agricultural laborer leads an out-of-door life, and uses the strength
that God has given to him. The sailor in the merchant service does the
name. Both are an uncultivated, a shamefully uncultivated, class--and
see the result! Look at the Map of Crime, and you will find the most
hideous offenses in the calendar, committed--not in the towns, where the
average man doesn’t lead an out-of-door life, doesn’t as a rule, use his
strength, but is, as a rule, comparatively cultivated--not in the towns,
but in the agricultural districts. As for the English sailor--except
when the Royal Navy catches and cultivates him--ask Mr. Brinkworth,
who has served in the merchant navy, what sort of specimen of the moral
influence of out-of-door life and muscular cultivation _he_ is.”
“In nine cases out of ten,” said Arnold, “he is as idle and vicious as
ruffian as walks the earth.”
Another cry from the Opposition: “Are _we_ agricultural laborers? Are
_we_ sailors in the merchant service?”
A smart reverberation from the human echoes: “Smith! am I a laborer?”
“Jones! am I a sailor?”
“Pray let us not be personal, gentlemen,” said Sir Patrick. “I am
speaking generally, and I can only meet extreme objections by pushing
my argument to extreme limits. The laborer and the sailor have served my
purpose. If the laborer and the sailor offend you, by all means let them
walk off the stage! I hold to the position which I advanced just now. A
man may be well born, well off, well dressed, well fed--but if he is an
uncultivated man, he is (in spite of all those advantages) a man with
special capacities for evil in him, on that very account. Don’t mistake
me! I am far from saving that the present rage for exclusively muscular
accomplishments must lead inevitably downward to the lowest deep of
depravity. Fortunately for society, all special depravity is more or
less certainly the result, in the first instance, of special temptation.
The ordinary mass of us, thank God, pass through life without being
exposed to other than ordinary temptations. Thousands of the young
gentlemen, devoted to the favorite pursuits of the present time, will
get through existence with no worse consequences to themselves than
a coarse tone of mind and manners, and a lamentable incapability of
feeling any of those higher and gentler influences which sweeten and
purify the lives of more cultivated men. But take the other case (which
may occur to any body), the case of a special temptation trying a modern
young man of your prosperous class and of mine. And let me beg Mr.
Delamayn to honor with his attention what I have now to say, because it
refers to the opinion which I did really express--as distinguished from
the opinion which he affects to agree with, and which I never advanced.”
Geoffrey’s indifference showed no signs of giving way. “Go on!” he
said--and still sat looking straight before him, with heavy eyes, which
noticed nothing, and expressed nothing.
“Take the example which we have now in view,” pursued Sir Patrick--“the
example of an average young gentleman of our time, blest with every
advantage that physical cultivation can bestow on him. Let this man be
tried by a temptation which insidiously calls into action, in his own
interests, the savage instincts latent in humanity--the instincts of
self-seeking and cruelty which are at the bottom of all crime. Let this
man be placed toward some other person, guiltless of injuring him, in a
position which demands one of two sacrifices: the sacrifice of the other
person, or the sacrifice of his own interests and his own desires.
His neighbor’s happiness, or his neighbor’s life, stands, let us say,
between him and the attainment of something that he wants. He can wreck
the happiness, or strike down the life, without, to his knowledge, any
fear of suffering for it himself. What is to prevent him, being the man
he is, from going straight to his end, on those conditions? Will the
skill in rowing, the swiftness in running, the admirable capacity and
endurance in other physical exercises, which he has attained, by a
strenuous cultivation in this kind that has excluded any similarly
strenuous cultivation in other kinds--will these physical attainments
help him to win a purely moral victory over his own selfishness and his
own cruelty? They won’t even help him to see that it _is_ selfishness,
and that it _is_ cruelty. The essential principle of his rowing and
racing (a harmless principle enough, if you can be sure of applying it
to rowing and racing only) has taught him to take every advantage of
another man that his superior strength and superior cunning can suggest.
There has been nothing in his training to soften the barbarous hardness
in his heart, and to enlighten the barbarous darkness in his mind.
Temptation finds this man defenseless, when temptation passes his way.
I don’t care who he is, or how high he stands accidentally in the social
scale--he is, to all moral intents and purposes, an Animal, and nothing
more. If my happiness stands in his way--and if he can do it with
impunity to himself--he will trample down my happiness. If my life
happens to be the next obstacle he encounters--and if he can do it with
impunity to himself--he will trample down my life. Not, Mr. Delamayn, in
the character of a victim to irresistible fatality, or to blind chance;
but in the character of a man who has sown the seed, and reaps the
harvest. That, Sir, is the case which I put as an extreme case only,
when this discussion began. As an extreme case only--but as a perfectly
possible case, at the same time--I restate it now.”
Before the advocates of the other side of the question could open their
lips to reply, Geoffrey suddenly flung off his indifference, and started
to his feet.
“Stop!” he cried, threatening the others, in his fierce impatience to
answer for himself, with his clenched fist.
There was a general silence.
Geoffrey turned and looked at Sir Patrick, as if Sir Patrick had
personally insulted him.
“Who is this anonymous man, who finds his way to his own ends, and
pities nobody and sticks at nothing?” he asked. “Give him a name!”
“I am quoting an example,” said Sir Patrick. “I am not attacking a man.”
“What right have you,” cried Geoffrey--utterly forgetful, in the strange
exasperation that had seized on him, of the interest that he had in
controlling himself before Sir Patrick--“what right have you to pick out
an example of a rowing man who is an infernal scoundrel--when it’s
quite as likely that a rowing man may be a good fellow: ay! and a better
fellow, if you come to that, than ever stood in your shoes!”
“If the one case is quite as likely to occur as the other (which I
readily admit),” answered Sir Patrick, “I have surely a right to choose
which case I please for illustration. (Wait, Mr. Delamayn! These are
the last words I have to say and I mean to say them.) I have taken
the example--not of a specially depraved man, as you erroneously
suppose--but of an average man, with his average share of the mean,
cruel, and dangerous qualities, which are part and parcel of unreformed
human nature--as your religion tells you, and as you may see for
yourself, if you choose to look at your untaught fellow-creatures any
where. I suppose that man to be tried by a temptation to wickedness, out
of the common; and I show, to the best of my ability, how completely the
moral and mental neglect of himself, which the present material tone
of public feeling in England has tacitly encouraged, leaves him at the
mercy of all the worst instincts in his nature; and how surely, under
those conditions, he _must_ go down (gentleman as he is) step by
step--as the lowest vagabond in the streets goes down under _his_
special temptation--from the beginning in ignorance to the end in crime.
If you deny my right to take such an example as that, in illustration of
the views I advocate, you must either deny that a special temptation to
wickedness can assail a man in the position of a gentleman, or you must
assert that gentlemen who are naturally superior to all temptation are
the only gentlemen who devote themselves to athletic pursuits. There
is my defense. In stating my case, I have spoken out of my own sincere
respect for the interests of virtue and of learning; out of my own
sincere admiration for those young men among us who are resisting the
contagion of barbarism about them. In _their_ future is the future hope
of England. I have done.”
Angrily ready with a violent personal reply, Geoffrey found himself
checked, in his turn by another person with something to say, and with a
resolution to say it at that particular moment.
For some little time past the surgeon had discontinued his steady
investigation of Geoffrey’s face, and had given all his attention to the
discussion, with the air of a man whose self-imposed task had come to
an end. As the last sentence fell from the last speaker’s lips, he
interposed so quickly and so skillfully between Geoffrey and Sir
Patrick, that Geoffrey himself was taken by surprise,
“There is something still wanting to make Sir Patrick’s statement of the
case complete,” he said. “I think I can supply it, from the result of
my own professional experience. Before I say what I have to say, Mr.
Delamayn will perhaps excuse me, if I venture on giving him a caution to
control himself.”
“Are _you_ going to make a dead set at me, too?” inquired Geoffrey.
“I am recommending you to keep your temper--nothing more. There are
plenty of men who can fly into a passion without doing themselves any
particular harm. You are not one of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think the state of your health, Mr. Delamayn, is quite so
satisfactory as you may be disposed to consider it yourself.”
Geoffrey turned to his admirers and adherents with a roar of derisive
laughter. The admirers and adherents all echoed him together. Arnold
and Blanche smiled at each other. Even Sir Patrick looked as if he
could hardly credit the evidence of his own ears. There stood the modern
Hercules, self-vindicated as a Hercules, before all eyes that looked at
him. And there, opposite, stood a man whom he could have killed with one
blow of his fist, telling him, in serious earnest, that he was not in
perfect health!
“You are a rare fellow!” said Geoffrey, half in jest and half in anger.
“What’s the matter with me?”
“I have undertaken to give you, what I believe to be, a necessary
caution,” answered the surgeon. “I have _not_ undertaken to tell
you what I think is the matter with you. That may be a question for
consideration some little time hence. In the meanwhile, I should like
to put my impression about you to the test. Have you any objection to
answer a question on a matter of no particular importance relating to
yourself?”
“Let’s hear the question first.”
“I have noticed something in your behavior while Sir Patrick was
speaking. You are as much interested in opposing his views as any of
those gentlemen about you. I don’t understand your sitting in
silence, and leaving it entirely to the others to put the case on your
side--until Sir Patrick said something which happened to irritate you.
Had you, all the time before that, no answer ready in your own mind?”
“I had as good answers in my mind as any that have been made here
to-day.”
“And yet you didn’t give them?”
“No; I didn’t give them.”
“Perhaps you felt--though you knew your objections to be good ones--that
it was hardly worth while to take the trouble of putting them into
words? In short, you let your friends answer for you, rather than make
the effort of answering for yourself?”
Geoffrey looked at his medical adviser with a sudden curiosity and a
sudden distrust.
“I say,” he asked, “how do you come to know what’s going on in my
mind--without my telling you of it?”
“It is my business to find out what is going on in people’s bodies--and
to do that it is sometimes necessary for me to find out (if I can) what
is going on in their minds. If I have rightly interpreted what was going
on in _your_ mind, there is no need for me to press my question. You
have answered it already.”
He turned to Sir Patrick next
“There is a side to this subject,” he said, “which you have not touched
on yet. There is a Physical objection to the present rage for muscular
exercises of all sorts, which is quite as strong, in its way, as the
Moral objection. You have stated the consequences as they _may_ affect
the mind. I can state the consequences as they _do_ affect the body.”
“From your own experience?”
“From my own experience. I can tell you, as a medical man, that a
proportion, and not by any means a small one, of the young men who are
now putting themselves to violent athletic tests of their strength and
endurance, are taking that course to the serious and permanent injury of
their own health. The public who attend rowing-matches, foot-races, and
other exhibitions of that sort, see nothing but the successful results
of muscular training. Fathers and mothers at home see the failures.
There are households in England--miserable households, to be counted,
Sir Patrick, by more than ones and twos--in which there are young men
who have to thank the strain laid on their constitutions by the popular
physical displays of the present time, for being broken men, and
invalided men, for the rest of their lives.”
“Do you hear that?” said Sir Patrick, looking at Geoffrey.
Geoffrey carelessly nodded his head. His irritation had had time to
subside; the stolid indifference had got possession of him again. He had
resumed his chair--he sat, with outstretched legs, staring stupidly
at the pattern on the carpet. “What does it matter to Me?” was the
sentiment expressed all over him, from head to foot.
The surgeon went on.
“I can see no remedy for this sad state of things,” he said, “as long
as the public feeling remains what the public feeling is now. A fine
healthy-looking young man, with a superb muscular development,
longs (naturally enough) to distinguish himself like others. The
training-authorities at his college, or elsewhere, take him in hand
(naturally enough again) on the strength of outward appearances. And
whether they have been right or wrong in choosing him is more than they
can say, until the experiment has been tried, and the mischief has been,
in many cases, irretrievably done. How many of them are aware of the
important physiological truth, that the muscular power of a man is no
fair guarantee of his vital power? How many of them know that we all
have (as a great French writer puts it) two lives in us--the surface
life of the muscles, and the inner life of the heart, lungs, and brain?
Even if they did know this--even with medical men to help them--it would
be in the last degree doubtful, in most cases, whether any previous
examination would result in any reliable discovery of the vital fitness
of the man to undergo the stress of muscular exertion laid on him. Apply
to any of my brethren; and they will tell you, as the result of their
own professional observation, that I am, in no sense, overstating this
serious evil, or exaggerating the deplorable and dangerous consequences
to which it leads. I have a patient at this moment, who is a young man
of twenty, and who possesses one of the finest muscular developments
I ever saw in my life. If that young man had consulted me, before
he followed the example of the other young men about him, I can not
honestly say that I could have foreseen the results. As things are,
after going through a certain amount of muscular training, after
performing a certain number of muscular feats, he suddenly fainted one
day, to the astonishment of his family and friends. I was called in and
I have watched the case since. He will probably live, but he will never
recover. I am obliged to take precautions with this youth of twenty
which I should take with an old man of eighty. He is big enough and
muscular enough to sit to a painter as a model for Samson--and only last
week I saw him swoon away like a young girl, in his mother’s arms.”
“Name!” cried Geoffrey’s admirers, still fighting the battle on their
side, in the absence of any encouragement from Geoffrey himself.
“I am not in the habit of mentioning my patients’ names,” replied the
surgeon. “But if you insist on my producing an example of a man broken
by athletic exercises, I can do it.”
“Do it! Who is he?”
“You all know him perfectly well.”
“Is he in the doctor’s hands?”
“Not yet.”
“Where is he?”
“There!”
In a pause of breathless silence--with the eyes of every person in the
room eagerly fastened on him--the surgeon lifted his hand and pointed to
Geoffrey Delamayn.
CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.
TOUCHING IT.
As soon as the general stupefaction was allayed, the general incredulity
asserted itself as a matter of course.
The man who first declared that “seeing” was “believing” laid his finger
(whether he knew it himself or not) on one of the fundamental follies
of humanity. The easiest of all evidence to receive is the evidence
that requires no other judgment to decide on it than the judgment of
the eye--and it will be, on that account, the evidence which humanity is
most ready to credit, as long as humanity lasts. The eyes of every
body looked at Geoffrey; and the judgment of every body decided, on
the evidence there visible, that the surgeon must be wrong. Lady Lundie
herself (disturbed over her dinner invitations) led the general protest.
“Mr. Delamayn in broken health!” she exclaimed, appealing to the better
sense of her eminent medical guest. “Really, now, you can’t expect us to
believe that!”
Stung into action for the second time by the startling assertion of
which he had been made the subject, Geoffrey rose, and looked the
surgeon, steadily and insolently, straight in the face.
“Do you mean what you say?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You point me out before all these people--”
“One moment, Mr. Delamayn. I admit that I may have been wrong in
directing the general attention to you. You have a right to complain of
my having answered too publicly the public challenge offered to me by
your friends. I apologize for having done that. But I don’t retract a
single word of what I have said on the subject of your health.”
“You stick to it that I’m a broken-down man?”
“I do.”
“I wish you were twenty years younger, Sir!”
“Why?”
“I’d ask you to step out on the lawn there and I’d show you whether I’m
a broken-down man or not.”
Lady Lundie looked at her brother-in-law. Sir Patrick instantly
interfered.
“Mr. Delamayn,” he said, “you were invited here in the character of a
gentleman, and you are a guest in a lady’s house.”
“No! no!” said the surgeon, good humoredly. “Mr. Delamayn is using a
strong argument, Sir Patrick--and that is all. If I _were_ twenty years
younger,” he went on, addressing himself to Geoffrey, “and if I _did_
step out on the lawn with you, the result wouldn’t affect the question
between us in the least. I don’t say that the violent bodily exercises
in which you are famous have damaged your muscular power. I assert that
they have damaged your vital power. In what particular way they have
affected it I don’t consider myself bound to tell you. I simply give
you a warning, as a matter of common humanity. You will do well to
be content with the success you have already achieved in the field of
athletic pursuits, and to alter your mode of life for the future.
Accept my excuses, once more, for having said this publicly instead of
privately--and don’t forget my warning.”
He turned to move away to another part of the room. Geoffrey fairly
forced him to return to the subject.
“Wait a bit,” he said. “You have had your innings. My turn now. I can’t
give it words as you do; but I can come to the point. And, by the Lord,
I’ll fix you to it! In ten days or a fortnight from this I’m going into
training for the Foot-Race at Fulham. Do you say I shall break down?”
“You will probably get through your training.”
“Shall I get through the race?”
“You may _possibly_ get through the race. But if you do--”
“If I do?”
“You will never run another.”
“And never row in another match?”
“Never.”
“I have been asked to row in the Race, next spring; and I have said I
will. Do you tell me, in so many words, that I sha’n’t be able to do
it?”
“Yes--in so many words.”
“Positively?”
“Positively.”
“Back your opinion!” cried Geoffrey, tearing his betting-book out of his
pocket. “I lay you an even hundred I’m in fit condition to row in the
University Match next spring.”
“I don’t bet, Mr. Delamayn.”
With that final reply the surgeon walked away to the other end of the
library. Lady Lundie (taking Blanche in custody) withdrew, at the same
time, to return to the serious business of her invitations for the
dinner. Geoffrey turned defiantly, book in hand, to his college friends
about him. The British blood was up; and the British resolution to bet,
which successfully defies common decency and common-law from one end of
the country to the other, was not to be trifled with.
“Come on!” cried Geoffrey. “Back the doctor, one of you!”
Sir Patrick rose in undisguised disgust, and followed the surgeon. One,
Two, and Three, invited to business by their illustrious friend, shook
their thick heads at him knowingly, and answered with one accord, in one
eloquent word--“Gammon!”
“One of _you_ back him!” persisted Geoffrey, appealing to the two choral
gentlemen in the back-ground, with his temper fast rising to fever heat.
The two choral gentlemen compared notes, as usual. “We weren’t born
yesterday, Smith?” “Not if we know it, Jones.”
“Smith!” said Geoffrey, with a sudden assumption of politeness ominous
of something unpleasant to come.
Smith said “Yes?”--with a smile.
“Jones!”
Jones said “Yes?”--with a reflection of Smith.
“You’re a couple of infernal cads--and you haven’t got a hundred pound
between you!”
“Come! come!” said Arnold, interfering for the first time. “This is
shameful, Geoffrey!”
“Why the”--(never mind what!)--“won’t they any of them take the bet?”
“If you must be a fool,” returned Arnold, a little irritably on his
side, “and if nothing else will keep you quiet, _I’ll_ take the bet.”
“An even hundred on the doctor!” cried Geoffrey. “Done with you!”
His highest aspirations were satisfied; his temper was in perfect order
again. He entered the bet in his book; and made his excuses to Smith and
Jones in the heartiest way. “No offense, old chaps! Shake hands!”
The two choral gentlemen were enchanted with him. “The English
aristocracy--eh, Smith?” “Blood and breeding--ah, Jones!”
As soon as he had spoken, Arnold’s conscience reproached him: not for
betting (who is ashamed of _that_ form of gambling in England?) but for
“backing the doctor.” With the best intention toward his friend, he was
speculating on the failure of his friend’s health. He anxiously assured
Geoffrey that no man in the room could be more heartily persuaded that
the surgeon was wrong than himself. “I don’t cry off from the bet,”
he said. “But, my dear fellow, pray understand that I only take it to
please _you._”
“Bother all that!” answered Geoffrey, with the steady eye to business,
which was one of the choicest virtues in his character. “A bet’s a
bet--and hang your sentiment!” He drew Arnold by the arm out of ear-shot
of the others. “I say!” he asked, anxiously. “Do you think I’ve set the
old fogy’s back up?”
“Do you mean Sir Patrick?”
Geoffrey nodded, and went on.
“I haven’t put that little matter to him yet--about marrying in
Scotland, you know. Suppose he cuts up rough with me if I try him now?”
His eye wandered cunningly, as he put the question, to the farther end
of the room. The surgeon was looking over a port-folio of prints. The
ladies were still at work on their notes of invitation. Sir Patrick was
alone at the book-shelves immersed in a volume which he had just taken
down.
“Make an apology,” suggested Arnold. “Sir Patrick may be a little
irritable and bitter; but he’s a just man and a kind man. Say you were
not guilty of any intentional disrespect toward him--and you will say
enough.”
“All right!”
Sir Patrick, deep in an old Venetian edition of The Decameron, found
himself suddenly recalled from medieval Italy to modern England, by no
less a person than Geoffrey Delamayn.
“What do you want?” he asked, coldly.