Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge Part 13

"I am your friend always, "B.

"TEHERAN, "Midsummer."

"A curious doc.u.ment," 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.

CHAPTER X

The next day I had to return to London on business, taking leave of the strange household with some regret. Arthur insisted on driving me to the station. He talked very brightly of his experiment, and argued at some length as to how far a.s.sociation could be depended upon as an element in education; and how to distinguish those natures early that were loyal to a.s.sociation and those to whom it would be of no authority.

"I have always divided," he said, "the great influences by which ordinary people are determined to action into two cla.s.ses; and I have connected them with the two staves that the prophet cut, and named 'Beauty and Bands.'

"Some people are worked upon by Beauty-direct influences of good; they choose a thing because it is fair; they refrain from action because it is unlovely; they take nothing for granted, but have an innate fastidious standard which the ugly and painful offend.

"Others are more amenable to Bands-home traditions, domestic affections: they do not act and refrain from action on a thing's own merits because it is good or bad; but because some one that they have loved would have so acted or so refrained from acting-'My mother would not have done so;' 'Henry would have disliked it.' The idea is fancifully put, but it holds good, I think."

Shortly after my return to London, I got two letters from him of considerable importance. I give them both. The first is apropos of the education of Edward Bruce.

"Tredennis, August 30.

"My Dear Friend,

"I want you to get me the inclosed list of books, which I find are culpably absent from my library. It is a very engrossing prospect, this child's mind: it is a blank parchment, ready for any writing, and apparently anxious for it too.

"'Insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs,' wrote Milton, as the end of his self-education-something like that I intend, if I am allowed, to give this child. I have the greatest contempt for knowledge and erudition _qua_ knowledge and erudition.

A man who has laboriously edited the Fathers seems to me only to deserve the respect due to a man who has carried through an arduous task, and one that must have been, to anyone of human feelings and real enthusiasm for ideas, uncongenial at first. Erudition touches the human race very little, but on the 'omne ignotum' principle, men are always ready to admire it, and often to pay it highly, and so there is a constant hum of these busy idlers all about the human hive. The man who works a single practical idea into ordinary people's minds, who adds his voice to the cry, 'It is better to give up than to take: it is n.o.bler to suffer silently than to win praise: better to love than to organize,' whether it be by novel, poem, sermon, or article, has done more, far more, to leaven humanity. I long to open people's eyes to that; I learnt it late myself. Before G.o.d, if I can I will make this boy enlightened, should I live to do it; or at least not at the mercy of every vagrant prophet and bawler of conventional ideas.

"Ever your friend, "Arthur Hamilton"

The next explains itself.

"Tredennis, September 15.

"My Dear Friend,

"As you write to inquire so affectionately about my health, I think it would be very wrong of me not to answer you fully; so I will take 'health' to mean well-being, and not confine myself to its paltry physiological usage.

"In the last month I have really turned a corner, and gained serenity and patience in my outlook. I do not mean that I am either patient or serene yet, but I have long and considerable s.p.a.ces of both, when I feel content to let G.o.d make or mar me as He will, and realise that perhaps in His mind those two words may bear a precisely contrary sense.

"One thing I wish to tell you, which I am afraid you will be rather shocked to hear. I have not told you before, from a culpable reticence; for I believe that there must be either complete confidence between friends or none at all-

"Do you remember a very gloomy and depressed letter that I wrote to you the other day? When I wrote it I was deliberately contemplating an action which I have now given up: I mean a voluntary exit from this world's disappointments-suicide, in fact.

"For many years I have carried about a quietus with me. I began the habit at Cambridge. Men have often asked me what is the curious little flask with a secret fastening, that stands on my dressing-table. It is prussic acid. The morning before I wrote that letter, the impulse was so strong upon me that I determined, if matters should not s.h.i.+ft a little, to take it on the following evening. I made, in fact, most methodical arrangements. I seemed so completely to have missed my mark. The superst.i.tions against the practice I did not regard, as they are merely the produce of a more imaginative and anxious system of morality. I did not see why G.o.d, for His own purposes-and, what is more, I believe He does-should not remove a man by suicide, if He allows him to die by a horrible disease or relegates him to insanity. Suicide is only a symptom of a certain pitch of mental distress: its incidental result is death, but so it is of many practices not immoral.

"It required considerable nerve, I confess, to make the resolution; but once made, I did not flinch. I considered the impulse to be a true leading, quite as true as the other intuitions which I have before now successfully followed, so I made my arrangements all day.

It gave me a wonderful sense of calm and certainty-there was a feeling of repose about the completion of a restless existence, as if I was at last about to slide into quiet waters, and be taught directly, and not by obscure and painful monitions.

"At nine o'clock I went to my room. There was a full moon, which shone in at the open window; the garden was wonderfully still and fragrant.

"I found myself wondering whether, when the thing was over, I should awake to consciousness at once; whether the freed soul would have, so to speak, a local origin, a _terminus a quo_: in plain words, whether my spirit would pa.s.s through the house and through the quiet garden to some mysterious home, taking in the earthly impression as it soared past with a single complete undimmed sense-or whether I should step, as it were, straight into a surrounding sea of sensation and be merged at once, feeling through all s.p.a.ce and time and matter by the spiritual fibres of which I should make a part. Do you understand me? I have often wondered at that.

"At last I drew out the flask, and touched the spring. It opens by pressing a penknife into one of a number of rivets; you can then unscrew it.

"When it was open I discovered that the little vial inside had been broken, and that somehow or other the life-giving fluid had evaporated unperceived. I had not opened it for a year or more.

"I saw at once that G.o.d intended it not to be at _my_ time-that was very clear; and after considerable reflection and a wakeful night, I came to the conclusion that my divine Impulse did not lead me to adopt a course of action, but only to _avoid_ a course-the fact which I developed in my letter to you. And then came the resolve, tardy and weak at first, but gaining ground, warning me that perhaps it was an inglorious flight; though I knew it was pardonable, I felt as if G.o.d might meet me with 'Not wrong, but if you are really bent on the highest, you must do better than this.' It might, I felt, be losing a great opportunity-the opportunity of facing a hopeless situation, a thing I had never done.

"And so I came to the conclusion to fight on, and my reward is coming slowly; contentment seems to return, and Edward is an ever-increasing joy; he fills my life and thoughts. Oh, if I can only make him good; put him in the way of inward happiness! I break out into prayer and aspirations for him in his presence when I think of the utterly heedless way in which he regards the future, and the awful, the momentous issues it contains. He, dear lad, thinks nothing of it, except as a sign of my love for him. We have no misunderstandings, and I seem somehow to love the world better, more pa.s.sionately, since he came to me.

"I send you a few flowers from our garden, and Edward sends his love, if that is respectful enough.

"I am your affectionate friend, "Arthur Hamilton."

CHAPTER XI

Down at Tredennis the year begun to fly with the speed of which uneventful enjoyable monotony alone possesses the secret.

"Our days are very similar here, and I find them very agreeable.

Edward thinks the same, he a.s.sures me, though I feel it may arise in his case from a want of breadth of view and lack of experience to argue from.

"In the summer months we get up early, and generally bathe in the stream, where I have contrived to get one of the pools sufficiently enlarged; as the weather gets colder I am compelled by my doctor to relinquish this. Then we read and write till breakfast, which we have at eight o'clock. In winter this is the first event of the day; in the morning we work for an hour or two and then go out, returning to lunch; after which we sun ourselves till five o'clock, or drive; and then, after tea, work again for three hours: the day thus concludes.

"I certainly don't coddle my boy, and I don't think I pet him, for I have the deepest horror of that practice: nothing is so weakening for both parties; it develops sentimentalism, and all mawkishness I abhor!-though I am what you would call ridiculously fond of him.

However, you must come and see us, and give me your most candid opinion, criticism, and censure on my educational methods.

"We drive into Truro once a week to market, and Edward goes in on messages, and for some mathematical training to the clergyman there.

I should like to find some _aequalis_ to make a companion for him.

He is English enough for anything, but I am afraid of his not keeping his appropriate boyishness if he is always hanging about with an old and serious valetudinarian like myself. But I don't like any of the families hereabouts, and can't get to know the ones I _do_ like well enough to find some one to my mind. I am very fastidious about my selection."