And thus we came ourselves to a new place, though I took but little note
of all we passed, for my mind was bent inward upon itself and upon
Cynthia. The place was a great solid stone building, in many courts,
with fine tree-shaded fields all about; a school, it seemed to me, with
boys and girls going in and out, playing games together. Amroth told me
that children were bestowed here who had been of naturally fine and
frank dispositions, but who had lived their life on earth under foul and
cramped conditions, by which they had been fretted rather than tainted.
It seemed a very happy and busy place. Amroth took me into a great room
that seemed a sort of library or common-room. There was no one there,
and I was glad to sit and rest; when suddenly the door opened, and a man
came in with outstretched hands and a smile of welcome. I looked up,
and it was none but the oldest and dearest friend of my last life, who
had died before me. He had been a teacher, a man of the simplest and
most guileless life, whose whole energy and delight was given to
teaching and loving the young. The surprising thing about him had always
been that he could meet one, after a long silence or a suspension of
intercourse, as simply and easily as if one had but left him the day
before; and it was just the same here. There was no effusiveness of
greeting--we just fell at once into the old familiar talk.
"You are just the same," I said to him, looking at the burly figure, the
big, almost clumsy, head, and the irradiating smile. His great charm had
always been an entire unworldliness and absence of ambition.
He smiled at this and said:
"Yes, I am afraid I am too easy-going." He had never cared to talk about
himself, and now he said, "Well, yes, I go along in my old prosy way.
It is just like the old schooldays, with half the difficulties gone. Of
course the children are not always good, but that makes it the more
amusing; and one can see much more easily what they are thinking of and
dreaming about."
I found myself telling him my adventures, which he heard with the same
quiet attention and I was sure that he would never forget a single
point--he never forgot anything in the old days.
"Yes," he said at the end, "that's a wonderful story. You always had the
trouble of the adventures, and I had the fun of hearing them."
He asked me what I was now going to do, and I said that I had not the
least idea.
"Oh, that will be all right," he said.
It was all so comfortable and simple, so obvious indeed, that I laughed
to think of the bitter and miserable reveries I had indulged in when he
was taken from me, and when the stay of my life seemed gone. The whole
incident seemed to give me back a touch of the serenity which I had
lost, and I saw how beautifully this joy of meeting had been planned for
me, when I wanted it most. Presently he said that he must go off for a
lesson, and asked me to come with him and see the children. We went into
a big class-room, where some boys and girls were assembling. Here he was
exactly the same as ever; no sentiment, but just a kind of bluff
paternal kindness. The lesson was most informal--a good deal of
questioning and answering; it was a biographical lecture, but devoted,
I saw, in a simple way, to tracing the development of the hero's
character. "What made him do that?" was a constant question. The answers
were most ingenious and extraordinarily lively; but the order was
perfect. At the end he called up two or three children who had shown
some impatience or jealousy in the lesson, and said a few half-humorous
words to them, with an air of affectionate interest.
"They are jolly little creatures," he said when they had all gone out.
"Yes," I said, with a sigh, "I do indeed envy you. I wish I could be set
to something of the kind."
"Oh, no, you don't," he said; "this is too simple for you! You want
something more artistic and more psychological. This would bore you to
extinction."
We walked all round the place, saw the games going on, and were
presently joined by Amroth, who seemed to be on terms of old
acquaintanceship with my friend. I was surprised at this, and he said:
"Why, yes, Amroth had the pleasure of bringing me here too. Things are
done here in groups, you know; and Amroth knows all about our lot. It is
very well organised, much better than one perceives at first. You
remember how you and I drifted to school together, and the set of boys
we found ourselves with--my word, what young ruffians some of us were!
Well, of course all that had been planned, though we did not know it."
"What!" said I; "the evil as well as the good?"
The two looked at each other and smiled.
"That is not a very real distinction," said Amroth. "Of course the poor
bodies got in the way, as always; there was some fizzing and some
precipitation, as they say in chemistry. But you each of you gave and
received just what you were meant to give and receive; though these are
complicated matters, like the higher mathematics; and we must not talk
of them to-day. If one can escape the being shocked at things and yet be
untainted by them, and, on the other hand, if one can avoid pomposity
and yet learn self-respect, that is enough. But you are tired to-day,
and I want you just to rest and be refreshed."
Presently Amroth asked me if I should like to stay there awhile, and I
most willingly consented.
"You want something to do," he said, "and you shall have some light
employment."
That same day, before Amroth left me, I had a curious talk with him.
I said to him: "Let me ask you one question. I had always had a sort of
hope that when I came to the land of spirits, I should have a chance of
seeing and hearing something of some of the great souls of earth. I had
dimly imagined a sort of reception, where one could wander about and
listen to the talk of the men one had admired and longed to see--Plato,
let me say, and Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Shelley--some of the
immortals. But I don't seem to have seen anything of them--only just
ordinary and simple people."
Amroth laughed.
"You do say the most extraordinarily ingenuous things," he said. "In the
first place, of course, we have quite a different scale of values here.
People do not take rank by their accomplishments, but by their power of
loving. Many of the great men of earth--and this is particularly the
case with writers and artists--are absolutely nothing here. They had, it
is true, a fine and delicate brain, on which they played with great
skill; but half the artists of the world are great as artists, simply
because they do not care. They perceive and they express; but they would
not have the heart to do it at all, if they really cared. Some of them,
no doubt, were men of great hearts, and they have their place and work.
But to claim to see all the highest spirits together is as absurd as if
you called on a doctor in London at eleven o'clock and expected to meet
all the great physicians at his house, intent on general conversation.
Some of the great people, indeed, you have met, and they were very
simple persons on earth. The greatest person you have hitherto seen was
a butler on earth--the master of your College. And if it does not shock
your aristocratic susceptibilities too much, the President of this place
kept a small shop in a country village. But one of the teachers here
was actually a marquis in the world! Does that uplift you? He teaches
the little girls how to play cricket, and he is a very good dancer.
Perhaps you would like to be introduced to him?"
"Don't treat me as a child," I said, rather pettishly.
"No, no," said Amroth, "it isn't that. But you are one of those
impressible people; and they always find it harder to disentangle
themselves from the old ideas."
I spent a long and happy time in the school. I was given a little
teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting. Imagine children with
everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or
spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the
interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and
even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them. They
were not angelic children at all, neither meek nor mild. But they were
generous and affectionate, and it was easy to evoke these feelings. The
one thing absent from the whole place was any touch of sentimentality,
which arises from natural affections suppressed into a giggling kind of
secrecy. They expressed affection loudly and frankly, just as they
expressed indignation and annoyance. All the while I kept Cynthia in my
heart; she was ever before me in a thousand sweet postures and with
innumerable glances. But I saw much of my sturdy and wholesome-minded
old friend; and the sore pain of parting faded away out of my heart, and
left me with nothing but the purest and deepest love, which helped me in
all I did or said, and made me patient and tender-hearted. And thus the
period sped not unhappily away, though I had my times of agony and
despair.