It was a hot summer, and Arthur a little overtasked his strength.
London, and a London season, is far more tiring than far greater
physical exertions in pure air and with rational hours. He complained
of feeling liable to faintness after standing about in hot rooms. It
did not cause him, however, any serious alarm, till one evening he
fainted after a dinner-party at which I was present, and we had some
difficulty in bringing him round.
After this, for several days he spoke of an invincible languor which
held him throughout the day, which he could not get rid of; and he
was altogether so unlike his usual self, and so prostrate, that at
last, with the greatest difficulty, I prevailed on him to see a
doctor—a thing he particularly disliked.
He made an appointment with a celebrated physician in Wimpole Street.
As he was far from well on the morning he was to go there, I insisted
on accompanying him.
He was in very cheerful spirits, and was eagerly discussing a book
which had just been published; he could not make up his mind whether
it had been written by a man or a woman. He said that there was
always one character in a book, not always the hero or heroine,
through whose eyes the writer seemed to look, whose mental analysis
seemed to have the ring not of description, but confession, and this
would be found to be, he maintained, of the sex of the writer. In
the particular case under discussion, where the hero was a man, he
professed to discover the "spy," as he called this character, in a
woman.
In the middle of the discussion we drew up at Dr. Hall's door, and
were immediately shown into one of those rooms with a professional
and suspicious calm about it. "'Five minutes before the drop falls,'
it seems to say; 'make your mind quite easy; feel chatty,'" said
Arthur.
He looked curiously about him, and commented humorously on the
selection of literature, till a patient was ushered out, and we were
called in.
Dr. Hall was not the least what one is inclined to think a celebrated
doctor should be. Arthur had been describing his ideal to me—"tall
and pale; stoops slightly, but very distinguished-looking, with
piercing grey eyes, a kindly reassuring manner, and grey whiskers cut
straight."
Dr. Hall was a small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy
manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat,
almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the butler in a
small establishment.
He put one or two questions to Arthur; stethoscoped him, hovering all
about restlessly; suddenly caught up his left hand and pushed aside
the first finger; "Ah, cigarette-smoker—we must put a stop to that
at once, if you please. What is your usual allowance?"
"It varies," said Arthur, "but I fear it is never less than twenty."
"Four, after this date," said Dr. Hall.
"Just come into my other room a moment," he said presently, and led
the way.
Arthur followed, giving me a cheerful wink. They remained about ten
minutes, during which time I speculated, and read a little book about
Epping Forest, which was on the table; looked out of the window, and
felt rather ill myself.
At last, the tall door creaked, and Arthur came out, followed by the
doctor.
"I hope you will see, sir," he said to me, "that Mr. Hamilton is
particular in following my directions, if you have any influence
with him."
"I am afraid I haven't got the temperament of a patient," said
Arthur, smiling. "But I am very much obliged to you. Good morning."
"What did he say to you?" I said, as soon as we were in our cab
again.
"Oh, he spoke to me like a father," said Arthur: "gave me a lot of
wretched directions which I know I shan't attend to. But we have
wasted much too much time medically already this morning." And he
changed the subject to the discussion which we had been carrying on
before.
A few days after this I went to see him, and found him much better.
"What do you think?" he said: "I am going to undertake the charge of
a human being. Do you remember our conversation about adopting
children, and the educational experiments we meant to try? I shall
have the chance now."
On my inquiring what had happened, he told me his experience at
Teheran, related in a former chapter; and said that, on reflection,
he had thought well to accept the commission, adding that he had been
surprised to find waiting for him, when he had returned home at a
late hour a few nights before his visit to Dr. Hall, a tall foreign
gentleman, who had introduced himself as a friend of Mr. Bruce's (so
the recluse chose to call himself), and as the bearer of a message
from him, the purport of which was to ask whether he would accept
Mr. Bruce's commission.
"I am authorized to state," the stranger added, "in the event of your
acquiescing, that the method of procedure will be left entirely to
yourself; that no question will be asked or conditions made; the boy
will be sent to London or to any other address you may appoint; that
£400 a year, quarterly, will be placed to your credit at the
Westminster Bank for all necessary expenses; and that a draft in your
name, for any further sum that you may think requisite, will be
honoured.
"If you would forward your answer to Morley's Hotel, to the address
on my card, any time within the next week, I shall be grateful. My
instructions are not to press for an immediate answer." And the
gentleman bowed himself out.
He showed me a short letter which he had written accepting the
charge; and, shortly after, I rose to go. But he detained me rather
pointedly; and after a short time, in which he appeared to be
considering something, he begged me to sit down again, and consider
whether I would listen to a short statement of facts on which he
wanted my advice. "They are," he said, "I fear, a little painful,
and therefore I do not press it; but I should be sincerely obliged
to you."
He then said, "I did not at the time tell you, my dear Chris, what
Doctor Hall said to me the other day, because I thought it better to
tell no one; but the events of the last week have caused me to change
my mind. I feel that I must be perfectly open.
"The fact was, that he warned me that I showed unequivocal symptoms
of a dangerous heart disease. He could not answer for anything, he
said. I had seen that something was wrong from his expression, so I
insisted on knowing everything."
I can hardly describe my sensations at this announcement—I felt the
room swim and shake; and yet it was made in such a deliberate
matter-of-fact tone, that it flashed across me for an instant that
Arthur was joking, and together with it came a curiously dismal sense
of unreality, that is well known to all those who have passed through
any great strain or emotional crisis, as if, suddenly, the soul had
fallen out of everything, and they were nothing but lifeless empty
husks, hollow and phantasmal.
"But," I gasped, "you never said anything of this at the time:
you—you behaved just as usual."
"I certainly tried to," he said. "And curiously enough, I did not
either realize or fear the news at the time; it left my feelings
almost blank. I won't deny that it has caused me some painful thought
since.... He gave me a few simple directions: I was to avoid bracing
climates, hard physical work, or, indeed, mental effort—anything
exhausting; to keep regular hours, avoid hot rooms and society and
smoking; but that I might do, in moderation, anything that interested
me, write or read; and, above all things, I was to avoid agitation.
"I think I intend to put his ideas into practice; not much with the
idea of saving my life, for I don't feel particularly anxious about
that, but because I think that, on the whole, it is the most sensible
kind of life to lead. And the fact that I had already accepted the
charge of this boy has finally decided me; it was too late to draw
back. I shall settle in some quiet place, and try and educate him for
the University. I don't at all expect to be dull; and it evidently
wouldn't do to thrust him straight into English life yet—he wants
Anglicizing gradually. I hope he will be an average Englishman by the
time he gets to Cambridge."
Arthur heard the next day, from Mr. Bruce's agent, that the boy would
arrive in the course of a month, so he determined to try and have
things ready by then for their retirement.
We went energetically to house agents, and the result was that we
were at last blessed by success.
Cornwall was the county that we selected; its warm indolent climate
seemed to answer our requirements best, and Arthur would not leave
England.
Close to Truro there is a little village called St. Uny Trevise. You
have to leave the high-road to get to it. Its grey church tower is a
conspicuous landmark for several miles round, standing out above a
small wood of wind-swept oaks, on the top of a long broad-backed
down, lately converted into farm-land, and ploughed up. About half a
mile from this, going by strangely winding deep lanes, you reach the
bottom of a wooded dell, very lonely and quiet, with a stream running
at the bottom, that spreads out into marshes and rush-beds, with here
and there a broad brown pool. Crossing the little ford, for there is
only a rude bridge for foot-passengers, and ascending the opposite
hill, you find yourself at last, after going up the steep overhung
road, at the gate of a somewhat larger house than usual in those
desolations.
The gate-posts are stone, with granite balls at the top, and there is
a short drive, which brings you to a square mottled front of brown
stone, with two large projections, or small wings, on each side.
This is a small manor, known as Tredennis, anciently belonging to the
Templeton family, whose pictures ornament the hall. It had been used
latterly merely as a farmhouse; but a local solicitor, desiring that
a somewhat more profitable arrangement might be made respecting it,
had the manor put up at the extremely moderate rent of £60, and
banished the farmer to an adjoining tenement.
There was a terraced garden, very rich in flowers in the summer. It
faced south and west, commanding a view of a winding valley, very
peaceful and still, a great part of which was overgrown with stunted
oak copses, or divided into large sloping fields. At the end, the
water of a tidal creek—Tressillian water—caught the eye. The only
sounds that ever penetrated to the ear were the cries of birds, or
the sound of sheep-bells, or the lowing of cows, with an occasional
halloo from the farm, children calling among the copses, or the
shrill whistle from over the hills, telling of the train, that,
burrowing among the downs, tied one to the noisier world.
Truro has been much opened up since then. It has a bishop, and the
rudiments of a cathedral. It has burst into a local and spasmodic
life. But when I knew it through Arthur, it was the sleepiest and
laziest town alive, with the water rippling through the streets.
Old-world farmers, with their strange nasal dialect, used to haunt
the streets on market day, like the day on which we first drove
through it on our way to Tredennis. Arthur was well and serene. He
took the keenest delight in the fragrance of retirement that hung
about the place: people to whose minds and ears modern ideas, modern
weariness, had never penetrated; who lived a serious indolent life,
their one diversion the sermon and the prayer-meeting, their one
dislike "London ways."
We reached the house in the evening, losing our way more than once in
our endeavour to discover it. Two sitting-rooms were furnished,
both large airy rooms looking upon the garden, and a bedroom and
dressing-room up-stairs, which Arthur and his charge were to occupy.
The housekeeper and her handmaiden, who were to be his servants, were
already installed, and had arranged in a certain fashion the new
furniture that Arthur had sent down, jostling with the old, and his
books. As we sat, the first evening, with our cigarettes, in the
dusk, watching the green sky over the quiet hills, a wonderful
sensation of repose seemed to pass into one from the place. "I feel
as if I might be very happy here," said Arthur, "if I were allowed;
and perhaps work out my old idea a little more about the meaning of
external things."
I was to return to London in a day or two, to see about any
commission that might have been neglected, and to bring down the
boy, who was now daily expected.
In my absence I received the following letter from Arthur. The serene
mood had had its reaction.
"I have told you, I think, of the depressing effect that a new place
has on me till I get habituated to it. There is a constant sense of
unrest, just as there is about a new person, that racks the nerves.
"I have been very anxious and 'heavy' to-day, as the Psalms have it:
dispirited about the future and the present, and remorseful about the
past. You don't mind my speaking freely, do you? I feel so weak and
womanish, I must tell some one. I have no one to lean on here.
"I can't see what to make of my life, or, rather, what can possibly
be made of it. I have taken hitherto all the rebuffs I have had—and
they have not been few—as painful steps in an education which was to
fit me for something. I was having, I hoped, experience which was to
enable me to sympathize with human beings fully, when I came to speak
to them, to teach them, to lead them, as I have all my life believed
I some day should.
"You won't think it conceited if I say this to you, my dear Chris?
I don't feel to myself as if I was like other people. I have met
several people better and on a higher level than myself, but no one
on quite the same level—no one, to put it shortly, quite so _sure_
as I am.
"Does that explain itself? I mean that I have for many years been
conscious of a kind of inward law that I dare not disobey, and which
has constrained me into obedience—once unwilling, now willing, and
even enthusiastic. In others, it has always seemed to me that there
is strife and διψυχία—one great factor pulling one way
and one another; but it has never been so with me—there has never
been a serious strain. I have always known what I meant, and have
generally done it; and little by little, as I have lived, comparing
this inner presence with what I can see of moral laws, of Divine
government, I have come to observe that the two are almost identical,
though there are certain variations which I have not yet accounted
for.
"Mind, this has been in my case a _negative_ influence; it has never
urged a course upon me; it has always withheld me. Even in a dilemma
of any kind, it never has said, 'Do this;' it is always, 'Avoid
that.' So that I have had to take my line, as I have done in
practical things, though never in opposition to its warnings.
"I had always thought that I was being educated to the point of
describing this subjective law to others, and helping them to some
such position. I have always felt that I had a message to deliver,
though the manner and method of delivering it I felt I had to
discover.
"And so I was led from point to point. I was educated without any
special domestic attachments. I was shown that I was not to believe
in my friends. And then, at Cambridge, it came upon me that this was
what was meant—that I was not to devote myself to mean, selfish
objects; that I was not even to be solaced by individual love: but
that I was to speak to the world the way of inward happiness by the
simplification of the complex issues, the human intricacies, which
have gathered round and obscured the whole problem.
"Then I gradually gave up, or thought I was giving up, human
ambitions. I took a course which I saw was not to end in human fame,
or wealth, or happiness of the ordinary kinds; and that I might test
my capacities a little more and learn myself, and also familiarize
myself with more aspects of the great question which I was going to
face, I travelled among the cities of men and the solitudes of the
earth.
"And at last I thought I had found the way; but I will not tell you
what it was, for I now see that I was mistaken. I thought I saw that
my duty was to come back and speak the first words to the society in
which most naturally I moved; and I came to London, as you know. And
then I began to write; but I failed there. I was not disheartened,
for I felt that I was being led, and that that was not the way. And
once I thought that I was to be pointed out the path by the love of a
daring woman; but that went from me too, as you know, and so I waited
to be shown how to speak.
"But it is not to be; for while I waited, this has fallen upon me;
and this is more than I can bear. It is terrible enough, as a human
being, to look Death in the face, and question of the blind eye what
are the secrets he knows; but I have passed through that before, and
I can truly say I do not dread that now. It is rather with an intense
and reverent curiosity that I look forward to death, as the messenger
that will tell me that my work here is over, and I am to learn God's
ways elsewhere. No, it is not that; but it is the utter aimlessness
and failure of my life. I have not attracted men's praise—I did not
hope to do that. I have not even attracted their attention. I have
not communicated the least grain of what I feel I _know_.
"Far from looking upon me as a man who at least sees clearer than
others, as having a truth of price which they might be glad to learn,
they look upon me as a man who has failed even to live life upon
their basis, classing me with those utter failures who fail in life
because they have no sense of proportion, because they can not
comprehend the complex issues among which they have to fight.
"And now I am laid aside, a useless weapon; I am not even physically
capable of writing, even if the world would hear me; and I am forced
back upon myself, upon a feeble life, necessarily self-centered, to
nurse and coddle myself as though I was a poor failing dotard, with
one avenue alone—and how precarious!—through which I may perhaps
speak my little message to the world—the education of a child to
carry on my torch.
"I have written to you my whole mind, not because I want you to
reassure me—no, that is impossible; but because I am weak and
miserable. I must unburden myself to some one—must confess that I
have indeed broken down.
"And, further, what is the Death, into whose antechamber I have
already passed? Is it indeed true that, as I have so passionately
denied, I have fallen into the grasp of a power which is waging an
equal war with truth and light and goodness? Shall I be sacrificed to
the struggle, without having made the world a whit better, or richer,
or stronger, with the only memory of me a quiet life with few follies
and fewer deeds of power, to be laid away in the dark?
"And yet I have a lingering hope that this is a leading too; that I
shall somehow emerge. My dear Chris, come and see me again as soon as
you can. You will be even more welcome if you bring my boy, Edward
Bruce, as I understand we are to call him—_attamen ipse veni_.
"I am your affectionate friend,
"Arthur Hamilton.
"Flora"—his collie, of whom he was very fond—"is sitting watching
me with such liquid eyes that I must go and take her out. We have not
walked as far as the creek yet; the first effect of valetudinarian
habits is, I find, to make one feel really ill."
On the 4th of August, Tuesday, at 11.15, a card was brought to me,
and immediately afterward a tall gentleman appeared, with a boy of
about fourteen, whom I knew at once to be Edward Bruce.
The gentleman, after a few polite words of inquiry after Arthur,
retired, the boy saying good-bye to him affectionately. He left me
his address for a few days, in case I should wish to see him.
Edward Bruce was a boy of extraordinary beauty—there was no denying
that. Personal descriptions are always disappointing; but, not to be
prolix, he had such eyes, with so much passion and fire in them, that
they could only be the inheritance of many generations of love and
hate and quick emotions; his eyelids drooped languidly, but when he
opened his eyes and looked full at you!—I felt relieved to think I
should not have to conduct his education; I could not have denied
him anything. His hair was brown and curly, cut short, but of that
fineness and glossy aspect that showed that till lately it had been
allowed its own way.
The boy had beautiful lips and white regular teeth, with that
exquisite complexion that is the result of perfect health and
physical condition. He did not speak English very well, but acquired
it fast. He always spoke slowly, and with a very pure articulation.
His voice was clear, high-pitched, and thrilling—I have no other
word for it.
On the following day I took him down to Tredennis. The boy was
interested and excited, and asked many questions of a very
unsophisticated kind.
"Why do people stare at me so?" he said, turning round from the
window of the carriage, in Bristol, where he stood devouring the
crowd with hungry eyes. I could not explain to him. He thought it was
because of his foreign look, and was much disgusted. "I made them
_dress_ me like an Englishman," he said, surveying himself. To be
English, that was his aim.
I found that his father had inculcated this idea in him thoroughly,
and had impressed upon him the dignity of the position. It was, I was
told afterward, the one argument that never failed to make him
attentive in his lessons.
It was not till he was driving away from Truro into the country that
he found leisure to think of his father and brother, and wonder what
they would be doing. I had the greatest difficulty in explaining that
the hours of the day were different, and that it was early morning
there.
"No," he said, "it is impossible; I feel like the evening—Martin
can not be feeling like the morning."
He was rather disappointed as we got further and further into the
lovely country. "I have lived among trees all my life," he said. "I
want to live among people now, in cities, and hear what they say and
do what they do. I love them." And he waved his hand to the lights of
the town in the valley below us, as a sign of farewell.
At last we drove into the dark gates of Tredennis, and drew up before
the house.
Arthur came out to meet us. "Where is Edward?" he said.
The boy sprang out to meet him, and would have kissed him; but Arthur
just grasped his hand, retaining it for a moment, and then let him
go. The boy kept close to him, examining him attentively, when we got
inside the house, with restless, affectionate glances.
"What makes you so pale?" he said.
"Ah!" said Arthur, with a smile, "no one else can tell except
ourselves what makes our face so white; but you will be white like
this soon," he said: "it is our dark English days, not like your
Persian sun."
"Then I shall be glad to be like that," said the boy, "if that is how
the English look."
He went off on a tour of exploration about the house, soon
discovering his room, with which he was enraptured.
In the garden, later on in the evening, he came to Arthur with a
letter in his hand. "This is for you," he said. "I had almost
forgotten it. But it is too dark to read it here; I shall fetch you a
light." And he brought the lamp out of the house, and stood holding
it, as it burnt unwavering in the still night air.
Arthur read it and handed it to me, while the great moths and
transparent delicate flies came and blundered against it.
"Edward will give you this letter himself. His hand will touch your
hand. It has come about as I anticipated, neither sooner nor later;
and I am glad.
"Dear friend, all is not well with you; I heard it in the night. But
the passages of the house are often dark, though the hills are full
of light; yet the Master's messengers pass to and fro between the
high halls bearing lamps; such a messenger I send you.
"You must not be dismayed, either now or later, for all is well. In
our mysteries, when the youth first tastes the chalice, he can hardly
keep his mind upon the Red Wine of Life, the Blood of the Earth, as
he would fain do, for thinking of the cup, and how tremblingly he
holds it, and for fear that the crimson juice be spilt; but all the
while, though he sees it not, the priest's hand encircles the gold
stem.
"Martin, _my_ son (for Edward is now yours—mine no longer), is even
nearer the end than when I spoke with you; and you too are nearer,
far nearer, though you know it not. And even in this little letter,
I have spoken words to you which, if you had but light to read them,
would make all plain.
"The hour is at hand; the clock has jarred and is silent again, but
the gear murmurs on in the darkness, waiting for the silver chiming
of the bell.
"I am your friend always,
"B.
"TEHERAN,
"Midsummer."
"A curious document," I said.
"Yes," said Arthur, musingly; "curious too, as literally true." And
he pointed to the boy holding the lamp.
"Edward," he said to the boy, "put back that lamp, and come here and
speak to me."
The boy went quickly and promptly, delighting in little acts of
obedience, as the young do.
When he returned, Arthur said, "Your father says in this letter that
you are to be my son for the future. Will you? are you content to
change?"
"Yes," said the boy, shyly; but he came and leant against his new
father's shoulder where he sat, and, in the pretty demonstrative
manner so natural to unsophisticated children, encircled his arm with
his hands.
Arthur put his arm round the boy's neck, and stroked his hair
caressingly.
"Very well," he said, "then you must always obey me as well as you
did just now; and we will make an Englishman of you, and, what is
more, a good man."
And we sat in silence, looking down the valley. Every now and then an
owl called in his flute-like notes across the thickets, and we heard
the cry of the seabirds from the creek; and the soft wind came gently
up, rustling the fir over our heads, stirring among the leaves of the
tall syringa, and wandering off into the warm dusk.