This is peace!
To conquer love of self and lust of life,
To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast,
To still the inward strife;
For glory, to be lord of self;...
... For countless wealth,
To lay up lasting treasure
Of perfect service rendered, duties done
In charity, soft speech, and stainless days;
These riches shall not fade away in life
Nor any death dispraise.
(_Buddha's Sermon.--The Light of Asia._) ARNOLD.
Geoffrey Hampstead had come out of the penitentiary with his former
hopes for life shattered. Margaret was lost to him. He came out without
a tie on earth--a living man from whom all previous reasons for
existence seemed to have been removed. For six years he had worked in
the penitentiary with all the energy that was in him, in order to keep
his thoughts from driving him mad. At one time all had been before him.
And now--Oh, the silent grinding of the teeth during the first two years
of it! After that he grew quieter and became able to regard his life
calmly. He learned how to suffer. To a large extent he ceased now to
think about himself. In the lowest depths of mental misery self died.
Then, for the first time in his life, he was able to realize the extent
of his wrongs to others. What now broke him down gradually was not, as
at first, the bitterness of his own lost hopes, but the thought that the
life of Margaret was wrecked--and by him, that the lives of others had
been wrecked--and by him. This was what the penitentiary now consisted
of. This was the penitentiary which would last for always.
When the period of his sentence had expired, he had gone to New York and
obtained work with his old employers on Wall Street. But his mind was
not in his occupation. With his energy, it was impossible to live with
no definite end in view. Why plod along on microscopic savings, like a
mere machine to be fed and to work? When mental anguish, for him the
worst whip of retribution, had made thought for self so unbearable that
at last it died, there arose in him, untarnished by selfishness, the
nobility which had always been occultly stamped upon him, and which in
prison enabled him to protect himself, as it were, against madness, and
to refuse to be unable to suffer--a nobility able to realize the
perfection of a life lived for others, which none can realize until
first thought for self has been in some way killed. Rightly or wrongly,
he had become convinced in years of anguished thought that with a
continually aching heart may coexist an internal gladness that arises
from the gift of self to others and makes the suffering not only
bearable but even desirable--that this was altogether a mental
phenomenon, such as memory, but one on which religions had been built,
and that it was capable of making a heaven of earth and leading one,
with the ecstasy of self-gift, even to crucifixion.
He determined to go to Paris to study medicine. For this, money was
required, and he conceived a plan for making a small fortune suddenly.
If he failed, what then? The world would lose a helper. His employers,
on being approached, saw that if proper contracts were made they were
sure to get their money back, and supplied him with all he required for
expenses.
* * * * *
Mr. Rankin, of the firm of Godlie, Dertewercke, Toylor, and Rankin, had,
for more than six years, shared with Jack Cresswell the old rooms
"_vice_ Hampstead, on active service." All Geoffrey's old relics had
been left untouched. He had sent word to have them sold, and Rankin, to
satisfy him, had let him think they were sold and that the money they
brought had been applied as directed. The money had been applied as
directed; but it had come out of Rankin's little bank account, and so,
until the time came when they could be handed over to Hampstead, the old
trophies remained where they were after being insured for a sum which,
for "old truck and rubbage only fit for a second-'and shop," seemed, to
Mrs. Priest, suspiciously large.
Rankin had received from a client the disposal of several passes on a
special train that was to take some railway officials and their families
to Niagara Falls to see the great swimmer, John Jackson, together with
his dog, endeavor to swim the Whirlpool Rapids. Half the world was
excited over this event, which had been advertised everywhere. While
dining with Jack at the Mackintoshes on the Sunday previous to the
event, Rankin proposed that Margaret should accompany Jack and him to
see the trial made.
Margaret hesitated, but Rankin said: "Oh, you know, as far as the fellow
himself is concerned, it will be hard to say how he is as he goes past.
You'll just see a head in the water for a moment, and then it will have
vanished down the river."
"I don't suppose there will be much to see if the water takes him past
at the rate of nineteen miles an hour," said Margaret.
"Just so. There won't be much to see. But we can have a pleasant day at
the falls and give the abused hack-men a chance. The 'special' will have
a number of ladies on board, and, if you like champagne, now's your
chance. What is a special train without champagne?"
"Well, what do you say, mother?" asked Margaret.
Mrs. Mackintosh, to give her daughter an acceptable change and to get
her out of her fixed ways, would have sent her to almost anything from
balloon ascension to a church lottery.
"Do as you wish, my dear. I think I would like you to go. I do not see
how it would be possible for a spectator to know whether the man was
suffering or not in those waters, and, as for his sacrificing his life,
why that is his own lookout. If he lives I suppose he will get well
paid, will he not, Mr. Rankin?"
"They expect he will make about twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars.
Arrangements have been made not only with the railways, but also with
the hotels for his commission on all profits, which will be paid to him
if he lives, or, if not, to his family. I don't know that it should be
necessarily looked upon as a suicidal speculation. I have examined the
water a good many times, and am by no means certain that his safe
passage is impossible, if he can keep on the surface and not get dragged
under where the water seems to shoot downward. If he gets through, or
even if he tries it and fails, he will prove himself as brave a man as
ever lived."
"I think I will go," said Margaret, brightening up with her old love for
daring. "It is not like going to a bullfight, and the excitement will be
intense."
So they went off on the special, and when they arrived at the rapids,
after descending the precipice in the hydraulic lift, they went along
the path to the platform where the photographs are taken. This place was
filled with seats, numbered and reserved, and Rankin's party were seated
in the front row. No less than a hundred thousand people were watching
the forces of the river at this time. They were noticing how the
precipices gradually converged as they approached the rapids, and how
apparent was the downward slope of the water as it rushed through the
narrowed gorge. They were noticing how the descending current struck
projections of fallen rock at the sides, causing back-waves to wash from
each bank diagonally across the main volume of the river, and make a
continual combat of waters in the middle of the stream. Here, the deep,
irresistible flow of the main current charges into the midst of the
battle raging between the lateral surges, and carries them off bodily,
while they continue to fight and tear at each other as far as one can
see down the river. It is a bewildering spectacle of immeasurable
forces, giving the idea of thousands of white horses driven madly into a
narrowing gorge, where, in the crush, hundreds are forced upward and
ride along on the backs of the others, plunging and flinging their white
crests high in the air and gnashing at each other as they go.
The worst spot of all is directly in front of the platform, where
Rankin's party was sitting. They waited until the time at which Jackson
was advertised to begin his swim, and then they grew impatient. Jack was
standing on a wooden parapet near at hand waiting until the swimmer
should appear around the bend far up the river, for they could not see
him take to the water from the place where they were.
All at once, before the rest of the people near him could see anything,
Jack called out: "There he is!" as he descried, with his sailor's eyes,
two black specks on the water far away, up above the bridges.
Jackson and his dog had jumped out of a boat in the middle of the river,
in the calm part half a mile up, and, as they swam down with the current
under the bridges, the dense mass of people there admired the easy grace
with which he swam, and remarked the whiteness of his skin. His dog, a
huge creature, half Great Dane and half Newfoundland, swam in front of
him, directed by his voice. Both of them could be seen to raise
themselves once or twice, so that they could get a better view of the
wild water in front of them. The dog recognized the danger, and for a
moment turned toward the shore and barked; but his master raised his
hand and directed him onward. Another moment, now, and the fight for
life began, for reaching the shore was as impossible as flying to the
moon.
The first back-wash that came to them was a small one, and they both
passed through it, each receiving the water in the face. The next wash
followed almost immediately, and they tried to swim over it, but it
turned both man and dog over on their sides and spread them out at full
length on the surface of the main current. The people on the suspension
bridge could see that both received a terrible blow. They both seemed to
dive under the next wave, and then the water became so turbulent and the
speed of their passage so great that it was impossible to give a minute
description of what happened.
Rankin's party and the multitude of spectators now watched what they
could see in breathless silence. At times, as the swimmers approached,
our party could see them hoisted in the air on the top of a wave, or
ridge or upheaval of water. Most of the time they were lost to sight in
the gulleys or, valleys, or else they were beneath the surface. It does
not take long to go a few hundred yards at nineteen miles an hour, and
in what scarcely seemed more than an instant the man, with the dog still
in front of him, had come near them. What Jack noticed was that as the
man here shook the water out of his eyes and raised himself, shoulders
out, by "treading water," his skin was almost scarlet. This, alone told
a tale of what he had gone through since the people on the bridges had
remarked the whiteness of his skin.
He was now almost opposite them, and his face, set desperately, turned,
during an instant in a quieter spot, toward the platform. Margaret gave
a piercing shriek, and fell back into Rankin's arms. At the next
half-moment a huge boiling mountain, foaming up against the current in
which the swimmer's body floated, struck him a terrible blow, and threw
the dog back on top of him. Both were engulfed. After a while the dog's
head appeared again, but Geoffrey Hampstead was overwhelmed in the
Bedlam of waters, whose foaming, raging madness battered out his life.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Geoffrey Hampstead, by Thomas Stinson Jarvis