William Jordan, Junior

by J. C. Snaith

“I suppose, my father,” he said, “heroes do not crave for death?”

“Yes, Achilles,” said his father, “death is a guerdon they do not seek.”

His father accompanied him up the stairs as was his invariable custom during the winter evenings, for he had not the courage to enter a dark room alone. When the boy had sought sanctuary in his cold bed, his father left him with the light burning at its fullest.

It was in the small hours of the morning when his father entered the chamber again. The boy lay wide-eyed, with his head pillowed upon his hands. He was gazing through the curtainless window at the bright stars. Thus did he lie all night very cold and still, but at six o’clock, when his father left his side to light the fire in the little room and to clean out the shop, he had fallen into a light and troubled rest. Later, when his father returned to bid him rise, he found that sheer fatigue had at last overcome him, and that his broken sleep had changed to a slumber that was deep and dreamless. It was only by shaking that the boy could be induced to open his eyes.

“You will be late at the school, Achilles,” said his father.

The boy gave a little faint shiver, and for an instant he cowered among the warm blankets in terror and dismay. In the next, however, he had left his too-pleasant refuge. He clothed his tottering limbs, yet they were so weak that he could hardly walk down the stairs. He took a deep draught of milk, of the inferior London kind, and again accompanied his father through the press of traffic to the house in the gloomy square. Throughout the journey neither spoke.

The incidents of the day were much like those of the previous one, except that his father and the aged master did not re-enact their former interview. As on the day before, the boy sat at the master’s table, and followed him wherever he went. The aged man continued to show him much consideration, while his voice, as it became familiar to the boy’s ears, seemed to grow even gentler and more melodious. Yet the eyes of the boys who sat opposite seemed to grow increasingly scornful and fierce.

The days passed with little change from this order. The boy’s pallor deepened, and his cheeks grew more gaunt than when he entered the school. Sometimes when he returned to the little room in the evening, still in his father’s care, he would be so overcome with weariness that he would lay his head on the table and fall asleep. He ate little; and the previous brightness of his childhood, his frank and insatiable curiosity, gave place to a settled air of lassitude, weariness and dejection.

Once or twice upon returning to the little room he would appear to have been invigorated by some incident of the day, which yet he did not mention. On these infrequent occasions he would seem to have a little appetite for his food, and he would read in some of the less familiar of the ancient authors under his father’s guidance.

Sometimes when his father went to rest in the midnight hours he found the boy kneeling at the side of the bed in his white gown. On one occasion, when the boy was too overborne to take off his own clothes, his father helped him to do so. In removing them his father observed the right arm to be much swollen, and to be greatly bruised and lacerated. His father affected not to notice its condition.