William Jordan, Junior

by J. C. Snaith

As soon as the old man began to read in his weak quavering voice, his face, which was so bloodless and ascetic, broke out into a suffusion of stern and almost uncontrollable joy. The poet, who could not discern this remarkable expression, bent his head to listen; and as the roll and cadence of the lines he had wrought came upon his ears he drew in his breath sharply with half a sob and half a sigh.

All through the night the aged man, his father, read aloud the poem in his weak quavering voice. As he did so, not he only, but the author of it sat with the inanimation of statues. They seemed neither to breathe nor to move; yet sometimes the tears would flow from the eyes of both. At other times every kind of emotion would pass across their faces: terror, joy, pity, laughter, bewilderment, protest, acceptance.

Hour after hour sped, and the passion engendered by the reading seemed to mount in the veins of each. At last towards the afternoon the old man’s voice failed him, and through sheer physical weakness he could read no more.

“Pray continue, O Achilles,” said the old man. “I am now old, and Nature fails me.”

“Nay, my father,” said the poet, “Nature has failed me also. I would have you repose a little, and then I would have you continue in your task.”

In obedience to the poet’s request, the old man laid his reading aside for a while, yet a few hours hence he resumed. And thus it befell that when Jimmy Dodson knocked upon the shutters of the shop at eight o’clock, no heed was paid to his summons. He knocked again and again; his blows were so loud that they echoed all about the street; yet although he could discern a thread of light stealing from the room behind the shop his demand met with no answer.

He tried the door of the shop, but it was secure. However, his imperious need armed him with resources; for climbing up by means of a niche in the shutters, he peered through an aperture at the top. He owed it to an infinite good fortune that the door of the little room was open wide; and he who looked was able to observe its two occupants sitting either side of the hearth. The white-haired old man with a great pile of papers upon his knees was reading aloud to his son; and as revealed by the shadows of the lamp the faces of both were suffused by a most singular emotion.

The evening following at the same hour Dodson returned again to the shop; yet again to his profound astonishment admittance was denied to him. Climbing up for the second time to peer over the top of the shutters he found the cause of his exclusion to be the same.

On the third evening, however, when he knocked upon the shutters he was admitted by the old man.

When Jimmy Dodson crossed the threshold of the little room, William Jordan, who still sat by the side of the fire with the great pile of his writings once more upon his knees, lifted his dull eyes towards his friend, and said with his lips yielding in a smile of exquisite mobility, “Embrace me, my dear friend, embrace me!”