IN A SHADY PLACE.
The ten days glided swiftly away: and, the day before the great party
was to take place, Arthur proposed that we should stroll down to the
Hall, in time for afternoon-tea.
“Hadn’t you better go _alone_?” I suggested. “Surely _I_ shall be very
much _de trop_?”
“Well, it’ll be a kind of _experiment_,” he said. “_Fiat experimentum in
corpore vili!_” he added, with a graceful bow of mock politeness towards
the unfortunate victim. “You see I shall have to bear the sight,
to-morrow night, of my lady-love making herself agreable to everybody
_except_ the right person, and I shall bear the agony all the better if
we have a dress-rehearsal beforehand!”
“_My_ part in the play being, apparently, that of the sample _wrong_
person?”
“Well, no,” Arthur said musingly, as we set forth: “there’s no such part
in a regular company. ‘Heavy Father’? _That_ won’t do: that’s filled
already. ‘Singing Chambermaid’? Well, the ‘First Lady’ doubles _that_
part. ‘Comic Old Man’? You’re not comic enough. After all, I’m afraid
there’s no part for you but the ‘Well-dressed Villain’: only,” with a
critical side-glance, “I’m a _leetle_ uncertain about the dress!”
We found Lady Muriel alone, the Earl having gone out to make a call, and
at once resumed old terms of intimacy, in the shady arbour where the
tea-things seemed to be always waiting. The only novelty in the
arrangements (one which Lady Muriel seemed to regard as _entirely_ a
matter of course), was that two of the chairs were placed _quite_ close
together, side by side. Strange to say, _I_ was not invited to occupy
_either_ of them!
“We have been arranging, as we came along, about letter-writing,” Arthur
began. “He will want to know how we’re enjoying our Swiss tour: and of
course we must pretend we _are_?”
“Of course,” she meekly assented.
“And the skeleton-in-the-cupboard——” I suggested.
“—is always a difficulty,” she quickly put in, “when you’re traveling
about, and when there are no cupboards in the hotels. However, _ours_ is
a _very_ portable one; and will be neatly packed, in a nice leather
case——”
“But please don’t think about _writing_,” I said, “when you’ve anything
more attractive on hand. I delight in _reading_ letters, but I know well
how tiring it is to _write_ them.”
“It _is_, sometimes,” Arthur assented. “For instance, when you’re very
shy of the person you have to write to.”
“Does that show itself in the _letter_?” Lady Muriel enquired. “Of
course, when I hear any one _talking_—_you_, for instance—I can see how
_desperately_ shy he is! But can you see that in a _letter_?”
“Well, of course, when you hear any one talk _fluently_—_you_, for
instance—you can see how desperately _un_-shy she is—not to say saucy!
But the shyest and most intermittent talker must _seem_ fluent in
letter-writing. He may have taken half-an-hour to _compose_ his second
sentence; but there it is, close after the first!”
“Then letters don’t express all that they _might_ express?”
“That’s merely because our system of letter-writing is incomplete. A shy
writer _ought_ to be able to show that he is so. Why shouldn’t he make
_pauses_ in writing, just as he would do in speaking? He might leave
blank spaces—say half a page at a time. And a _very_ shy girl—if there
_is_ such a thing—might write a sentence on the _first_ sheet of her
letter—then put in a couple of _blank_ sheets—then a sentence on the
_fourth_ sheet: and so on.”
“I quite foresee that _we_—I mean this clever little boy and myself—”
Lady Muriel said to me, evidently with the kind wish to bring me into
the conversation, “—are going to become famous—of course all our
inventions are common property now—for a new Code of Rules for
Letter-writing! Please invent some more, little boy!”
“Well, another thing _greatly_ needed, little girl, is some way of
expressing that we _don’t_ mean anything.”
“Explain yourself, little boy! Surely _you_ can find no difficulty in
expressing a _total_ absence of meaning?”
“I mean that you should be able, when you _don’t_ mean a thing to be
taken seriously, to express that wish. For human nature is so
constituted that whatever you write seriously is taken as a joke, and
whatever you mean as a joke is taken seriously! At any rate, it is so in
writing to a _lady_!”
“Ah! you’re not used to writing to ladies!” Lady Muriel remarked,
leaning back in her chair, and gazing thoughtfully into the sky. “You
should try.”
“Very good,” said Arthur. “How many ladies may I begin writing to? As
many as I can count on the fingers of both hands?”
“As many as you can count on the _thumbs_ of _one_ hand!” his lady-love
replied with much severity. “What a _very_ naughty little boy he is!
_Isn’t_ he?” (with an appealing glance at me).
“He’s a little fractious,” I said. “Perhaps he’s cutting a tooth.” While
to myself I said “How _exactly_ like Sylvie talking to Bruno!”
“He wants his tea.” (The naughty little boy volunteered the
information.) “He’s getting very tired, at the mere _prospect_ of the
great party to-morrow!”
“Then he shall have a good rest beforehand!” she soothingly replied.
“The tea isn’t made yet. Come, little boy, lean well back in your chair,
and think about nothing—or about _me_, whichever you prefer!”
“All the same, all the same!” Arthur sleepily murmured, watching her
with loving eyes, as she moved her chair away to the tea table, and
began to make the tea. “Then he’ll wait for his tea, like a good,
patient little boy!”
“Shall I bring you the London Papers?” said Lady Muriel. “I saw them
lying on the table as I came out, but my father said there was nothing
in them, except that horrid murder-trial.” (Society was just then
enjoying its daily thrill of excitement in studying the details of a
specially sensational murder in a thieves’ den in the East of London.)
“I have no appetite for horrors,” Arthur replied. “But I hope we have
learned the lesson they should teach us—though we are very apt to read
it backwards!”
[Illustration: ‘I AM SITTING AT YOUR FEET’]
“You speak in riddles,” said Lady Muriel. “Please explain yourself. See
now,” suiting the action to the word, “I am sitting at your feet, just
as if you were a second Gamaliel! Thanks, no.” (This was to me, who had
risen to bring her chair back to its former place.) “Pray don’t disturb
yourself. This tree and the grass make a very nice easy-chair. _What_ is
the lesson that one always reads wrong?”
Arthur was silent for a minute. “I would like to be clear what it _is_ I
mean,” he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “before I say anything to
_you_—because you _think_ about it.”
Anything approaching to a compliment was so unusual an utterance for
Arthur, that it brought a flush of pleasure to her cheek, as she replied
“It is _you_, that give me the ideas to think about.”
“One’s first thought,” Arthur proceeded, “in reading of anything
specially vile or barbarous, as done by a fellow-creature, is apt to be
that we see a new depth of Sin revealed _beneath_ us: and we seem to
gaze down into that abyss from some higher ground, far apart from it.”
“I think I understand you now. You mean that one ought to think—not
‘God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are’—but ‘God, be merciful
to me also, who might be, but for Thy grace, a sinner as vile as he!’”
“No,” said Arthur. “I meant a great deal more than that.”
She looked up quickly, but checked herself, and waited in silence.
“One must begin further back, I think. Think of some other man, the same
age as this poor wretch. Look back to the time when they both began
life—before they had sense enough to know Right from Wrong. _Then_, at
any rate, they were equal in God’s sight?”
She nodded assent.
“We have, then, two distinct epochs at which we may contemplate the two
men whose lives we are comparing. At the first epoch they are, so far as
moral responsibility is concerned, on precisely the same footing: they
are alike incapable of doing right or wrong. At the second epoch the one
man—I am taking an extreme case, for contrast—has won the esteem and
love of all around him: his character is stainless, and his name will be
held in honour hereafter: the other man’s history is one unvaried record
of crime, and his life is at last forfeited to the outraged laws of his
country. Now what have been the causes, in each case, of each man’s
condition being what it is at the second epoch? They are of two
kinds—one acting from within, the other from without. These two kinds
need to be discussed separately—that is, if I have not already tired you
with my prosing?”
“On the contrary,” said Lady Muriel, “it is a special delight to me to
have a question discussed in this way—analysed and arranged, so that one
can understand it. Some books, that profess to argue out a question, are
to me intolerably wearisome, simply because the ideas are all arranged
hap-hazard—a sort of ‘first come, first served.’”
“You are very encouraging,” Arthur replied, with a pleased look. “The
causes, acting from _within_, which make a man’s character what it is at
any given moment, are his successive acts of volition—that is, his acts
of choosing whether he will do this or that.”
“We are to assume the existence of Free-Will?” I said, in order to have
that point made quite clear.
“If not,” was the quiet reply, “_cadit quaestio_: and I have no more to
say.”
“We _will_ assume it!” the rest of the audience—the majority, I may say,
looking at it from Arthur’s point of view—imperiously proclaimed. The
orator proceeded.
“The causes, acting from _without_, are his surroundings—what Mr.
Herbert Spencer calls his ‘environment.’ Now the point I want to make
clear is this, that a man is responsible for his acts of choosing, but
_not_ responsible for his environment. Hence, if these two men make, on
some given occasion, when they are exposed to equal temptation, equal
efforts to resist and to choose the right, their condition, in the sight
of God, must be the same. If He is pleased in the one case, so will He
be in the other; if displeased in the one case, so also in the other.”
“That is so, no doubt: I see it quite clearly,” Lady Muriel put in.
“And yet, owing to their different environments, the one may win a great
victory over the temptation, while the other falls into some black abyss
of crime.”
“But surely you would not say those men were equally guilty in the sight
of God?”
“Either that,” said Arthur, “or else I must give up my belief in God’s
perfect justice. But let me put one more case, which will show my
meaning even more forcibly. Let the one man be in a high social
position—the other, say, a common thief. Let the one be tempted to some
trivial act of unfair dealing—something which he can do with the
absolute certainty that it will never be discovered—something which he
can with perfect ease forbear from doing—and which he distinctly knows
to be a sin. Let the other be tempted to some terrible crime—as men
would consider it—but under an almost overwhelming pressure of
motives—of course not _quite_ overwhelming, as that would destroy all
responsibility. Now, in this case, let the second man make a _greater_
effort at resistance than the first. Also suppose _both_ to fall under
the temptation—I say that the second man is, in God’s sight, _less_
guilty than the other.”
Lady Muriel drew a long breath. “It upsets all one’s ideas of Right and
Wrong—just at first! Why, in that dreadful murder-trial, you would say,
I suppose, that it was possible that the least guilty man in the Court
was the murderer, and that possibly the judge who tried him, by yielding
to the temptation of making one unfair remark, had committed a crime
outweighing the criminal’s whole career!”
“Certainly I should,” Arthur firmly replied. “It sounds like a paradox,
I admit. But just think what a grievous sin it must be, in God’s sight,
to yield to some very slight temptation, which we could have resisted
with perfect ease, and to do it deliberately, and in the full light of
God’s Law. What penance can atone for a sin like _that_?”
“I ca’n’t reject your theory,” I said. “But how it seems to widen the
possible area of Sin in the world!”
“Is that so?” Lady Muriel anxiously enquired.
“Oh, not so, not so!” was the eager reply. “To me it seems to clear away
much of the cloud that hangs over the world’s history. When this view
first made itself clear to me, I remember walking out into the fields,
repeating to myself that line of Tennyson ‘_There seemed no room for
sense of wrong!_’ The thought, that perhaps the real guilt of the human
race was infinitely less than I fancied it—that the millions, whom I had
thought of as sunk in hopeless depths of sin, were perhaps, in God’s
sight, scarcely sinning at all—was more sweet than words can tell! Life
seemed more bright and beautiful, when once that thought had come! ‘_A
livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the
sea!_’” His voice trembled as he concluded, and the tears stood in his
eyes.
Lady Muriel shaded her face with her hand, and was silent for a minute.
“It is a beautiful thought,” she said, looking up at last. “Thank
you—Arthur, for putting it into my head!”
The Earl returned in time to join us at tea, and to give us the very
unwelcome tidings that a fever had broken out in the little harbour-town
that lay below us—a fever of so malignant a type that, though it had
only appeared a day or two ago, there were already more than a dozen
down in it, two or three of whom were reported to be in imminent danger.
In answer to the eager questions of Arthur—who of course took a deep
scientific interest in the matter—he could give very few _technical_
details, though he had met the local doctor. It appeared, however, that
it was an almost _new_ disease—at least in _this_ century, though it
_might_ prove to be identical with the ‘Plague’ recorded in
History—_very_ infectious, and frightfully rapid in its action. “It will
not, however, prevent our party to-morrow,” he said in conclusion. “None
of the guests belong to the infected district, which is, as you know,
exclusively peopled by fishermen: so you may come without any fear.”
Arthur was very silent, all the way back, and, on reaching our lodgings,
immediately plunged into medical studies, connected with the alarming
malady of whose arrival we had just heard.