of the "Wings and Spur," and drove away, turning his face from his friends to avoid a silly inclination to cry. As the carrier cracked his whip while his horses gathered pace down the street, his pa.s.senger looked back to the old familiar house and signalled to the group still standing by the door; but for all the high hopes that beckoned him along this road that ran to London he was sorry to go.

When they were pa.s.sing the cottage of old Carne, and a sweet face lit by two violet eyes looked out between the dimity curtains, while a girl's hand rattled pleasantly on the window, Henry smiled and waved his arm.

But he was dimly conscious he had lost something he could not define. It had to do with tears on a woman's wrinkled face.

CHAPTER III

THE REAL AND THE IDEAL

IT was a perfect day in "the sweet o' the year" when the carrier's waggon creaked along the highway to Stratford with Henry Charles perched beside the red-faced driver.

There is, perhaps, no county in all England so full of charm in spring-time and the early summer as leafy Ardens.h.i.+re. The road on which the hope of Hampton travelled is typical of many in that fair countryside. Gleaming white in the morning suns.h.i.+ne, it lies snug between high banks of prodigal growth, bramble and trailing arbutus, backed by green bushes, among which the ma.s.sy white clots of elder-blossom look like snowy souvenirs of the winter that has fled, with here and there a strong note of colour struck by swaying foxgloves.

The lanes that steal away from the highway are often as beautiful as those of glorious Devon, and all bear promise that if the wanderer will but come with them he will surely find the veritable

"Bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxlip and the nodding violet grows; Quite over-canopy'd with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."

But it was not of the wild beauties by the way that Henry thought as onward creaked the waggon. Nor was it for long that the picture of his mother's face and the light of violet eyes occupied his mind. His thoughts ran forward swifter than ever the train would go which in later years was to bring Hampton Bagot within half-an-hour's journey of Stratford.

Twice before had he travelled this same way, and both times to the same place. But now all was changed. The carrier would crack his whip on his homeward way that evening and sing his s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, but not for Henry.

For the first time in his life the youth would stretch himself upon an unfamiliar bed, and hear voices that had never spoken to him before. He would tread the streets where once the steps of the immortal bard had been as common as his own comings and goings at the Hampton Post Office.

Till now he had dreamed what life might be in a town larger than his native hamlet, and this night he would begin to know, to live it.

The wayside wild flowers, so recently part and parcel of his daily life, paled before his eyes when he thought of the temple of books toward which his course was bent. The smell of the new bindings, and the mouldy suggestions of old volumes, were sweeter to him for the moment than the scented hedgerows. Already he had built up for himself the figure of his Mr. Ephraim Griggs.

A man of medium height, somewhat bent in the back, high forehead, intelligent face, eyes aided with spectacles in their constant task of examining the treasures stacked around.

His hair? Grey--yes, of course, it must be grey; thin to baldness on the top, but abundant at the back of the head. Clothes? Old-fas.h.i.+oned, no doubt; negligent, certainly; yet not altogether slovenly.

He saw the figure, vivid as life, moving about the shop, talking with innocent display of erudition to some wealthy customer, or half reluctantly selling a costly volume from his shelves.

This dream-companion kept him company all the way, and it was only in a listless fas.h.i.+on that he chatted with the carrier, to whom books were no better than common lumber.

Stratford was reached early in the afternoon, and as the waggon rumbled over the Clopton Bridge, Henry thought that the scene presented here by the soft flowing Avon, with the spire of Shakespeare's Church softly etched on the sky, and the strange masonry of the world-famed Memorial Theatre in the middle distance, was the fairest man could see.

The thoughtfulness of his father had arranged for Henry a lodging near to Rother Street, and thither the carrier undertook to drive him before stopping at the market-hall to distribute his goods. On the way up the broad and pleasant High Street Henry was excited, for there, to his joy, he beheld the name of Ephraim Griggs upon a window well stocked with books--smaller, perhaps, and dustier than he had pictured it in his own mind.

Mrs. Filbert, the landlady with whom Edward John had arranged for Henry's board and lodging, was a widow of more than middle age, who had brought up a considerable family, most of whom were now "doing for themselves." In summertime she often let her best rooms to visitors, but nothing rejoiced her more than the prospect of a permanent lodger. She was fortunate already in having one who came under that description, and whose acquaintance we may make in due time.

Mrs. Filbert was a motherly soul, and set Henry at his ease at once when she took him to the little bedroom he was to share with one of her sons, a lad about his own age. Nor would she allow him to fare forth into the town until he had disposed of some dinner she had kept for him, suspecting that his means did not run to the luxury of a meal at one of the country inns on the way from Hampton.

When Henry had freed himself from the motherly attentions of Mrs.

Filbert, and again found himself in the High Street, it was late afternoon. With a beating heart he walked direct to the shop of Mr.

Griggs, but as his engagement commenced the next morning, he did not intend to present himself to his future employer that afternoon.

His purpose was merely a preliminary inspection of the place, for on his two previous visits to Stratford the establishment which had suddenly become his centre of interest had not been noticed by him.

The window was dustier than he had supposed from his sight of it while pa.s.sing with the carrier, and many of the books that were offered for sale were disappointingly commonplace. As for the collection in the window-box, labelled in crude blue letters, "All in this row 2_d._ each," he was amazed that Mr. Griggs should exhibit them. For the most part they were old school-books, and he remembered, with a sudden sense of wealth unreckoned, that he had quite a number at home as good as these. He was not aware that only a summer ago a sharp visitor had picked up from this bundle a volume which he sold in London for 9.

Timidly did Henry peep in at the doorway, which was narrower than he had expected, and a trifle shabby so far as painting was concerned.

So much as he could see of the shop inside accorded but little better with his mental picture of the place. Books were there in abundance, many of them presenting some degree of order, and as many more seemingly in hopeless confusion.

He got a glimpse of a counter, at which he supposed the business of the place was transacted, but the inadequate back view of the figure of a young man bending at a desk in a gloomy corner was the only thing suggesting life.

His first peep a.s.suredly was not what he had looked forward to, but who knew to what hidden chambers of interest the door at the far side of the front shop gave access?

Afraid to further pursue his inspection, Henry moved away somewhat hurriedly when the young man at the desk showed signs of moving towards the door, having probably scented a customer.

He wandered next to Shakespeare's Church, lingering on the way at the Memorial, then fresh from the hands of the builders, and loudly out of harmony with everything else in Stratford. Anon he was peeping in at the old Grammar School and the Guild Hall, and tea-time found him loitering around the Birthplace, with half a desire to set out then and there to Anne Hathaway's Cottage.

The business of dealing in Shakespeare's memory had not yet developed into Stratford's staple industry, nor had local boyhood begun to earn precarious pennies by waylaying visitors and rehearsing to them in parrot fas.h.i.+on the leading dates in the life of the poet. But the princ.i.p.al show-place of the town had long been attracting pilgrims from the ends of the earth, and for the first time in his life Henry heard the English language produced with strong nasal accompaniment by a group of brisk-looking young men and women issuing from the shrine in Market Street.

There was little sleep for him that night, nor was the unusual circ.u.mstances of his sharing a bed with another youth the cause of it.

He wondered at his ability to peep in at Mr. Griggs's door without entering precipitately and avowing himself the new a.s.sistant. But his father's instructions on this point had been explicit. He had to present himself at the proper hour of the morning; neither early nor late, but at the hour precisely. It would have been unbusiness-like to stroll in the previous afternoon, and if business-like habits were not acquired now they never would be.

But Henry had read so recently the wonderful story of "Monte Cristo,"

and was so impressed by the hero's habit of keeping his appointments to the second, that he required no advice on this point.

"Suppose I go down in the morning and enter the shop when the market-clock is striking the fifth note of nine. That would be a good start to make!"

Thus he thought, and thus he did. But alas! the new Monte Cristo found no appreciative audience awaiting him.

For a moment he stood at the counter in the middle of the shop, with half a mind to run away. His entry had been unheralded, un.o.bserved. No one was visible. But hesitating whether to knock on the counter, as customers at Hampton Post Office were wont to do, or take down a book until someone appeared, he became aware of certain sounds issuing from behind a wooden part.i.tion which enclosed a corner of the shop.