UNEARTHED.
The circumstance of circumstance is timing and placing. When a man
meets his accurate mate, society begins, and life is delicious.
_Emerson._
Be not amazed at life; ’tis still
The mode of God with His elect
Their hopes exactly to fulfil
In times and ways they least expect.
_Coventry Patmore._
The romance of the novelist and the startling incident of melodrama are
colourless and insignificant in comparison with the events of real
life. Every day things happen around us which would appear far-fetched
and absurd if transferred to the pages of a novel. We go to our
peaceful slumbers at night little reckoning of the letter lying at the
post-office close by which at breakfast-time will have destroyed the
work of our lives, and given us a heart wound no time can heal. We sit
down to dinner in weariness with the common-place monotony of our
existence which the telegraph boy, already on his way to us, will
startle into most unseemly agitation. We wander along Cheapside, Fleet
Street, and the Strand, wondering why the stream of life in the world’s
chief artery so little affects our pulses, and we meet the man who with
a word changes the current of our existence in an instant.
Mildred Lee went to her bed full of thought, and wondered how she was
to carry out the purposes which she had often pondered, with only
half-opened eyes seeing the great work which lay before her, little
dreaming that before another bedtime she would have had all her fluid
purposes cast in the mould of fate, or rather set, by the hand of
Providence, in a sharply defined form which was to make her name high
and honourable amongst men. She went to rest that Granada night a
purposeless dreamer of unbodied hopes. Next day was to introduce her to
a higher phase of thought. Hopes to-night, dreams to-night; to-morrow
an opening in the mist, as one sees from a high mountain in a rift of
the fog, the panorama sun-bathed at one’s feet.
It was a bright and glorious morning when she opened her window, the
birds in the elms singing to the ever-rushing streams, and the breeze
rustling amongst the leaves hinted a delicious coolness inviting to a
ramble. She met Mr. Crowe strolling in front of the hotel smoking his
early cigarette. Throwing this away, he advanced to meet her, and, in
his most gracious manner, invited her to inspect the restoration of
some Moorish baths which were going on close by.
“These Moors,” said he, “value fresh air and water far more than their
Christian successors. The old Eastern religions and the Professors of
White Magic insisted on the most scrupulous cleanliness, while the
Inquisition made the use of the bath a mark of heresy.”
Mildred thought of some new bath experiments which her father had tried
to prevent at St. Bernard’s; and could not help saying, with a tinge of
maliciousness, “There are some uses of the bath which I think
heretical, and would punish as severely as ever did Philip the Second.”
Mr. Crowe remembered his old battle with her father on this question,
but prudently declined to discuss medical treatment with any one but a
doctor. Mildred, seeing he was getting huffy, did not press her point
further. The physiologist was very severe on the old and cherished
institutions of Catholic Spain, and did only partial justice to the
authors of so many mistakes, whilst he was quite blind to the horrors
being perpetrated in the name of Science now, and which a more
civilized age, let us hope, will brand with equal infamy.
“How long do you propose to stay here?” asked Mr. Crowe.
“Really, I find it hard to leave; but we must not extend our visit
beyond another day or two. What have we still to explore?”
“You don’t want to make any ascent of the Sierra Nevada, do you?”
“Oh, no; I fear it is too fatiguing. My aunt is not equal to camping
out in the snow for a night, and I should not like to leave her. But we
must visit the gipsy quarter; I am told it was much more interesting
than that at Seville.”
“I have not explored it, but shall be glad to do so. Shall we go
to-day? I saw Rico, the gipsy king, yesterday, and he was anxious to do
the honours of the colony, and make our visit pleasant.”
“Very well, then. My aunt is anxious to go, I know. Will you arrange it
all for us?”
“Certainly. They say there is some risk of annoyance; but if you are
not very fastidious, I dare say it is nothing very serious.”
Mildred declared that she wanted to see everything that was Spanish,
and had not crossed the Pyrenees to be stopped by trifles. So an
expedition to the Sacro Monte was arranged for the next day, and the
party, with a trustworthy guide, took a carriage for the trip.
* * * * *
The hill of the Albayzin was steep, and the horses not being equal to
their work, they made the rest of the ascent on foot, and soon reached
the singular region of the Zincali. It was strangely unlike anything
else in Europe, and the ladies being anxious to acquaint themselves
with the mode of life peculiar to this tribe, went into many of the
open grottoes, of course accompanied by the guide. This being one of
the show places of the city, the inhabitants are used to visitors, but
they often rob and sometimes behave very badly to them. Wandering down
the alleys and maze-like turnings amongst the hills, observing the
curious trades followed by the bronzed cave-dwellers, they became
separated from their guide, who was engaged with the gentlemen in a
distant cavern, explaining some of the methods adopted by the gipsies
when they want to improve the appearance of a horse they have to sell.
Suddenly they were surrounded by a crowd of half-naked, vociferating
children, handsome as those of Murillo’s pictures, but rather alarming
in their boisterous behaviour, tugging at their dresses, cutting wild
and unpleasant capers, and demanding money on every hand. Missing the
turning by which they had entered the labyrinth, they were nervous and
annoyed with themselves for slipping away from their friends, when
suddenly the noisy rabble melted away as if by magic, as a tall young
man in Spanish dress came into the lane, and called angrily to the
little imps in their own lingo. The young scaramouches at once made
off, and the Englishman, apologising with an easy grace for the
rudeness of the children, volunteered to escort the ladies to their
party. The shortest way was through a patch of garden, and the walk
gave the ladies the opportunity of thanking their protector, who soon
found the gentlemen and their guide.
Mildred felt certain that she had met the young man before, though it
seemed very improbable; but when they reached Mr. Crowe, he at once
exclaimed, “Mr. Elsworth, I declare!” As Mr. Crowe had been Elsworth’s
physiological teacher at the hospital, it was natural he should easily
recognise him. The ladies, of course, had not the same intimate
knowledge of him, though they knew of his mysterious disappearance from
London. Mildred had not seen him since the day they had first met at a
picnic which her father gave to his students at their country place on
the Surrey Downs. They had been introduced some months previously; but
on that occasion, while showing him the points of interest round the
house and grounds, she had been favourably impressed by the earnestness
of his interest in many things in which she delighted, and had often
confessed to herself that if she should ever be weak enough to bother
herself about man in the concrete, it would be somebody very much like
Elsworth who would interest her. He knew all her favourite books, and
her tastes in poetry coincided with his own. He was something of a
Shelley and a Browning enthusiast; and held by Ruskin and Emerson,
proving by his criticism of their works how deep a hold their ideas had
taken of him. They had talked much that day of these things, and she
recalled, as she now met him again after his long absence, the time
when they had so long discussed themes congenial to them both. When he
disappeared she had been painfully anxious to learn the causes which
could have driven so promising a young man from his work and friends,
and had speculated deeply as to what could have befallen him. She had
never ceased to hope that one day he might turn up again. And here he
was, and she had discovered him! Their eyes met, in an instant each
recognised the other, and in that glance each told the other that the
meeting was of moment to him and her.
“Mr. Elsworth, I was sure!” she exclaimed.
“And Miss Lee, of course!” said he.
Aunt Janet had met, but did not recall the handsome man who had just
done them so grateful a service. She was soon enlightened however.
“Auntie dear, you remember Mr. Elsworth who used to visit us, and who
alarmed us all so much by going away and leaving no address, making us
all wonder what could have become of him?”
Auntie remembered all in a moment; and as quickly reflected with a
woman’s instinct that perhaps their kind friend would not thank them
for thus unearthing him, which they had literally done by drawing him
from the gipsies’ cave. “Mr. Elsworth will, I am sure, forgive us,” she
said, without embarrassment, “for inadvertently trespassing upon his
retirement, and he may rest assured we will not break the secret we
have unwittingly discovered.”
“Oh, for that matter,” said he, as they turned into a field planted
thickly with prickly pears, and shaded by olives, “you have but
precipitated what would have come to pass very soon, for I had resolved
to return.” He had noticed Mildred’s deep mourning, but he had no
knowledge of her father’s death. He had immediately, on recognising
her, remarked a great alteration in her features. True, it was six
years since they had last met; but he had not forgotten, amid the hosts
of beautiful faces which he had since seen, those bright eyes and the
face free from all anxiety or trace of melancholy which had fixed
themselves upon his memory. She was more beautiful now, but there was
not the sparkling playfulness of the eye, nor the light-hearted glow in
the features; she was more like our Lady of Sorrows whom he had seen
above so many Spanish altars, than the merry, laughing maiden of his
student days. “You are not quite the Miss Lee of the picnic, if you
will forgive me saying so. Have you not passed through some great
anxiety or trial?”
“Did you not know I had lost my father? Do you get no English
newspapers here?”
“I do not see them often. I have so much to occupy me here that I am
unpatriotic enough to confess that I have lost much of my interest in
the affairs of my own country.”
“We must hear your story, Mr. Elsworth,” said Aunt Janet, “for there
must be a most romantic one to tell, I am thinking. You are more
Spanish now than English, and we anticipate quite a revelation of the
real life of the people we mix with, but do not in the least
understand.”
“Here are the carriages,” said Dr. Graves, who had walked on with Mr.
Crowe a little in advance.
Dr. Graves and Mr. Crowe expressed their regret for neglecting the
ladies. It was, in fact, a risky neighbourhood; and as they had been
warned that they might suffer annoyance if they got away from their
guide, they could only blame themselves.
Mr. Crowe was not very cordial in his manner towards Elsworth. Dr.
Graves was courteous enough in a formal sort of way. He had known his
father; and with a fashionable physician’s worldly wisdom made it a
rule never to make an enemy of anybody if he could help it, but to be
on his best behaviour to all the world.
“You have dropped from the clouds, Mr. Elsworth,” said he.
“Or sprung from the earth, rather,” said Mr. Crowe.
Elsworth knew Crowe did not like him. They had never quite got on
together since he neglected to attend his experimental physiology class
which met at church time on Sunday mornings in his own private
laboratory—the chamber of horrors it was called. He could never bring
himself to do so.
“Neither a fall nor a rise,” rejoined Elsworth, quietly; “nothing but a
very matter-of-fact story of disgust with the noisy world of men, and a
relish for a sojourn in the wilderness for study and meditation. Not
quite without precedent in the history of civilisation, eh, Mr. Crowe?”
“Well, friend, I always said that a man who refused to learn practical
physiology was a ‘heathen man and a publican,’ so I am surprised at
nothing that has happened to you.”
“Is the evisceration of a living cat the passport to all the Beatitudes
with you, Mr. Crowe?” asked Miss Lee, in a rather contemptuous manner.
“Symbolically, for a medical man, yes,” said he, “as implying the true
scientific mind.”
The ladies had now re-entered their carriage, and warmly thanking
Elsworth for his assistance, and expressing their delight at having
discovered him, like Stanley finding Livingstone, they ended by begging
that he would join them at dinner that day at their hotel. He declared
his readiness to do so, and bowing with all the dignity and grace of a
real Spaniard, he turned and left them.
The guide who had taken the party to the gipsy quarter knew and saluted
Elsworth, and when he had taken his place beside the coachman, turning
to the party, said, “That gentleman is the friend of all the poor in
Granada. The gipsies call him their English king; he has lived here
several years. When the people are sick he attends them, for he is a
clever doctor; he takes no money from anybody, but he gives away a
great deal to the poor. He can go amongst the worst people unmolested.
Where the priest goes, he can go—to brigands, to thieves, to all the
gipsies everywhere. He can travel alone over the mountains where none
of us could go safely without an escort. He is a good man—a saint I
ought to have said.”
“Why does he stay so long in Granada?” asked Mildred.
“Oh, he is studying the language and the manners and customs of the
gipsies; he has a printing press, and he prints books to give them. He
has a school, and he teaches their children. He is writing, they say, a
great work on the origin and the life of the Spanish gipsies; but we
hear he is going back soon to his own country. He had a hospital down
in the city for the cholera patients last year, and has been decorated
by the king for his services in the epidemic. There will be many tears
when he leaves us, señora.”
The exile dined with his friends at the hotel, and enlightened them all
on many points of interest which a mere tourist would be certain to
miss. Every one noticed the change in Elsworth. Even Mr. Crowe, with
his hard, unsympathetic soul, could not help seeing that in him was a
renewed man, “one who had been set apart by Nature (as he expressed it
to his colleague afterwards) for some great work.” Mildred and Aunt
Janet saw that here was a man called to be an apostle; called, like the
men of Galilee, from their nets and money tables, to serve the highest
purposes of God; and they longed to hear the story they knew he must
have to tell. After dinner the ladies contrived to have a chat with
him, while Mr. Crowe and Dr. Graves were walking on the terrace
smoking. To no one had he spoken, during these years of retirement, of
the causes which had led him away from his haunts and profession; but
these sweet women, with their sympathy which invited his confidence,
soon heard his story; and in listening to it Mildred felt as Desdemona
when Othello told his own; and listening, loved. Here, she thought, is
a man with a heart and a conscience! All her life had been spent
amongst selfish seekers after fame, wealth, or the amusements of life;
men who cared not whom they overthrew could they but climb themselves;
men of genius, who cared no more for the troubles of their fellowmen
than the heartless libertines for the victims of their pleasures. She
remembered Moore’s lines:—
“Out on the craft—I’d rather be
One of those hinds that round me tread,
With just enough of sense to see
The noon-day sun that’s o’er my head,—
Than thou, with high-built genius cursed,
That hath no heart for its foundation,
Be all, at once, that’s brightest, worst,
Sublimest, meanest in creation!”
Here was a man who had left all and followed his Master; not as a
missionary sent out by a society, with all the prestige and protection
of his Church behind him, but who went forth to save his own soul and
aid his brother man. This was devotion, true self-sacrifice, of which
this age seems almost to have lost the idea. One cannot give a cup of
cold water now-a-days to a thirsty child unless at the bidding of a
committee. Our charity is done to order and by deputy. Elsworth’s way
of going to work was like that of an early Christian, and savoured of
real heroism; and women love heroes, because every woman has the germ
of heroism in her own heart, and self-sacrifice is of her nature.
Mildred had found her ideal man. They talked of many things, but most
of his hospital down in the city, and the next day they all went to see
it, and many other of the charitable agencies of the town.
Of course Mr. Crowe was huffy and upset at the meeting, and at the
reception which the ladies gave to the handsome young fellow whom they
had discovered. He was jealous, too; for Mildred did not conceal the
interest she felt in all that was shown her, and Mr. Crowe could not
scoff down the good works of which he had evidence that day, though he
tried hard to make game of any attempt to Christianize the gipsies, and
protested it was a great pity to waste so many opportunities of
investigating cholera germs and inoculations in such a favourable field.
Mildred set him down when he spoke contemptuously of Elsworth’s Gitano
friends.
“Now, Mr. Crowe, you surprise me, as a deep student of natural
phenomena, to hear you talk so. Don’t you know—
‘No creature’s made so mean
But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate,
Its supreme worth’?”
Mr. Crowe did not think the game was worth the candle; besides, it
would spoil the artists’ chances to civilize the gipsies.
Elsworth explained that had he attempted to experiment with the cholera
patients, if he had been so inclined, he would have fared no better
than the native doctors, who were suspected of propagating the disease
for the Government, who wished to deplete the population.
“Yes,” said Aunt Janet, “can we wonder at the poor Neapolitans and
Spaniards, in the late cholera epidemics, attacking the doctors with
sticks and stones, declaring they were spreading the disease—as, in
fact, they were—by these abominable vaccinations?”
“I hear that Pasteur’s hydrophobia cure is entirely discredited by the
French experts,” said Mildred.
“It is,” replied Elsworth; “and anybody who believed that God, and not
the devil, governs the world, might have predicted its failure from the
infernal nature of the process for keeping up the supply of the
vaccine. Just fancy, keeping in cages, a lot of dogs inoculated with
the virus, to inoculate again a lot of rabbits, ready for use for any
patient who might want the treatment!”
“Do you know, Mr. Elsworth,” said Mildred, “I am almost afraid to
venture the opinion, yet it is a growing one with me, that what is
called scientific medicine is a contradiction in terms. The human
stomach is not a test-tube, and till we leave off treating it as a dyer
treats his vats, we can’t expect to make any progress. So many things
go to make up therapeutic treatment. How often have I heard my father
say that he never could do any good unless the patient had full faith
in him!”
“I fear you do not estimate very highly either the education you got at
St. Bernard’s, or the benefits such institutions confer on the people,”
said Mr. Crowe, in a rather sneering tone, when Elsworth had assented
to Mildred’s remarks.
Dr. Graves maintained that the hospital education given at St.
Bernard’s was second to none in Europe, and doubted if it were possible
to improve on its methods, as far as they went. “What do you say, Mr.
Elsworth?” he asked.
“I hold,” said Elsworth, “that all hospitals are only necessary evils
in an imperfect state of society.”
“I have long held that opinion, too,” replied Mildred; “it seems to me
that our poor people are far too ready to get rid of their sick and
troublesome relatives.”
“Yes, nursing is rapidly becoming a lost art amongst the working
people,” remarked Aunt Janet. “The instant their children, husbands, or
wives get sick, they are packed off to one or other of the charities
which compete for their favours and they are troubled with them no more
till they are cured.”
“You mean till they recover?” said Mildred, with an arch look.
“Oh, we really do make some cures, though our Spanish friends are cruel
enough to say, ‘_El medico lleva la plata pero Dios es que sana!_’ (the
doctor takes the fee, but God works the cure.”)
“I fear our noble art is not more highly esteemed here than in
England,” said Dr. Graves.
“England is the very Paradise of doctors; though the art of medicine,
so far from making progress even there, bids fair to be destroyed by a
noisy and arrogant school,” said Elsworth emphatically.
“You mean the ultra-physiological party which goes in for these hideous
inoculations?” asked Mildred.
“I do,” he replied. “While I was a student at the hospital, I often
remarked the contempt with which many of the physicians spoke of drugs
and of the people who believed in them; and found it difficult to
reconcile all they said with their practice amongst their private
patients who went to their consulting rooms and always returned armed
with prescriptions which they were instructed should be dispensed only
at the most eminent pharmacies. At the hospital, peppermint water was
the great remedy for every complaint, except where some new thing was
in hand which wanted testing; but when the guinea-paying public were to
be dealt with, they received the most formidable prescriptions,
resulting ultimately in rows of medicine bottles.”
Mr. Crowe looked very cross at this, and would have replied with
bitterness had it not been for the ladies. To make matters worse, Aunt
Janet capped it.
“Yes, I remember Dr. Lee declaring at a meeting of medical men that
drugs were a delusion and a sham; and that nothing but nature and a
good nurse were wanted to cure any complaint amenable to treatment.”
“What did the others say?” asked Elsworth.
“Oh, they objected that it was all very well for a Royal Physician, who
had reached the top of the ladder to talk like that, but that it would
not work well for those who were still climbing.”
Wishing to divert the conversation into another channel, Mildred asked
Elsworth if he did not think with her that the great cause of sickness
amongst the poor was due to drink—in England, at all events.
He agreed that it was so, but attributed the craze for alcohol partly
to the climate, and partly to the gradual degradation of the social
conditions of life amongst the poor. The separation between the masses
and the classes was more pronounced, he thought, in England than in any
other country of which he knew anything.
“I don’t wonder at the poor creatures drinking,” said he; “it is the
only way they have of satisfying the natural aspiration of mankind for
the ideal!”
“You mean, we are all more or less poets, and alcohol develops the
latent genius within us?” said Mildred.
“I do, and I can never tolerate the argument that a man who drinks
makes a beast of himself, because the beast can have no desire to
minister to a sense which he does not possess.”
“Then you would say, that the universal desire for some sort of
intoxication is a proof of the higher and immortal nature of man,” said
Mr. Crowe.
“In a certain degree, yes; because all error is a perversion of some
truth. A booze of bad beer and a glass of gin do for the lower man what
Shakespeare and Keats, Bacon and Macaulay do for the cultured man—lift
him for a while from his sordid surroundings, and raise him to a Monte
Cristo palace of beautiful imagery. Mind, this is all the more sinful,
all the more degrading at last, because it is buying of the devil at
the price of your soul what God would have given you in another and a
better way, if you had asked Him.”
“Very pretty,” said Crowe, “but I don’t believe it a bit!”
Dr. Graves said he thought that the theory was as clever, yet as
improbable, as that of an American friend of his, who held that all
children told lies, because by nature their dramatic faculties were in
advance of their moral principles. Fibbing children were on this theory
all premature poets.
And so the symposium ended, and the little party broke up.