William Jordan, Junior

by J. C. Snaith

XLVI

The returned wayfarer, ragged, bare-footed, and dishevelled, continued in his profound sleep by the side of the fire. Not a sound escaped him, not once did he change his posture; and as the hour of midnight approached, the old man, his father, began to have a fear that he would not waken again. But at the first stroke of the clocks, as they told the midnight hour, the wanderer opened his eyes to the full, and, rising immediately from his chair, without pain, and without weariness, sat down exactly as he was before the materials for writing that were spread upon the table, and commenced author.

At first, as he dipped the pen in the ink, and it sought the virgin sheets of white paper, his face was calm and untroubled, and about his lips was a happy smile of peace. Lightly, easily, deftly at first, his right hand, that was now so strong, ran across the paper, without a moment of hesitation, without a single pause, or any kind of uncertainty.

Page upon page was traversed by his strong right hand. Not once did it falter, no fault did it commit; and neither blot, nor erasure, nor substitution of one word for another, defiled the fair copy that grew, minute by minute, under the slender, blood-stained fingers. Hour after hour passed; and the aged man, his father, sat by the side of the fire with his dim and incredulous eyes fixed upon him who wrote. In them was a kind of entrancement.

The beams of the morning stole through the top of the shutters of the little room, but the author did not look up an instant from his labours, and not once did he change the attitude in which he wrote. Neither did he ask to have the shutters thrown back, and the bright lamp removed, even when it was twelve o’clock in the day. From time to time the old man plied the hearth with fuel, and also he procured a second lamp, newly replenished with oil.

In the afternoon the old man went forth of the little room, and making no sound, so that his movements might not be regarded, he penetrated, candle in hand, to a deep cellar below the shop.

In a corner of this chill vault, all covered with cobwebs and grime, was a bottle of a great and aged wine. This the old man removed from the place it had occupied full many years, and bore it, with a care as nice as a woman bears a sleeping infant, up the dark stairs to the little room.

The old man placed the wine near to him who wrote; but, as though unconscious of the action, the returned wayfarer pursued his labours.

The old man, his father, then returned to his place beside the bright hearth. The hours passed. All that day the shutters were not taken down from the shop, which was shrouded in complete darkness in the broad light; while in the room behind it a lamp was burning continually, even when the sun was high at noon.

As page upon page was traversed by the strong right hand of him who wrote, and they began to form a delicately-written heap on the table before him, the mood of the author, which at first was so serene and of such a calm assurance, began to change. In those large and bright eyes, whose lustre seemed to vie with that of the ever-burning lamp, the inward fire, the controlled passion, the noble self-possession, began, towards afternoon, to yield to the hue of terror. The large and bright eyes began to roll in a strange kind of frenzy. Great beads of perspiration came upon the forehead of the author; they rolled in a stream down his cheeks.