MOLLY O’HARA.
Professor S. S. Reid’s history thus continues:
Well, I saw old Lepsius very shortly after his return, when he showed
me the little cylinder of basalt, and related to me for the first time,
not the last, the details of his adventures. He was blithe and fit, if
a bit bothered in mind about the three shot Abyssinians, and about the
drowning of the aged prior’s body, due to his rage of research.
“And how about the stele,” said I to him; “have you made out the
meaning?”
“I am going to,” was his answer.
“I suppose it is worth the pains?” said I.
“Reid,” says he, “it would be worth the pains, if all the Orientalists
in the world applied their wits to nothing else than that one thing.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“Well, but haven’t I already read part of the thing?” says he.
“True, it is no cartouche of Darius, nor Rosetta-stone; its date
can’t be earlier than the thirteenth century, and not only is it
the oddest mix of Memphitic with hieroglyphs, but, what is really
remarkable, this Coptic stone is the record of an Indian incident. Its
comparative-philological value will hardly be high, perhaps, but I am
convinced that, once deciphered, it will prove a priceless document
from the historian’s point of view.”
Well, I wished him joy of his new toy, and we said adieu for that time.
Then for some few months I did not see much of Lepsius, nor, I imagine,
did anyone else of his world, till his seclusion began to be remarked
upon by one and another of the gossips. “Where was Lepsius, what was
he pottering at at present, why the father of lies...?” and so on. On
three or four of the occasions when I called upon him at his Hanover
Square house, I found him looking far from so well and sprightly as
usual, nor did the good fellow give himself the pains to hide from me
that I was somewhat heavy upon him. I understood that he was in the
grip of a fit of study—a certain grimness of his looks and gauntness
of his face informed one of so much—and that in that same little stele
lay the secret of this too great zeal. By this time the blessed stele
had been reproduced and distributed among the savants everywhere, and
it may be that a race was being run in its deciphering, I don’t know;
but one thing was obvious, it made Lepsius lean many days, so that
says Matthews to me, “serves him right for picking and _steling_,
there’s some black spook in the basalt thing that’s paying him back,
and making him its victim”; and, in truth, I never saw such a thing,
for one by one Lepsius threw every social, every scientific obligation
to the winds to give himself day and night to this one object. Such,
however, was the man: whatsoever his hands found to do, he did it with
a fraction more than all his might or right. Then all at once I learned
that he had fallen ill and had gone off to his castle in Galway, from
which region, after some weeks, he once only wrote me a few words.
On a sudden one morning, say ten months after his coming back from
Abyssinia, Lepsius presents his old phiz before me, looking as brisk
and light as you like, with a smile on the thin lips. He had got back
from Ireland only the day before, and, after some gossip, said I to
him, “Come now, one can really see that we have laid bare at last the
secret of our basalt stele.”
“Do I look like it?” he asked rather sorrowfully.
“So I thought,” said I.
“Just failed, sir! just failed!” sighs he, tossing up his hand.
“Tell me about it,” said I.
“That’s all I’ve got to say,” says he; “I’ve only just failed. The
epigraph, as you know, consists of signs of very diverse dates, with a
quite hierogrammatic vowelling, but Memphitic aspirations, and a jumble
of true idiographs and true rebuses. Well, within five months I had
deciphered it all—every syllable—save fifteen signs, making, I think,
three words at the very finish, which are purposely ‘secret’; but, as
it chances, those three are the important ones.”
“That’s hard luck, certainly,” said I; “but why, then, are these three
of such particular importance?”
“You know,” said he, “that the stele is the record of an accumulation
of riches heaped up somewhere by a host of Hindu princes during the
period of the Mohammedan deluge—this where and when is exactly what
remains dark. Fix place and date, and you have sextupled the value of
your stele as a piece of history, quite apart from the pile of lucre in
question, supposing it still to exist.”
“Well, that’s tantalising,” I said. “Of course, Thibaut has seen it?”
“You may bet,” was his answer. “Who hasn’t seen it? They have all seen
it. But the fellows _can’t make it out_! I question if any one of them
has read as much of it as I have. Reid, there’s not one single living
man who can do it!”
“So much for stolen goods, then,” said I. “Still, you seemed to me a
good deal more like your old self just as you came in, quite a youthful
step and jaunty air, I thought! so I made sure....”
He laughed, saying, “Well, perhaps you are right, for I _am_ relieved,
and I have reason.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Look you,” says he, “I am going to read every syllable of the writing
on that stele.”
“You said just now that you couldn’t,” said I.
“I am going to, though,” says he, “for it can be done, if not by me, if
not by any living man, still it can be done; and if I look relieved it
is because I know the means of doing it, and because, two nights since,
lying in my bed, I suddenly decided to use them.”
“Very good,” said I, swallowing my puzzlement; “and what _are_ the
means?”
“I am going, Reid,” says Lepsius, “to make a man who will read the
secret.”
Quite at a loss to make out what the deuce he would be at, no doubt I
smiled, for he added quickly, “No, don’t smile in that fashion, as if
you hadn’t known me until to-day, since I assure you quite seriously
that I can and will successfully accomplish this job.”
“The making of a man?” said I: “those are your words.”
“The making of a man,” says he, “who will not merely read the rebus,
but do it without difficulty—without effort.”
“Quite so, Lepsius,” said I, “for though you choose to express
yourself in terms of x, I am quite sure that in due course some
explanation will be offered by you of the matter which you meditate,
and of your meaning when you speak of ‘making a man’ to read this
stele.”
“Lord,” exclaims Lepsius, “what a speech! How sweet the smile, but
how icy the meaning! as if I were some rash, fantastic talker. No! at
present I haven’t the time to go into prolonged explanations, moreover
doubting Thomas ought to be tortured; but in about four days I shall
probably lay my plan fully before you, when I shall have seen the
initial stages of it well under way: and meanwhile, I invite you to
take part with me in watching the accomplishment of these stages.”
“Where?” said I.
“You come,” said he.
“To the end of the world,” said I, “if you are serious and scientific.”
“I am quite serious and strictly scientific,” says he.
Well, I went with him. First we drove to his club in Piccadilly,
where we took two seats at a window to look down upon the passers on
the pavement beneath, as to whom Lepsius remarked that we might have
to keep an eye on them for two, three, four hours, and—did I mind?
“No, didn’t mind,” I replied, feebly chewing my foolish feeling.
However, after half an hour of this watch, he changed his mind, said
that that was hardly the proper place for his object, and suggested
that we should drive to Westminster Bridge, if I would. I should, I
said: so thither we drove, and there by the parapet of the bridge we
stood, under the July blaze of the sun, two hours. I was at first
simply amused by this open-air sentry of two venerable persons like
ourselves, then I became a little vexed. However, I stuck to my task,
while of the river of people that passed by every one stared at us
two standing stupidly there, Lepsius speaking of everything except of
what had brought us into this exhibition, mainly, I remember, of the
necessity, by a law of probability, that every variety of human type
should move past us within a number of time-units equal to the number
of type-varieties which exist in the city. At last, when it was close
on two o’clock, he stopped suddenly in his talk, and pointed.
“There, I think,” he says, “comes the right age, the right race, the
right trade, the right body and being—the very lady.”
It was a passing woman at whom he pointed, a woman of the lower orders,
with black hair, black eyes, high cheek-bones, very cheaply dressed,
but not unclean, long in the leg, lean and fit, some twenty-five years
old. Her nose was not red, her teeth were regular. She was going, under
a heap of soiled clothes, toward the Surrey side, and one could make
quite sure that she was an Irish washerwoman.
Well, Lepsius stepped out and addressed the woman. She was startled! I
heard her say, “Sure, then, it isn’t me that has the time to be showing
your worship around the town this day.”
I remained waiting at the parapet, absolutely astonished, much amused,
while Lepsius walked on with the woman, talking pressingly, quite
a confab, one could see, taking place between them, he all suave
insistence, the woman curtseying, till, presently turning, he beckons
me to come. So I ran and overtook them, to find them already fast
friends; and Lepsius effusively introduced me to “Miss Molly O’Hara.”
This woman turned out to be the heartiest, best soul in the world, and
in some half-hour we had won from her the whole simple history of one
who was orphaned and friendless, save for a sister, a fruit-seller,
who lived at Ballihooly. In the course of our discourse it was
discovered that she had never visited the Tower, the Crown Jewels,
nor the whispering-gallery at St. Paul’s, so we soon got from her an
engagement to meet us on the Bridge the next day, in order to go with
us to inspect these glories. She showed us the slum and the house in
Southwark in which she occupied a room, and we parted.
Well then, the next day, at one o’clock, behold Molly standing in
holiday garb with her landlady for guardian, and the pair of professors
before them with doffed hats, like characters in an opera! We had
lunch in a restaurant, and I spent a pestilent day in the “chamber
of horrors” and other suchlike places, winding up with a play in the
evening; after which, at about midnight, we sent our ladies home in a
cab, and Lepsius, coming back to my house with me, disclosed to me that
night the design that underlay his conduct during the last two days,
so that we were still talking in my study when the dawn stole in. When
I said to him that I had well earned his secret, and asked what in the
world he meant to do with this Molly O’Hara, his answer was, “I mean to
make her read my stele for me.” “Quite so,” said I, “but then, Lepsius,
you persist in speaking to me in riddles.” “I mean to marry her,” says
Lepsius.
I was so startled, I couldn’t help crying out a “No!”
“And why not?” says the doctor coldly.
“Oh, Lepsius,” I couldn’t help saying, half laughing, and half
shrinking with reproach, “this is ridiculous, this is absurd.”
“Ridiculous enough, certainly,” says he, “but very far from absurd. We
differ there.”
“But, Lepsius,” said I.
“Pooh, man,” says he, “don’t be excessive; there’s no law to prevent
me taking a female to the altar, if I like, and, as to the particular
lass in question, if it isn’t the right of men like you and me to look
at facts in their true light, where’s the use of us? Molly O’Hara is
a better human being than I, you may bet, with all my learning, sound
from her top-knot to her toes; I don’t doubt she will make a pretty
fairish wife—and a most splendid mother.”
“Well, I never was so astonished,” I said.
“That,” he answered, “is due to the fact that you have not yet acquired
a scientific interest in my motive, for as soon as ever you have, your
interest will quite quash your astonishment.”
“Well, I am all ears,” says I: “what _is_ your motive?”
“You know, Reid,” was his answer, “that whatever else I may or may not
be, I am by nature an educationist; the world calls me educationist,
and with justice, if a lifetime’s work and warmth are worth ought;
and you know, too, my notion that no son of Adam so far has ever been
educated, or been half educated—that education is an affair of the
future. Well, my thought, cherished for many years, and now brought to
a head by this stele, is to turn out by certain quite sure modes of
education, a man, or why not a woman? who shall be not so much a man as
a kind of—god. The methods, however, have to be such, that I should not
venture to employ them upon another man’s boy, nor, unless the child
were in my absolute power from a very early age, would they be of any
use. You now observe where my Molly comes nicely in: the first needful
work for a man who would build a mansion or a fane is to make sure that
his marble and beams are at least good.”
“I see,” said I: “given fair materials to start with, you undertake
what you say.”
“Aye,” says he, “and without so much as the shadow of a doubt as to the
result.”
“What an enterprise!” I cried. “But as to the means.”
“The means,” says he, “will be simple enough, being based purely upon
the known fact that human beings are what their environment makes of
them. We know that an English child, abandoned by its guardians in
China, will grow up, hardly a mental Englishman, but a mental Chinaman:
never by any effort will he be able to row like a Cambridge-man, or
do business like a jobber; but he will, without effort, make finer
porcelain than could be turned out by the life’s devotion of ten
thousand Cambridge-men or jobbers; it is a question of environment,
of the mental hue and house about you. Be sure that every brat born
into ancient Athens was straightway an artist, and if children to-day
were born into a world in which everybody as a matter of course played
violins with perfect skill, then _every_ average child would without
conscious effort be a pretty perfect fiddle-player—and, indeed, _is_ so
in some regions of the Bas-Pyrennees. It is a question of environment.”
“Quite so,” said I, “and, if you add heredity——”
“No,” says he, “let one get on; what I am trying to tell you is that
the faculties of a human child’s mind and body can be made to stretch
_a hundred miles_—almost indefinitely—I half said infinitely—according
to the ideal, the standard and life-idea, that he finds about him; and
I should doubt almost any limit which you chose to lay down to the
possible activity, exactness, and acumen of the human mind and senses;
we here are limited merely by habit, by the iron rod of mean ideals.
Primitive man in his atmosphere of reindeer could run very like a deer;
he had his hound’s scent, could speed his spear with the sureness of a
machine—and without toil, that’s the point, without dreaming that he
did anything astounding. A modern British child, abandoned in Africa
to that same atmosphere and life-ideal, would also run like the devil,
shoot like a machine, track like a dog; born into a world of gods or
godlike beings, he, too, would in general be stretched into a god or
godlike being; if he believed that everybody about him could read
rebuses without effort, then he, too, would read them without effort.
It is an affair of environment.”
“Quite so,” said I; “one has no difficulty in following you so far,
for even monkeys that have lived long in an environment of men become
manlike, and get to do many things; so, given your ‘environment of
gods,’ your undertaking looks all in bloom. But where, then, do you
mean to find this environment of gods? On the moon? In Venus?”
“Oh, as to that,” says Lepsius, “surely that much is simplicity itself.
The environment may be real or it may be merely imagined. A child
placed in isolation may be made to believe in an environment, a world,
which does not exist, and so long as he never comes into actual contact
with the imperfect world, and has no suspicion that it is not a perfect
one, you will have all the elements of success: his life-ideal and
standard, his idea and atmosphere, will remain quite unaffected by the
actual world round about him; and having been made to conceive man as a
god, he will not himself be vastly inferior to his conception.”
“By George,” I cried, “I see what you are at!... But, my friend, aren’t
you preparing a nice little shock for some poor devil of a child,
supposing he ever does come into contact with his actual, as distinct
from his fancied, environment?”
“May be,” says Lepsius, with a shrug; “or may be the shock will be to
the environment, not to the child—‘so much the worse for the coo,’ as
old Stephenson said; but really, Reid, that’s looking too far forward
for me; the practical point for us is to make out the meaning of our
stele.... Lord! it is broad day, I’m away.”
Such is something of the gist of my talk with this radical mind that
morning. I can’t recall a hundredth part of his ratiocinations, but
when he had finished I was convinced. I made him stay till with our own
hands we had found and cooked some coffee on my tripod, whereupon the
doctor went home.
As to the end of this business, I have already, under September 13th,
1869, recorded the doctor’s marriage with Molly O’Hara in the church at
Lambeth. As usual with him, Lepsius has given himself up heart and soul
to the grip of his caprice, the married pair going off at once to his
Galway castle, where, for the past twelvemonth, they have lived. Some
months since I received tidings that Lepsius was in a fair way to be a
parent, and that he had then leased the island of Shunter (one of the
uninhabited islands of the Hebrides), which he was busily preparing at
a crazy cost for the habitation of the child shortly to be born. Now
this morning comes the joyful news that a boy was actually born about
two weeks ago, and with it the gloomy news that our poor good Molly is
no more. She died of milk-fever five days ago, and it had been better
for the good woman not to have passed over Westminster Bridge just
at that particular hour of that day twelve months ago. However, so it
was to be. The fellow who is to read the famous stele is to be named
Hannibal ... etc., etc.