Whatever he might read, for he turned to other books as one travels, for the joy of coming home again, the old brown book lay open on his knees, and he patted the pages with one hand, absently, as his eyes travelled over the print. Sooner or later he came back to the yellowed leaves—perhaps to the story of Dryope.
"Now there was nothing left of Dryope but her face. Her tears still flowed and fell on her leaves, and while she could, she spoke. 'I am not guilty. I deserve not this fate. I have injured no one. If I speak falsely, may my foliage perish with drought and my trunk be cut down and burned. Take this infant and give it to a nurse. Let it often be brought and nursed under my branches, and play in my shade; and when he is old enough to talk, let him be taught to call me mother, and to say with sadness, "My mother lies hid under this bark." But bid him be careful of river-banks, and beware how he plucks flowers, remembering that every bush he sees may be a goddess in disguise. Farewell, dear husband and sister and father. If you retain any love for me, let not the axe wound me nor the flocks bite and tear my branches. Since I cannot stoop to you, climb up hither and kiss me; and while my lips continue to feel, lift up my child, that I may kiss him. I can speak no more, for already the bark advances up my neck, and will soon shoot over me. You need not close my eyes; the bark will soon close them without your aid.' Then the lips ceased to move, and life was extinct; but the branches retained, for some time longer, the vital heat."
In fancy he walked by that fatal stream. He saw the plant dripping blood—the flower that was the poor nymph Lotis. The terrible, beautiful revenge, the swift doom of those wonderful Greeks, that delights even while it horrifies, he felt to the fullest measure. He had no more need to read them than a priest his breviary, for he knew them all, but he followed the type in very delight of recognition.
Through the window came the strong scent of the purple lilacs, that grew all over the little New England town. Faint cries of children playing drifted in with the breeze. The organ in the church nearby crooned and droned a continual fugue. Someone was always practising there. The deep, bass notes jarred the air, even the little building trembled to them at times. And since it had been at this season of the year, when he had first found the book, the lovely broken myths, elusive sometimes, and as dim to his understanding as the marble fragments that still bewilder the enchanted artist, he always connected with that throbbing, mournful melody, that haunting lilac odour. Sometimes the organ swelled triumphantly and cried out in a mighty chorus of tone: at those times Ulysses shot down the false suitors, or Perseus, hovering over the shrieking sea-beast, rescued the white Andromeda. Sometimes a minor plaintive strain troubled him vaguely, and then he listened to poor Venus, bending in tears above the slain Adonis.
"'Yet theirs shall be but a partial triumph; memorials of my grief shall endure, and the spectacle of your death, my Adonis, and of my lamentation, shall be annually renewed. Your blood shall be turned into a flower; that consolation none shall envy me.' Thus speaking, she sprinkled nectar on the blood; and as they mingled, bubbles rose as in a pool, on which rain-drops fall, and in an hour's time there sprang up a flower of bloody hue, like that of the pomegranate. But it is short-lived."
The peculiar odour of much leather on pine shelves was confused, too, with the darling book. He had never read it elsewhere; he had not money enough for a library-ticket. Old Mr. Littlejohn, quickly recognising the invaluable services that this little acolyte might be counted upon to render, had readily granted him the freedom of the shelves, and smoked his pipe in peace for hours together, thereafter, in the back room, sure of his monitor in front.
Miss Watkins needed no such assistance, but she found herself, to her amazement, not wholly ungrateful for the many steps saved her by Jimmy's tactful service to the children. At first she would have none of it, and groups of shy boys and girls waited awkwardly and in vain before the little gate, hoping for a glimpse of their kindly counsellor. She thrust lists of juveniles into their unwilling hands, led them cautiously into an inspection of Nature Lessons for Little Learners, displayed tempting rows of bound St. Nicholas—but to no purpose.
"Where's Jimmy?" they demanded stubbornly.
"What on earth do they want of him?" she asked of her assistant one day. "That stupid Meadows child—is she going to ask his opinion of the Dotty Dimple Books?"
"Not at all," Miss Mather replied tranquilly. "But he always gets her a Mary J. Holmes novel, and I stamp it and let it go. You always argue with her about it, and ask her if she wouldn't prefer something else—which she never would."