Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge, Arthur Christopher Benson [the little red hen ebook txt] 📗

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am authorized to state," the stranger added, "in the event of your acquiescing, that the method of procedure will be left entirely to yourself; that no question will be asked or conditions made; the boy will be sent to London or to any other address you may appoint; that £400 a year, quarterly, will be placed to your credit at the Westminster Bank for all necessary expenses; and that a draft in your name, for any further sum that you may think requisite, will be honoured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a small manor, known as Tredennis, anciently belonging to the Templeton family, whose pictures ornament the hall. It had been used latterly merely as a farmhouse; but a local solicitor, desiring that a somewhat more profitable arrangement might be made respecting it, had the manor put up at the extremely moderate rent of £60, and banished the farmer to an adjoining tenement.

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

Truro has been much opened up since then. It has a bishop, and the rudiments of a cathedral. It has burst into a local and spasmodic life. But when I knew it through Arthur, it was the sleepiest and laziest town alive, with the water rippling through the streets. Old-world farmers, with their strange nasal dialect,