The Carpet From Bagdad | Page 2

bayed and decorated, marrying the most distinguished woman in all
Europe, whoever she might be. Mr. Jones had had no dreams at all, and
had put the boy to work in the shipping department a little while after
the college threshold had been crossed, outward bound. The mother,
while sweet and gentle, had a will, iron under velvet, and when she
held out for Percival Algernon and a decent knowledge of modern
languages, the old man agreed if, on the other hand, the boy's first name
should be George and that he should learn the business from the cellar
up. There were several tilts over the matter, but at length a truce was
declared. It was agreed that the boy himself ought to have a word to say
upon a subject which concerned him more vitally than any one else. So,
at the age of fifteen, when he was starting off for preparatory school, he
was advised to choose for himself. He was an obedient son, adoring his
mother and idolizing his father. He wrote himself down as George
Percival Algernon Jones, promised to become a linguist and to learn the
rug business from the cellar up. On the face of it, it looked like a big
job; it all depended upon the boy.

The first day at school his misery began. He had signed himself as
George P. A. Jones, no small diplomacy for a lad; but the two initials,
standing up like dismantled pines in the midst of uninteresting
landscape, roused the curiosity of his schoolmates. Boys are boys the
world over, and possess a finesse in cruelty that only the Indian can
match; and it did not take them long to unearth the fatal secret. For
three years he was Percy Algy, and not only the boys laughed, but the
pretty girls sniggered. Many a time he had returned to his dormitory
decorated (not in accord with the fond hopes of his mother) with a
swollen ear, or a ruddy proboscis, or a green-brown eye. There was a
limit, and when they stepped over that, why, he proceeded to the best of
his ability to solve the difficulty with his fists. George was no milksop;
but Percival Algernon would have been the Old Man of the Sea on
broader shoulders than his. He dimly realized that had he been named
George Henry William Jones his sun would have been many diameters
larger. There was a splendid quality of pluck under his apparent
timidity, and he stuck doggedly to it. He never wrote home and
complained. What was good enough for his mother was good enough
for him.
It seemed just an ordinary matter of routine for him to pick up French
and German verbs. He was far from being brilliant, but he was sensitive
and his memory was sound. Since his mother's ambition was to see him
an accomplished linguist, he applied himself to the task as if everything
in the world depended upon it, just as he knew that when the time came
he would apply himself as thoroughly to the question of rugs and
carpets.
Under all this filial loyalty ran the pure strain of golden romance, side
by side with the lesser metal of practicality. When he began to read the
masters he preferred their romances to their novels. He even wrote
poetry in secret, and when his mother discovered the fact she cried over
the sentimental verses. The father had to be told. He laughed and
declared that the boy would some day develop into a good writer of
advertisements. This quiet laughter, unburdened as it was with ridicule,
was enough to set George's muse a-winging, and she never came back.

After leaving college he was given a modest letter of credit and told to
go where he pleased for a whole year. George started out at once in
quest of the Holy Grail, and there are more roads to that than there are
to Rome. One may be reasonably sure of getting into Rome, whereas
the Holy Grail (diversified, variable, innumerable) is always the exact
sum of a bunch of hay hanging before old Dobbin's nose. Nevertheless,
George galloped his fancies with loose rein. He haunted the romantic
quarters of the globe; he hunted romance, burrowed and plowed for it;
and never his spade clanged musically against the hidden treasure,
never a forlorn beauty in distress, not so much as chapter one of the
Golden Book offered its dazzling first page. George lost some
confidence.
Two or three times a woman looked into the young man's mind, and in
his guilelessness they effected sundry holes in his letter of credit, but
left his soul singularly untouched. The red corpuscle, his father's gift,
though it lay dormant, subconsciously erected barriers. He was
innocent, but he