OXFORD STREET
UNTIL I had actually left, I hardly knew where I was going, but at last I
made up my mind I would go to Reuben Shapcott, another fellow-student,
whom I knew to be living in lodgings in one of the streets just then
beginning to creep over the unoccupied ground between Camden Town and
Haverstock Hill, near the Chalk Farm turnpike gate. To his address I
betook myself, and found him not at home. He, like me, had been
unsuccessful as a minister, and wrote a London letter for two country
papers, making up about £100 or £120 a year by preaching occasionally in
small Unitarian chapels in the country. I waited till his return, and
told him my story. He advised me to take a bed in the house where he was
staying, and to consider what could be done.
At first I thought I would consult Mardon, but I could not bring myself
to go near him. How was I to behave in Mary’s presence? During the last
few months she had been so continually before me, that it would have been
absolutely impossible for me to treat her with assumed indifference. I
could not have trusted myself to attempt it. When I had been lying alone
and awake at night, I had thought of all the endless miles of hill and
valley that lay outside my window, separating me from the one house in
which I could be at peace; and at times I scarcely prevented myself from
getting up and taking the mail train and presenting myself at Mardon’s
door, braving all consequences. With the morning light, however, would
come cooler thoughts and a dull sense of impossibility.
This, I know, was not pure love for her; it was a selfish passion for
relief. But then I have never known what is meant by a perfectly pure
love. When Christian was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and,
being brought to the mouth of hell, was forced to put up his sword, and
could do no other than cry, O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul, he
heard a voice going before him and saying, Though I walk through the
Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear none ill, for Thou art with
me. And by and by the day broke. “Then,” said Christian, “He hath
turned the Shadow of Death into morning. Whereupon Christian sang—
“Oh, world of wonders! (I can say no less)
That I should be preserved in that distress
That I have met with here! Oh, blessed be
That hand that from it hath delivered me!”
This was Christian’s love for God, and for God as his helper. Was that
perfectly pure? However, this is a digression. I determined to help
myself in my own way, and thought I would try the publishers. One
morning I walked from Camden Town to Paternoster Row. I went straightway
into two or three shops and asked whether they wanted anybody. I was
ready to do the ordinary work it of a publisher’s assistant, and aspired
no higher. I met with several refusals, some of them not over-polite,
and the degradation—for so I felt it—of wandering through the streets and
suing for employment cut me keenly. I remember one man in particular,
who spoke to me with the mechanical brutality with which probably he
replied to a score of similar applications every week. He sat in a
little glass box at the end of a long dark room lighted with gas. It was
a bitterly cold room, with no contrivances for warming it, but in his box
there was a fire burning for his own special benefit. He surveyed all
his clerks unceasingly, and woe betide the unhappy wretch who was caught
idling. He and his slaves reminded me of a thrashing-machine which is
worked by horses walking round in a ring, the driver being perched on a
high stool in the middle and armed with a long whip.
While I was waiting his pleasure he came out and spoke to one or two of
his miserable subordinates words of directest and sharpest rebuke,
without anger or the least loss of self-possession, and yet without the
least attempt to mitigate their severity. I meditated much upon him. If
ever I had occasion to rebuke anybody, I always did it apologetically,
unless I happened to be in a flaming passion—and this was my habit, not
from any respectable motive of consideration for the person rebuked, but
partly because I am timid, and partly because I shrink from giving pain.
This man said with perfect ease what I could not have said unless I had
been wrought up to white heat. With all my dislike to him, I envied him:
I envied his complete certainty; for although his language was harsh in
the extreme, he was always sure of his ground, and the victim upon whom
his lash descended could never say that he had given absolutely no reason
for the chastisement, and that it was altogether a mistake. I envied
also his ability to make himself disagreeable and care nothing about it;
his power to walk in his own path, and his resolve to succeed, no matter
what the cost might be.
As I left him, it occurred to me that I might be more successful perhaps
with a publisher of whom I had heard, who published and sold books of a
sceptical turn. To him I accordingly went, and although I had no
introductions or recommendatory letters, I was received, if not with a
cordiality, at least with an interest which surprised me. He took me
into a little back shop, and after hearing patiently what I wanted, he
asked me somewhat abruptly what I thought of the miracles in the Bible.
This was a curious question if he wished to understand my character; but
his mind so constantly revolved in one circle, and existed so completely
by hostility to the prevailing orthodoxy, that belief or disbelief in it
was the standard by which he judged men. It was a very absurd standard
doubtless, but no more absurd than many others, and not so absurd then as
it would be now, when heresy is becoming more fashionable.
I explained to him as well as I could what my position was; that I did
not suppose that the miracles actually happened as they are recorded, but
that, generally speaking, the miracle was a very intense statement of a
divine truth; in fact, a truth which was felt with a more than common
intensity seemed to take naturally a miraculous expression. Hence, so
far from neglecting the miraculous stories of the Bible as simply outside
me, I rejoiced in them more, perhaps, than in the plain historical or
didactic prose.
He seemed content, although hardly to comprehend, and the result was that
he asked me if I would help him in his business. In order to do this, it
would be more economical if I would live in his house, which was too big
for him. He promised to give me £40 a year, in addition to board and
lodging. I joyously assented, and the bargain was struck.
The next day I came to my new quarters. I found that he was a bachelor,
with a niece, apparently about four or five and twenty years old, acting
as a housekeeper, who assisted him in literary work. My own room was at
the top of the house, warm, quiet, and comfortable, although the view was
nothing but a wide reaching assemblage of chimney-pots. My hours were
long—from nine in the morning till seven in the evening; but this I did
not mind. I felt that if I was not happy, I was at least protected, and
that I was with a man who cared for me, and for whom I cared. The first
day I went there, he said that I could have a fire in my bedroom whenever
I chose, so that I could always retreat to it when I wished to be by
myself. As for my duties, I was to sell his books, keep his accounts,
read proofs, run errands, and in short do just what he did himself.
After my first morning’s work we went upstairs to dinner, and I was
introduced to “my niece Theresa.” I was rather surprised that I should
have been admitted to a house in which there lived a young woman with no
mother nor aunt, but this surprise ceased when I came to know more of
Theresa and her uncle. She had yellowish hair which was naturally waved,
a big arched head, greyish-blue eyes, so far as I could make out, and a
mouth which, although it had curves in it, was compressed and indicative
of great force of character. She was rather short, with square
shoulders, and she had a singularly vigorous, firm walk. She had a way,
when she was not eating or drinking, of sitting back in her chair at
table and looking straight at the person with whom she was talking.
Her uncle, whom, by the way, I had forgotten to name—his name was
Wollaston—happened to know some popular preacher whom I knew, and I said
that I wondered so many people went to hear him, for I believed him to be
a hypocrite, and hypocrisy was one of the easiest of crimes to discover.
Theresa, who had hitherto been silent, and was reclining in her usual
attitude, instantly broke out with an emphasis and directness which quite
startled me.
“The easiest to discover, do you think, Mr. Rutherford? I think it is
the most difficult, at least for ordinary persons; and when they do
discover it, I believe they like it, especially if it is successful.
They like the sanction it gives to their own hypocrisy. They like a man
to come to them who will say to them, ‘We are all hypocrites together,’
and who will put his finger to his nose and comfort them. Don’t you
think so yourself?”
In conversation I was always a bad hand at assuming a position contrary
to the one assumed by the person to whom I might be talking—nor could I
persistently maintain my own position if it happened to be opposed. I
always rather tried to see as my opponent saw, and to discover how much
there was in him with which I could sympathise. I therefore assented
weakly to Theresa, and she seemed disappointed. Dinner was just over;
she got up and rang the bell and went out of the room.
I found my work very hard, and some of it even loathsome. Particularly
loathsome was that part of it which brought me into contact with the
trade. I had to sell books to the booksellers’ assistants, and I had to
collect books myself. These duties are usually undertaken in large
establishments by men specially trained, who receive a low rate of wages
and who are rather a rough set. It was totally different work to
anything I had ever had to do before, and I suffered as a man with soft
hands would suffer who was suddenly called to be a blacksmith or a
dock-labourer.
Specially, too, did I miss the country. London lay round me like a
mausoleum. I got into the habit of rising very early in the morning and
walking out to Kensington Gardens and back before breakfast, varying my
route occasionally so as even to reach Battersea Bridge, which was always
a favourite spot with me. Kensington Gardens and Battersea Bridge were
poor substitutes for the downs, and for the level stretch by the river
towards the sea where I first saw Mardon, but we make too much of
circumstances, and the very pressure of London produced a sensibility to
whatever loveliness could be apprehended there, which was absent when
loveliness was always around me. The stars seen in Oxford Street late
one night; a sunset one summer evening from Lambeth pier; and, above
everything, Piccadilly very early one summer morning, abide with me
still, when much that was more romantic has been forgotten. On the
whole, I was not unhappy. The constant outward occupation prevented any
eating of the heart or undue brooding over problems which were insoluble,
at least for my intellect, and on that very account fascinated me the
more.
I do not think that Wollaston cared much for me personally. He was a
curious compound, materialistic yet impulsive, and for ever drawn to some
new thing; without any love for anybody particularly, as far as I could
see, and yet with much more general kindness and philanthropy than many a
man possessing much stronger sympathies and antipathies. There was no
holy of holies in him, into which one or two of the elect could
occasionally be admitted and feel God to be there. He was no temple, but
rather a comfortable, hospitable house open to all friends, well
furnished with books and pictures, and free to every guest from garret to
cellar. He had “liberal” notions about the relationship between the
sexes. Not that he was a libertine, but he disbelieved in marriage,
excepting for so long as husband and wife are a necessity to one another.
If one should find the other uninteresting, or somebody else more
interesting, he thought there ought to be a separation.
All this I soon learned from him, for he was communicative without any
reserve. His treatment of his niece was peculiar. He would talk on all
kinds of subjects before her, for he had a theory that she ought to
receive precisely the same social training as men, and should know just
what men knew. He was never coarse, but on the other hand he would say
things to her in my presence which brought a flame into my face. What
the evil consequences of this might be, I could not at once foresee, but
one good result obviously was, that in his house there was nothing of
that execrable practice of talking down to women; there was no change of
level when women were present.
One day he began to speak about a novel which everybody was reading then,
and I happened to say that I wished people who wrote novels would not
write as if love were the very centre and sum of human existence. A
man’s life was made up of so much besides love, and yet novelists were
never weary of repeating the same story, telling it over and over again
in a hundred different forms.
“I do not agree with you,” said Theresa. “I disagree with you utterly.
I dislike foolish, inane sentiment—it makes me sick; but I do believe, in
the first place, that no man was ever good for anything who has not been
devoured, I was going to say, by a great devotion to a woman. The lives
of your great men are as much the history of women whom they adored as of
themselves. Dante, Byron, Shelley, it is the same with all of them, and
there is no mistake about it; it is the great fact of life. What would
Shakespeare be without it? and Shakespeare is life. A man, worthy to be
named a man, will find the fact of love perpetually confronting him till
he reaches old age, and if he be not ruined by worldliness or
dissipation, will be troubled by it when he is fifty as much as when he
was twenty-five. It is the subject of all subjects. People abuse love,
and think it the cause of half the mischief in the world. It is the one
thing that keeps the world straight, and if it were not for that
overpowering instinct, human nature would fall asunder; would be the prey
of inconceivable selfishness and vices, and finally, there would be
universal suicide. I did not intend to be eloquent: I hate being
eloquent. But you did not mean what you said; you spoke from the head or
teeth merely.”
Theresa’s little speech was delivered not with any heat of the blood.
There was no excitement in her grey eyes, nor did her cheek burn. Her
brain seemed to rule everything. This was an idea she had, and she
kindled over it because it was an idea. It was impossible, of course,
that she should say what she did without some movement of the organ in
her breast, but how much share this organ had in her utterances I never
could make out. How much was due to the interest which she as a
looker-on felt in men and women, and how much was due to herself as a
woman, was always a mystery to me.
She was fond of music, and occasionally I asked her to play to me. She
had a great contempt for bungling, and not being a professional player,
she never would try a piece in my presence of which she was not perfectly
master. She particularly liked to play Mozart, and on my asking her once
to play a piece of Beethoven, she turned round upon me and said: “You
like Beethoven best. I knew you would. He encourages a luxurious
revelling in the incomprehensible and indefinably sublime. He is not
good for you.”
My work was so hard, and the hours were so long, that I had little or no
time for reading, nor for thinking either, except so far as Wollaston and
Theresa made me think. Wollaston himself took rather to science,
although he was not scientific, and made a good deal of what he called
psychology. He was not very profound, but he had picked up a few
phrases, or if this word is too harsh, a few ideas about metaphysical
matters from authors who contemned metaphysics, and with these he was
perfectly satisfied. A stranger listening to him would at first consider
him well read, but would soon be undeceived, and would find that these
ideas were acquired long ago; that he had never gone behind or below
them, and that they had never fructified in him, but were like hard
stones, which he rattled in his pocket. He was totally unlike Mardon.
Mardon, although he would have agreed with many of Wollaston’s results,
differed entirely from him in the processes by which they had been
brought about; and a mental comparison of the two often told me what I
had been told over and over again, that what we believe is not of so much
importance as the path by which we travel to it.
Theresa too, like her uncle, eschewed metaphysics, but she was a woman,
and a woman’s impulses supplied in her the lack of those deeper
questionings, and at times prompted them. She was far more original than
he was, and was impatient of the narrowness of the circle in which he
moved. Her love of music, for example, was a thing incomprehensible to
him, and I do not remember that he ever sat for a quarter of an hour
really listening to it. He would read the newspaper or do anything while
she was playing. She never resented his inattention, except when he made
a noise, and then, without any rebuke, she would break off and go away.
This mode of treatment was the outcome of one of her theories. She
disbelieved altogether in punishment, except when it was likely to do
good, either to the person punished or to others. “A good deal of
punishment,” she used to say, “is mere useless pain.”
Both Theresa and her uncle were kind and human, and I endeavoured to my
utmost to repay them by working my hardest. My few hours of leisure were
sweet, and when I spent them with Wollaston and Theresa, were
interesting. I often asked myself why I found this mode of existence
more tolerable than any other I had hitherto enjoyed. I had, it is true,
an hour or two’s unspeakable peace in the early morning, but, as I have
said, at nine my toil commenced, and, with a very brief interval for
meals, lasted till seven. After seven I was too tired to do anything by
myself, and could only keep awake if I happened to be in company.
One reason certainly why I was content, was Theresa herself. She was a
constant study to me, and I could not for a long time obtain any
consistent idea of her. She was not a this or a that or the other. She
could not be summarily dismissed into any ordinary classification. At
first I was sure she was hard, but I found by the merest accident that
nearly all her earnings were given with utmost secrecy to support a
couple of poor relatives. Then I thought her self-conscious, but this,
when I came to think upon it, seemed a mere word. She was one of those
women, and very rare they are, who deal in ideas, and reflectiveness must
be self-conscious. At times she appeared passionless, so completely did
her intellect dominate, and so superior was she to all the little arts
and weaknesses of women; but this was a criticism she contradicted
continually.
There was very little society at the Wollastons’, but occasionally a few
friends called. One evening there was a little party, and the
conversation flagged. Theresa said that it was a great mistake to bring
people together with nothing special to do but talk. Nothing is more
tedious than to be in a company assembled for no particular reason, and
every host, if he asks more than two persons at the outside, ought to
provide some entertainment. Talking is worth nothing unless it is
perfectly spontaneous, and it cannot be spontaneous if there are sudden
and blank silences, and nobody can think of a fresh departure. The
master of the house is bound to do something. He ought to hire a Punch
and Judy show, or get up a dance.
This spice of bitterness and flavour of rudeness was altogether
characteristic of Theresa, and somebody resented it by reminding her that
_she_ was the hostess. “Of course,” she replied, “that is why I said it:
what shall I do?” One of her gifts was memory, and her friends cried out
at once that she should recite something. She hesitated a little, and
then throwing herself back in her chair, began _The Lass of Lochroyan_.
At first she was rather diffident, but she gathered strength as she went
on. There is a passage in the middle of the poem in which Lord Gregory’s
cruel mother pretends she is Lord Gregory, and refuses to recognise his
former love, Annie of Lochroyan, as she stands outside his tower. The
mother calls to Annie from the inside—
“Gin thou be Annie of Lochroyan
(As I trow thou binna she),
Now tell me some of the love tokèns
That passed between thee and me.”
“Oh, dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory,
As we sat at the wine,
We changed the rings frae our fingers,
And I can show thee thine?
“Oh, yours was gude, and gude enough,
But aye the best was mine;
For yours was o’ the gude red gowd,
_But mine o’ the diamond fine_.”
The last verse is as noble as anything in any ballad in the English
language, and I thought that when Theresa was half way through it her
voice shook a good deal. There was a glass of flowers standing near her,
and just as she came to an end her arm moved and the glass was in a
moment on the floor, shivered into twenty pieces. I happened to be
watching her, and felt perfectly sure that the movement of her arm was
not accidental, and that her intention was to conceal, by the apparent
mishap, an emotion which was increasing and becoming inconvenient. At
any rate, if that was her object it was perfectly accomplished, for the
recitation was abruptly terminated, there was general commiseration over
the shattered vase, and when the pieces were picked up and order was
restored, it was nearly time to separate.
Two of my chief failings were forgetfulness and a want of thoroughness in
investigation. What misery have I not suffered from insufficient
presentation of a case to myself, and from prompt conviction of
insufficiency and inaccuracy by the person to whom I in turn presented
it! What misery have I not suffered from the discovery that explicit
directions to me had been overlooked or only half understood!
One day in particular, I had to take round a book to be “subscribed”
which Wollaston had just published—that is to say, I had to take a copy
to each of the leading booksellers to see how many they would purchase.
Some books are sold “thirteen as twelve,” the thirteenth book being given
to the purchaser of twelve, and some are sold “twenty-five as
twenty-four.” This book was to be sold “twenty-five as twenty-four,”
according to Wollaston’s orders. I subscribed it thirteen as twelve.
Wollaston was annoyed, as I could see, for I had to go over all my work
again, but in accordance with his fixed principles, he was not out of
temper.
It so happened that that same day he gave me some business correspondence
which I was to look through; and having looked through it, I was to
answer the last letter in the sense which he indicated. I read the
correspondence and wrote the letter for his signature. As soon as he saw
it, he pointed out to me that I had only half mastered the facts, and
that my letter was all wrong. This greatly disturbed me, not only
because I had vexed him and disappointed him, but because it was renewed
evidence of my weakness. I thought that if I was incapable of getting to
the bottom of such a very shallow complication as this, of what value
were any of my thinkings on more difficult subjects, and I fell a prey to
self-contempt and scepticism. Contempt from those about us is hard to
bear, but God help the poor wretch who contemns himself.
How well I recollect the early walk on the following morning in
Kensington Gardens, the feeling of my own utter worthlessness, and the
longing for death as the cancellation of the blunder of my existence! I
went home, and after breakfast some proofs came from the printer of a
pamphlet which Wollaston had in hand. Without unfastening them, he gave
them to me, and said that as he had no time to read them himself, I must
go upstairs to Theresa’s study and read them off with her. Accordingly I
went and began to read. She took the manuscript and I took the proof.
She read about a page, and then she suddenly stopped. “Oh, Mr.
Rutherford,” she said, it, “what have you done? I heard my uncle
distinctly tell you to mark on the manuscript when it went to the
printer, that it was to be printed in demy octavo, and you have marked it
twelvemo.”
I had had little sleep that night, I was exhausted with my early walk,
and suddenly the room seemed to fade from me and I fainted. When I came
to myself, I found that Theresa had not sought for any help; she had done
all that ought to be done. She had unfastened my collar and had sponged
my face with cold water. The first thing I saw as I gradually recovered
myself, was her eyes looking steadily at me as she stood over me, and I
felt her hand upon my head. When she was sure I was coming to myself,
she held off and sat down in her chair.
I was a little hysterical, and after the fit was over I broke loose.
With a storm of tears, I laid open all my heart. I told her how nothing
I had ever attempted had succeeded; that I had never even been able to
attain that degree of satisfaction with myself and my own conclusions,
without which a man cannot live; and that now I found I was useless, even
to the best friends I had ever known, and that the meanest clerk in the
city would serve them better than I did. I was beside myself, and I
threw myself on my knees, burying my face in Theresa’s lap and sobbing
convulsively. She did not repel me, but she gently passed her fingers
through my hair. Oh, the transport of that touch! It was as if water
had been poured on a burnt hand, or some miraculous Messiah had soothed
the delirium of a fever-stricken sufferer, and replaced his visions of
torment with dreams of Paradise.
She gently lifted me up, and as I rose I saw her eyes too were wet. “My
poor friend,” she said, “I cannot talk to you now. You are not strong
enough, and for that matter, nor am I, but let me say this to you, that
you are altogether mistaken about yourself. The meanest clerk in the
city could not take your place here.” There was just a slight emphasis I
thought upon the word “here.” “Now” she said, “you had better go. I
will see about the pamphlet.”
I went out mechanically, and I anticipate my story so far as to say that,
two days after, another proof came in the proper form. I went to the
printer to offer to pay for setting it up afresh, and was told that Miss
Wollaston had been there and had paid herself for the rectification of
the mistake, giving special injunctions that no notice of it was to be
given to her uncle. I should like to add one more beatitude to those of
the gospels and to say, Blessed are they who heal us of self-despisings.
Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious.
When I went back to my work I worshipped Theresa, and was entirely
overcome with unhesitating, absorbing love for her. I saw no thing more
of her that day nor the next day. Her uncle told me that she had gone
into the country, and that probably she would not return for some time,
as she had purposed paying a lengthened visit to a friend at a distance.
I had a mind to write to her; but I felt as I have often felt before in
great crises, a restraint which was gentle and incomprehensible, but
nevertheless unmistakable. I suppose it is not what would be called
conscience, as conscience is supposed to decide solely between right and
wrong, but it was none the less peremptory, although its voice was so
soft and low that it might easily have been overlooked. Over and over
again, when I have purposed doing a thing, have I been impeded or
arrested by this same silent monitor, and never have I known its warnings
to be the mere false alarms of fancy.
After a time, the thought of Mary recurred to me. I was distressed to
find that, in the very height of my love for Theresa, my love for Mary
continued unabated. Had it been otherwise, had my affection for Mary
grown dim, I should not have been so much perplexed, but it did not. It
may be ignominious to confess it, but so it was; I simply record the
fact.
I had not seen Mardon since that last memorable evening at his house, but
one day as I was sitting in the shop, who should walk it in but Mary
herself. The meeting, although strange, was easily explained. Her
father was ill, and could do nothing but read. Wollaston published
free-thinking books, and Mardon had noticed in an advertisement the name
of a book which he particularly wished to see. Accordingly he sent Mary
for it. She pressed me very much to call on him. He had talked about me
a good deal, and had written to me at the last address he knew, but the
letter had been returned through the dead-letter office.
It was a week before I could go, and when did go, I found him much worse
than I had imagined him to be. There was no virulent disease of any
particular organ, but he was slowly wasting away from atrophy, and he
knew, or thought he knew, he should not recover. But he was perfectly
self-possessed.
“With regard to immortality,” he said, “I never know what men mean by it.
_What_ self is it which is to be immortal? Is it really desired by
anybody that he should continue to exist for ever with his present
limitations and failings? Yet if these are not continued, the man does
not continue, but something else, a totally different person. I believe
in the survival of life and thought. People think is not enough. They
say they want the survival of their personality. It is very difficult to
express any conjecture upon the matter, especially now when I am weak,
and I have no system—nothing but surmises. One thing I am sure of—that a
man ought to rid himself as much as possible of the miserable egotism
which is so anxious about self, and should be more and more anxious about
the Universal.”
Mardon grew slowly worse. The winter was coming on, and as the
temperature fell and the days grew darker, he declined. With all his
heroism and hardness he had a weakness or two, and one was, that he did
not want to die in London or be buried there. So we got him down to
Sandgate near Hythe, and procured lodging for him close to the sea, so
that he could lie in bed and watch the sun and moon rise over the water.
Mary, of course, remained with him, and I returned to London.
Towards the end of November I got a letter, to tell me that if I wished
to see him alive again, I must go down at once. I went that day, and I
found that the doctor had been and had said that before the morning the
end must come. Mardon was perfectly conscious, in no pain, and quite
calm. He was just able to speak. When I went into his bedroom, he
smiled, and without any preface or introduction he said: “Learn not to be
over-anxious about meeting troubles and solving difficulties which time
will meet and solve for you.” Excepting to ask for water, I don’t think
he spoke again.
All that night Mary and I watched in that topmost garret looking out over
the ocean. It was a night entirely unclouded, and the moon was at the
full. Towards daybreak her father moaned a little, then became quite
quiet, and just as the dawn was changing to sunrise, he passed away.
What a sunrise it was! For about half-an-hour before the sun actually
appeared, the perfectly smooth water was one mass of gently heaving
opaline lustre. Not a sound was to be heard, and over in the south-east
hung the planet Venus. Death was in the chamber, but the surpassing
splendour of the pageant outside arrested us, and we sat awed and silent.
Not till the first burning-point of the great orb itself emerged above
the horizon, not till the day awoke with its brightness and brought with
it the sounds of the day and its cares, did we give way to our grief.
It was impossible for me to stay. It was not that I was obliged to get
back to my work in London, but I felt that Mary would far rather be
alone, and that it would not be proper for me to remain. The woman of
the house in which the lodgings were was very kind, and promised to do
all that was necessary. It was arranged that I should come down again to
the funeral.
So I went back to London. Before I had got twenty miles on my journey
the glory of a few hours had turned into autumn storm. The rain came
down in torrents, and the wind rushed across the country in great blasts,
stripping the trees, and driving over the sky with hurricane speed great
masses of continuous cloud, which mingled earth and heaven. I thought of
all the ships which were on the sea in the night, sailing under the
serene stars which I had seen rise and set; I thought of Mardon lying
dead, and I thought of Mary. The simultaneous passage through great
emotions welds souls, and begets the strongest of all forms of love.
Those who have sobbed together over a dead friend, who have held one
another’s hands in that dread hour, feel a bond of sympathy, pure and
sacred, which nothing can dissolve.
I went to the funeral as appointed. There was some little difficulty
about it, for Mary, who knew her father so well, was unconquerably
reluctant that an inconsistency should crown the career of one who, all
through life, had been so completely self-accordant. She could not bear
that he should be buried with a ceremony which he despised, and she was
altogether free from that weakness which induces a compliance with the
rites of the Church from persons who avow themselves sceptics.
At last a burying-ground was found, belonging to a little half-forsaken
Unitarian chapel; and there Mardon was laid. A few friends came from
London, one of whom had been a Unitarian minister, and he “conducted the
service,” such as it was. It was of the simplest kind. The body was
taken to the side of the grave, and before it was lowered a few words
were said, calling to mind all the virtues of him whom we had lost.
These the speaker presented to us with much power and sympathy. He did
not merely catalogue a disconnected string of excellences, but he seemed
to plant himself in the central point of Mardon’s nature, and to see from
what it radiated.
He then passed on to say that about immortality, as usually understood,
he knew nothing; but that Mardon would live as every force in nature
lives—for ever; transmuted into a thousand different forms; the original
form utterly forgotten, but never perishing. The cloud breaks up and
comes down upon the earth in showers which cease, but the clouds and the
showers are really undying. This may be true,—but, after all, I can only
accept the fact of death in silence, as we accept the loss of youth and
all other calamities. We are able to see that the arrangements which we
should make, if we had the control of the universe, would be more absurd
than those which prevail now. We are able to see that an eternity of
life in one particular form, with one particular set of relationships,
would be misery to many and mischievous to everybody, however sweet those
relationships may be to some of us. At times we are reconciled to death
as the great regenerator, and we pine for escape from the surroundings of
which we have grown weary; but we can say no more, and the hour of
illumination has not yet come. Whether it ever will come to a more nobly
developed race we cannot tell.
* * * * *
Thus far goes the manuscript which I have in my possession. I know that
there is more of it, but all my search for it has been in vain. Possibly
some day I may be able to recover it. My friend discontinued his notes
for some years, and consequently the concluding portion of them was
entirely separate from the earlier portion, and this is the reason, I
suppose, why it is missing.
Miss Mardon soon followed her father. She caught cold at his funeral;
the seeds of consumption developed themselves with remarkable rapidity,
and in less than a month she had gone. Her father’s peculiar habits had
greatly isolated him, and Miss Mardon had scarcely any friends.
Rutherford went to see her continually, and during the last few nights
sat up with her, incurring not a little scandal and gossip, to which he
was entirely insensible.
For a time he was utterly broken-hearted; and not only broken-hearted,
but broken-spirited, and incapable of attacking the least difficulty.
All the springs of his nature were softened, so that if anything was cast
upon him, there it remained without hope, and without any effort being
made to remove it. He only began to recover when he was forced to give
up work altogether and take a long holiday. To do this he was obliged to
leave Mr. Wollaston, and the means of obtaining his much-needed rest were
afforded him, partly by what he had saved, and partly by the kindness of
one or two whom he had known.
I thought that Miss Mardon’s death would permanently increase my friend’s
intellectual despondency, but it did not. On the contrary, he gradually
grew out of it. A crisis seemed to take a turn just then, and he became
less involved in his old speculations, and more devoted to other
pursuits. I fancy that something happened; there was some word revealed
to him, or there was some recoil, some healthy horror of eclipse in this
self-created gloom which drove him out of it.
He accidentally renewed his acquaintance with the butterfly-catcher, who
was obliged to leave the country and come up to London. He, however, did
not give up his old hobby, and the two friends used every Sunday in
summer time to sally forth some distance from town and spend the whole
live-long day upon the downs and in the green lanes of Surrey. Both of
them had to work hard during the week. Rutherford, who had learned
shorthand when he was young, got employment upon a newspaper, and
ultimately a seat in the gallery of the House of Commons. He never took
to collecting insects like his companion, nor indeed to any scientific
pursuits, but he certainly changed.
I find it very difficult to describe exactly what the change was, because
it was into nothing positive; into no sect, party, nor special mode. He
did not, for example, go off into absolute denial. I remember his
telling me, that to suppress speculation would be a violence done to our
nature as unnatural as if we were to prohibit ourselves from looking up
to the blue depths between the stars at night; as if we were to determine
that nature required correcting in this respect, and that we ought to be
so constructed as not to be able to see anything but the earth and what
lies on it. Still, these things in a measure ceased to worry him, and
the long conflict died away gradually into a peace not formally
concluded, and with no specific stipulations, but nevertheless definite.
He was content to rest and wait. Better health and time, which does so
much for us, brought this about. The passage of years gradually relaxed
his anxiety about death by loosening his anxiety for life without
loosening his love of life.
But I would rather not go into any further details, because I still
cherish the hope that some day or the other I may recover the contents of
the diary. I am afraid that up to this point he has misrepresented
himself, and that those who read his story will think him nothing but a
mere egoist, selfish and self-absorbed. Morbid he may have been, but
selfish he was not. A more perfect friend I never knew, nor one more
capable of complete abandonment to a person for whom he had any real
regard, and I can only hope that it may be my good fortune to find the
materials which will enable me to represent him autobiographically in a
somewhat different light to that in which he appears now.