"Whoso would be a man must be a Nonconformist."--EMERSON.
John was eleven years old when, during a memorable Easter holidays, his
father died, and lay in state in the round room in the western tower,
and was buried at midnight by torchlight in the little Norman church at
Overleigh, as had been the custom of the Tempests from time immemorial.
His father's death made very little difference to John, except that his
holidays were spent with Miss Fane, an aunt in London: and Charles left
to become a butler with a footman under him; and the other servants,
too, seemed to melt away, leaving only Mitty, and Mr. Parker, and Mrs.
Alcock, in the old shuttered home. Mr. Goodwin was John's tutor during
the holidays. It was he who saved John's life at the railway station, at
the risk of his own.
No one had been aware, till the accident happened, that John had been
particularly attached to his tutor. He evidently got on with him, and
was conveniently pleased with his society, but he had, to a peculiar
degree, the stolid indifferent manner of most schoolboys. He was
absolutely undemonstrative, and he tacitly resented his aunt's
occasional demonstrative affection to himself. When will unmarried elder
people learn that children are not to be deceived? John was very
courteous, even as a boy, but his best friends could not say of him, at
that or at any later period of his life, that he was engaging. He had,
through life, a cold manner. No one had supposed, what really was the
case, namely, that he would have given his body to be burned for the
sake of the kind, cheerful young man who had taken an easy fancy to him
on his arrival at school, and had subsequently become sufficiently fond
of him to prefer being his tutor to that of any one else. He guessed
John's absolute devotion to himself as little as any one. John's boyish
thoughts, and feelings, and affections, were of that shy yet fierce
kind, which shrink equally from expression and detection. No one had so
far found them hard to deal with, because no one had thought of dealing
with them.
Yet John sat for two days on the stairs outside the sick man's room,
after the accident, unnoticed and unreprimanded. He was never seen to
cry, but he was, nevertheless, almost unable to see out of his eyes. His
aunt, Miss Fane, at whose house in London he was spending his Christmas
holidays, had gone down to the country to nurse a sister, and the house
was empty, but for the servants and the trained nurse. The doctor, who
came several times a day, always found him sitting on the stairs, or
appearing stealthily from an upper landing, working himself down by the
balusters. He said very little, but the doctor seemed to understand the
situation, and always had a kind and encouraging word for him, and gave
him Mr. Goodwin's love, and took messages and offers of his best books
from John to the invalid. But during those two long days, he always had
some excellent reason for John's not visiting his tutor. He was
invariably, at that moment, tired, or asleep, or resting, or---- A deep
anxiety settled on John's mind. Something was being kept from him.
Christmas Day came and passed. Mitty's present, and a Christmas card
from a friend, the Latin master's youngest daughter, came for John, but
they were unopened. The next day brought three doctors who stayed a long
time in the drawing-room after they had been in the sick-room.
John sat on the stairs with clenched hands. At last he got up
deliberately and went into the drawing-room. Two of the doctors were
sitting down. One was standing on the hearth-rug looking into the fire.
"It can't be done," he was saying emphatically. "Both must go."
All three men turned in surprise as John entered the room. He came up to
the fire, unaware of the enormity of the crime he was committing in
interrupting a consultation. He tried to speak. He had got ready what he
wished to ask. But his lips only moved; no words came out.
The consultation was evidently finished, for the man on the hearth-rug,
who seemed anxious to get away, was buttoning his fur coat, and holding
his hands to the fire for a last warm. They were very kind. They were
not jocose with him, as is the horrible way of some elder persons with
childhood's troubles. The old doctor who came daily put his hand on his
shoulder and told him Mr. Goodwin had been very ill, but that he was
going to get better, going to be quite well and strong again presently.
John said nothing. He was convinced there was something in the
background.
"Twelve o'clock to-morrow, then," said the man who was in a hurry, and
he took up his hat and went out.
"I have two boys about the same age as you," said the old doctor,
patting John's shoulder. "Tom and Edward. They are making a little model
steam-engine. I expect you are fond of engines, aren't you?"
"Not just now, thank you," said John. "I am sometimes."
"I wish you would come and see it to-morrow," continued the doctor.
"They would like to show it you, I know. I could send you back in the
carriage when it has set me down here about--shall we say twelve? Do
come and see it."
"Thank you," said John almost inaudibly, "you are very kind, but--I am
engaged."
Miss Fane always said she was engaged when she did not want to accept an
invitation, and John supposed it was a polite way of saying he would
rather not go. The other doctor laughed, but not unkindly, and the
father of Tom and Edward absently drew on his gloves, as if turning over
something in his mind.
"Have you seen the new lion, and the birds that fly under water at the
Zoo?" he inquired slowly, "and the snakes being fed?"
"No," said John.
"Ah! That's the thing to see," he said thoughtfully. "Tom and Edward
have been. Dear me! How they enjoyed it! They went at feeding time,
mid-day. And my nephew, Harry Austin, who is twenty-one and at college,
went with them, and said he would not have missed it for anything. You
go and see that, with that nice man who answers the bell. I will send
you two tickets to-night."
"Thank you," said John.
The two doctors shook hands with him and departed.
"You may as well keep your tickets," said the younger one as they went
downstairs. "He does not mean going."
"He is a queer little devil," said Tom's and Edward's father. "But I
like him. There's grit in him, and he watches outside that room like a
dog. I wish I could have got him out of the house to-morrow, poor little
beggar."
John stood quite still in the middle of the long, empty drawing-room
when they were gone. A nameless foreboding of some horrible calamity was
upon him. And yet--and yet--they had said he was going to get better, to
be quite strong again. He waylaid the trained nurse for the twentieth
time, and she said the same.
He suffered himself to be taken out for a walk, after hearing from her
that Mr. Goodwin wished it; and in the afternoon he consented to go with
George, Miss Fane's cheerful, good-natured young footman, to the
"Christian Minstrels." But he lay awake all night, and in the morning
after breakfast he crept noiselessly back to the stairs. It was a foggy
morning, and the gas was lit. Jessie, the stout, silly housemaid, always
in a perspiration or tears, was sweeping the landing just above him,
sniffing audibly as she did so.
"Poor young gentleman," she was saying below her breath to her
colleague. "I can't a-bear the thought of the operation. It seems to
turn my inside clean upside down."
John clutched hold of the banisters. His heart gave one throb, and then
stood quite still.
"Coleman says as both 'is 'ands must go," said the other maid also in a
whisper. "She told me herself. She says she's never seen such a case all
her born days. They've been trying all along to save one, but they
can't. They're to be took hoff to-day."
John understood at last.
He slipped downstairs again, and stood a moment in hesitation where to
go: not to the little back-room on the ground-floor, which had been set
apart for his use by his aunt. He might be found there. George might
come in to see if he would fancy a game of battledore and shuttle-cock,
or the cook might step up with a little cake, or the butler himself
might bring him a comic paper. The servants were always kind. But he
felt that he could not bear any kindness just now. He must be somewhere
alone by himself.
The drawing-room door was locked, but the key was on the outside. He
turned it cautiously and went in. The room was dark and fiercely cold.
Bands of yellow fog peered in over the tops of the shutters. The room
had been prepared the day before for the consultation, but now it had
returned to its former shuttered, muffled state. John took the key from
the outside and locked himself in.
Then he flung himself on his face on to one of the muffled settees and
stuffed the dust-sheet into his mouth. Anything not to scream--a low
strangled cry was wrenched out of him; another and another, and
another, but the dust sheet told no tales. He dragged it down with him
on to the floor and bit into the wet, cobwebby material. And by degrees
the paroxysm passed. The power to keep silence returned. At last John
sat up and looked round him, breathing hard. A clock ticked in the
darkness, and presently struck a single chime. Half-past
something--half-past eleven it must be--and they were coming at twelve.
Was there no help?
"God," said John suddenly, in a low, distinct voice in the darkness. "Do
something. If you don't stop it nobody else will. You know you can if
you like. You divided the Red Sea. Remember all your plagues. Oh, God!
God! make something happen. There's half an hour still. Think of him.
Both hands. And all the clever books he was going to write, and all the
things he was going to do. Oh, God! God! and _such_ a cricketer!"
There was a short silence. John felt absolutely certain God would
answer. He waited a long time, but no one spoke. The fog deepened
outside. The quarter struck faintly from the church in the next street.
"I give up one hand," said John, stretching out both of his. "I only ask
for one now. Let him keep one--the other one. He is so clever, he could
soon learn to write with his left, and perhaps hooks don't hurt after
the first. Oh, God! I dare say he could manage with one, but not both,
not both."
John repeated the last words over and over again in an agony of
supplication. He would _make_ God hear.
It was growing very dark. The link-boys were crying in the streets: a
carriage stopped at the door.
"Oh, God! They're coming. Not both; not both!" gasped John, and the
sweat broke from his forehead.
Two more carriages--lowered voices in the passage, and quiet footfalls
going upstairs. John prayed without ceasing. The house had become very
silent. At last the silence awed him, and an overmastering longing to
know seized upon him. He stole out of the drawing-room, and sped swiftly
upstairs. On the landing opposite Mr. Goodwin's room the butler was
standing listening. Everything was quite still. John could hear the gas
burning. There was a can of hot water just outside the door. The steam
curled upwards out of the spout. As he reached the landing the door was
softly opened, and the nurse raised the heavy can and lifted it into the
room.
Through the open door came a hoarse inarticulate sound, which seemed to
pierce into John's brain.
"Courage," said a gentle voice, and the door was closed again. The
butler breathed heavily, and there was a whimper from the upper landing.
Trembling from head to foot John fled down the stairs again unperceived
into the drawing-room, and crouched down on the floor near the open
door, turning his face to the wall. Every now and then a strong shudder
passed over him, and he beat his little black head dumbly against the
wall. But he did not move until at last the doctors came down. He let
the first two pass, he could not speak to them; and it was a long time
before the father of Tom and Edward appeared. John came suddenly out
upon him at the turn of the stairs.
"Is it both?" he said, clutching his coat.
"Both what, my boy?" said the doctor, puzzled by the sudden onslaught,
and looking down at the blackened convulsed face and shaggy hair.
"Both _hands_."
The doctor hesitated.
"Yes," he said gravely. "I am grieved to say it is." John flung up his
arms.
"I will never pray to God again as long as I live," he said
passionately.
"John," said the doctor sternly, and then suddenly putting out his hand
to catch him as he reeled backwards. "What? Good gracious! The child has
fainted."
* * * * *
John went back to school before the holidays were over, for Miss Fane on
her return found it difficult to know what to do with him. Mr. Goodwin
came back no more. He slowly regained a certain degree of health, a
ruined man, without private means, at seven and twenty. John wrote
constantly to him, and wrote also long urgent letters in a large
cramped hand to his trustees. And something inadequate was done. When he
came of age his first action was to alter that something, and to induce
Mr. Goodwin and the sister who lived with him to take up their abode in
the chaplain's house, in the park at Overleigh, where they had now been
established nearly seven years. Whether John's was an affectionate
nature or not it would be hard to say, for affection had so far
intermeddled little with his life; but he had a kind of faithfulness,
and a memory of the heart as well as of the head. John never forgot a
kindness, never wholly forgot an injury. He might forgive one, for he
showed as he grew towards man's estate, and passed through the various
vicissitudes of school and college life, a certain stern generosity of
temper, and contempt for small retaliations. He was certainly not
revengeful, but--he remembered. His mind was as tenacious of impression
as engraved steel. That very tenacity of impression had given Mr.
Goodwin an unbounded influence over him in his early youth. John had
believed absolutely in Mr. Goodwin; and Mr. Goodwin, hurried by a bitter
short cut of suffering from youth to responsible middle age, had devoted
himself with the religious fervour of entire self-abnegation to the boy
for whom he had risked his life. John's intense attachment to him had
after his recovery come as a surprise to him, yoked with a sense of
responsibility; for to be loved in any fashion is to incur a great
responsibility.
Mr. Goodwin acted according to his lights. But the good intentions of
others cannot pave the way to heaven for us. In the manner of many
well-meaning teachers, Mr. Goodwin used his influence over John to
impress upon him the stamp of his own narrow religious convictions. He
honestly believed it was the best thing he could do for the young,
strong, earnest nature which sat at his feet. But John did not sit long.
Mr. Goodwin was aghast at the way in which the little chains and
check-strings of his scheme of salvation were snapped like thread when
John began to rise to his feet. An influence misused, if once shaken, is
lost for ever. John went away like a young Samson, taking the poor
weaver's inadequate beam with him; and never came back. Mr. Goodwin's
teaching had done its work. John never leaned again "on one mind
overmuch." Mr. Goodwin pushed him early into scepticism, into which
narrow teaching pushes all independent natures, and regarded his success
with bitter disappointment. John left him, and Mr. Goodwin's office
others took. Mr. Goodwin suffered horribly.
John had not, of course, reached seven and twenty without passing
through many phases, each more painful to Mr. Goodwin than the last. He
had spoken fiercely at Oxford on one occasion in favour of community of
goods, to the surprise and amusement of his friends; and on one other
single occasion in support of the philosophy of Kant, with which he did
not agree, but whose side he could not bear to see inefficiently taken
up only for the sake of refutation. When the spirit moved him John could
be suddenly eloquent, but the spirit very seldom did. As a rule he saw
both sides with equal clearness, and could be forced into partisanship
on neither. Those who expected he would make a brilliant speaker in the
House of Commons would probably be disappointed in him. It was
remarkable, considering he had apparently no special talent or aptitude
for any one line of study, and had never particularly distinguished
himself either at school or college, that nevertheless he had
unconsciously raised in the minds of those who knew him best, and many
who knew him not at all, a more or less vague expectation that he would
make his mark, that in some fashion or other he would come to the fore.
The abilities of persons with square jaws are usually taken for granted
by the crowd, and certainly John's was square enough to suggest any
amount of reserved force. But general expectation rarely falls on those
who have sufficient strength not only to resist its baneful influence,
but also to realize its hopes. The effect of the expectation of others
on many minds is to draw into greater activity that personal conceit
which, once indulged, saps the roots of individual life, and gradually
vitiates the powers. Conceit is only mediocrity in the bud. Like a
blight in Spring it stunts the autumn fruit.
On some natures again the expectation of others acts as a stimulus, the
force of which is quite incalculable. It spurs a natural humility into
fixed resolution and self-reliance; turns sloth into energy, earnestness
into action, and goads diffidence up the hill of achievement. It has
been truly said, that "those who trust us educate us." Perhaps it might
be added that those who believe in us make or destroy us.
If John, who was perfectly aware of the enthusiastic or grudging
expectations that others had formed of him, had not as yet fallen into
either of these two extremes, it was probably because what others might
happen to think or not think concerning him was of little moment to him,
and had no power to sway him either way.
The thing of all others that puzzled John's staunchest adherents was
their inability to fix him in any one set of opinions, social,
political, or religious. Many after Mr. Goodwin tried and failed. For
John's great wealth and position, besides the native force of character
of which even as a very young man he gave signs, and an openness of mind
which encouraged while it ought to have disheartened proselytism, all
these attributes had made him an object of interest and importance,
which would have ruined a more self-conscious man. As it was, he
listened, got to the bottom of the subject, whatever it might be, never
left it till he had probed it to the uttermost, and then went his way.
He marched out of every mental prison he could be temporarily lured
into. He would go boldly into any that interested him, but locks and
bars would not hold him directly he did not wish to stay there any
longer.
Mr. Goodwin hoped against hope that John would see the error of his
ways, and "come back"; that, according to his mode of expressing
himself, the pride of the intellect might be broken, and John might one
day be moved to return from the desert and husks and the sw----
philosophy of free thought to his father's home. He said something of
the kind one day to John, and was astonished at the sudden flame that
leapt into the young man's eyes as he silently took up his hat and went
out.
The one thing of all others which the Mr. Goodwins of this world are
incapable of discerning, is that to leave an outgrown form of faith is
in itself an act of faith almost beyond the strength of shrinking human
frailty. To bury a dead belief is hard. They regard it invariably as a
voluntary desertion, not of their form of religion, but of religion
itself for private ends, or from a sense of irksomeness. Mr. Goodwin had
reproachfully suggested that John had got into "a bad set" at Oxford,
and was in the habit of mixing in "doubtful society" in London. Those
whose surroundings have moulded them attribute all mental changes in
others to a superficial and generally an entirely inadequate influence
such as would have had power to affect themselves.
John left the house white with anger. He had been anxious and humble
half an hour before. He had listened sadly enough to Mr. Goodwin's
counsels, the old, old counsels that fortunately always come too
late--that are worse than none, because they appeal to motives of
self-interest, safety, peace of mind, etc.; the pharisaical reasoning
that what has been good enough for our fathers is good enough for us.
But now his anger was fierce against his teacher, who was so quick to
believe evil of any development not of his own fostering.
"He calls good evil, and evil good," he said to himself. "It seems to me
I have only got to lose hold of the best in me, and lead a cheap
goody-goody sort of life, and I should please everybody all round, Mr.
Goodwin included. He wants me to remain a child always. He would break
my mind to pieces now if he could, and would offer up the little bits to
God. He thinks the voice of God in the heart is a temptation of the
devil. I will not silence it and crush it down, as he wants me to do. I
will love, honour, and cherish it from this day forward, for better for
worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health."
* * * * *
There seems to be in life a call which comes to a few only who, like the
young man in the Gospel, have great possessions. From youth up the life
may have been carefully lived in certain well-worn grooves traced by
the finger of God--grooves in which many are allowed to pass their whole
existence. But to some among those many, to some few with great mental
possessions, the voice comes sooner or later: "Forsake all, leave all,
and follow Me." How many turn away sorrowful? They cannot believe in the
New Testament of the present day. They ponder instead what God whispered
eighteen hundred years ago in the ear of a listening Son, but they
shrink from recognizing the same voice speaking in their hearts now,
completing all that has gone before. And so the point of life is missed.
The individual life, namely, the life of Christ--obedient not to
Scripture, but to the Giver of the Scripture--is not lived. The life
Christ led--at variance with the recognized faiths and fashionable
opinions of the day, at variance just because it did not conform to a
dead ritual, just because it was obedient throughout to a personal
prompting--that life is not more tolerated to-day than it was eighteen
hundred years ago. The Church will have none of it--treats the first
spark of it as an infidelity to Christ Himself. Against every young and
ardent listening and questioning soul the Church and the world combine,
as in Our Lord's day, to crucify once again the Christ--life which is
not of their kindling, which is indeed an infidelity, but an infidelity
only to them. So the crucifix is raised high. The sign of our great
rejection of Him is deified; the Mediator, the Saviour, the Redeemer is
honoured. The instrument of His death is honoured; but the thought for
the sake of which He was content to stretch His nailed hands upon it,
His thought is without honour.
* * * * *
Poor Mr. Goodwin! Poor John! Affection had to struggle on as best it
could as the years widened the gulf between them, and was reduced to
find a meagre subsistence in cordial words and sympathy for neuralgia on
John's part, and interest in John's shooting and hunting on Mr.
Goodwin's. Affectionate and easy terms were gradually re-established
between them, and a guarded sympathy on general subjects returned; but
Mr. Goodwin knew that, from being "the friend of the inner, he had
become only the companion of the outer life" of the person he cared for
most in the world, and the ways of Providence appeared to him
inscrutable. And now Mr. Goodwin understood John even less at seven and
twenty than at twenty-one. The conception of the possibility of a mind
that after being strongly influenced by a succession of the most
"dangerous" teachers and books, gives final allegiance to none, and can
at last elect to stand alone, was impossible to Mr. Goodwin. And yet
John arrived at that simple and natural result at which those who have
sincerely and humbly searched for a law and an authority outside
themselves do arrive. An external authority is soon seen to be too good
to be true. There is no court of appeal against the verdict of the
inexorable judge who dwells within.
How many rush hither and thither and wear down the patience of earnest
counsellors, and whittle away all the best years of their lives to
nothingness, in fretting and scratching among ruins for the law by which
they may live! They look for it in Bibles, in the minds of anxious
friends who turn over everything to help them, in the face of Nature,
who betrays the knowledge of the secret in her eyes, but who utters it
not. And last of all a remnant of the many look in their own hearts,
where the great law of life has been hidden from the beginning. David
says: "Yea, Thy law is within my heart." A greater than David said the
same. But it is buried deep, and few there be that find it.