Ernest Hume sick here with pneumonia. Come.
[Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Zoe Morton_]
I am glad you got off so well, and that the sun shone at last. Ever so
many presents have come since you left. Mrs. Badger sends a Turkish
rug, hideous, I think, and abominably dirty. I smelled cholera, and in
five minutes sent the thing to be cleansed. Cousin Robert, in his usual
forethoughtful way, brought a silver service, unmarked, so that you can
exchange it if you like. Do you read the papers? Do you know about
Francis Hume? I found out casually from Bellamy Winthrop, who chanced
to go up with him in the train. Bellamy is a ferret; that you know. He
could get news out of a stone--or Francis. It seems Mr. Hume was very
ill, started to come down here, was taken worse in a Concord hotel, and
died there before Francis could reach him. The boy took his body and
carried it to that awful camp for burial. I desire never to set eyes on
the place again. I wrote to him, but he doesn't answer. Good luck to
you both. Regards to Captain Morton. I suppose I am to call him Ned?
What with the wedding and this last nightmare, my nerves are quite
unstrung.
Francis Hume had gone back. It was the spring now, and a visit to the
spot at that same time last year reminded me that the grass would have
been thick and tall before the door, and that the linden was in bloom.
I had found old Pierre in the village, and asked him to row me over;
but though his arms were still like whipcords, he declined. He seemed
to think the visit an intrusion upon the two who had evidently made
something as holy and unapproachable in his own life as the legends of
his saints. On the other hand, he was jealously unwilling to trust me
there alone; and when I found another man to row me, Pierre came of his
own will and took a place in the boat. The day was a heaven of May, the
lake untouched. Our oars made its only ripple. It was a strange, still
progress. Pierre, dark, silent, a man of thought and experience,
brooded all the way, as over vanished things; and the other man
evidently held him in too much awe to speak. They landed me without a
word. I walked about the spot where the log-cabin had stood, now a
blank in the vegetation. I lingered by the Point, to catch the little
ripples there; and I visited the spring where the two men used to
drink. Pierre had followed me, with the cat-like tread of the woods. He
touched my sleeve, and pointed through a forest path.
"There," he said. "That is the grave."
I understood. Ernest Hume had been buried there. I walked in a few
steps, and Pierre pointed. A forest of maiden-hair strove and fluttered
greenly. This was the grave. There was no stone to mark it; but at that
moment it seemed to me very rich in peace to lie down so and to be
absorbed into the life of the forest, throwing back no foolish outcry,
"Here I lie! Remember."
When Pierre found that I was going back without disturbing even a leaf
of his shrine, his heart opened a little to me, and he told me a few
facts of the burial. Francis Hume had brought back his father's body,
and they two had dug the grave and laid him within it. Francis had
never spoken. He looked like the dead. He had no mind. Pierre repeated
it: he had no mind.
I could understand. He was beside himself. His soul had been reft away
into merciful dulness, somewhere outside his body. When the burial was
over, Francis had dismissed him and walked away into the woods. Pierre
followed, silently. All that day they walked, Francis unconscious that
he was not alone. Then Pierre began to realize that they were going in
a great circle, and that they were coming back to the grave. Night
fell, and they were still walking, now away from the grave again, but
always in a circle. The moon came out, and Pierre, very hungry, yet not
daring to lose sight of Francis, approached him and tried to speak; the
boy's eyes were wide open, unwinking, luminous. Pierre began to talk of
food, and Francis struck out at him, and walked on. Pierre followed.
They continued still in the same dull circle, all night long, Francis
walking like a cat undeterred by branches and avoiding pitfalls with
the cleverness of the insane, and the guide, wearied and stumbling.
Just as the latter darkness of night came on, Francis paused, wavered a
little, and Pierre caught him as he fell. He drew him upon his
shoulder, and toiled back to camp with him. There he laid him upon a
couch in the cabin, and poured brandy between his lips. All that day
the boy slept, only stirring when Pierre roused him to administer milk
or brandy; but at twilight time he moved and opened his eyes. Pierre
knew he had "come back." Then the old man placed bread and meat beside
him and went silently out. He had much experience, I judged, of the
dignity of the soul; much knowledge, gained from lonely living, of her
needs. He knew when she must be alone. Yet he watched all night in the
grove, his quick ears strained for a movement of the creature within.
What came next, Francis Hume only can tell.
* * * * *
It is two o'clock in the morning, and I am writing here in the cabin
door-way. I have no light, yet I can see what I am writing. That, I
remember, is not what ordinarily happens; but it seems quite natural. I
must write in haste, for, as I judge, I have been crazy, and now I am
sane; and I must put down something to remember, lest madness should
come on again. I must have something to hold to, if I am to fall back
into the great confusion and trouble of mind that have been sweeping me
down like a sea. For I have learned something. It is most precious, and
I must be sure to keep it. There is no doubt that I have killed my
father. I was not by to tend him. When his soul was going forth, I let
it go alone. I brought upon him the sharpest pangs of his mortality.
But even that is well. Can I write what has befallen me, to recall it
to my later mind when the vision has faded, as it may? I cling to it. I
must try. First, I went down into hell. I do not know much about that.
It is confused. And hell is not very important. We dig it for
ourselves. Let me remember only the things of God. Then I awoke, and
Pierre was feeding me. He went out, and I saw the twilight shaft of
light strike across the cabin where it used to fall. But I knew
everything was changed. The cabin was not real. Only I was real--and
Pierre. My soul--was it my soul?--went out of the cabin, and swept
across Lone Mountain to the sea, and over the sea and back again. She
saw the great earth swing in space. She knew there are many worlds
beside. She felt an awe of the vastness of things, and she began to be
healed. Then she came back to me, and I took her in, like a dove with
dew upon her wings, and she comforted me. Me? Was it she who went, or
I? What is she? I do not know. But I was comforted. Then, as I lay
there, vision after vision began to throng upon me, and the cabin walls
lifted up, and let me see the world. And I looked upon the great
balances wherein we are held, and millions of souls, uncounted souls,
in myriads, like little points of light, fleeing home to God. That was
it--God. That was what I had sinned and suffered for, to know Him. I
saw the souls going toward Him, and an ineffable delight took hold on
me because I felt that I was going, too; not my body, not even the Me
that stayed in the cabin, though every impulse of me was tending fast
that way. I knew a flower's feeling when its fragrance meets the sun.
This was love; and immediately I understood everything that it was
necessary for me to understand. I comprehended His perfect well-wishing
toward us. I knew one blood ran from His heart through ours. I knew how
small a thing it is to say "_I_ suffer." I? What is I? A mote in the
whole, an aching nerve in one great plexus. And the whole will some day
be nourished, and we shall be healed. I do not know whether I can
believe this when I read it by day; but the cabin is thronged
with--radiances. I have not learned what to call them, but they are
infinitely beautiful, patient, strong, and they uphold me. I cannot
think they suffer with me; their wisdom is too great. But they crowd
about me silently, forbearingly, divinely. They are incarnate love. I
stretch out my hands to them. While they stay, I am almost happy. I do
not see them, yet they shed a lustre and the soul perceives it. I have
learned--what have I learned? Obedience. I must not strive nor cry. I
must serve. What? I do not know. But I must serve, even in the dark and
enchained. I am content to grope, with my eyes bandaged. Content? No,
this is joy. I have tasted God. I drink no other spring.
I have read this over. It is all wrong, all poor and pale; I have told
nothing. Yet the visions--they are in my soul. I throw my arms about
them and hold them fast. Perhaps even they must be withdrawn. Perhaps
it is a part of my service to lose my way. Even that I accept. I reach
my hand for the cup--thirstily. I drink, and to the Unknown God. What
is He? I am contented not to know. What am I? It is His will I should
not know. Only this: the soul is perfect, indestructible, and she goes
to lave herself in Him.
* * * * *
The next morning, said Pierre, Francis made swift preparations for
going away. They were few, for he wished to retain nothing belonging to
his former life. He took last long looks about the walls, he studied
the pictures as if he would learn them by heart, and laid his hand upon
one and another of the things that had been dear to him. Then he
touched fire to the building, and stood by outside, waiting while it
burned. Pierre very plainly understood why he did it, though he could
not tell. He seemed to distrust the quality of my intelligence because
I asked primitive questions. Was it because Francis feared marauders?
Was it some idea of sacrifice to his father's memory? Was it because he
felt himself unworthy to retain the precious surroundings of a life to
which he had been false? As I became insistent, Pierre grew dumb. The
cabin burned, he said. Francis watched it. Then he went away. He never
came back.
In the old man's countenance I fancied I could trace, under a veiling
patience, the lines of an immortal grief. Francis, I could understand,
had been the child of his heart, his one human love. It had taken all
the great austerity of the forest to teach him to bear that loss. Yet
you could see from his face, as in the faces of so many who suffer with
dignity, that he was not destitute of hope.
It has been surprisingly difficult to follow the after-track of Francis
Hume. For those who knew him have only to say that he disappeared. But
he disappeared merely by settling down at their own door: the back-door
where carriages never come. He selected a very poor and sordid street
in the city where he had met his loss, and betook himself there to
live; not, I believe, with any idea of work among the poor, but because
he had probed life to the bottom in his own experience, and he felt
constrained to seek a lower depth. He had acquired that passionate
abnegation which is the child of grief; not undervaluing the joys of
time, he had learned that they were not for him. Now his life became
very simple, very humble, in the expectancy of its attitude; for he
leaned upon God, and waited until he should be told what to do. There
are strange, vivid memories of him among the people with whom he
walked. Evidently he gave munificently, yet from such austerity of
life, and with such directness of speech and action, that few presumed
to bleed him further. In that same dark region remain to-day strange
touches of magnificence and beauty; a great picture here, a glowing
curtain there, dowered with a richness the present owners may not
understand, although they dimly feel it. He had no formulated idea of
charity, no recognition of the fact that there are theories of doing
good. All that can be discovered about his later life is that he was
much beloved, and that he loved much; the latter, from an aching sense
of the pain common to all souls, a sense of spiritual kinship. At
least, he was spared many of the tawdry temptations of youth; for grief
had touched him so near that she had opened his eyes to the foolishness
of vain desires. He could watch the fluttering of the garment of
happiness without wondering if happiness were really underneath. He had
seen the real; thenceforth, for him, there was no illusion. He simply
lived, and shared when the inner voice told him to share; and as it
afterwards proved, he made his will, and left his fortune to buy great
tracts of pine woods for a camping-ground forevermore. But that does
not pertain to his story. Sufficient to know that the trust has been
very wisely administered, and that hundreds of squalid creatures were
last summer turned loose there.
Meantime Zoe Morton was fulfilling to the letter her own cynical
prophecy of an unhappy marriage. There is no doubt whatever about the
life she led with Captain Morton. He was a frank materialist. Every man
has his price, said he; every woman also. The baser breed of vices are
as unavoidable as any other part of the earthly scheme. Eat and
drink--and die when you must. He was kind enough to Zoe in the manner
of a man who would not wantonly hurt his horse or dog; he would have
been kinder had she not rebelled. But after the manner of her sex and
nature, when they wed with Bottom, she went hysterical-mad. He got
tired--and he rode away. Then, after five years of marriage and two of
acute invalidism, thus she wrote Francis Hume:--
* * * * *
I send this to the Boston post-office in the hope of finding you. My
aunt thinks she saw you in the street the other day; but I did not need
that to tell me you were here. I have guessed it for a long time. I
have almost felt you knew how I suffer. I am asking an impossible
service. Captain Morton is abroad, and he refuses to come home. I am
dying, and he will not believe it. I have written him and cabled him;
but I have said I was dying for the last three years. Now it is true.
Will you go over there and see him? _Make him believe it._ Make him
come to me. I do not know how--but make him. His bankers are Baring
Bros. Perhaps they can tell you where he is.
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]
Dear lady,--I start to-night. It was generous of you to ask me. He
shall come.
* * * * *
But Captain Morton was not to be found, either in England or on the
Continent; and so there was much delay which must have tried the soul
of the messenger beyond endurance. Through one of the foolish ironies
of life, the captain ("rather fat," six years before!) had decided, in
a futile blindness to his own limitations, to join an exploring party
to the interior of Abyssinia. He had always a childish vanity; perhaps
that led him to ignore all the habits of his luxurious past and seek
healthier living through the means he had despised. Thus to nourish
himself for more vices! So does the _bon vivant_ recuperate at Spas.
Thither, as soon as Francis Hume could get upon his track, he followed
him, through danger and delay, through wilderness and night. The
difficulties of the journey were a thousandfold enhanced by his
ignorance of any definite route; and he made many a maddening detour
and experienced tragic loss in the treachery of guides. This, at least,
is apparent from some crumpled notes of travel found among his
possessions. At length, suddenly, dramatically, he came upon his man.
What arguments he used, no one can say. Perhaps Morton had grown sick
of his fool's errand, perhaps his heart was really touched, at last;
but he did turn about and make all due speed to America. Francis
accompanied him only to the fastest steamer route; and then dropped off
to take another boat home. His notes keep rigid silence concerning the
captain. Did he hate him to the last, or had hatred, like other spawn
of evil, sunk, for him, in the unplumbed depths of larger seas? Captain
Morton came home and found his wife still living. She died within a
week, and there is a strange contradiction in her end. The nurse who
was with her says that she moaned for him, like a child, through all
those dreary days; and yet when he came into the room she looked at
him, turned her face to the wall, and would not speak. It seemed almost
as if she had held herself within a bond she loathed, and as if death
had really freed her.
Francis returned to Boston on his slow-sailing boat. They were coming
up the harbor in the flush of twilight, and the State-house dome stood
like a golden beehive against the sky. He had kept very much to
himself, said one of the passengers who was strongly drawn to him, and
now he stood by the rail, not looking forward with the seeking glance
of those whose voyage is done, but musingly into the sea. A little
sailboat had been keeping alongside. Two men were in it, and they were
plainly drunk. They had a little rough dog, and they were teasing him.
The passengers looked on with indignant protest. One or two called out;
but the men swore back and bullied him the more. Their last pleasantry
was to hold him over the side with a feint of dropping him; and
suddenly, in an access of cruelty, they called out that he should swim
for it. And then they dropped him. Francis Hume had not followed the
entire occurrence; but the passenger who told it happened to glance at
him at the moment when the dog was thrown overboard. That he saw. She
says he glowed at once with pure anger. His face lighted and flamed;
and two seconds after the dog went down, Francis Hume sprang after him.
There was an outcry on the instant. A boat was lowered, but some
strange clumsiness of execution seemed to overshadow the whole thing;
so that Hume had to keep himself afloat for what seemed a long time. In
reality, she supposes, it was minutes. That was nothing. Miles of
swimming were nothing to a man of his training; but when the boat
reached him, he threw the dog into it and himself slipped away. That
was all. The event is confused in the minds of everybody present, and
no one can wholly account for it. It seemed fatality. He simply went
down, and his body was not recovered. The men in the sailboat, shocked
into soberness, put about, and left the steamer in all possible haste;
and the passenger who told me the story dried the little dog in her
shawl and promised him a home. But of this thing every one is
convinced. Francis Hume must have gone willingly to his death, but he
did not choose it. The sailors of the rescuing boat say that his face
showed a strange bewilderment, but no refusal of their efforts; he did
not mean to drown. There must have been, said the ship's doctor, some
lesion of the heart.
Much as I know of the reality of his life (and it ended not so long
ago), it never seems to me to belong to this actual world, this "city
by the sea." For me, its mirror lies, strangely enough, in another life
of noble ends and uncompleted action: Beauchamp's Career. There is your
only parallel, even to the splendid futility of its close. Read this
from Meredith's novel, which is, after all, nothing less than vivid
biography, and fit it to the end of Francis Hume.
"An old man volunteered the information. 'That's the boy. That boy was
in his father's boat out there, with two of his brothers, larking; and
he and another, older than him, fell overboard; and just then Commander
Beauchamp was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood,
jump up and dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him
in safe: that boy; and he dived again after the other, and was down a
long time. Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been
rowing himself from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and
must have been hot when he jumped in; either way, he fetched the second
up, and sank with him. Down he went.'
"A fisherman said: ... 'Do you hear that voice thundering? That's the
great Lord Romfrey. He's been directing the dragging since five o' the
evening, and will till he drops or drowns, or up comes the body.'
"'O God, let's find the body!' the woman with the little boy called
out.
"'... My lord! my lord!' sobbed the woman, and dropped on her knees.
"'What's this?' the earl said, drawing his hand away from the woman's
clutch at it.
"'She's the mother, my lord,' several explained to him.
"'Mother of what?'
"'My boy,' the woman cried, and dragged the urchin to Lord Romfrey's
feet, cleaning her boy's face with her apron.
"'It's the boy Commander Beauchamp drowned to save,' said a man.
"All the lights of the ring were turned on the head of the boy.... The
boy struck out both arms to get his fists against his eyelids.
"This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp.
"It was not uttered, but it was visible in the blank stare at one
another of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after they had examined the
insignificant bit of mud-bank life remaining in this world in the place
of him."
* * * * *
But those of us who loved Francis Hume do not ask to find his body,
even for tender burial. We only pray that in some bright star-passage
we may be fortunate, and one day see his soul.