Chapter 9

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_ CHAPTER IX

It was a hot summer, and Arthur a little overtasked his strength. London, and a London season, is far more tiring than far greater physical exertions in pure air and with rational hours. He complained of feeling liable to faintness after standing about in hot rooms. It did not cause him, however, any serious alarm, till one evening he fainted after a dinner-party at which I was present, and we had some difficulty in bringing him round.

After this, for several days he spoke of an invincible languor which held him throughout the day, which he could not get rid of; and he was altogether so unlike his usual self, and so prostrate, that at last, with the greatest difficulty, I prevailed on him to see a doctor--a thing he particularly disliked.

He made an appointment with a celebrated physician in Wimpole Street. As he was far from well on the morning he was to go there, I insisted on accompanying him.

He was in very cheerful spirits, and was eagerly discussing a book which had just been published; he could not make up his mind whether it had been written by a man or a woman. He said that there was always one character in a book, not always the hero or heroine, through whose eyes the writer seemed to look, whose mental analysis seemed to have the ring not of description, but confession, and this would be found to be, he maintained, of the sex of the writer. In the particular case under discussion, where the hero was a man, he professed to discover the "spy," as he called this character, in a woman.

In the middle of the discussion we drew up at Dr. Hall's door, and were immediately shown into one of those rooms with a professional and suspicious calm about it. "'Five minutes before the drop falls,' it seems to say; 'make your mind quite easy; feel chatty,'" said Arthur.

He looked curiously about him, and commented humorously on the selection of literature, till a patient was ushered out, and we were called in.

Dr. Hall was not the least what one is inclined to think a celebrated doctor should be. Arthur had been describing his ideal to me--"tall and pale; stoops slightly, but very distinguished-looking, with piercing grey eyes, a kindly reassuring manner, and grey whiskers cut straight."

Dr. Hall was a small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the butler in a small establishment.

He put one or two questions to Arthur; stethoscoped him, hovering all about restlessly; suddenly caught up his left hand and pushed aside the first finger; "Ah, cigarette-smoker--we must put a stop to that at once, if you please. What is your usual allowance?"

"It varies," said Arthur, "but I fear it is never less than twenty."

"Four, after this date," said Dr. Hall.

"Just come into my other room a moment," he said presently, and led the way.

Arthur followed, giving me a cheerful wink. They remained about ten minutes, during which time I speculated, and read a little book about Epping Forest, which was on the table; looked out of the window, and felt rather ill myself.

At last, the tall door creaked, and Arthur came out, followed by the doctor.

"I hope you will see, sir," he said to me, "that Mr. Hamilton is particular in following my directions, if you have any influence with him."

"I am afraid I haven't got the temperament of a patient," said Arthur, smiling. "But I am very much obliged to you. Good morning."

"What did he say to you?" I said, as soon as we were in our cab again.

"Oh, he spoke to me like a father," said Arthur: "gave me a lot of wretched directions which I know I shan't attend to. But we have wasted much too much time medically already this morning." And he changed the subject to the discussion which we had been carrying on before.

A few days after this I went to see him, and found him much better.

"What do you think?" he said: "I am going to undertake the charge of a human being. Do you remember our conversation about adopting children, and the educational experiments we meant to try? I shall have the chance now."

On my inquiring what had happened, he told me his experience at Teheran, related in a former chapter; and said that, on reflection, he had thought well to accept the commission, adding that he had been surprised to find waiting for him, when he had returned home at a late hour a few nights before his visit to Dr. Hall, a tall foreign gentleman, who had introduced himself as a friend of Mr. Bruce's (so the recluse chose to call himself), and as the bearer of a message from him, the purport of which was to ask whether he would accept Mr. Bruce's commission.

"I am authorized to state," the stranger added, "in the event of your acquiescing, that the method of procedure will be left entirely to yourself; that no question will be asked or conditions made; the boy will be sent to London or to any other address you may appoint; that L400 a year, quarterly, will be placed to your credit at the Westminster Bank for all necessary expenses; and that a draft in your name, for any further sum that you may think requisite, will be honoured.

"If you would forward your answer to Morley's Hotel, to the address on my card, any time within the next week, I shall be grateful. My instructions are not to press for an immediate answer." And the gentleman bowed himself out.

He showed me a short letter which he had written accepting the charge; and, shortly after, I rose to go. But he detained me rather pointedly; and after a short time, in which he appeared to be considering something, he begged me to sit down again, and consider whether I would listen to a short statement of facts on which he wanted my advice. "They are," he said, "I fear, a little painful, and therefore I do not press it; but I should be sincerely obliged to you."

He then said, "I did not at the time tell you, my dear Chris, what Doctor Hall said to me the other day, because I thought it better to tell no one; but the events of the last week have caused me to change my mind. I feel that I must be perfectly open.

"The fact was, that he warned me that I showed unequivocal symptoms of a dangerous heart disease. He could not answer for anything, he said. I had seen that something was wrong from his expression, so I insisted on knowing everything."

I can hardly describe my sensations at this announcement--I felt the room swim and shake; and yet it was made in such a deliberate matter-of-fact tone, that it flashed across me for an instant that Arthur was joking, and together with it came a curiously dismal sense of unreality, that is well known to all those who have passed through any great strain or emotional crisis, as if, suddenly, the soul had fallen out of everything, and they were nothing but lifeless empty husks, hollow and phantasmal.

"But," I gasped, "you never said anything of this at the time: you--you behaved just as usual."

"I certainly tried to," he said. "And curiously enough, I did not either realize or fear the news at the time; it left my feelings almost blank. I won't deny that it has caused me some painful thought since.... He gave me a few simple directions: I was to avoid bracing climates, hard physical work, or, indeed, mental effort--anything exhausting; to keep regular hours, avoid hot rooms and society and smoking; but that I might do, in moderation, anything that interested me, write or read; and, above all things, I was to avoid agitation.

"I think I intend to put his ideas into practice; not much with the idea of saving my life, for I don't feel particularly anxious about that, but because I think that, on the whole, it is the most sensible kind of life to lead. And the fact that I had already accepted the charge of this boy has finally decided me; it was too late to draw back. I shall settle in some quiet place, and try and educate him for the University. I don't at all expect to be dull; and it evidently wouldn't do to thrust him straight into English life yet--he wants Anglicizing gradually. I hope he will be an average Englishman by the time he gets to Cambridge."

Arthur heard the next day, from Mr. Bruce's agent, that the boy would arrive in the course of a month, so he determined to try and have things ready by then for their retirement.

We went energetically to house agents, and the result was that we were at last blessed by success.

Cornwall was the county that we selected; its warm indolent climate seemed to answer our requirements best, and Arthur would not leave England.

Close to Truro there is a little village called St. Uny Trevise. You have to leave the high-road to get to it. Its grey church tower is a conspicuous landmark for several miles round, standing out above a small wood of wind-swept oaks, on the top of a long broad-backed down, lately converted into farm-land, and ploughed up. About half a mile from this, going by strangely winding deep lanes, you reach the bottom of a wooded dell, very lonely and quiet, with a stream running at the bottom, that spreads out into marshes and rush-beds, with here and there a broad brown pool. Crossing the little ford, for there is only a rude bridge for foot-passengers, and ascending the opposite hill, you find yourself at last, after going up the steep overhung road, at the gate of a somewhat larger house than usual in those desolations.

The gate-posts are stone, with granite balls at the top, and there is a short drive, which brings you to a square mottled front of brown stone, with two large projections, or small wings, on each side.

This is a small manor, known as Tredennis, anciently belonging to the Templeton family, whose pictures ornament the hall. It had been used latterly merely as a farmhouse; but a local solicitor, desiring that a somewhat more profitable arrangement might be made respecting it, had the manor put up at the extremely moderate rent of L60, and banished the farmer to an adjoining tenement.

There was a terraced garden, very rich in flowers in the summer. It faced south and west, commanding a view of a winding valley, very peaceful and still, a great part of which was overgrown with stunted oak copses, or divided into large sloping fields. At the end, the water of a tidal creek--Tressillian water--caught the eye. The only sounds that ever penetrated to the car were the cries of birds, or the sound of sheep-bells, or the lowing of cows, with an occasional halloo from the farm, children calling among the copses, or the shrill whistle from over the hills, telling of the train, that, burrowing among the downs, tied one to the noisier world.

Truro has been much opened up since then. It has a bishop, and the rudiments of a cathedral. It has burst into a local and spasmodic life. But when I knew it through Arthur, it was the sleepiest and laziest town alive, with the water rippling through the streets. Old-world farmers, with their strange nasal dialect, used to haunt the streets on market day, like the day on which we first drove through it on our way to Tredennis. Arthur was well and serene. He took the keenest delight in the fragrance of retirement that hung about the place: people to whose minds and ears modern ideas, modern weariness, had never penetrated; who lived a serious indolent life, their one diversion the sermon and the prayer-meeting, their one dislike "London ways."

We reached the house in the evening, losing our way more than once in our endeavour to discover it. Two sitting-rooms were furnished, both large airy rooms looking upon the garden, and a bedroom and dressing-room up-stairs, which Arthur and his charge were to occupy. The housekeeper and her handmaiden, who were to be his servants, were already installed, and had arranged in a certain fashion the new furniture that Arthur had sent down, jostling with the old, and his books. As we sat, the first evening, with our cigarettes, in the dusk, watching the green sky over the quiet hills, a wonderful sensation of repose seemed to pass into one from the place. "I feel as if I might be very happy here," said Arthur, "if I were allowed; and perhaps work out my old idea a little more about the meaning of external things."

I was to return to London in a day or two, to see about any commission that might have been neglected, and to bring down the boy, who was now daily expected.

In my absence I received the following letter from Arthur. The serene mood had had its reaction.

"I have told you, I think, of the depressing effect that a new place has on me till I get habituated to it. There is a constant sense of unrest, just as there is about a new person, that racks the nerves.

"I have been very anxious and 'heavy' to-day, as the Psalms have it: dispirited about the future and the present, and remorseful about the past. You don't mind my speaking freely, do you? I feel so weak and womanish, I must tell some one. I have no one to lean on here.

"I can't see what to make of my life, or, rather, what can possibly be made of it. I have taken hitherto all the rebuffs I have had--and they have not been few--as painful steps in an education which was to fit me for something. I was having, I hoped, experience which was to enable me to sympathize with human beings fully, when I came to speak to them, to teach them, to lead them, as I have all my life believed I some day should.

"You won't think it conceited if I say this to you, my dear Chris? I don't feel to myself as if I was like other people. I have met several people better and on a higher level than myself, but no one on quite the same level--no one, to put it shortly, quite so _sure_ as I am.

"Does that explain itself? I mean that I have for many years been conscious of a kind of inward law that I dare not disobey, and which has constrained me into obedience--once unwilling, now willing, and even enthusiastic. In others, it has always seemed to me that there is strife and [Greek: dipsyxia]--one great factor pulling one way and one another; but it has never been so with me--there has never been a serious strain. I have always known what I meant, and have generally done it; and little by little, as I have lived, comparing this inner presence with what I can see of moral laws, of Divine government, I have come to observe that the two are almost identical, though there are certain variations which I have not yet accounted for.

"Mind, this has been in my case a _negative_ influence; it has never urged a course upon me; it has always withheld me. Even in a dilemma of any kind, it never has said, 'Do this;' it is always, 'Avoid that.' So that I have had to take my line, as I have done in practical things, though never in opposition to its warnings.

"I had always thought that I was being educated to the point of describing this subjective law to others, and helping them to some such position. I have always felt that I had a message to deliver, though the manner and method of delivering it I felt I had to discover.

"And so I was led from point to point. I was educated without any special domestic attachments. I was shown that I was not to believe in my friends. And then, at Cambridge, it came upon me that this was what was meant--that I was not to devote myself to mean, selfish objects; that I was not even to be solaced by individual love: but that I was to speak to the world the way of inward happiness by the simplification of the complex issues, the human intricacies, which have gathered round and obscured the whole problem.

"Then I gradually gave up, or thought I was giving up, human ambitions. I took a course which I saw was not to end in human fame, or wealth, or happiness of the ordinary kinds; and that I might test my capacities a little more and learn myself, and also familiarize myself with more aspects of the great question which I was going to face, I travelled among the cities of men and the solitudes of the earth.

"And at last I thought I had found the way; but I will not tell you what it was, for I now see that I was mistaken. I thought I saw that my duty was to come back and speak the first words to the society in which most naturally I moved; and I came to London, as you know. And then I began to write; but I failed there. I was not disheartened, for I felt that I was being led, and that that was not the way. And once I thought that I was to be pointed out the path by the love of a daring woman; but that went from me too, as you know, and so I waited to be shown how to speak.

"But it is not to be; for while I waited, this has fallen upon me; and this is more than I can bear. It is terrible enough, as a human being, to look Death in the face, and question of the blind eye what are the secrets he knows; but I have passed through that before, and I can truly say I do not dread that now. It is rather with an intense and reverent curiosity that I look forward to death, as the messenger that will tell me that my work here is over, and I am to learn God's ways elsewhere. No, it is not that; but it is the utter aimlessness and failure of my life. I have not attracted men's praise--I did not hope to do that. I have not even attracted their attention. I have not communicated the least grain of what I feel I _know_.

"Far from looking upon me as a man who at least sees clearer than others, as having a truth of price which they might be glad to learn, they look upon me as a man who has failed even to live life upon their basis, classing me with those utter failures who fail in life because they have no sense of proportion, because they can not comprehend the complex issues among which they have to fight.

"And now I am laid aside, a useless weapon; I am not even physically capable of writing, even if the world would hear me; and I am forced back upon myself, upon a feeble life, necessarily self-centered, to nurse and coddle myself as though I was a poor failing dotard, with one avenue alone--and how precarious!--through which I may perhaps speak my little message to the world--the education of a child to carry on my torch.

"I have written to you my whole mind, not because I want you to reassure me--no, that is impossible; but because I am weak and miserable. I must unburden myself to some one--must confess that I have indeed broken down.

"And, further, what is the Death, into whose antechamber I have already passed? Is it indeed true that, as I have so passionately denied, I have fallen into the grasp of a power which is waging an equal war with truth and light and goodness? Shall I be sacrificed to the struggle, without having made the world a whit better, or richer, or stronger, with the only memory of me a quiet life with few follies and fewer deeds of power, to be laid away in the dark?

"And yet I have a lingering hope that this is a leading too; that I shall somehow emerge. My dear Chris, come and see me again as soon as you can. You will be even more welcome if you bring my boy, Edward Bruce, as I understand we are to call him--_attamen ipse veni_.

"I am your affectionate friend,
"Arthur Hamilton.

"Flora"--his collie, of whom he was very fond--"is sitting watching me with such liquid eyes that I must go and take her out. We have not walked as far as the creek yet; the first effect of valetudinarian habits is, I find, to make one feel really ill."

On the 4th of August, Tuesday, at 11.15, a card was brought to me, and immediately afterward a tall gentleman appeared, with a boy of about fourteen, whom I knew at once to be Edward Bruce.

The gentleman, after a few polite words of inquiry after Arthur, retired, the boy saying good-bye to him affectionately. He left me his address for a few days, in case I should wish to see him.

Edward Bruce was a boy of extraordinary beauty--there was no denying that. Personal descriptions are always disappointing; but, not to be prolix, he had such eyes, with so much passion and fire in them, that they could only be the inheritance of many generations of love and hate and quick emotions; his eyelids drooped languidly, but when he opened his eyes and looked full at you!--I felt relieved to think I should not have to conduct his education; I could not have denied him anything. His hair was brown and curly, cut short, but of that fineness and glossy aspect that showed that till lately it had been allowed its own way.

The boy had beautiful lips and white regular teeth, with that exquisite complexion that is the result of perfect health and physical condition. He did not speak English very well, but acquired it fast. He always spoke slowly, and with a very pure articulation. His voice was clear, high-pitched, and thrilling--I have no other word for it.

On the following day I took him down to Tredennis. The boy was interested and excited, and asked many questions of a very unsophisticated kind.

"Why do people stare at me so?" he said, turning round from the window of the carriage, in Bristol, where he stood devouring the crowd with hungry eyes. I could not explain to him. He thought it was because of his foreign look, and was much disgusted. "I made them _dress_ me like an Englishman," he said, surveying himself. To be English, that was his aim.

I found that his father had inculcated this idea in him thoroughly, and had impressed upon him the dignity of the position. It was, I was told afterward, the one argument that never failed to make him attentive in his lessons.

It was not till he was driving away from Truro into the country that he found leisure to think of his father and brother, and wonder what they would be doing. I had the greatest difficulty in explaining that the hours of the day were different, and that it was early morning there.

"No," he said, "it is impossible; I feel like the evening--Martin can not be feeling like the morning."

He was rather disappointed as we got further and further into the lovely country. "I have lived among trees all my life," he said. "I want to live among people now, in cities, and hear what they say and do what they do. I love them." And he waved his hand to the lights of the town in the valley below us, as a sign of farewell.

At last we drove into the dark gates of Tredennis, and drew up before the house.

Arthur came out to meet us. "Where is Edward?" he said.

The boy sprang out to meet him, and would have kissed him; but Arthur just grasped his hand, retaining it for a moment, and then let him go. The boy kept close to him, examining him attentively, when we got inside the house, with restless, affectionate glances.

"What makes you so pale?" he said.

"Ah!" said Arthur, with a smile, "no one else can tell except ourselves what makes our face so white; but you will be white like this soon," he said: "it is our dark English days, not like your Persian sun."

"Then I shall be glad to be like that," said the boy, "if that is how the English look."

He went off on a tour of exploration about the house, soon discovering his room, with which he was enraptured.

In the garden, later on in the evening, he came to Arthur with a letter in his hand. "This is for you," he said. "I had almost forgotten it. But it is too dark to read it here; I shall fetch you a light." And he brought the lamp out of the house, and stood holding it, as it burnt unwavering in the still night air.

Arthur read it and handed it to me, while the great moths and transparent delicate flies came and blundered against it.

"Edward will give you this letter himself. His hand will touch your hand. It has come about as I anticipated, neither sooner nor later; and I am glad.

"Dear friend, all is not well with you; I heard it in the night. But the passages of the house are often dark, though the hills are full of light; yet the Master's messengers pass to and fro between the high halls bearing lamps; such a messenger I send you.

"You must not be dismayed, either now or later, for all is well. In our mysteries, when the youth first tastes the chalice, he can hardly keep his mind upon the Red Wine of Life, the Blood of the Earth, as he would fain do, for thinking of the cup, and how tremblingly he holds it, and for fear that the crimson juice be spilt; but all the while, though he sees it not, the priest's hand encircles the gold stem.

"Martin, _my_ son (for Edward is now yours--mine no longer), is even nearer the end than when I spoke with you; and you too are nearer, far nearer, though you know it not. And even in this little letter, I have spoken words to you which, if you had but light to read them, would make all plain.

"The hour is at hand; the clock has jarred and is silent again, but the gear murmurs on in the darkness, waiting for the silver chiming of the bell.

"I am your friend always,
"B.

"TEHERAN,
"Midsummer."

"A curious document," I said.

"Yes," said Arthur, musingly; "curious too, as literally true." And he pointed to the boy holding the lamp.

"Edward," he said to the boy, "put back that lamp, and come here and speak to me."

The boy went quickly and promptly, delighting in little acts of obedience, as the young do.

When he returned, Arthur said, "Your father says in this letter that you are to be my son for the future. Will you? are you content to change?"

"Yes," said the boy, shyly; but he came and leant against his new father's shoulder where he sat, and, in the pretty demonstrative manner so natural to unsophisticated children, encircled his arm with his hands.

Arthur put his arm round the boy's neck, and stroked his hair caressingly.

"Very well," he said, "then you must always obey me as well as you did just now; and we will make an Englishman of you, and, what is more, a good man."

And we sat in silence, looking down the valley. Every now and then an owl called in his flute-like notes across the thickets, and we heard the cry of the seabirds from the creek; and the soft wind came gently up, rustling the fir over our heads, stirring among the leaves of the tall syringa, and wandering off into the warm dusk. _

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