True Manliness

Arthur paused a moment, and then said quickly, “I’ll tell you how it all happened. At first, when I was sent to the sick-room, and found I had really got the fever, I was terribly frightened. I thought I should die, and I could not face it for a moment. I don’t think it was sheer cowardice at first, but I thought how hard it was to be taken away from my mother and sisters, and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way to many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man’s work. To die without having fought and worked, and given one’s life away, was too hard to bear. I got terribly impatient, and accused God of injustice, and strove to justify myself; and the harder I strove, the deeper I sank. Then the image of my dear father often came across me, but I turned from it. Whenever it came, a heavy numbing throb seemed to take hold of my heart, and say ‘Dead – dead, dead.’ And I cried out, ‘The living, the living shall praise thee O God; the dead cannot praise Thee. There is no work in the grave; in the night no man can work. But I can work. I can do great things. I will do great things. Why wilt Thou slay me.’ And so I struggled and plunged, deeper and deeper, and went down into a living black tomb. I was alone there, with no power to stir or think; along with myself; beyond the reach of all human fellowship; beyond Christ’s reach, I thought, in my nightmare. You who are brave and bright and strong, can have no idea of that agony. Pray to God you never may. Pray as for your life.”

Arthur stopped – from exhaustion, Tom thought; but what between his fear lest Arthur should hurt himself, his awe, and longing for him to go on, he couldn’t ask, or stir to help him. Presently he went on, but quite calm and slow:

“I don’t know how long I was in that state. For more than a day, I know; for I was quite conscious, and lived my outer life all the time, and took my medicines, and spoke to my mother, and heard what they said. But I didn’t take much note of time; I thought time was over for me, and that that tomb was what was beyond. Well, on last Sunday morning, as I seemed to lie in that tomb, alone, as I thought, for ever and ever, the black, dead wall was cleft in two, and I was caught up and borne through into the light by some great power, some living, mighty spirit. Tom, do you remember the living creatures and the wheels in Ezekiel? It was just like that: ‘when they went I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host; when they stood they let down their wings’ – ‘and they went every one straight forward; whither the spirit was to go they went, and they turned not when they went.’ And we rushed through the bright air, which was full of myriads of living creatures, and paused on the brink of a great river. And the power held me up, and I knew that great river was the grave, and death dwelt there; but not the death I had met in the black tomb – that I felt was gone forever. For on the other bank of the great river I saw men and women and children rising up pure and bright, and the tears were wiped from their eyes, and they put on glory and strength, and all weariness and pain fell away. And beyond were a multitude which no man could number, and they worked at some great work; and they who rose from the river went on and joined them in the work. They all worked, and each worked in a different way, but all at the same work. And I saw there my father, and the men in the old town whom I knew when I was a child; many a hard, stern man, who never came to church, and whom they called atheist and infidel. There they were, side by side with my father, whom I had seen toil and die for them, and women and little children, and the seal was on the foreheads of all. And I longed to see what the work was, and could not; so I tried to plunge in the river, for I thought I would join them, but I could not. Then I looked about to see how they got into the river. And this I could not see, but I saw myriads on this side, and they too worked, and I knew that it was the same work; and the same seal was on their foreheads. And though I saw there was toil and anguish in the work of these, and that most that were working were blind and feeble, yet I longed no more to plunge into the river, but more and more to know what the work was. And as I looked I saw my mother and my sisters, and I saw the Doctor, and you, Tom, and hundreds more whom I knew; and at last I saw myself, too, and I was toiling and doing ever so little a piece of the great work. Then it all melted away, and the power left me, and as it left me I thought I heard a voice say, ‘The vision is for an appointed time; though it tarry, wait for it, for in the end it shall speak and not lie, it shall surely come, it shall not tarry.’ It was early morning I know, then, it was so quiet and cool, and my mother was fast asleep in the chair by my bedside; but it wasn’t only a dream of mine. I know it wasn’t a dream. Then I fell into a deep sleep, and only woke after afternoon chapel; and the Doctor came and gave me the sacrament. I told him and my mother I should get well – I knew I should; but I couldn’t tell them why. Tom,” said Arthur, gently, after another minute, “do you see why I could not grieve now to see my dearest friend die? It can’t be – it isn’t, all fever or illness. God would never have let me see it so clear if it wasn’t true. I don’t understand it all yet – it will take me my life and longer to do that – to find out what the work is.”

LXXIV

“Hullo, Brown! here’s something for you,” called out the reading man. “Why, your old master, Arnold of Rugby, is dead.”

Tom’s hand stopped half-way in his cast, and his line and flies went all tangling round and round his fishing-rod; you might have knocked him over with a feather.

Neither of his companions took any notice of him, luckily; and with a violent effort he set to work mechanically to disentangle his line. He felt completely carried off his moral and intellectual legs, as if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the deep loving loyalty he felt for his old leader made the shock intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for him and for many others in like case; who had to learn by that loss, that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however strong, and wise, and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and lean will knock away all such props in His own wise and merciful way, until there is no ground or stay left but Himself, the Rock of Ages, upon whom alone a sure foundation for every soul of man is laid.

LXXV

At the school-gates Tom made a dead pause; there was not a soul in the quadrangle – all was lonely, and silent, and sad. So with another effort he strode through the quadrangle, and into the school-house offices.

He found the little matron in her room in deep mourning; shook her hand, tried to talk, and moved nervously about; she was evidently thinking of the same subject as he, but he couldn’t begin talking.

“Where shall I find Thomas?” said he at last, getting desperate.

“In the servants’ hall, I think, sir. But won’t you take anything?” said the matron looking rather disappointed.

“No, thank you,” said he, and strode off again to find the old verger, who was sitting in his little den as of old puzzling over hieroglyphics.

He looked up through his spectacles, as Tom seized his hand and wrung it.

“Ah! you’ve heard all about it, sir, I see,” said he.

Tom nodded, and then sat down on the shoe-board, while the old man told his tale, and wiped his spectacles, and fairly flowed over with quaint, homely, honest sorrow.

By the time he had done, Tom felt much better.

“Where is he buried, Thomas?” said he at last.

“Under the altar in the chapel, sir,” answered Thomas. “You’d like to have the key, I dare say.”

“Thank you, Thomas. Yes, I should very much.” And the old man fumbled among his bunch, and then got up as though he would go with him; but after a few steps stopped short and said, “Perhaps you’d like to go by yourself, sir?”

Tom nodded, and the bunch of keys were handed to him with an injunction to be sure and lock the door after him, and bring them back before eight o’clock.

We walked quickly through the quadrangle and out into the close. The longing which had been upon him and driven him thus far, like the gad-fly in the Greek legends, giving him no rest in mind or body, seemed all of a sudden not to be satisfied, but to shrivel up, and pall. “Why should I go on? It is no use,” he thought, and threw himself at full length on the turf, and looked vaguely and listlessly at all the well-known objects. There were a few of the town-boys playing cricket, their wicket pitched on the best piece in the middle of the big-side ground, a sin about equal to sacrilege in the eyes of a captain of the eleven. He was very nearly getting up to go and send them off. “Pshaw! they won’t remember me. They’ve more right there than I,” he muttered. And the thought that his sceptre had departed, and his mark was wearing out, came home to him for the first time, and bitterly enough. He was lying on the very spot where the fights came off; where he himself had fought six years ago his first and last battle. He conjured up the scene till he could almost hear the shouts of the ring, and East’s whisper in his ear; and looking across the close to the Doctor’s private door, half-expected to see it open, and the tall figure in cap and gown come striding under the elm-trees towards him.

No, no! that sight could never be seen again. There was no flag flying on the round tower; the school-house windows were all shuttered up; and when the flag went up again, and the shutters came down, it would be to welcome a stranger. All that was left on earth of him whom he had honored, was lying cold and still under the chapel-floor. He would go in and see the place once more, and then leave it once for all. New men and new methods might do for other people; let those who would, worship the rising star; he at least would be faithful to the sun which had set. And so he got up, and walked to the chapel-door and unlocked it, fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow.

He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form boy, and sat himself down there to collect his thoughts.

And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain, and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all, his heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never be made up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly through the painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colors on the opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little and little. And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud:

“If he could only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes – have told him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced him, and would by God’s help follow his steps in life and death – he could have borne it all without a murmur. But that he should have gone away for ever without knowing it all, was too much to bear.” – “But am I sure he does not know it all?” – the thought made him start – “May he not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow – as I should wish to have sorrowed when I shall meet him again?”

He raised himself up and looked around; and after a minute rose and walked humbly down to the lowest bench, and sat down on the very seat which he had occupied on his first Sunday at Rugby. And then the old memories rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing him as he let himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great painted window above the altar, and remembered how when a little boy he used to try not to look through it at the elm-trees and the rocks, before the painted glass came – and the subscription for the painted glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And there, down below, was the very name of the boy who sat on his right hand on that first day, scratched rudely in the oak paneling.

And then came the thought of all his own school-fellows; and form after form of boys nobler, and braver, and purer than he, rose up and seemed to rebuke him. Could he not think of them, and what they had felt and were feeling, they who had honored and loved from the first, the man whom he had taken years to know and love? Could he not think of those yet dearer to him who was gone, who bore his name and shared his blood, and were now without a husband or a father? Then the grief which he began to share with others became gentle and holy, and he rose up once more, and walked up the steps to the altar; and while the tears flowed freely down his cheeks, knelt down humbly and hopefully, to lay down there his share of a burden which had proved itself too heavy for him to bear in his own strength.

LXXVI

“It will be forty years ago next month,” said the old Captain, “since the ship I was then in came home from the West Indies station, and was paid off. I had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very glad to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth, asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from an old sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of the fleet. He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old sailor – what you young men would call ‘an old salt’ – and couldn’t live out of sight of the blue sea and the shipping. It is a disease that a good many of us take who have spent our best years on the sea. I have it myself – a sort of feeling that we must be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and see a hill on this side and a hill on that. It’s wonderful to see the trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn’t come so home to an old sailor. I know that we’re all just as much under the Lord’s hand on shore as at sea; but you can’t read in a book you haven’t been used to, and they that go down to the sea in ships, they see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. It isn’t their fault if they don’t see His wonders on the land so easily as other people.

“But, for all that, there’s no man enjoys a cruise in the country more than a sailor. It’s forty years ago since I started for Plymouth, but I haven’t forgotten the road a bit, or how beautiful it was; all through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and then on by the mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me three days to get to Plymouth, for we didn’t get about so quick in those days.

“The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went about with him to the ships in the bay, and through the dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old Commodore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set his whole heart upon. He was an old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to live with him, and was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some one who would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl’s, but as brave as a lion and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat together; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about the great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had been on.

“Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from the Commodore to help things on. After a month or two I was appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the Commodore, and he got his boy a midshipman’s berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth himself a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The old gentleman came on board to see his boy’s hammock slung, and went below into the cockpit to make sure that all was right. He only left us by the pilot-boat when we were well out in the Channel. He was very low at parting from his boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised to write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a chance.

“I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as if he had been my own younger brother, and, for that matter, so were all the crew, from our captain to the cook’s boy. He was such a gallant youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business we had, he climbed over the boatswain’s shoulders, and was almost first on deck; how he came out of it without a scratch I can’t think to this day. But he hadn’t a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to any one who was wounded or down with sickness.

“After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise off Malta, on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long business, and the post wasn’t so good then as it is now. We were sometimes for months without getting a letter, and knew nothing of what was happening at home, or anywhere else. We had a sick time too on board, and at last he got a fever. He bore up against it like a man, and wouldn’t knock off duty for a long time. He was midshipman of my watch; so I used to make him turn in early, and tried to ease things to him as much as I could; but he didn’t pick up, and I began to get very anxious about him. I talked to the doctor, and turned matters over in my own mind, and at last I came to think he wouldn’t get any better unless he could sleep out of the cockpit. So one night, the 20th of October it was – I remember it well enough, better than I remember any day since; it was a dirty night, blowing half a gale of wind from the southward, and we were under close-reefed topsails – I had the first watch, and at nine o’clock I sent him down to my cabin to sleep there, where he would be fresher and quieter, and I was to turn into his hammock when my watch was over.

“I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and the weather got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by, and the wind sang and hummed through the rigging – it made me melancholy to listen to it. I could think of nothing but the youngster down below, and what I should say to his poor old uncle if anything happened. Well, soon after midnight I went down and turned into his hammock. I didn’t go to sleep at once, for I remember very well listening to the creaking of the ship’s timbers as she rose to the swell, and watching the lamp, which was slung from the ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other hammocks swinging slowly all together. At last, however, I dropped off, and I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with a start. For the first moment I didn’t see anything but the swinging hammocks and the lamp; but then suddenly I became aware that some one was standing by my hammock, and I saw the figure as plainly as I see any of you now, for the foot of the hammock was close to the lamp, and the light struck full across on the head and shoulders, which was all that I could see of him. There he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled hair coming out from under a red woollen night cap, and his shoulders wrapped in an old thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often seen him in. His face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful, disappointed look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice, but didn’t seem to recognize me; and, just as I was getting back my tongue and going to speak, he said slowly: ‘Where’s Tom? this is his hammock. I can’t see Tom;’ and then he looked vaguely about and passed away somehow, but how I couldn’t see. In a moment or two I jumped out and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth was fast asleep. I sat down, and wrote down just what I had seen, making a note of the exact time, twenty minutes to two. I didn’t turn in again, but sat watching the youngster. When he woke I asked him if he had heard anything of his great uncle by the last mail. Yes, he had heard; the old gentleman was rather feeble, but nothing particular the matter. I kept my own counsel and never told a soul in the ship; and, when the mail came to hand a few days afterwards with a letter from the Commodore to his nephew, dated late in September, saying that he was well, I thought the figure by my hammock must have been all my own fancy.

“However, by the next mail came the news of the old Commodore’s death. ‘It had been a very sudden break-up,’ his executor said. He had left all his property, which was not much, to his great nephew, who was to get leave to come home as soon as he could.

“The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left us and went home. We followed about two years afterwards, and the first thing I did after landing was to find out the Commodore’s executor. He was a quiet, dry little Plymouth lawyer, and very civilly answered all my questions about the last days of my old friend. At last I asked him to tell me as near as he could the time of his death; and he put on his spectacles, and got his diary, and turned over the leaves. I was quite nervous till he looked up and said, ‘Twenty-five minutes to two, sir, A.M., on the morning of October 21st; or it might be a few minutes later.’

“‘How do you mean, sir?’ I asked.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is an odd story. The doctor was sitting with me, watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at twenty-five minutes to two, he got up and said it was all over. We stood together, talking in whispers for, it might be, four or five minutes, when the body seemed to move. He was an odd old man, you know, the Commodore, and we never could get him properly to bed, but he lay in his red nightcap and old dressing-gown, with a blanket over him. It was not a pleasant sight, I can tell you, sir. I don’t think one of you gentlemen, who are bred to face all manner of dangers, would have liked it. As I was saying, the body first moved, and then sat up, propping itself behind with its hands. The eyes were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment, and said slowly, “I’ve been to the Mediterranean, but I didn’t see Tom.” Then the body sank back again, and this time the old Commodore was really dead. But it was not a pleasant thing to happen to one, sir. I do not remember anything like it in my forty years’ practise.’”

There was a silence of a few seconds after the captain had finished his story, all the men sitting with eyes fixed on him, and not a little surprised at the results of their call. Drysdale was the first to break the silence, which he did with a long respiration; but, as he did not seem prepared with any further remark, Tom took up the running.

“What a strange story,” he said; “and that really happened to you, Captain Hardy?”

“To me, sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years ago.”

“The strangest thing about it is that the old Commodore should have managed to get all the way to the ship, and then not have known where his nephew was,” said Blake.

“He only knew his nephew’s berth, you see, sir,” said the Captain.

“But he might have beat about through the ship till he had found him.”

“You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir,” said the Captain; “you can’t expect a man to have his head clear at such a moment.”

“Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost,” said Blake.

“Time was everything to him,” went on the Captain, without regarding the interruption, “space nothing. But the strangest part of it is that I should have seen the figure at all. It’s true I had been thinking of the old uncle, because of the boy’s illness; but I can’t suppose he was thinking of me, and, as I say, he never recognized me. I have taken a great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I have never met with just such a case as this.”

“No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to his nephew well enough,” said Tom.