The first step was achieved. The first class was gained. Challice of
Pembroke was second classic; he might have been senior but for the
unaccountable laziness of his first year. He was University scholar,
medallist, prizeman; he was one of the best speakers at the Union. He
was known to be ambitious. He was not popular, however, because he was
liable to strange fits of dulness; those who met him wandering about the
banks of the river found him apparently unable to understand things; at
such times he looked heavy and dull; it was supposed that he was
abstracted; men respected his moods, but these things do not increase
friendships. Challice the Animal and Challice the Intellect weighed each
other down.
They left Cambridge, they went to London, they took lodgings. "You are
now so different from me in appearance," said the Intellect, "that I
think we may leave off the usual precautions. Go about without troubling
what I am and what I am doing. Go about and amuse yourself, but be
careful."
The victim of sloth obeyed; he went about all day long in heavy,
meaningless fashion; he looked at things in shops; he sat in museums,
and dropped off to sleep. He strolled round squares. At luncheon and
dinner time he found out restaurants where he could feed--in reality,
the only pleasure left to him was to eat, drink, and sleep.
One day he was in Kensington Gardens, sitting half asleep in the sun.
People walked up and down the walk before him; beautiful women gaily
dressed; sprightly women gaily talking; the world of wealth, fashion,
extravagance, and youth. He was no more than three-and-twenty himself.
He ought to have been fired by the sight of all this beauty, and all
this happiness. Nobody in the world can look half so happy as a lovely
girl finely dressed. But he sat there like a clod, dull and insensate.
Presently, a voice which he remembered: "Papa, it is Will Challice!" He
looked up heavily. "Why, Will," the girl stood before him, "don't you
know me?"
[Illustration: "PAPA, IT IS WILL CHALLICE!"]
It was Nell, the daughter of his tutor, now a comely maiden of
one-and-twenty, who laughed and held out her hand to him He rose, but
not with alacrity. The shadow of a smile crossed his face. He took her
hand.
"Challice!" his tutor clapped him on the shoulder. "I haven't seen you
since you took your degree. Splendid, my boy! But it might have been
better. I hear you are reading Law--good. With the House before you?
Good again! Let me look at you. Humph!" He grunted a little
disappointment. "You don't look quite so--quite so--what? Do you take
exercise enough?"
"Plenty of exercise--plenty," replied the young scholar, who looked so
curiously dull and heavy.
"Well, let us walk together. You are doing nothing for the moment."
They walked together; Nelly between them.
"Father," she said, when they arrived at their lodgings in Albemarle
Street, "what has come over that poor man? He has gone stupid with his
success. I could not get a word out of him. He kept staring at me
without speaking."
Was he a lumpish log, or was he a man all nerves and electricity?
In the morning Will Challice partly solved the question, because he
called and showed clearly that he was an insensible log and a lumpish
log. He sat for an hour gazing at the girl as if he would devour her,
but he said nothing.
In the evening Cousin Tom called, bringing Will Challice again--but how
changed! Was such a change really due to evening dress? Keen of feature,
bright of eye, full of animation. "Why, Will," said Nelly, "what is the
matter with you sometimes? When you were here this morning, one could
not get a word out of you. Your very face looked heavy."
He changed colour. "I have times when I--I--lose
myself--thinking--thinking of things, you know."
They passed a delightful evening. But when Will went away, the girl
became meditative. For, although he had talked without stopping, on
every kind of subject, there was no hungry look in his eye, such as she
had perceived with natural satisfaction in the morning. Every maiden
likes that look of hunger, outward sign and indication of respect to her
charms.
They were up in town for a month. Every morning Will called and sat glum
but hungry-eyed, gazing on the girl and saying nothing. Every evening he
called again and talked scholarship and politics with her father, his
face changed, his whole manner different, and without any look of
hunger in his eyes.
[Illustration: "WILL SAT GAZING ON THE GIRL."]
One day after a fortnight or so of this, Will the Animal stood up after
breakfast and spoke.
"There has got to be a change."
"You are changing, in fact," replied the other with a sneer.
"I am in love. I am going to marry a girl. Now hold your tongue," for
the Intellectual Half bounded in his chair. "You have left me very
little power of speech. Let me try to explain what I--I want to say." He
spoke painfully and slowly. "Let me--try--I have lost, bit by bit,
almost everything. I don't want to read--I can't play any more. I don't
care about anything much. But this girl I do care about. I have always
loved her, and you--you with your deuced intellect--cannot kill that
part of me. Be quiet--let me try to think. She loves me, too. She loves
me for myself, and not on account of you and your success. She is sorry
for me. She has given me--I don't know how--the power of thinking a
little. When I am married to her, she will give me more. Let us part
absolutely. Take all my intellect and go. Nell will marry a stupid man,
but he will get something from her--something I am sure. I feel
different already; I said something to-day which made her laugh. What
are you glaring at me for?"
"I am not glaring. I am thinking. Go on."
"This has got to stop. Now find some way of stopping it, or--or--"
"What can you do?"
"I can drink," he said, with awful meaning. "I can ruin you. And I will,
unless you agree to part."
The Intellectual Half was looking at him with a strangely softened face.
There was neither scorn nor hatred in that face. "Dimidium Animae," he
said, "Half of my Soul, I have something to say as well. Confess,
however, first of all, that I was right. Had it not been for this
step--the most severe measure possible, I admit--nothing would have been
achieved. Eh?"
"Perhaps. You _would_ work, you see."
"Yes. Well--I have made a discovery. It is that I have been too
thorough. I don't quite understand how, logically and naturally,
anything else was possible. I wanted, heaven knows, all the intellect
there was; you were, therefore, bound to become the Animal, pure and
simple. Well, you see, we are not really two, but one. Can't we hit upon
an agreement?"
"What agreement?"
"Some agreement--some _modus vivendi_. I shall get, it is true, some of
the Animal; you will get some of the Intellectual, but we shall be
united again, and after all----" He looked very kindly upon himself, and
held out his hand. So they stood with clasped hands looking at each
other.
"I found it out through Nell," the Intellectual Half went on. "You went
to see her every morning--I went every evening. You were always brimful
of love for her; I, who knew this, was not moved in the slightest degree
by her. Oh! I know that she is the best girl that the world, at this
moment, has to show; I am fully persuaded of that: yet she has ceased to
move me. I think of her Intellect, which is certainly much lower than my
own, and I cannot even admire her. In other words, I cannot be moved by
any woman. This terrifies me."
"Why?"
"It threatens my future. Don't you see? He who cannot be moved by woman
is no longer man. But man can only be moved by brother man. If I cannot
move men my career is at an end. What they call magnetism belongs to the
animal within us. When that is gone, I now perceive, when the animal is
killed, the rest of the man has no longer any charm, any attraction, any
persuasion, any power of leading, teaching, compelling, or guiding. His
success, whatever he does, is all glitter--evanescent glitter. He may
sit down and hold his tongue, for he can do no more good."
"I only half understand."
"Intellect, in short, my lower Half, is of no use without human passion.
That is what it means. We have gone too far. Let us end it."
"How? You despise the man who is only animal."
"No--no! The animal is part of man. I understand now. I have done
wrong--brother Half--to separate myself so much from you. Only, you
carried it too far. You _would_ not work: you would not give me even a
decent show. Suppose--I say suppose--we were united once more. Could I
count on being allowed to work?"
"Yes," said the Animal, "I have had a lesson too. You shall work," he
hesitated and shuddered, "in reason, of course--say all the morning,
and, if you go into the House, all the evening."
"I would not be hard upon you. I would let you have a reasonable amount
of indolence and rest. My success will be less rapid, on your account,
but it will be more solid. Do you think that if we were to be lost again
in each other, I should once more feel for that girl as--"
"Why," said the Animal, "you would be--Me; and what I feel for her is, I
assure you, overwhelming."
That evening Will Challice sat at the open window in the dark, Nellie's
hand in his. "My dear," he murmured, "tell me, do you love me more
because I have realized some of our old dreams?"
"Will; how can I tell you? I love you, not your success. If you had not
done so well, it would have made no difference. Your success is only an
accidental part of you." Oh! the metaphysician! "You are not your
success. Yet, of course, I don't love you for your fine degree, you
conceited boy, and yet it is for yourself."
He kissed her forehead. "The old dream time was pleasant, wasn't it?
when we chose to be Archbishop of Canterbury one day and Lord Chancellor
the next. To be Leader of the House of Commons is the present ambition.
It is a most splendid thing"--the dreamer's eyes looked up into space
with the old light in them--"a most splendid thing--to lead the
House--to sway the House. But I don't know," he sighed, "it will take an
awful lot of work. And the Cambridge business did take it out of one
most tremendously. I didn't believe, Nell, that I had such an amount of
work in me."
"You have been so gloomy lately, Will. Was that fatigue?"
[Illustration: "HE KISSED HER FOREHEAD."]
"Ambition on the brain, Nell," he replied, lightly--as lightly as of
old--success had not destroyed the old gaiety of heart. "I've consulted
a learned physician, Dr. Sydenham Celsus Galen, Wimpole Street. He says
that an engagement with the right girl--he is extremely particular on
that point, so that I do hope, Nell, we have made no mistake--is a
sovereign remedy for all mopey, glum, dumpsy, moody, broody, gloomy,
sulky, ill-conditioned vapours. It is, he confessed, the only medicine
in his pharmacopoeia. All his clients have to follow that
prescription. You will very soon find that those glum, dumpsy moods have
vanished quite away. You will charm them away. Oh! I live again--I
breathe--I think--I don't work so infernally hard--I am once more
human--because I love, and because--" The girl's head rested upon his
arm, and he kissed her forehead.
_Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives._