A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 10
II
For some time, when I lay half-awake next morning, I was aware of a letter with the usual cup of tea by my bedside. At last I roused myself sufficiently to stretch out my hand and lift the letter into the bed by me. Then I managed to open it, and began, still half-awake, to read it:
'Dear Mr. Leicester,—I have been informed of your appointment as private secretary to Mr. Brooke, and that you are about to accompany him on his expedition to Central Africa, to which I wish all possible success. I have a profound admiration for Mr. Brooke personally. I once had the honour of meeting him at the house of my distinguished friend, Professor Strachan, F.R.S. I think that you are to be greatly congratulated on the results of your independent course of action in having faced the world so boldly on your own account' (about this point I woke up completely), 'and I have no doubt that you will always do credit to the name you bear. I have to regret and apologise for any little disagreeableness that may have arisen during our last interview, and to ask you to ascribe it to the very indifferent state of my health at the time. I am still, I believe, in rather a critical condition; but my doctors give me every hope of the ultimate recovery of my accustomed vigour. Thinking that perhaps you might require some small moneys, cash for your outfit, etc., I have directed that the sum of one hundred pounds shall be deposited to your account at my agents', Messrs. Milnes and Co., Axe Street, which you will do me a great pleasure by accepting as a small token of my personal regard.—I remain. Yours truly, Thos, R. James.
B. Leicester, Esq.
'P.S.—The £100 will be handed over to you on personal application. I have to ask your indulgence for the indifferent composition of this letter, which you must please to ascribe to my present condition. I find any mental effort very painful to me.'
I lay back, with my head deep in the pillow, staring at the ceiling: 'Either the man is soft-brained,' I thought, 'or flunkey-hearted, or … I don't understand it! But I certainly shan't waste a quarter of another minute in trying to. What's the old hypochondriac to me? Of course, I won't take his money, damn him!'
Then a crowd of other thoughts came upon me. There was Rosy, and my books still at Glastonbury, and the general futility of existence, and particularly of my own.
A barrel-organ began playing some way off. I lay and listened to it in an arid disgust. At last it stopped. Then I got up, and proceeded to my toilet.—'This is what is generally known as getting, or having got, out of the wrong side of your bed this morning,' thought I, going downstairs.
Mr. Brooke seemed better. He talked to me quite naturally at breakfast about things. Then we parted: he to go I do not know where, I to see about some orders that had not been punctually fulfilled, etc.—But when we met again at luncheon, I thought he had rather a beaten-out look, a look of extreme weariness. I ascribed it to the amount of conventional thought and worry that he had gone through of late, and perhaps a little to the unusual excitement of last night.
The next day was quite ordinary and uneventful. And so the day after. Everything was done now. We were to start early in the morning from Charing Cross. Consequently, that night we went to bed earlier than usual at about half-past nine.
I, out in the hall, lit my candle first: said good-night to him in the library: and was almost up to the top of the first staircase, where our ways separated, when I heard him call out. I stopped and listened.
He called again;
'Boy!'
I answered:
'Yes?'
'Good-night!'
'Good-night.'
'No: wait. I will be up in a moment to shake hands with you. The night before the campaign opens, eh?' He came out: lit his candle (I watched him over the bannisters. I see him now): and came up slowly. I stepped back, and stood waiting for him in the dark entrance of the passage.
Then we shook hands, but he did not let mine go after he had pressed it. I turned my eyes from his face generally to his eyes, and looked into them, puckering up my mouth a little to one side.
He smiled: smiled a second time, and let fall my hand.—He meant something by that smile, and I understood something, but I did not, and do not, quite know what.
Mine was a dreamless sleep that night.
Sitting opposite him in the railway-carriage some five minutes before we were to start, he caught me glancing at him in a peculiar way.
'I can tell you what you are thinking of,' he said, bending towards me and putting his hand on my knee, 'you are half-puzzled, half amused at my "delusion." Oh yes, that's your word: "Delusion." Very well! We shall see what we shall see. My dear boy, I am not given to morbidity, believe me.—You didn't forget to get some papers ?'
I started up.
'I am sorry. I have forgotten all about them. I will go at once.—What papers shall I get?'
'No, I should have got them myself. Let me go. I have been doing all the talking and you all the work. It was very kind of old Gordon to come down to give me a God-speed and shake o' the hand, wasn't it, Starkie?—You didn't see him, I thought. He kept me chattering with him.—Stop! stop! I'll go. I really insist on going!'
'It is only at the end of the platform, sir,' I said, 'let me'
'No, no, I will go myself. You stop here.—Is there any paper you particularly like, Starkie? Are you a liberal or a conservative?'
Mr. Starkie, with his feet upon the cushions, looked round with his usual beard-twitching smile:
'Oh, I'm neither. They're both equally bad.—Get me a "society" paper.'
As Mr. Brooke hurried away, Mr. Starkie said something sarcastic about 'society papers.' Then, after a pause (I knew nothing about 'society papers'), I went on to the platform, and began walking up and down before the carriage.
All at once I saw Mr. Brooke, with some papers in his hand, coming towards the open gate. A shabbily-dressed man was slouching along at right-angles to him. They met. I saw Mr. Brooke start back: half-loose and then clutch the papers: let the man pass by, and then come towards me, but more slowly.
I thought nothing of it: re-entered the carriage; and a moment after he was at the door, and threw the papers on to the seat. I was arranging some rugs upon the rack. Then the guard came to the door to examine our tickets. I had Mr. Brooke's. As I gave it up with mine, I noticed him. He was sitting staring in front of him, with his hand supporting his head. He was very pale. I stood in doubt, looking at him.
'Are you ill?' I asked.
He started and laughed.
'Oh, it is nothing.—We are to have a fine day for our journey. See how the sun is shining through the mist! It must be quite clear out in the country.… Do you know what time we get to Dover, Starkie?'
There was a door between Mr. Brooke's room and mine at the Hotel de Manchester in Paris. We had it opened, and talked as we were dressing for dinner. He was instructing me in the programme that had to be gone through here in Paris. I was at my glass, spoiling a white tie, when I heard him come from his room into mine, but did not turn, thinking he was only continuing the conversation. All at once I saw his face reflected beside mine. I jerked myself round.
His eyes kept opening and shutting. I caught him by the arm. He smiled at me.
'It is as I thought,' he said slowly, 'we must get out of this, boy.… That man at the station. I ran against him.'
He shuddered. I heard his teeth click as he closed his jaws.
'You are ill?'
'Yes. That man! It went through me like Weland's sword. Oh, the horrible smell!'
'You think you have caught the small-pox?' I said.
'I do not think: I know. How weak my eyes are. I could almost fancy I saw motes before.… What folly!'
'It is the crossing,' I said. 'You will be all right soon.'
'The crossing? An old sailor like me? Pooh! And yet'
He began to consider to himself:
'And yet … how possibly …'
I caught him by the arm:
'Stop: stop!' I said. 'You will give yourself the small-pox if you go on at that rate.—Have you been vaccinated?'
He moved from me, saying, with great calmness:
'Not I! Nonsense, every bit of it! I never wanted to have all the vile diseases flesh is heir to pumped my system with bad lymph! See. I will sit down here, on the bed. I don't feel well: that's all—at present. Giddy. Go and tell Starkie. Then go and find a room for me somewhere. A nice room: and flowers. Mind you tell the people what it's for: a case of small-pox.' (He stopped and smiled.) 'Variola confluens, if they are particular. That means something like the certainty of a dead body in the house. You may add that: people like to know. Never mind what you have to pay. A nice room, Leicester. Remember, I shall want to be in it—probably a fortnight—before I die. I used to like Passy: try in Passy.—Now go. No: I am not mad: not in the least!'
'Will you let me fetch a doctor?' I said.
'You will anger me in a moment!—Go and tell Starkie, and find me a nice room. I want to get there while I am sure of myself. We must think of other people as well as of ourselves.—Please go at once.'
I went to Starkie and sent him into my room: then ran downstairs; found out the maitre d'hotel, and tried to explain to him that I wanted to know where I should be able to find a house agent. Seeing that I only confused the man, I came up to the room again.
Mr. Starkie was sitting beside Mr. Brooke, speaking to him earnestly—trying, I think to persuade him that he was mistaken in his idea about the small-pox. He stopped speaking as I came in.
I explained how useless it was for me to try to get what was wanted: I did not know a street in Paris, and could not speak French: Mr. Starkie had better go, and leave me here with Mr. Brooke. They both seemed to see this. Mr. Starkie jumped up, saying that of course I was quite right. It would be a dreadful waste of time for me to go, and in the end I might not be successful. Mr. Brooke thanked him.
As the door closed I sat down beside the bed.
After a little:
'I wish you would let me get a doctor,' I said.
'Not yet, not yet, useless! We shall see, boy, in a little while. I hate doctors. They are a blundering race.… But I have one or two things to say to you before you go … Bertram.'
It was the first time he (or indeed anyone since I was quite a child,) called me by my Christian name. I felt a sort of answering thrill in me.
'Before I go?' I said.
'Yes. I shall not allow you to stay, and run the chance of catching it. That would never do. Nor must Starkie: he will have to hurry on to Brindisi; but I'm afraid Clarkson won't care to go on without me.… And he wishes to put it off, too. It is hard; after all these years!'
A pause.
'I have been speaking to him about you,' he went on, 'he knows all my wishes. He is one of my executors … A brave man: rough and ready: will follow anywhere, but can't lead. Clarkson has all the brains of the party. You must have scientific observation to hand, or you can never do any real good. That is the mistake we have all of us made. Brave men can plod on and, when there is need, shoot straight (but the less shooting, the better): but there is something else wanted as well, and that's perception. They don't recognise more than half they see. There has only been one naturalist in Africa yet—Klesmer, I mean. Think of that! And he, poor devil, came to grief on the ubiquitous reef of poverty. I have often regretted I didn't know of him in time. But it's the old, old story! When they had muscle, they hadn't brains: and when they had brains, they hadn't muscle. These explorers (especially the French) are a queer lot. Du Camp's gorillas are … well, let's only say exaggerations. And as for Louis … But there, there! Starkie knows all about it. He will tell you some day. I have a thousand things in my head, and can only bring you out one. About yourself. You would not promise that night to give up your life to the Cause. You said that you believed you had other work to do. I want you to promise now. You must leave me to-night, Bertram—very soon.'
'Leave you? Here, with strangers?'
'I want no one but the Sisters. I have seen them at work before: have worked with them. They are all I want. With the small-pox, men die in delirium. loathsome to everyone. You could not stay.… I am thinking of going into an hospital instead of taking an apartment—if it can be managed as I want it. Starkie has gone to see. That was a foolish idea of mine: I am glad you came back. It is all right. Starkie knows all about it. If the doctors will only leave me alone.… Oh, boy,' he said, 'if you would but promise to try! Go back and study, say, for three years: only three years! And learn everything, everything! And then go down there for another year to learn the life. And you will pick up experience very quickly. I know you, Starkie says he will do it; he will not be too old: a brave fellow! Ah dear! ah dear! I have so many things that I want to tell you: so many, so many that they confuse me, and I can scarcely tell you anything. All one gigantic jumble, eh? But I have not been like myself since that dream.—You will promise?
I answered nothing.
He lifted up his head.
'Promise me! I am so sure you could do it. If you only had some beacon-light to steer by! At times I have thought that I am infatuated about you. You did not know that I was married once?… And God took away my son from me. Yet I bore it. And then my wife, too. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed he the name of the Lord." That was what Blake said to me in the evening when my son died. I only saw him dead. It was very sudden. Dear child! dear child!… You have something of him in you, Bertram, at times.… And then Ratcliffe came and fell ill. He was not worth much. Intelligent, and all that; but had no interest in his work, and could not have done much for it if he had had. And then God sent you to me. Your struggle in London!—Oh, you must promise me!… Ha! I am a fond old fool!'
At last:
'You have not answered me,' he said, 'will you not promise? How taciturn you are sometimes!'
'I cannot, sir. It is as if you asked me to become a priest, having no vocation.'
'But I have determined that you shall promise! I have made you my heir. I am not rich. Some eight hundred a-year now; much less than I once had. I have spent much in the Cause. You will promise?'
'I cannot, sir. I thank you none the less; but you must give it to some one else.—To Mr. Starkie. I cannot promise to give up my life to the pursuit of a thing—I do not care for: I mean care for, enough for that,'
After a little he:
'You will think better of it when you are older. You are full of dreams now.—Promise me now. In five years… It is not for five years.'
'I cannot promise. You must not leave me that money. I could not take it without I did promise, and I will never promise. How could I—honestly?'
He sighed:
'My head is too heavy. I cannot talk any more now. Remember; I will alter nothing. You will go some day. Wait till you have been out in the world, boy. I have seen bees covered with tiny red spiders innumerable, tickled to death. I will alter nothing.'
I took his hand gently:
'I am sorry sir,' I said, 'to seem so ungrateful. It is not that I am really; but … I cannot do this: I cannot give up my life to such a thing! Do not think that I set great store by my life. I do not. I am not far from indifferent whether I live or whether I die—as yet. But, as you have just said, I am full of dreams. I have scarcely dared to whisper to my own heart what they are, but, such as they are, I will either climb up to them or to nothing. Greatness is the only truth.'
In a little he said:
'Oh greatness, greatness! what greatness, boy? It is all vague—visions—dreams—emptiness!'
'No, no, not to me—now.'
'I am too weary to talk of it any more. Rest, rest! This is not the end.'
I did not say what was upon my tongue. I was foolish to have said so much. I kept silence for a little. Then:
'Can I get you nothing? ' I said.
'Nothing, nothing!… Let us wait for Starkie.'
I rested my elbow on my knee and my chin upon my hand; and so sat, looking at the floor. Mr. Brooke lay motionless on his back with his eyes closed. His breathing seemed to me short and heavy.
At last Starkie came. It was all right: Mr. Brooke might go to the hospital.
Just before he went downstairs, he asked Mr. Starkie to leave us alone for a moment. I stood by the large wardrobe mirror, with a certain feeling of almost shame, making me wish to avert my eyes from his face. He came to me—put one hand on to my shoulder in his old way, smiling, and said:
'Well, Starkie knows all about the Book, too. It is to be brought out soon after my death, and you are to be joint editor with him.'
'I, sir? I know nothing about Africa; nothing even of literary matters. How shall I?'
'I wish it so. You will not refuse me this?'
'But, sir, I am so young.'
'People will laugh. Is that it?'
'What people do or do not do, is nothing to me.'
'You say it with lots of emphasis. Very well.—Then you accept?'
'Yes, sir.—But I hope that neither Mr. Starkie nor I may ever have to touch your book. You may recover.'
He smiled again; less sadly than before, it seemed to me.
'No, no, that is not to be! God has laid his hand upon me; and I am to pay the penalty of my sin. It is just.—May His will be done in all things!'
I answered nothing.
He sighed; let fall his hand from my shoulder listlessly; turned, and was moving to the door. I followed him and touched his arm:
'You have not said good-bye to me, sir,' I said.
I passed in front of him. He raised a hand to either shoulder, feeling up my right sleeve, but not the other: then bent his face forward towards mine, murmuring:
'My eyes are a little weak. I too am a little weak—a little feeble. That is tautological—eh?… I did not say good-bye to you? That was careless of me. You were in my thoughts—in the thoughts behind my thoughts, Bertram.—Good-bye, boy, good-bye!… I have no fear for thee—in the end. Thou wilt do it in the end. Keep a brave heart. God is not so far from thee.…'
His lips moved after that, but I heard no sound that came from them. Then felt the pressure of his hands moving me aside: caught the door handle: turned and opened the door, and he went out.
I stood watching him. Mr. Starkie was at the top of the stairs. He offered Mr. Brooke his arm, who half-absently took it; then started, looked at him, and smiled. They went down together slowly.
Mr. Starkie was to go on to Brindisi next day. I told him that I would not leave Paris until I had heard decisive news of Mr. Brooke. I had still £15 left from my £25, and had scarcely spent anything, Mr. Brooke having insisted on paying all my expenses of outfit, etc.
Mr. Starkie told me of a 'pension' in the Avenue de Fontenoi. I went there on the same evening that Mr. Brooke went to the hospital. The last thing Mr. Starkie said to me (we were sitting in the courtyard of the hotel: I was about to leave him for the 'pension'), was that he had very little doubt but that Clarkson would agree to give up the expedition, but still, if he wished to go on, there was nothing left but to go on with him: in which case I should hear at once, either by letter or from Mr. Starkie himself. As for my expenses at Paris, those would, of course, be defrayed by Mr. Brooke: but of this, and many other matters, more anon.
It was late in the evening when I arrived at the Avenue de Fontenoi. I went straight up to bed and slept heavily.
In the morning no one appeared for cafe au lait and petit pain in the salle-à-manger but Madame Rouff, her child, and myself. I learnt from her that there was a park quite close to us, the Parc Monceau.
I went there at once. It is a pretty greenery. I found a sunlit, bubbling spring at the end of a pool in what I took to be a sham ruin. And so, first of all, sitting watching and playing with the stream: then sitting watching the passers and some horses being tried, I was happy enough for the time. The sense of it all being in an air and place somewhere between dream and reality was perpetually with me. There were water-jets of pierced hose playing to right and left on the fresh grass: cooings of pigeons, and the flappings of their wings as they took flight: small birds taking baths in the dust: all the morning smiling and soft, and fresh-breathed. I thought of my first morning in Regent's Park, and of others, and that by degrees led me to thinking of Rosy.—What was she doing now? And Minnie? Such a dear beast, but infernally thin!
Later in the day I went to inquire about Mr. Brooke. Nothing new. 'The symptoms of small-pox, you know, sir, advance with order. This does not hurry itself for anyone. You must keep quiet.'—And so, day after day, I went, and it was always the same answer. 'This advances, this goes on advancing.'
I tried once to make myself unhappy by thinking about him. I could not. My sorrow for him was of itself hushed and not untender; but I could not make it into a disturbing gnat buzzing in my ears at all hours. After that one attempt, I let my thoughts wander on at pleasure, as I had always done before, and was contented; for such unceasing misery, producible, it seemed to me, by continued concentration of the mind on one subject, was not 'true.' I instinctively shrank from it.
My old wandering spirit came back upon me in Paris quickly enough. I had nothing to interest me indoors. Perhaps there were few things that could have taken me out of myself then: I was living for my 'dreams.' I saw many things before me.
So passed ten or twelve weary days, whose only memory to me is unrecorded weariness. At last I received a letter from Starkie, saying that he was back at the Hôtel de Manchester. Clarkson had decided to proceed, but Starkie had refused to do so until Brooke's fate was decided. I went down to him, and we discussed the whole matter together. Then the weary time began again. I spent most of it in wandering about Paris, reading, and talking with Starkie; but that last was only as we went down together to the hospital each morning for news, and sometimes an hour or so in the evenings, he having a good deal of business to do in one shape or another.
On about the thirteenth day (but all accurate record or memory is gone) I lit upon the Louvre, and from that hour forward was in it continually. It gave me much quiet pleasure.
This was broken into by the news of the nineteenth morning. Secondary fever had set in. For the first time, Starkie seemed to give up hope. The effect on me was quite different. I could not realise the fact of Mr. Brooke being in the state I, I almost thought, knew he was in. I went into the Parc Monceau, and sat there in a sort of warm, gold dream of wilderment for some time, till, all at once, I caught myself starting up with the exclamation:
'No, no! If I was right, then, in refusing, I am right in now having refused.'—And I was right. For what had I to do with it?'
I spent the afternoon sculling on the river out at Courbevoi.
After dinner I went for a walk along the boulevards, softly singing or whistling to myself; till, in a dim street by the Opera, I woke up out of vague, sweet thoughts into the perception of something like a breath of fluttering music in me, now melting, now languorous, now fierce, floating up into my brain and pulsing through me, from time to time, with a longing and yearning to stretch out my arms in a happy cry to something. And in this strange, half-ecstatic state I came home; threw off my things, and got into bed as into a white cool haven.
In that night I had a strange and vivid dream. I stood below somewhere, and saw a lady I had known once, in a carriage with a dead child, on a green-lit down by the sea. The carriage had just crossed a bridge. A river rolled down smoothly over golden sands. A boy on the right shore stood watching a ball that the up-cresting sea-waves kept lifting up to and back from him every moment. I rose, and crossed over the stone bridge; came behind the carriage and began climbing over it from the back. The lady turned, and, seeing me, put out her brown-gloved hand to me; and then, when I would have caught and pressed it into my bosom, touched my chest with her finger-tips: the carriage moved onwards: the child wailed: I fell backwards and down, and awoke trembling and wet with trickling sweat.
It was the next morning that, when we came together to the hospital, they told us that Mr. Brooke had died during the night delirious.
In a long moment Starkie turned away. I followed him.
We went in silence along the pavement with the on-moving people, till I said to myself half-aloud:
'I cannot realise that it is so.'
'Nor I,' he said in the same way, 'nor I scarcely. … He was a good man.'
Then I said:
'It is a deep thought to think that his soul has gone out like a candle, and that that is the end of him.'
Starkie answered nothing.
'I wish,' I said, 'you would tell me truly and from the bottom of your soul: do you believe that that is the end of him?'
In a little:
'I believe it,' he said, 'the energy that was in him has undergone some change. We call that change death. It is, I believe, the end of us.'
'Do you think that, when that change comes to you, you will end, that there will be no more of you?'
'I do. Death looses that which grips the gathered threads of our individualities: the threads fall away, going to other invisible work, just as the threads of the body which is left slowly fade into the earth and air, going for other visible work. What death or, to use what seems to me its proper name, solution may be, I cannot of course pretend to guess: but our grandchildren may be able to, and their grandchildren, perhaps, to know. You asked me to tell you my belief: what I truly and from the bottom of my heart believe. That is my belief.'
'I thank you for it,' I said, 'for from to-day I purpose beginning my soul's life anew, and I might go far before I met one who believed what you believe, and would tell it me as you have told it me. Will you let me ask you one more question?'
'Twenty, if you care to ask them.'
'Have you not in you a feeling, a strange unaccountable, but nevertheless undeniable feeling, that you, you—your individuality, as you said,—cannot possibly be destroyed?'
'You mean have I, what is called the instinct of immortality?—No: I have not,—now. When I first began to think about these things, my mind was strongly prepossessed in favour of immortality, and consequently this instinct soon developed itself from its passive unconsciousness into active consciousness, and I held fast to the idea of immortality when everything else, save belief in a deity, had gone. It was not till after more than three years of thoughtfulness and study, that I learnt that my desire for immortality was only a synonym for my selfishness, and, having learnt this, I began to see, too, the complete needlessness, though as complete naturalness, of that desire. I determined to devote myself to benefiting, as far as I could, my fellow men. Whether this was a result from, or parallel to, my loss of all belief in immortality, it would be difficult to say. At any rate, there are the two facts contemporaneous.'
'And do you not believe in a deity either?'
'I cannot answer you; for I do not know. I am content, seeing a world full of ignorance and woe, to strive to lessen however little of that ignorance, knowing that thereby I shall lessen a corresponding amount of that woe. This seems to me the one undeniable duty of each of us: to make the earth better for our having been in it.'
I answered nothing. We walked on together in silence till we came to the hotel door. Then, as he half-turning faced me, I held out my hand for his, and when it was in mine, pressed it, looking into his eyes that looked into mine, and I said:
'Thank you.'
We passed to other matters; for what more was to be said or done as regarded this?
We bought Brooke's grave in Père-Lachaise à perpétuité. Upon the tombstone a plain white marble cross was to be put, his name, the dates of his birth and death, and below:
'Thy will be done.'