A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 9
III
i
I brought a certain amount of enthusiasm to bear upon my new life. The idea of working in co-operation with 'the friend of Blake' was a powerful incentive to perseverance. I wrote in the Journal, which I began to keep at this time:
'I have had a great deal to learn and to do in this swift-flown fortnight. And I have found both the learning and the doing very pleasant to me. It would seem that my just-past struggle for existence partook, all along, greatly of the cul-de-sac; whereas this new life is like an open road that leads to a great city: that city has to be reached: certain things have to be done, which things constitute a "cause." There can be no doubt that a definite aim, object, end is the making of a man.'
But the next week came a reaction. I began to weary of the details of my work, more weary of the people with whom I was thrown, and there was growing in me a deaf unrecognised notion in connection with Mr. Brooke that would have partaken, had I let it, of disillusionment. Hear the Journal of three days later, à propos of a dinner at a Mr. Starkie's, a friend of Mr. Brooke's, where I had met some, what I called, 'travellers':
'"Travellers" are an aggravating tribe. They seem to expect you to know their books better than they do themselves: to pretend that no one else ever went where they went, or, if some one else undeniably did go,—then that that some one else went the wrong way, came back the wrong way, and made rather a fool than otherwise of himself every bit of the way! People have no business to be active monomaniacs: passive ones, as much as you like: I see no harm in that. I am a passive monomaniac myself.'
A little later:
'Imps have been at me to-day. The air has been densely populated with them. Here is a lugubrious account for you! I begin from the beginning.
'Since the morning I had a longing to write one particular thing haunting me. In crowded shops, before me as the cab cut through the streets, beside me as I sat at my desk; wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I saw the same silent figure, with its hand to its brow, standing under a tree in the early evening. I was like an inveterate smoker, robbed of his pipe and left staring at his full tobacco-jar. Once or twice I very nearly went up to my room with paper and pencil to fill in my imaginary picture: having resisted and conquered, I was irritable with everything about me for my own firmness. How cruel it was that I had no time! how badly organised was the world, that so many other people had time, and wasted it!
'Driving down New Bond Street, I saw a young girl, with a pince-nez and walking-stick, staring into a jeweller's window. I at once began to revile her as frivolity's foolish wasp, and must have done so aloud, for the coachman opened the trap to inquire if I had said anything? "No," I said, "drive on!"
'In the evening (this evening) we had a dinner-party. The two men who are going with us on the Expedition, Clarkson and Starkie, were there—with their wives. Also some other "men of mark" with their wives. But the female element was (thank God!) in the minority. That didn't save me, though. I sat between a beetle-browed prude who kept making (bad) eyes at her husband opposite us (a travelling monomaniac, of course!), and a big cavalry officer who had cantered through half a continent, and, as soon as he came home, sat down and written a book on all its histories, languages and literatures. The beetle-browed prude told me about her husband's travels: the cavalry officer about his own. (The lady he had taken in to dinner was a philanthropist, very distinguished, very loquacious. but unfortunately deaf. She and the cavalry officer soon gave one another up: the cavalry officer, for me, the female philanthropist for a course of lectures to a weak-eyed man on her right—subject, parochial rates, I think.) The officer varied the conversation once, by remarking that Darwin did not appreciate the spirit of Nature, so leading the prude into a disquisition on Eternal Love; but, in the end disagreeing, they called me from my thoughts under the ceiling to give my opinion: found I knew nothing about the points in question, and so repeated them in their entirety for my edification—even to the disagreement.
'After dinner, when we joined the ladies, the prude motioned me to her side by a smile and a gesture. I heard the officer repeating his remark about Darwin to another prude (square-browed: lifeless, combed-back hair, slow eyes, and an altogether suggestiveness of "shoulder arms") just behind us. My own particular prude seemed for some time (that is, till I grew dreamy and inattentive) to have eyes, and I should say a good many tongues, for me only: then she carried me off, tripping over her spasmodic train, to her dear, dear friend Mrs. Basingstoke (to whom she really must introjooce me—a most cul-tivated and highly de-lightful crea-ture, she assured me!) and I was presented, as (in a whisper) "a most in-ter-esting young man, with de-cidedly marked tastes, my dear Mrs. Basingstoke" (VV^hat could I have been saying?)—"and—alas!—a rare endowment of young men now-a-days—earnest re-ligious con-victions."—Goats and monkeys!
'But jam satis!—After they were all gone, I stood frowning on the hearthrug.—Mr. Brooke came in from the Hall, having seen the last of them off.
'"Aha, Leicester," he said, "and how about those things from Taunton's? I was dressing when you came back. They are all right?"
'"Well, no, sir. The tubes had to be made on purpose"
'"I ordered them a fortnight ago."
'"And they came. But one of the people in the shop managed to crack one"
'"And the whole thing will have to be done again. Bother!… Hoity-toity, I'm very tired!… You look tired too."
'"I am."
'"I saw you making yourself very agreeable to Mrs. Napier, and afterwards to Mrs. Basingstoke."
'I curled my lip.—Then, feeling that I should say something foolish in a moment if I stayed, and irritated that I should have to save myself by running away, said:
'I think I will go to bed, sir.—There is nothing more to be done to-night?'
'"Ah-h-h … no! That is, I don't think so.— Hamilton and Malmesbury sent up everything?—They are the rudest and most unpunctual people in all London; but they have the best …"
'I made a quick noise with my lips, expressive of impatience and disgust. I had forgotten altogether about Hamilton and Malmesbury.—What business on earth had I with running about seeing that Hamiltons and Malmesburies sent up things? Why not use a servant? Or the post? The post is one of the greatest institutions of our country. There was not any need for such frantic haste. Whereas there were creatures, like that girl with the pince-nez and walking stick, who dawdled away their whole lives! And here was I—going out on an expedition into the wilds of Africa, to be killed by fever and eaten by jackals and vultures, or run through with spears and eaten by negroes!—Oh, it was too hard! I really must write to some Crœsus: state my cruel case, and ask for £100 for three years, offering to refund it out of my first year's earnings.—Nay, a better idea would be, to insert an advertisement in the Times agony column: "An unappreciated GENIUS (male), ætat. 18, desirous of benefiting humanity by devoting himself to Himself, would be glad to meet with some young woman who would give him the means of pursuing this lofty course of action. Millionairesses with a hankering after (literary) immortality are strongly advised not to let this opportunity slip, as a similar one may never arise again. Apply for further particulars to B.L., 5 Dunraven Place, Piccadilly, W., who …" And I burst out into a laugh, rather a bitter laugh.
'"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Brooke.
'I shrugged back my shoulders with a half-sigh, half-groan,
'" I think I am ill," I said.
'He rose from his desk, where he was sitting examining some papers: came across to me and, smiling, put his hand on to my shoulder in his usual kindly unctuous manner. I could almost have struck him.
'"Come, come, come!" he said, "You must not mind now.—It will soon pass, this malaise. You have lived so much in yourself, that you find it very hard to live in other people?—Ah well, well! We most of us have that little difficulty to contend with sooner or later." But I, hanging down my head, bit my underlip with all my might for a moment. The pain made me master of myself. I looked up in his face, with my eyes hedged about with tears, but ready to listen to what he had to say to me.
'He pressed my shoulder with his hand:
'"Don't dream so, my boy," he said, "don't dream so. You're always at it, you know; and it's such a bad habit. It leads to absorption in one's own world, and that means selfishness. Why, I have known in my time at least three dreamers, who ruined all their own happiness and their families' as well, simply because they would have their dreams. Such are they whom the world calls 'geniuses' and their friends 'brutes,' for no sacrifice is too great for these precious empty dreams of theirs—not excluding the dreamers' lives. It angers me to hear people erecting special codes of morality for such men. Because a man is dubbed 'genius,' is he also to be dubbed demi-god, and allowed to pick and choose from the laws of the land, which he will be so good as to obey and which he won't?—Give up thinking that you can do anything, and there is a chance of your doing something. Get out of yourself and into other people: they are, probably, better than you are.—You don't mind me speaking like this to you? Now, do you now?"
'"No," I said, "it's true what you say. I live too much in myself, and I am impatient of what I think are other people's smallnesses … I will try to be more patient."
'"Very well. Don't let's talk about it any more.—One moment, though. Am I to halve the dose? Is it too strong for you?"
'"No, sir: double it; but"
'"Your stomach can't stand it yet? Never mind. I only wonder that it has stood so much. Go on taking your medicine like a man (I don't mind your pulling faces now and then: perhaps it is rather nasty!) and …" (with a smile). "Well you shall have some jam afterwards!"
'"Will you tell me the sort?" I asked, but in a purposeless sort of way, for it seemed as if he expected me to ask for an explanation of his "jam afterwards."
'"You will be more contented, less self-conscious, a better member of society generally: I mean, more ready to put yourself out to talk to 'fools,' less eager to find fault with wiser people than yourself. In a word, more healthy!"
'I kept silence; for I felt that it would be quite useless to speak.'
The next day has:
'Mr. Brooke with me to the Riding School. Nothing particular.' And, after a space, the following remark:
'These riding lessons five times a week are not without their pleasure to me. I am pleased at my complete freedom from fear. But, can I ever be afraid of anything again? For have I not realised how small an atom I am of things living and dead, how valueless, as I am, to things as yet uncreated? I am a spectator of existence in general, and of my own in particular.—How can a man who believes in nothing but bare existence and the beauty of Truth, and feels that he is floating along, weak and not far from helpless, have fear? What are a few more seconds to him?'
Here my enthusiasm for a full Journal seems to have given way. The rest is made up of simple notifications of the general events of each day.
This short period of my life is, strangely or not, one of those about which I remember least. It may be that I was too absorbed in what Mr. Brooke dubbed for me my 'dreams' to notice even what took place to myself. It may be. Perhaps that may account for the long filing trail of 'society' dressed people that represents my memory of it all, and for a certain lifeless wanness that I seem to find in even these conversations between Mr. Brooke and myself, although written so shortly after they were spoken. But as the days wore on, I with a little astonishment found that I was again beginning to take an interest in my work. At first, as I have said, this astonished me, and I half anticipated that 'it would go off soon.' But, when it did not, but rather grew, till it seemed to have achieved some permanent strength, I was led to look upon my early discontent as the momentary humour and this calmer readiness as the actual individuality. Something too of my old adventurous love was rising in me at the near approach of our departure, and this helped me to realise that, past denial, there was much in me that was morbid and self-concentrated, and helped me to determine to resist these infirmities. I had begun to like Mr. Brooke better, and this, although I was far from holding him up to myself as 'the ideal friend,' as I had done at starting. No one could help liking the man's earnestness: an earnestness that had something of the tenderness-inspiring in it. It did not matter that the aim of this earnestness was not altogether apparent to you. You saw the effect: the effect was beautiful, earnestness and honesty welded together, and you 'liked' it. What matter about the cause?
It was in a hiunour of this sort that, some days later, I sat with him after dinner in the library, he smoking a cigar, I thinking about things.
We sat in silence.
At last, with a slight yawn:
'We shall be off,' he said, 'before this time next week. Oh-h-h!… How delightful it is to think of it!'
'Mr. Clarkson is to meet us at Brindisi, isn't he!' I said.
'Yes. He does not want to go through Paris, and it would scarcely do to go through the Continent and he not go with us. I do not think so, at least.… He has a perfect monomania about Paris. He caught typhoid fever when he was there three years ago, and almost died of it, up at the top of an hotel, alone. He declared that he would never put his foot inside the place again. It was a very horrible idea, I must confess—death, alone, in a strange hotel, in a strange city.'
'But, if he's afraid of fever, surely it is rather a strange thing to go to'
'Yes, yes, it is! But men are made up of such inconsistencies. I, for example, am shudderingly afraid of small-pox. Yet I have been through a cholera epidemic: nursed diphtheritic cases; known cancer, and what not besides.'
'King Alfred used to pray that God's will might be done in all things, but that he should prefer not to die of a loathsome disease. I should perhaps be afraid of such things too, if it wasn't that …' I paused.
'Wasn't what.'" he said.
'O, an idea of mine!—I don't believe that I shall ever catch anything again, somehow!'
'Fearlessness is half the battle.… I too have prayed to God that I may not die of a disease that makes others fearful of me and myself loathe myself.'
'And I do not see why God should not grant your prayer, if' I left the rest, 'If He is and can,' unsaid; for I had seen his face contract a little.
'I beg your pardon,' I said, 'if I have offended you.'
'Oh no! I am foolish to notice it. I should not have, but that it recalled to me that the same vile bartering thought had, I am ashamed to say, occurred to me too, as it were despite myself, before now. You see I am trembling' (he held up his hand) 'like a terrified woman. Upon my word I ought to be ashamed of myself!'
He resumed more slowly:
'I cannot quite account for this hysterical dread of one particular disease. My father died of it just before I was born, and my mother was nigh losing life, and then reason, in giving birth to me. Perhaps that is enough to excuse my poor nerves.… But I've not much belief in these things. Hereditaribility, as Herbert Spencer would say, has been done to death now-a-days.'
I remembered a somewhat contrary remark to this of his, and smiled a little to myself.
There was a silence for a few moments.
At last he lifted up his head; looked across at me, and jerked his cigar-end under the grate, saying:
'By-the-by, Leicester, I have something to say to you.… It's about my book.' He paused for a moment. Then proceeded:
'You know that it is not yet published?—indeed, it is not fit to be published.—It is like Çæsar's Commentaries—nudi, recti et venusti (I think that's the expression all right), omni omatu orationis tamquam veste detracto—'Unadorned, severe and decent, stripped of all the embellishment of expression, like a garment.' But I was carried away from its actual state, nudus, into its ideal state, rectus et vemtstus.—Decent, comely, that is the best attribute for a man, his thoughts and his actions, that there can be. But you see my poor book never got beyond starkness! It was meant to be as a sort of introduction, or prelude, to a future work, my magnum opus! I did not care to tell the tale of my failure—not, at least, till I could tell with it the tale of my success. But … if anything happened to me—who can foresee even a moment here?—Quid humanitus, as Cicero has it—any of those chances to which humanity is liable' He paused again. His speech seemed perseveringly jerky.
I waited.—He resumed:
'I should like it brought out—then: supposing, I mean—supposing aliquid humanitus. For, you see, it might be of some use to others: more especially to those following on my track. It contains my attempt from the south, and my last journey ending at Injiji.'
' Yes?' I said.
Another pause.
Then he:
'Ah, but I thought I had the bird in my hand that time! Only in the bush, only in the bush! And I with no more twine with which to mend broken nets and snare it. I have not told you before, how bitter that moment was to me. To turn back at Mount Nebo, within sight of Canaan, into the sandy desert, so hot and waterless!—And as I turned, verily my anguish shamed me out of my manliness to play the woman. I did restrain myself till they had pitched the tent there. in the roar and very breath of the mighty waters; but then I went apart, and sat, and looked at the smoking columns of the Falls fading into the purpling sky, and wept. It seemed to me, as I sat there alone that evening, that I was not turning back, to come again with new victorious face and reach to It: but it seemed to me—I cannot tell you how, or why; I can only tell you that so it was.—It seemed to me, I say, that a still small voice spoke whispering to my heart, and I knew that I should not see Mount Nebo again; should not even cross the desert again, but die far away in the land of Egypt, in a land of glory and sin.'
Another pause.
He went on:
'Since then, I have tried to persuade myself that I was mistaken. Life is so ordinary: it is hard to believe always in the faith of one's higher moments.—And you see, my dear boy, in a few days we are off! What do you say?—Well, what I want to tell you is this. Supposing aliquid humanitus.—You follow me?'
He looked at me, who was a little mystified by it all.
'Yes,' I said, 'to a certain extent.'
He smiled.
'Ah, you've grown deep into my heart, boy? you cannot know how deep! Perhaps there is some selfishness in my love for you: I do not say that there is none. But I do love you!—I have been rather sharp with you at times: forget it! It is, that I cannot bear to see you with the ideas you have, about this beautiful world—and God. It seems to me almost a crime that you … Forgive me! Now you do, now?'
He had touched my leg: laid his hand on it, and looked so fondly into my eyes that I was moved, but not quite with an answering feeling to what he called his love. I turned my look aside.
'You see that I believe in you,' he said, 'Believe in you even as you are now, a mere boy! I know that if you only had some great work cut out for you to do, you would do it, and that there would be no need for it to be done again—something that would require all your heart and soul! At present … Why, I am afraid for you, and that is the truth! And being afraid, I am jealous for you, and so—cross with you! That is my way.… Can't you understand it?'
'Yes,' I said, 'I think so.'
He went on at last, I was glad, looking away from me.
'I have this presentiment in my mind, and I cannot shake it off. I shall never reach my heart's desire. God's will be done!—And I feel it so strongly that I … I am afraid I am very clumsy, beating about the bush like this! See now. Here it is out straight for you! I want you to promise me to go on and finish what I feel I shall never be able to do more than begin.—Every river, every lake of that land shall be mapped out and known!' (His voice rose and rang) 'Why, I tell you I dreamt about it as a boy at school. I have kept it by me all my life. A grand idea!—But not yet, not yet, you understand. That would be foolish. If we—if they, fail this time, I want you to come back to England and wait here four or five years, preparing for it. You will grow apace. Then try again: and when you do it!—when you do it! then … tell them of my poor old dead book: and of me, just a little, to say how I dreamt of that hour all my life!—Oh no, none of the glory! I don't want any of that! All that shall be yours! But—if I could only think that through me, if not by me, the thing had been done at last!—if I could only think that, why …
He began again deliberately!
'I want you to promise me that, in the event of anything happening to me, you will devote yourself to the Cause.—You see? Study for it: toil for it; do for it everything; forget nothing! On that condition I make you my heir.'
There was a pause.
Then I said quite simply:
'I cannot!'
'Yes, yes,' he cried, 'you can do it, if anyone can; and it is to be done! I am sure you can do it! I know you better than you know yourself. You will grow old apace: a man by twenty: a—something more than a man by thirty, if God wills. I pray He may!—No, I say. Don't be afraid of that. I have no relation whom I can wrong by making you my heir: be easy on that point.'
He stopped suddenly:
'You answer nothing?'
In a little, I, with my eyes downcast, said:
'You have so completely taken me by surprise'
'Yes: yes: yes, I know. It was foolish of me. I had intended working up to it slowly: training you into what I wanted you to become.'
He began to drift away:
'Last night I … I had a horrible, a horrible dream.… Strange, strange how we all are troubled by our dreams!… What accursed shadows I saw! shadows of sin; shadows of a tormented universe! Oh my God!… My time is short.… I know it. I shall not get further than Paris. I know it.… "Blake, old fellow: Allan's dead."—"Dead?" he said.—"Yes, dead. Renshaw brought me news of it last night. He carried him on his back over a mile through the sands. It was evening when they got to the water-hole. Allan was delirious. I cannot think of his poor parched lips muttering, and his eyes stared so, Renshaw says. But at the last, he grew quite calm, and asked him to hold him up. Are those the mountains out there?' he asked.—'Yes,' said Renshaw.—'How peaceful they are!' Then he closed his eyes for a little; but opened them all of a sudden and cried out: 'Do you see the Cross there?'—'No,'—said Renshaw. 'Where?'—'Upon the mountain top, the ridge I mean. Christ is holding it. How sweet His face is.… Oh what a light, what a light! It bursts out all round Him. And see. the shadow! There, there on the sand. The shadow of the Cross. Nearer—nearer—nearer, fleet over the golden sand. The shadow of the Cross!'—And so he died."'
I shook him by the arm:
'Sir, sir—You are ill,' I said.
'No,' he said, 'not ill, only tired.'
All at once he started up:
'I've been talking quickly.… My blood's been boiling. But I'm all right now.—You have understood all that I said? No. I see that you don't realise it. Well, well. That is nothing. We'll begin again.—No, I assure you, I'm all right now. Sit down. Draw your chair closer. Now I will go through it again.'
It seemed he had quite forgotten the story he had told me of his friend's death. He began to explain the object of the expedition: what was to be done this time: what was to be done next time: lastly, what he wanted me to do. I listened patiently, although I was, as it were, physically wearied of it all.
Dawn was breaking as I stood looking from my bedroom window. I wished that I stood on some Thames bridge, to look at the sleeping town: then turned away sighing, and glad that I was not there—anywhere but where I was, a few yards off my cool, comfortable bed. As I had one knee on it, getting in, I paused, made half-irresolute by a thought. How long was it since I had prayed? Had I grown so sure, then, that there was no 'good' in it?—None! none! 'If God is, He knows what is in my heart without my telling Him. And yet I haven't given much thought to the subject of late: not had time to go searching for new material with which to build up my belief in disbelief, as I used to do at Glastonbury. Ah, I was a boy then. Now I am . . . a fool to be standing here like this!' I was into bed and had the clothes over me.
'. . . I wonder what Rosy 's doing now? Asleep, of course, like a good little girl. I wish I was! I wish this world had never been made. I wish I had never been born, and then I shouldn't have been plagued with all these things. . . . No; this world is not much of a place to be happy in!