THE ARCH PHYSICIAN.
The Arch Physician generally walked in the College Gardens for
an hour or so every forenoon. They are very large and spacious
Gardens, including plantations of trees, orchards, ferneries, lawns,
flower-beds, and shrubberies. In one corner is a certain portion which,
having been left entirely alone by the gardeners, has long since become
like a tangled coppice, rather than a garden, covered with oaks and
elms and all kinds of trees, and overgrown with thick underwoods. It
was in this wild and secluded part that Dr. Linister daily walked. It
lay conveniently at the back of his own residence, and adjoining the
Museum and Picture Gallery. No one came here except himself, and but
for the beaten path which his footsteps had made in their daily walk,
the place would have become entirely overgrown. As it was, there were
thick growths of holly and of yew; tall hawthorn-trees, wild roses
spreading about among brambles; ferns grew tall in the shade, and
under the great trees there was a deep shadow even on the brightest
day. In this neglected wood there were creatures of all kinds--rabbits,
squirrels, snakes, moles, badgers, weasels, and stoats. There were also
birds of all kinds in the wood, and in the stream that ran through the
place there were otters. In this solitary place Dr. Linister walked
every day and meditated. The wildness and the solitude pleased and
soothed him. I have already explained that he had always, from the
outset, been most strongly opposed to the policy of the majority, and
that he was never free from a certain melancholy. Perhaps he meditated
on the world as he would have made it, had he been able to have his own
way.
* * * * *
I have heard that much was said among the Rebels about my conduct
during these events, as wanting in Gratitude. In the first place,
if it is at all necessary for me to defend my conduct, let me point
out that my duty to the Authority of the House must come before
everything--certainly before the claims of private gratitude. In the
second place, I owe no gratitude at all to Dr. Linister, or to anybody.
I have made myself. Whatever I have done, alone I have done it, and
unaided. Dr. Linister, it is very true, received me into his laboratory
as bottle-washer and servant. Very good. He paid me my wages, and I
did his work for him. Much room for gratitude there. He looked for the
proper discharge of the work, and I looked for the regular payment of
the wages. Where does the gratitude come in? He next taught me the
elements of science. To be sure, he wanted the simpler part of his
experiments conducted by a skilled, not an ignorant, hand. Therefore
he taught me those elements. The better skilled the hand, the more he
could depend upon the successful conduct of his research. Therefore,
when he found that he could depend upon my eye and hand, he taught me
more, and encouraged me to work on my own account, and gave me the best
books to read. Very good. All for his own purposes.
What happened next? Presently, Grout the Bottle-washer became so
important in the laboratory that he became Grout the Assistant, or
Demonstrator; and another Bottle-washer was appointed--a worthy
creature who still performs that useful Function, and desires nothing
more than to wash the bottles truly and thoroughly. Next, Grout
became known outside the laboratory; many interesting and important
discoveries were made by Grout; then Grout became too big a man to be
any longer Dr. Linister's Assistant; he had his own laboratory; Grout
entered upon his own field of research. This was a practical field, and
one in which he quickly surpassed all others.
Remember that Dr. Linister never claimed, or looked for, gratitude.
He was much too wise a man. On all occasions, when it was becoming in
him, he spoke in the highest terms of his former Assistant's scientific
achievements.
There was, in fact, no question of Gratitude at all.
As for personal friendship, the association of years, the bond of
union, or work in common--these are mere phrases, the worn-out old
phrases of the vanished Past. Besides, there never was any personal
friendship. Quite the contrary. Dr. Linister was never able to forget
that in the old time I had been the servant and he the master. Where
equality has been so long established, the continual reminder of former
inequality is galling.
Dr. Linister, indeed, was always antipathetic from the beginning.
Except over a research, we could have nothing in common. In the old
days he was what they called a gentleman; he was also a scholar; he
used to play music and write verses; he would act and dance and sing,
and do all kinds of things; he was one of those men who always wanted
to do everything that other men can do, and to do it as well as other
men could do it. So that, though he was a great scientific worker,
he spent half his day at his club, or at his sports, or in Society;
that is to say, with the women--and mostly, I think, among the games
and amusements of the women. There was every day, I remember, a great
running to and fro of page-boys with notes from them; and he was always
ready to leave any, even the most important work, just to run after a
woman's caprice.
As for me, I never had any school education at all; I never had
anything to do with Society; the sight of a woman always filled me with
contempt for the man who could waste time in running after a creature
who knew no science, never cared for any, and was so wont to disfigure
her natural figure by the way she crowded on her misshapen clothes that
no one could guess what it was like beneath them. As for music, art,
and the rest of it, I never asked so much as what they meant; after I
began to make my way, I had the laboratory for work, play, and all.
When, again, it came to the time when the Property question became
acute, and we attempted to solve it by a Civil War, although Dr.
Linister adhered to his determination not to leave his laboratory, his
sympathies were always with individualism. Nay, he never disguised his
opinion, but was accustomed regularly to set it forth at our Council
meetings in the House of Life--that the abolition of property and
the establishment of the perfect Socialism were the greatest blows
ever inflicted upon civilization. It is not, however, civilization
which the College advances, but Science--which is a very different
thing--and the Scientific End of Humanity. The gradual extinction of
all the emotions--love, jealousy, ambition, rivalry--Dr. Linister
maintained, made life so poor a thing that painless extinction would be
the very best thing possible for the whole race. It is useless to point
out, to one so prejudiced, the enormous advantage gained in securing
constant tranquillity of mind. He was even, sometimes, an advocate for
the revival of fighting--fighting, the old barbarous way of settling
disputes, in which lives were thrown away by thousands on a single
field. Nor would he ever agree with the majority of the House that the
only End of Humanity is mere existence, at which Science should always
aim, prolonged without exertion, thought, care, or emotion of any kind.
In fact, according to the contention of my followers and myself, the
Triumph of Science is as follows: The Philosopher finds a creature,
extremely short-lived at the best, liable to every kind of disease
and suffering from external causes, torn to pieces from within by all
kinds of conflicting emotions; a creature most eager and insatiate
of appetite, fiery and impetuous, quarrelsome and murderous, most
difficult to drive or lead, guided only by its own selfish desires,
tormented by intellectual doubts and questions which can never be
answered. The Philosopher works upon this creature until he has moulded
it into another so different that no one would perceive any likeness to
the original creature. The new creature is immortal; it is free from
disease or the possibility of disease; it has no emotions, no desires,
and no intellectual restlessness. It breathes, eats, sleeps.
Such is my idea of Science Triumphant. It was never Dr. Linister's.
In manners, the Arch Physician preserved the old manners of courtesy
and deference which were the fashion when he was brought up. His
special work had been for many years the study of the so-called
incurable diseases, such as asthma, gout, rheumatism, and so forth.
For my own part, my mind, since I became Suffragan, has always been
occupied with Administration, having steadily in view the Triumph of
Science. I have, with this intention, made the Social Equality real and
complete from every point; I have also endeavored to simplify labor,
to enlarge the production and the distribution of food by mechanical
means, and thus to decrease the necessity for thought, contrivance,
and the exercise of ingenuity. Most of our work is so subdivided that
no one understands more than the little part of it which occupies
him for four hours every day. Workmen who know the whole process are
impossible. They ask, they inquire, they want to improve; when their
daily task is but a bit of mechanical drudgery, they do it without
thought and they come away. Since labor is necessary, let it be as
mechanical as possible, so that the head may not be in the least
concerned with the work of the hand. In this--my view of things--the
Arch Physician could never be brought to acquiesce. Had he been able
to have his own way, the whole of my magnificent scheme would have
been long ago destroyed and rendered impossible. I suppose it was
this impossibility of having his own way which afflicted him with so
profound a melancholy. His face was always sad, because he could never
reconcile himself to the doctrine of human equality, without which the
Perfection of Man is impossible.
It will be seen, in short, that the Arch Physician and myself held
hardly a single view in common. But he had been elected to his post,
and I to mine. We shared between us the Great Secret; and if my views
prevailed in our Council, it was due either to my own power of
impressing my views upon my colleagues, or to the truth and justice of
those views.
But as to gratitude, there was no room or cause for any.
* * * * *
As, then, Dr. Linister walked to and fro upon the open space outside
the Picture Gallery, his hands behind him, his head hanging, and his
thoughts I know not where, he became conscious of something that was
out of the usual order. When one lives as we live, one day following
another, each like the one which went before, little departures from
the accustomed order disturb the mind. For many, many years the Doctor
had not given a thought to the Picture Gallery or to the door. Yet,
because it stood open, and he had been accustomed to see it closed, he
was disturbed, and presently lifted his head and discovered the cause.
The door stood open. Why? What was the door? Then he remembered what it
was, and whither it led. It opened into the ancient Picture Gallery,
the very existence of which he had forgotten, though every day he
saw the door and the building itself. The Picture Gallery! It was
full of the pictures painted in the last few years before the Great
Discovery; that is to say, it was full of the life which he had long
ago lived--nay, he lived it still. As he stood hesitating without the
door, that life came back to him with a strange yearning and sinking of
the heart. He had never, you see, ceased to regret it, nor had he ever
forgotten it. And now he was tempted to look upon it again. As well
might a monk in the old times look upon a picture of fair women years
after he had forsworn love.
He hesitated, his knees trembling, for merely thinking what was
within. Then he yielded to the temptation, and went into the Gallery.
The morning sun streamed through the window and lay upon the floor;
the motes danced in the sunshine; the Gallery was quite empty; but
on the walls hung, one above the other, five or six in each row, the
pictures of the Past. In some the pigments were faded; crimson was
pale-pink; green was gray; red was brown; but the figures were there,
and the Life which he had lost once more flashed upon his brain. He
saw the women whom once he had loved so much; they were lying on soft
couches, gazing upon him with eyes which made his heart to beat and his
whole frame to tremble; they were dancing; they were in boats, dressed
in dainty summer costume; they were playing lawn-tennis; they were in
drawing-rooms, on horseback, on lawns, in gardens; they were being
wooed by their lovers. What more? They were painted in fancy costumes,
ancient costumes, and even with no costume at all. And the more he
looked, the more his cheek glowed and his heart beat. Where had they
gone--the women of his youth?
Suddenly he heard the tinkling of a musical instrument. It was a thing
they used to call a zither. He started, as one awakened out of a dream.
Then he heard a voice singing; and it sang the same song he had heard
that night five or six weeks ago--his own song:
"The girls they laugh, the girls they cry,
'What shall their guerdon be?--
Alas! that some must fall and die!--
Bring forth our gauds to see.
'Twere all too slight, give what we might.'
Up spoke a soldier tall:
'Oh! Love is worth the whole broad earth;
Oh! Love is worth the whole broad earth;
Give that, you give us all!'"
This time, however, it was another voice--a fuller and richer
voice--which sang those words.
Dr. Linister started again when the voice began. He changed color, and
his cheek grew pale.
"Heavens!" he murmured. "Are there phantoms in the air? What does it
mean? This is the second time--my own song--the foolish old song--my
own air--the foolish, tinkling air that they used to like! And the
voice--I remember the voice--whose voice is it? I remember the
voice--whose voice is it?"
He looked round him again, at the pictures, as if to find among them
the face he sought. The pictures showed all the life of the Past; the
ball-room with the dancers; the sports of the field; the drive in the
afternoon, the ride in the morning; the bevy of girls; the soldiers and
the sailors; the streets crowded with people; the vile slums and the
picturesque blackguardism of the City--but not the face he wanted. Then
he left off looking for the singer, and began to think of the faces
before him.
"On every face," he said, "there is unsatisfied desire. Yet they are
the happier for that very dissatisfaction. Yes--they are the happier."
He paused before a painted group of street children; some were playing
over the gutter; some were sitting on door-steps, carrying babies as
big as themselves; one was sucking a piece of orange-peel picked up on
the pavement; one was gnawing a crust. They were all ragged and half
starved. "Yet," said the Arch Physician, "they are happy. But we have
no children now. In those days they could paint and draw--and we have
lost the Art. Great heavens!" he cried, impatiently, "we have lost
every Art. Cruel! cruel!" Then from within there broke upon his ears a
strain of music. It was so long since he had heard any music that at
first it took away his breath. Wonderful that a mere sound such as that
of music should produce such an effect upon a man of science! "Oh," he
sighed, heavily, "we have even thrown away that! Yet--where--where does
the music come from? Who plays it?"
While he listened, carried away by the pictures and by the music and
by his own thoughts to the Past, his mind full of the Past, it did not
surprise him in the least that there came out from the door between the
Gallery and the Museum a young lady belonging absolutely to the Past.
There was no touch of the Present about her at all. She did not wear
the regulation dress; she did not wear the flat cap.
"It is," said Dr. Linister, "the Face that belongs to the Voice. I know
it now. Where did I see it last? To whom does it belong?"
She stood for a few moments in the sunshine. Behind her was a great
picture all crimson and purple, a mass of flaming color, before which
her tall and slight figure, dressed in a delicate stuff of soft creamy
color, stood clearly outlined. The front of the dress--at least that
part which covered the throat to the waist--was of some warmer color;
there were flowers at her left shoulder; her hair was braided tightly
round her head; round her neck was a ribbon with something hanging from
it; she wore brown gloves, and carried a straw hat dangling in her
hand. It was, perhaps, the sunshine which made her eyes so bright, her
cheek so glowing, her rosy lips so quivering.
She stood there, looking straight down the Hall, as if she saw no one.
Dr. Linister gazed and turned pale; his cheeks were so white that you
might have thought him about to faint; he reeled and trembled.
"GOOD GOD!" he murmured, falling back upon the interjection of
the Past, "we have lost the Beauty of women! Oh, Fools! Fools! We have
thrown all away--all--and for what?"
Then the girl came swiftly down the Hall towards him. A smile of
welcome was on her lips; a blush upon her cheek; her eyes looked up and
dropped again, and again looked up and once more dropped.
Then she stopped before him and held out both her hands.
"Harry Linister!" she cried, as if surprised, and with a little laugh,
"how long is it since last we met?"