WILLIE’S WIFEWILLIE’S WIFE
WILLIE’S WIFE
The woman had dropped upon her knees by the cradle, while he was speaking. She neither looked at him nor seemed to hear him. With hands clasped above her head, she rocked herself wildly to and fro. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” was all she said, over and over again.
Sylvie and Bruno gently unclasped her hands and drew them down—till she had an arm round each of them, though she took no notice of them, but knelt on with eyes gazing upwards, and lips that moved as if in silent thanksgiving. The man kept his face hidden, and uttered no sound: but one couldseethe sobs that shook him from head to foot.
After a while he raised his head—his face all wet with tears. “Polly!” he said softly; and then, louder, “Old Poll!”
Then she rose from her knees and came to him, with a dazed look, as if she were walking in her sleep. “Who was it called me old Poll?” she asked: her voice took on it a tender playfulness: her eyes sparkled; and the rosy light of Youth flushed her pale cheeks, till she looked more like a happy girl of seventeen than a worn woman of forty. “Wasthat my own lad, my Willie, a-waiting for me at the stile?”
His face too was transformed, in the same magic light, to the likeness of a bashful boy: and boy and girl they seemed, as he wound an arm about her, and drew her to his side, while with the other hand he thrust from him the heap of money, as though it were something hateful to the touch. “Tak it, lass,” he said, “tak it all! An’ fetch us summat to eat: but get a sup o’ milk, first, for t’ bairn.”
“Mylittlebairn!” she murmured as she gathered up the coins. “My own little lassie!” Then she moved to the door, and was passing out, but a sudden thought seemed to arrest her: she hastily returned—first to kneel down and kiss the sleeping child, and then to throw herself into her husband’s arms and be strained to his heart. The next moment she was on her way, taking with her a jug that hung on a peg near the door: we followed close behind.
We had not gone far before we came in sight of a swinging sign-board bearing the word ‘DAIRY’ on it, and here she went in, welcomed by a little curly white dog, who, not beingunder the ‘eerie’ influence, saw the children, and received them with the most effusive affection. When I got inside, the dairyman was in the act of taking the money. “Is’t for thysen, Missus, or for t’ bairn?” he asked, when he had filled the jug, pausing with it in his hand.
“For t’bairn!” she said, almost reproachfully. “Think’st tha I’d touch a dropmysen, while asshehadna got her fill?”
“All right, Missus,” the man replied, turning away with the jug in his hand. “Let’s just mak sure it’s good measure.” He went back among his shelves of milk-bowls, carefully keeping his back towards her while he emptied a little measure of cream into the jug, muttering to himself “mebbe it’ll hearten her up a bit, the little lassie!”
The woman never noticed the kind deed, but took back the jug with a simple “Good evening, Master,” and went her way: but the children had been more observant, and, as we followed her out, Bruno remarked “That werewellykind: and I loves that man: and if I was welly rich I’d give him a hundred pounds—and a bun. That little grummelingdog doosn’t know its business!” He referred to the dairyman’s little dog, who had apparently quite forgotten the affectionate welcome he had given us on our arrival, and was now following at a respectful distance, doing his best to ‘speed the parting guest’ with a shower of little shrill barks, that seemed to tread on one another’s heels.
“Whatisa dog’s business?” laughed Sylvie. “Dogs ca’n’t keep shops and give change!”
“Sisters’ businessesisn’tto laugh at their brothers,” Bruno replied with perfect gravity. “And dogs’ businesses is tobark—not like that: it should finish one bark before it begins another: and it should—Oh Sylvie, there’s some dindledums!”
And in another moment the happy children were flying across the common, racing for the patch of dandelions.
While I stood watching them, a strange dreamy feeling came upon me: a railway-platform seemed to take the place of the green sward, and, instead of the light figure of Sylvie bounding along, I seemed to see the flying form of Lady Muriel; but whether Brunohad also undergone a transformation, and had become the old man whom she was running to overtake, I was unable to judge, so instantaneously did the feeling come and go.
When I re-entered the little sitting-room which I shared with Arthur, he was standing with his back to me, looking out of the open window, and evidently had not heard me enter. A cup of tea, apparently just tasted and pushed aside, stood on the table, on the opposite side of which was a letter, just begun, with the pen lying across it: an open book lay on the sofa: the London paper occupied the easy chair; and on the little table, which stood by it, I noticed an unlighted cigar and an open box of cigar-lights: all things betokened that the Doctor, usually so methodical and so self-contained, had been trying every form of occupation, and could settle to none!
“This is very unlikeyou, Doctor!” I was beginning, but checked myself, as he turned at the sound of my voice, in sheer amazement at the wonderful change that had taken place in his appearance. Never had I seen a face so radiant with happiness, or eyes that sparkledwith such unearthly light! “Even thus,” I thought, “must the herald-angel have looked, who brought to the shepherds, watching over their flocks by night, that sweet message of ‘peace on earth, good-will to men’!”
“Yes, dear friend!” he said, as if in answer to the question that I suppose he read in my face. “It is true! It is true!”
No need to askwhatwas true. “God bless you both!” I said, as I felt the happy tears brimming to my eyes. “You were made for each other!”
“Yes,” he said, simply, “I believe we were. Andwhata change it makes in one’s Life! This isn’t the same world! That isn’t the sky I saw yesterday! Those clouds—I never saw such clouds in all my life before! They look like troops of hovering angels!”
Tomethey looked very ordinary clouds indeed: but thenIhad not fed ‘on honey-dew, And drunk the milk of Paradise’!
“She wants to see you—at once,” he continued, descending suddenly to the things of earth. “She saysthatis theonedrop yet wanting in her cup of happiness!”
“I’ll go at once,” I said, as I turned to leave the room. “Wo’n’t you come with me?”
“No, Sir!” said the Doctor, with a sudden effort—which proved an utter failure—to resume his professional manner. “Do Ilooklike coming with you? Have you never heard that two is company, and——”
“Yes,” I said, “Ihaveheard it: and I’m painfully aware thatIamNumber Three! But,whenshall we three meet again?”
“When the hurly-burly’s done!” he answered with a happy laugh, such as I had not heard from him for many a year.
So I went on my lonely way, and, on reaching the Hall, I found Lady Muriel standing at the garden-gate waiting for me.
“No need togiveyou joy, or towishyou joy?” I began.
“Nonewhatever!” she replied, with the joyous laugh of a child. “Wegivepeople what they haven’t got: wewishfor something that is yet to come. Forme, it’s allhere! It’s allmine! Dear friend,” she suddenly broke off, “do you think Heaven ever begins onEarth, for any of us?”
“Forsome,” I said. “For some, perhaps, who are simple and childlike. You know He said ‘of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
Lady Muriel clasped her hands, and gazed up into the cloudless sky, with a look I had often seen in Sylvie’s eyes. “I feel as if it had begun forme,” she almost whispered. “I feel as ifIwere one of the happy children, whom He bid them bring near to Him, though the people would have kept them back. Yes, He has seen me in the throng. He has read the wistful longing in my eyes. He has beckoned me to Him. They havehadto make way for me. He has taken me up in His arms. He has put His hands upon me and blessed me!” She paused, breathless in her perfect happiness.
“Yes,” I said. “I think He has!”
“You must come and speak to my father,” she went on, as we stood side by side at the gate, looking down the shady lane. But, even as she said the words, the ‘eerie’ sensation came over me like a flood: I saw the dear old Professor approaching us, and also saw, what was stranger still, that he was visible toLady Muriel!
What was to be done? Had the fairy-life been merged in the real life? Or was Lady Muriel ‘eerie’ also, and thus able to enter into the fairy-world along with me? The words were on my lips (“I see an old friend of mine in the lane: if you don’t know him, may I introduce him to you?”) when the strangest thing of all happened: Lady Muriel spoke.
“I see an old friend of mine in the lane,” she said: “if you don’t know him, may I introduce him to you?”
I seemed to wake out of a dream: for the ‘eerie’ feeling was still strong upon me, and the figure outside seemed to be changing at every moment, like one of the shapes in a kaleidoscope: now he was theProfessor, and now he was somebody else! By the time he had reached the gate, he certainly was somebody else: and I felt that the proper course was forLady Muriel, not forme, to introduce him. She greeted him kindly, and, opening the gate, admitted the venerable old man—a German, obviously—who looked about him with dazed eyes, as ifhe, too, had but just awaked from a dream!
No, it was certainlynotthe Professor! My old friendcouldnot have grown that magnificent beard since last we met: moreover, he would have recognisedme, for I was certain thatIhad not changed much in the time.
As it was, he simply looked at me vaguely, and took off his hat in response to Lady Muriel’s words “Let me introduce Mein Herr to you”; while in the words, spoken in a strong German accent, “proud to make your acquaintance, Sir!” I could detect no trace of an idea that we had ever met before.
Lady Muriel led us to the well-known shady nook, where preparations for afternoon tea had already been made, and, while she went in to look for the Earl, we seated ourselves in two easy-chairs, and ‘Mein Herr’ took up Lady Muriel’s work, and examined it through his large spectacles (one of the adjuncts that made him so provokingly like the Professor). “Hemming pocket-handkerchiefs?” he said, musingly. “Sothatis what the English miladies occupy themselves with, is it?”
“It is the one accomplishment,” I said, “in which Man has never yet rivaled Woman!”
Here Lady Muriel returned with her father; and, after he had exchanged some friendly words with ‘Mein Herr,’ and we had all been supplied with the needful ‘creature-comforts,’ the newcomer returned to the suggestive subject of Pocket-handkerchiefs.
“You have heard of Fortunatus’s Purse, Miladi? Ah, so! Would you be surprised to hear that, with three of these leetle handkerchiefs, you shall make the Purse of Fortunatus, quite soon, quite easily?”
“Shall I indeed?” Lady Muriel eagerly replied, as she took a heap of them into her lap, and threaded her needle. “Pleasetell me how, Mein Herr! I’ll make one before I touch another drop of tea!”
“You shall first,” said Mein Herr, possessing himself of two of the handkerchiefs, spreading one upon the other, and holding them up by two corners, “you shall first join together these upper corners, the right to the right, the left to the left; and the opening between them shall be themouthof the Purse.”
A very few stitches sufficed to carry outthisdirection. “Now, if I sew the other threeedges together,” she suggested, “the bag is complete?”
“Not so, Miladi: theloweredges shallfirstbe joined—ah, not so!” (as she was beginning to sew them together). “Turn one of them over, and join therightlower corner of the one to theleftlower corner of the other, and sew the lower edges together in what you would callthe wrong way.”
“Isee!” said Lady Muriel, as she deftly executed the order. “And a very twisted, uncomfortable, uncanny-looking bag it makes! But themoralis a lovely one. Unlimited wealth can only be attained by doing thingsin the wrong way! And how are we to join up these mysterious—no, I meanthismysterious opening?” (twisting the thing round and round with a puzzled air.) “Yes, itisone opening. I thought it wastwo, at first.”
“You have seen the puzzle of the Paper Ring?” Mein Herr said, addressing the Earl. “Where you take a slip of paper, and join its ends together, first twisting one, so as to join theuppercorner ofoneend to thelowercorner of theother?”
“I saw one made, only yesterday,” the Earl replied. “Muriel, my child, were you not making one, to amuse those children you had to tea?”
“Yes, I know that Puzzle,” said Lady Muriel. “The Ring has onlyonesurface, and onlyoneedge. It’s very mysterious!”
“Thebagis just like that, isn’t it?” I suggested. “Is not theoutersurface of one side of it continuous with theinnersurface of the other side?”
“So it is!” she exclaimed. “Only itisn’ta bag, just yet. How shall we fill up this opening, Mein Herr?”
“Thus!” said the old man impressively, taking the bag from her, and rising to his feet in the excitement of the explanation. “The edge of the opening consists offourhandkerchief-edges, and you can trace it continuously, round and round the opening: down the right edge ofonehandkerchief, up the left edge of theother, and then down the left edge of theone, and up the right edge of theother!”
“So you can!” Lady Muriel murmured thoughtfully, leaning her head on her hand,and earnestly watching the old man. “And thatprovesit to be onlyoneopening!”
FORTUNATUS’ PURSEFORTUNATUS’ PURSE
FORTUNATUS’ PURSE
She looked so strangely like a child, puzzling over a difficult lesson, and Mein Herr had become, for the moment, so strangely like the old Professor, that I felt utterly bewildered: the ‘eerie’ feeling was on me in its full force, and I felt almostimpelledto say “Do you understand it, Sylvie?” However I checked myself by a great effort, and let the dream (if indeed itwasa dream) go on to its end.
“Now, thisthirdhandkerchief,” Mein Herr proceeded, “hasalsofour edges, which you can trace continuously round and round: all you need do is to join its four edges to the four edges of the opening. The Purse is then complete, and its outer surface——”
“Isee!” Lady Muriel eagerly interrupted. “Itsoutersurface will be continuous with itsinnersurface! But it will take time. I’ll sew it up after tea.” She laid aside the bag and resumed her cup of tea. “But why do you call it Fortunatus’s Purse, Mein Herr?”
The dear old man beamed upon her, with a jolly smile, looking more exactly like the Professor than ever. “Don’t you see, my child—I should say Miladi? Whatever isinsidethat Purse, isoutsideit; and whatever isoutsideit, isinsideit. So you have all the wealth of the world in that leetle Purse!”
His pupil clapped her hands, in unrestrained delight. “I’ll certainly sew the third handkerchief in—sometime,” she said: “but I wo’n’t take up your time by trying it now. Tell us some more wonderful things, please!” And her face and her voice soexactlyrecalledSylvie, that I could not help glancing round, half-expecting to seeBrunoalso!
Mein Herr began thoughtfully balancing his spoon on the edge of his teacup, while he pondered over this request. “Something wonderful—like Fortunatus’s Purse?Thatwill give you—when it is made—wealth beyond your wildest dreams: but it will not give youTime!”
A pause of silence ensued—utilised by Lady Muriel for the very practical purpose of refilling the teacups.
“Inyourcountry,” Mein Herr began with a startling abruptness, “what becomes of all the wasted Time?”
Lady Muriel looked grave. “Who can tell?” she half-whispered to herself. “All one knows is that it is gone—past recall!”
“Well, inmy—I mean in a countryIhave visited,” said the old man, “they store it up: and it comes inveryuseful, years afterwards! For example, suppose you have a long tedious evening before you: nobody to talk to: nothing you care to do: and yet hours too soon to go to bed. How doyoubehave then?”
“I getverycross,” she frankly admitted: “and I want to throw things about the room!”
“When that happens to—to the people I have visited, they never actso. By a short and simple process—which I cannot explain to you—they store up the useless hours: and, on someotheroccasion, when they happen toneedextra time, they get them out again!”
The Earl was listening with a slightly incredulous smile. “Why cannot youexplainthe process?” he enquired.
Mein Herr was ready with a quite unanswerable reason. “Because you have nowords, inyourlanguage, to convey the ideas which are needed. I could explain it in—in—but you would not understand it!”
“No indeed!” said Lady Muriel, graciously dispensing with thenameof the unknown language. “I never learnt it—at least, not to speak itfluently, you know.Pleasetell us some more wonderful things!”
“They run their railway-trains without any engines—nothing is needed but machinery tostopthem with. Isthatwonderful enough, Miladi?”
“But where does theforcecome from?” I ventured to ask.
Mein Herr turned quickly round, to look at the new speaker. Then he took off his spectacles, and polished them, and looked at me again, in evident bewilderment. I could see he was thinking—as indeedIwas also—that wemusthave met before.
“They use the force ofgravity,” he said. “It is a force known also inyourcountry, I believe?”
“But that would need a railway goingdown-hill,” the Earl remarked. “You ca’n’t haveallyour railways going down-hill?”
“Theyalldo,” said Mein Herr.
“Not frombothends?”
“Frombothends.”
“Then I give it up!” said the Earl.
“Can you explain the process?” said Lady Muriel. “Without using that language, that I ca’n’t speak fluently?”
“Easily,” said Mein Herr. “Each railway is in a long tunnel, perfectly straight: so of course themiddleof it is nearer the centre of the globe than the two ends: so every trainruns half-waydown-hill, and that gives it force enough to run theotherhalfup-hill.”
“Thank you. I understand that perfectly,” said Lady Muriel. “But the velocity, in themiddleof the tunnel, must be somethingfearful!”
‘Mein Herr’ was evidently much gratified at the intelligent interest Lady Muriel took in his remarks. At every moment the old man seemed to grow more chatty and more fluent. “You would like to know our methods ofdriving?” he smilingly enquired. “To us, a run-away horse is of no import at all!”
Lady Muriel slightly shuddered. “Tousit is a very real danger,” she said.
“That is because your carriage is whollybehindyour horse. Your horse runs. Your carriage follows. Perhaps your horse has the bit in his teeth. Who shall stop him? You fly, ever faster and faster! Finally comes the inevitable upset!”
“But supposeyourhorse manages to get the bit in his teeth?”
“No matter! We would not concern ourselves. Our horse is harnessed in the verycentre of our carriage. Two wheels are in front of him, and two behind. To the roof is attached one end of a broad belt. This goes under the horse’s body, and the other end is attached to a leetle—what you call a ‘windlass,’ I think. The horse takes the bit in his teeth. He runs away. We are flying at ten miles an hour! We turn our little windlass, five turns, six turns, seven turns, and—poof! Our horse is off the ground!Nowlet him gallop in the air, as much as he pleases: ourcarriagestands still. We sit round him, and watch him till he is tired. Then we let him down. Our horse is glad, very much glad, when his feet once more touch the ground!”
“Capital!” said the Earl, who had been listening attentively. “Are there any other peculiarities in your carriages?”
“In thewheels, sometimes, my Lord. For your health,yougo to sea: to be pitched, to be rolled, occasionally to be drowned.Wedo all that on land: we are pitched, as you; we are rolled, as you; butdrowned, no! There is no water!”
“What are the wheels like, then?”
“They areoval, my Lord. Therefore the carriages rise and fall.”
“Yes, and pitch the carriage backwards and forwards: but how do they make itroll?”
“They do not match, my Lord. Theendof one wheel answers to thesideof the opposite wheel. So first one side of the carriage rises, then the other. And it pitches all the while. Ah, you must be a good sailor, to drive in our boat-carriages!”
“I can easily believe it,” said the Earl.
Mein Herr rose to his feet. “I must leave you now, Miladi,” he said, consulting his watch. “I have another engagement.”
“I only wish we had stored up some extra time!” Lady Muriel said, as she shook hands with him. “Then we could have kept you a little longer!”
“Inthatcase I would gladly stay,” replied Mein Herr. “As it is—I fear I must say good-bye!”
“Where did you first meet him?” I asked Lady Muriel, when Mein Herr had left us. “And where does he live? And what is his real name?”
“We first—met—him——” she musingly replied, “really, I ca’n’t rememberwhere! And I’ve no idea where he lives! And I never heard any other name! It’s very curious. It never occurred to me before to consider what a mystery he is!”
“I hope we shall meet again,” I said: “he interests me very much.”
“He will be at our farewell-party, this day fortnight,” said the Earl. “Of course you will come? Muriel is anxious to gather all our friends around us once more, before we leave the place.”
And then he explained to me—as Lady Muriel had left us together—that he was so anxious to get his daughter away from a place full of so many painful memories connected with the now-canceled engagement with Major Lindon, that they had arranged to have the wedding in a months time, after which Arthur and his wife were to go on a foreign tour.
“Don’t forget Tuesday week!” he said as we shook hands at parting. “I only wish you could bring with you those charming children, that you introduced to us in the summer.Talk of the mystery of Mein Herr! That’snothingto the mystery that seems to attendthem! I shall never forget those marvellous flowers!”
“I will bring them if I possibly can,” I said. But how tofulfilsuch a promise, I mused to myself on my way back to our lodgings, was a problem entirely beyond my skill!
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 goalone?” I suggested. “SurelyIshall be very muchde trop?”
“Well, it’ll be a kind ofexperiment,” 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 agreableto everybodyexceptthe right person, and I shall bear the agony all the better if we have a dress-rehearsal beforehand!”
“Mypart in the play being, apparently, that of the samplewrongperson?”
“Well, no,” Arthur said musingly, as we set forth: “there’s no such part in a regular company. ‘Heavy Father’?Thatwon’t do: that’s filled already. ‘Singing Chambermaid’? Well, the ‘First Lady’ doublesthatpart. ‘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 aleetleuncertain 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 asentirelya matter of course), was that two of the chairs were placedquiteclose together, side by side. Strange to say,Iwas not invited to occupyeitherof 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 weare?”
“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,oursis averyportable one; and will be neatly packed, in a nice leather case——”
“But please don’t think aboutwriting,” I said, “when you’ve anything more attractive on hand. I delight inreadingletters, but I know well how tiring it is towritethem.”
“Itis, sometimes,” Arthur assented. “For instance, when you’re very shy of the person you have to write to.”
“Does that show itself in theletter?” Lady Muriel enquired. “Of course, when I hear any onetalking—you, for instance—I can see howdesperatelyshy he is! But can you see that in aletter?”
“Well, of course, when you hear any one talkfluently—you, for instance—you can see how desperatelyun-shy she is—not to say saucy! But the shyest and most intermittent talker mustseemfluent in letter-writing. He may have taken half-an-hour tocomposehis second sentence; but there it is, close after the first!”
“Then letters don’t express all that theymightexpress?”
“That’s merely because our system of letter-writing is incomplete. A shy writeroughtto be able to show that he is so. Why shouldn’t he makepausesin writing, just as he would do in speaking? He might leave blank spaces—say half a page at a time. And averyshy girl—if thereissuch a thing—might write a sentence on thefirstsheet of her letter—then put in a couple ofblanksheets—then a sentence on thefourthsheet: and so on.”
“I quite foresee thatwe—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 arecommon property now—for a new Code of Rules for Letter-writing! Please invent some more, little boy!”
“Well, another thinggreatlyneeded, little girl, is some way of expressing that wedon’tmean anything.”
“Explain yourself, little boy! Surelyyoucan find no difficulty in expressing atotalabsence of meaning?”
“I mean that you should be able, when youdon’tmean 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 alady!”
“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 thethumbsofonehand!” his lady-love replied with muchseverity. “What averynaughty little boy he is!Isn’the?” (with an appealing glance at me).
“He’s a little fractious,” I said. “Perhaps he’s cutting a tooth.” While to myself I said “Howexactlylike Sylvie talking to Bruno!”
“He wants his tea.” (The naughty little boy volunteered the information.) “He’s getting very tired, at the mereprospectof 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 aboutme, 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 dailythrill 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!”
‘I AM SITTING AT YOUR FEET’‘I AM SITTING AT YOUR FEET’
‘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.Whatis the lesson that one always reads wrong?”
Arthur was silent for a minute. “I would like to be clear what itisI mean,” he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “before I say anything toyou—because youthinkabout 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 isyou, 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 revealedbeneathus: 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 fromwithin, 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.”
“Wewillassume 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 fromwithout, 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, butnotresponsible 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 notquiteoverwhelming, as that would destroy all responsibility. Now, in this case, let the second man make agreatereffort at resistance than the first. Also supposebothto fall under the temptation—I say that the second man is, in God’s sight,lessguilty 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 thatthe 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 likethat?”
“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!’ Thethought, 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 interestin the matter—he could give very fewtechnicaldetails, though he had met the local doctor. It appeared, however, that it was an almostnewdisease—at least inthiscentury, though itmightprove to be identical with the ‘Plague’ recorded in History—veryinfectious, 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.
On the following day, Arthur and I reached the Hall in good time, as only a few of the guests—it was to be a party of eighteen—had as yet arrived; and these were talking with the Earl, leaving us the opportunity of a few words apart with our hostess.
“Who is thatverylearned-looking man with the large spectacles?” Arthur enquired. “I haven’t met him here before, have I?”
“No, he’s a new friend of ours,” said Lady Muriel: “a German, I believe. Heissuch a dear old thing! And quite the most learnedman I ever met—withoneexception, of course!” she added humbly, as Arthur drew himself up with an air of offended dignity.
“And the young lady in blue, just beyond him, talking to that foreign-looking man. Isshelearned, too?”
“I don’t know,” said Lady Muriel. “But I’m told she’s a wonderful piano-forte-player. I hope you’ll hear her to-night. I asked that foreigner to take her in, becausehe’svery musical, too. He’s a French Count, I believe; and he singssplendidly!”
“Science—music—singing—you have indeed got a complete party!” said Arthur. “I feel quite a privileged person, meeting all these stars. Idolove music!”
“But the party isn’tquitecomplete!” said Lady Muriel. “You haven’t brought us those two beautiful children,” she went on, turning to me. “He brought them here to tea, you know, one day last summer,” again addressing Arthur; “and theyaresuch darlings!”
“They are,indeed,” I assented.
“But why haven’t you brought them with you? You promised my father youwould.”