"Arthur Hamilton."
His father curtly acknowledged this letter, but nothing more; and left the discussion of the subject to be a personal one. They came to the following compromise.
Arthur was to engage for one year in some active profession, business, the law, medicine, schoolmastering, taking pupils; at the end of that time he was to make his choice; if he decided not to take up any profession, his father promised to allow him £350 a year as long as he lived, and to secure him the same sum after his own death. This occupation was to extend from August till the August following. He was allowed three days for his decision.
He at once decided on schoolmastering, and without much difficulty secured a post at an upper-class private school, being a substantial suburban house, in fine timbered grounds, the boys being all destined for public schools.
He wrote me several letters from that place, but during that time our correspondence waned, as we were both very busy. He was interested in his work, and very popular with the boys.
"My experience of life generally gives me a strong impulse in favour of Determinism; that is to say, the system which considers the histories of nations, the lives of individuals, their very deeds and words, to be all part of a vast unalterable design: and whose dealing with the past, with each event, indeed, as it occurs, is thus nothing but interpretation, an earnest endeavour to exclude regret or disappointment, and to see how best to link each fact in our past on with what we know of ourselves, to see its bearing on our individual case. Of course this will operate with our view of the future too, but only in a general way, to minimize ambition and anxiety. It produces, in fact, exactly the same effect as a perfect 'faith;' indeed, it is hard to distinguish the two, except that faith is the instinctive practice of the theory of Determinism.
"Now, the more I work at education, the more I am driven into Determinism; it seems that we can hardly regulate tendency, in fact as if the schoolmaster's only duty was to register change. A boy comes to a place like this, μνημονὶκος and φιλομάθης, and εὐφύης, as Ascham calls it, in other respects; he is not exposed, let us say, to any of the temptations which extraordinary charms of face or manner seem always to entail upon their possessors, and he leaves it just the same, except that the natural propensities are naturally developed; whereas a boy with precisely the same educational and social advantages but without a predisposition to profit by them leaves school hardly altered in person or mind. It is true that circumstances alter character—that can not be disputed; but circumstances are precisely what we can not touch. A boy, εὐφύης as I have described, brought up as a street-arab, would only so far profit by it as to be slightly less vicious and disgusting than his companions. But education, which we speak of as a panacea for all ills, only deals with what it finds, and does not, as we ought to claim, rub down bad points and accentuate good, and it is this, that perhaps more than anything else has made me a Determinist, that the very capacity for change and improvement is so native to some characters, and so utterly lacking to others. A man can in real truth do nothing of himself, though there are all possible varieties—from the man who can see his deficiencies and make them up, through the man who sees his weak points and can not strengthen them, to the spiritually blind who can not even see them. I may of course belong to the latter class myself—it is the one thing about which no one can decide for himself—but an inherent contempt for certain parts of my character seems to hint to me that it is not so."
It will be seen from the last two letters that his ethical position was settling itself.
I therefore think, before I go any further, it will be as well to give a short account of his religious opinions at this time, as they were very much bound up with his life. He told me not unfrequently that religion had been nothing whatever to him at school, and he came up to the University impressionable, ardent, like a clean paper ready for any writing.
It is well known that at the Universities there is a good deal of proselytizing; that it is customary for men of marked religious views and high position to have a large clientèle of younger men whom they influence and mould; schools of the prophets.
Arthur was not drawn into any one of these completely, though I fancy that he was to a certain extent influenced by the teaching of one of these men. The living original of these words will pardon me if I here insert the words of my friend relating to him; many Cambridge men have been and are everlastingly grateful for his simple noble influence and example.
"Why are there certain people in this world, who whenever they enter a room have a strange power of galvanizing everybody there into connection with themselves? what mysterious currents do they set in motion to and from them, so that those who do not talk to them or at them, begin to talk with reference to them, hedged about as they are with an atmosphere of desire and command?
"There is one of these at Cambridge now, a man for whom I not only have the profoundest respect, but whose personal presence exercises on me just the fascination I describe; and influential as he is, it is influence more utterly unconscious of its own power than any I have seen—a rare quality. He finds all societies into which he enters, stung by his words and looks, serious, sweet, interested in, if not torn by moral and social problems of the deepest import; yet he always fancies that it is they, not he, that are thus potent. He is not aware that it is he who is saintly; he thinks it is they that are good; and all this, not for want of telling him, for he must be weary of genuine praise and thanks."
To write thus of any one must imply a deep attraction. I do not think, however, that the admiration ever extended itself to imitation in matters theoretical or religious. Arthur was not one of those indiscriminate admirers, blinded by a single radiant quality to accept the whole body as full of light.
Very slowly his convictions crystallized; he had a period of very earnest thought—during the time of which I have just been speaking—in which he shunned the subject in conversation; but I have reason to believe from the books he read, and from two or three letters to his friend, the curate of whom I have been speaking, that he was thinking deeply upon revealed religion.
It must, however, be remembered that he never went through that period of agonized uprooting of venerated and cherished sentiment that many whose faith has been very keen and integral in their lives pass through, the dark valley of doubt. His religion had not intwined itself into his life; it was not shrined among his sacred memories or laid away in secret storehouses of thought.
"I have never felt the agony of a dying faith," he wrote to a friend who was sorely troubled, "so you will forgive me if I do not seem to sympathize very delicately with you, or if I seem not to understand the darkness you are in. But I have been in deep waters myself, though of another kind. I have seen an old ideal foully shattered in a moment, and a hope that I had held and that had consecrated my life for many years, not only crushed in an instant—that would have been bad enough—but its place filled by an image of despair ... so you will see that I can feel for you, as I do.
"Leading to the light is a sad, terribly sad, and wearying process; I have not won it yet, but I have seen glimpses which have dispelled a gloom which I thought was hopeless. My dear friend, I know that God will bring you out into a place of liberty, as He has brought me; in the day when you come and tell me that He has done so, the smile that will be on your face will be no sort of symbol, I know, of the unutterable content within. Expertus novi, you have my thoughts and hopes."
The letters I shall now quote are taken out of a considerable period, and give a fair picture of what he believed. Tolerance was his great characteristic.
Below all principles of his own was a deep resolve not to interfere in any way with the principles of others, however erroneous he deemed them.
With his definition of sincerity that comes out in the following extracts I have myself often found fault in conversation and by letter, but I never produced any change. I thought, and still think, that it is sophistical in tone, and tampers with one of the most sacred of our instincts. It never in his case, I think, made any difference to his presentment of the truth, but it is a principle that I should not dare to advocate; however, it was so integral a part of his faith that in this delineation, which shall be as accurate as I can make it, I dare not omit it.
His convictions were then a steady accumulation, not the shreds of one system worked into the fabric by the overmastering new impulse communicated by another, as is so often the case. He writes:
"The strong man's house entered by the stronger, and his goods despoiled, is a parable more frequently true of the conversion of a 'believer' into a sceptic than vice versa. The habit of firm adherence to principle, the capacity for trust, the adaptation of intellectual resources to uphold a theory—all these go to swell the new emotion; no man is so effective a sceptic as the man who has been a fervent believer.
"But in the rare cases of the conversion of an intellectual man from scepticism into belief (like Augustine and a very few others) the spirit suffers by the change. A great deal of cultivation, of logical readiness, of eloquence, seem to be essentially secular, to belong essentially to the old life, and to need imperatively putting away together with the garment spotted by the flesh. Augustine suffered less perhaps than others; but some diminution of force seems an inevitable result.
"I never had a great change of that kind to make. I had a moral awakening, which was rude but effective, never a conversion; I had not to strike my old colours."
Thus, though he was a strong Determinist, his capacity for idealism, and a natural enthusiasm, saved him from the paralysis which in some cases results from such speculations.
"I look upon all philosophical theories as explanations of an ontological problem, not as a basis of action. The appearance of free-will in adopting or discontinuing a course of action is a deception, but it is a complete deception—so complete as not to affect in the slightest my interest in what is going to happen, nor my unconscious posing as a factor in that result. Though I am only a cogwheel in a vast machine, yet I am conscious of my cogs, interested in my motions and the motions of the whole machine, though ignorant of who is turning, why he began, and whether he will stop, and why.
"If I saw the slightest loophole at which free-will might creep in, I would rush to it, but I do not; if man was created with a free will, he was also created with predispositions which made the acting of that will a matter of mathematical certainty.
"But the idea that it diminishes my interest in life or its issues is preposterous; I am inclined to credit God with larger ideas than my own, and His why and wherefore, and the part I bear in it, is extraordinarily fascinating to me because it is so hidden; and the least indication of law that I can seize upon—such as this law of necessity—is an entrancing glimpse into reality. It may not be quite so delightful as some other theories, but it is true, and real, and therefore has an actual working in you and me and every one else, which can not fail to attach a certain interest to it which other systems lack."
He gives a very graphic illustration of the phenomena of free-will. He says—
"It seems to me closely to resemble a very ordinary phenomenon: the principle that things as they are farther off appear to us to be smaller. Logical reflection assures us that they are not so, but the effect upon our senses is completely illusive; and, what is more, we act as though they were smaller; we act as if what they gained in distance they lost in size; we aim at a target which is many feet high and broad as if it was but a few inches; we say the sun is about as big as a soup-plate, and having once made these allowances the knowledge does not affect our conduct of life at all.
"Just so with free-will; we know by our reason that the thing is impossible; we act as though it were a prevailing possibility."
His position with regard to Christianity was shortly as follows; it is settled by an extract from his diary:
"I have often puzzled over this: Why in the Gospels did Christ say nothing about the whole fabric of nature which in His capacity as Creator ('through whom He made all things') He must have had the moulding of? All His teaching was personal and individual, dealing with man alone, an infinitesimal part of His creation ... for compare the shred, the span of being which man's existence represents with the countless æons of animal and vegetable life which have preceded, and surround, and will in all probability succeed it—and not a word of all this from the Being who gave and supported their life, calling it out of the abyss for inscrutable and useless ends—to minister, as the theologians tell us, to the wants and animal cravings of pitiful mankind.
"Why is it that He there takes no cognizance of the whole frame of things of which I am a part, but only deals with human feelings and emotions as if they were the end of all these gigantic works—the Milky Way, the blazing sun, the teeming earth—only to raise thoughts of reverence in the heart of this pitiful being, and failing too, so hopelessly, so constantly to do so?...
"'I will accept Christ,' said Herbert, 'as my superior, yes! as my master, yes! but not as my God.'" One sees, I think, where the difficulty lies; it must be felt by any man whose idea of God is very high, whose belief in humanity very low.
And again—
"I believe in a revelation which is coming, which may be among us now, though we do not suspect it, in the words and deeds of some simple-minded heroic man.
"No one who preceded the Christian revelation could possibly, from the fabric of the world as it then was, have anticipated the form it was about to take. This revelation, too, will be as unexpected as it will be new—it will come in the night as a thief; the 'quo modo' I can not even attempt to guess, except that it will take the form of some vast simplification of the myriad and complicated issues of human life."
But such entries as these were left to his diaries and most private correspondence; he never attempted a crusade against ordinary forms of belief, mistaken though he deemed them, often putting a strong constraint upon himself in conversation. If he was pressed to give an account of his religious principles he used smilingly to say that he belonged to the great Johnsonian sect, who practised the religion of all sensible men, and who kept what it was to themselves.
There were two views of life with which he had no patience only—the men who preached the open confession of agnosticism, "if you have anything to tell us for goodness sake let us have it, but if you have not, hold your tongue; you are like a clock that has gone wrong, but insists on chiming to show everybody that it hasn't the least idea of the time;" and secondly, the men who "took no interest" in the problems of religion and morals; for a deliberate avoidance of them he had some respect, but for a professional moralist who took everything for granted, and for feeble materialists who did not "trouble their head" about such things, he had a profound contempt.
The following remarks that he gave vent to on the subject of orthodox Christianity and an Established Church are very striking, and after what has preceded might appear paradoxical and ridiculous. But they are in reality absolutely consistent.
"When people tell me," he said, "as you have been doing, that the old methods are passés, and compare the crude new ideas with them for effectiveness, as working theories, I snap my fingers mentally in their face.
"These new ideas may, and doubtless do, contain all the good of the world's future, all the seed of progress in them—but as working ideas! A system that has been mellowed and coloured, that has insinuated itself year by year into all the irregularities and whimsical, capricious, unexpected chinks and crannies of human nature, accommodating itself gradually to all, to be torn out and have the bleeding sensitive gap filled with a hard angular heavy object thrust straight in from an intellectual workshop—the idea is absolutely preposterous!"
A friend wrote to him once in great perplexity about the following problem: as to whether, taking as he did, a purely agnostic view of life, he should continue to receive the Communion with his parents when at home; as to whether it was not a base concession to his own weakness; as to whether he should not stand by his principles.
"If you have any principles to stand by," he wrote, "by all means stand by them; but if all you mean is throwing cold water on other people's principles, my advice is to make no move. Dissembling your own uneasiness in the matter and quieting their anxious scruples is one of those matters which seem so simple that heroism appears to have no part in it. It would be so much nobler (we are tempted to think) to stand up and protest and denunciate; to throw gloom and dissension into a happy home and wreck (if you are the affectionate son I believe you to be) your own happiness, not to speak of usefulness. It would be more arduous, I admit; not therefore nobler. Your duty is most plain; you have no right to cause acute distress to several people, because you can not take exactly such an exalted view as they do, of an institution which, from the lowest point of view, is the dying request of a great and loving soul, to all who can feel his beauty or listen to his call, a beautiful pledge of family and national unity, and a touching symbol of all good things."
To another friend, who wrote to him to say that his principles, though still religious, and faithful in general idea to the Christian creed, were in so many points different from the principles taught and demanded by the Church of England, that he felt he ought to take some definite step to show his state of mind, he wrote as follows:
"The being born into an institution is a thing which must not be lightly considered: it imposes certain duties upon you—the quiet examination of its tenets, for example—and unless you are convinced of its utter inutility, not to say immorality, it is your duty to bear such a part in relation to it as shall not mar its usefulness; and you may no more throw it away through caprice or indifferentism than you may throw away your own life, simply because you did not agree to be in the world, and it is through no will of your own that you are there. Similarly, you can not justify murder because you were not present to give an assent to the framing of the laws which condemn it and provide for its restraint.
"In fact, by taking such a step you are incurring a very heavy responsibility, and it is at any rate worth while to give it the closest consideration.
"And therefore I should suggest that the philosopher who wishes in any way to affect humanity for the better, should not begin his crusade by storming one of its chief defences because its title to that position is not quite so secure as the governor alleges; but rather accept his religion together with his life, his circumstances, his disposition, as a condition under which he is born: tacitly συνειδὼς ἑαύτῳ that it may not be absolute truth, from which no appeal is possible, but yet fight his best under its colours, though they may not be quite red enough to suit his own fancy.
"For what is there ignoble in this concealment? Is it not rather ignoble to demolish a hope on which others build because it does not appear to us to be quite satisfactory, though we have nothing to offer in its stead? It is like plucking down a savage's wattled cabin. 'First-rate stone houses, if you please, or none at all,'—and, on being questioned as to where the materials are to come from, point for answer to the eternal hills.
"These are general considerations; but you, in particular, my dear C——, ought to be very cautious, considering who you are." His father was a high dignitary of the church. "A secession like yours will carry far more weight than it ought to from your own and your father's position. People will say, Mr. C—— ought to know; he has had opportunities of judging from the inside which other people have not—whereas you have really less opportunity because your horizon is far more limited because you have only seen it from the inside. You are rather in the position of the valet. No gossip and gabble of yours about braces and sock-suspenders will make your hero less a hero: you will only establish your title to be considered an unperceptive and low-minded creature among the only people whose opinion is worth having."
He was always very decided on what he called "mock sincerity," the people whom he described as "professional crystals," who always "speak their mind about a thing." "The art of life," he said, "consists in knowing exactly what to keep out of sight at any given moment, and what to produce; when to play hearts and diamonds, ugly clubs or flat spades; and you must remember that every suit is trumps in turn."
The following passage from a letter about a leading politician will illustrate this:
"I have always admired him intensely," he writes, as an instance of a public man who has succeeded by sheer adherence to principles.
"You can't ensure success; three parts is luck, the genius of time and place. The only thing you can do seems to me to work hard, and always take the highest line about things. The highest line, that is to say, not the line you may feel to be highest, but the line that you recognize to be so. Not what your fluctuating emotions may commend, but that which the best moral tact seems to pronounce best. You can't always expect to feel enthusiasm for the best, so be true not to your sensations, but your deliberate ideals—that is the highest sincerity; all the higher because it is so often called hypocrisy."
But his Determinist, almost Calvinistic, views were mellowed and tempered by a serene and deep belief in a providence moving to good, and ordering life down to the smallest details with special reference to each man's case; in fact, as he said, the two were so closely connected that they were like the convex and concave sides of a lens.
He wrote to me, "I often feel, when straining after happiness, just like the child who, anxious to get home, pushes against the side of the railway carriage which is carrying him so smoothly and serenely to the haven where he would be, while all he effects is a temporary disarrangement of particles.
"Life shows me more and more every day that there is something watching us and working with us, so that now and then in unexpected moments when I have felt particularly independent for some time back, I come upon a little fact or incident that reveals to me that I am like a mouse in the grasp of a cat, allowed sometimes to run a few inches alone—or more truly like a baby walking along, very proud of its performance, with a couple of anxious, loving arms poised to catch it. The extraordinary apportionment not only in balance but in kind of punishment to sin—long-continued, secret, base desires, punished by long-hidden suffering—the sharp stress of temptation yielded to, requited by the sharp pang—the glorious feeling which I have once or twice felt—the sin once sinned and the punishment once over, as one is assured supremely sometimes that it is without doubt—of trustful freedom, and fresh fitness for battling one's self and helping others to battle—a mood that is soon broken, but is an earnest while it lasts of infinite satisfaction. The extraordinary delicacy with which the screw of pain and mental suffering is adjusted, just lifted when we can bear no more (not when we think we can bear no more, but when God knows it) and resolutely applied again when we have gained strength which we propose to devote to enjoyment, but which God intends us to devote to suffering. The very beauty, too, of pain itself—the strange flushes of joy that it gives us, which can only thus be won—the certainty that this is reality, this is what we are meant to do and be—happiness of different kinds, art, friends, books, are delusive; they play over the surface; in suffering we dip below it." This latter thought expanded is the subject of a passage of a letter to myself that gave me wonderful comfort.
We know how sickness or sorrow comes down heavily on us, crushing in what we are pleased to call our "plans," and "interrupting," as we say, "our opportunities for usefulness," spoiling our life.
"My dear friend, this is life itself. It is this very 'interruption' that we live for. What does God care about the wretched books you intend to write, the petty occupations you think you discharge so gracefully? He means to teach you a great high truth, worth knowing; and, thank Heaven, He will, however much you shrink and writhe. Do not pick and choose among events: try and interpret each as it comes."
At the expiration of the year of work—Easter, 1875—he was unchanged in his plan of travel; in fact, it had become a resolve by that time. He confessed that he did not personally at all like giving up the school work; he had got very much interested in some of the boys, and in the whole process of the education of character. But there was also another reason, which the following letter will explain:
"You know, perhaps, that I have been acting as usher here for a year; it is to be a kind of probation. That is to say, I have promised to try what it is like for a year, and see if I feel inclined to adopt it as my profession.
"Now, I am in a very curious position. I do feel inclined, very much inclined indeed, to stick permanently to the work; it interests, amuses, occupies me. I hate the want of occupation. I hate making occupations for myself, and this provides me with regular work at stated hours, leaving other stated hours free, and free in the best way; that is to say, it works the vapours off. My brain feels clear and steady; I can talk, think, write, read better, in those intervals than I ever can when all my time is my own, and yet—I must, I believe, give it up.
"You know I pretend to a kind of familiar; like Socrates, I am forbidden to do certain things by a kind of distant inward voice—not conscience, for it is not limited to moral choice. I don't mean to say I do not or have not disobeyed it, but it is always the worse for me in the end; it is like taking a short cut in the mountains; you get to your end in time, but far more tired and shaky than if you had followed the right road, which started so much to the left among the pines, and moreover, you get there very much behind your party.
"This time it tells me that I am not equal to the direct responsibility; that I can not, with my habits of mind and temper, impress a permanent enough mark upon the lads. It is like beginning a system of education that is to take, say, thirty years, giving them a year of it, and then taking to another; you not only lose your year, but you unfit them for other systems. That is what I should do; my methods do not prepare them for other normal education; it is only the beginning of a preparation for what I believe to be a higher and more complete education, but that wouldn't justify my keeping on.
"I do not believe that I have done any harm; in fact, my theory would forbid me to think so; but it also informs me that my rôle is not to be that of a schoolmaster.
"I shall be a poor man, of course; poor, that is, for an independent gentleman. I wish I were a Fellow of a College at Cambridge; I would try and be as ideal as Gray in that position."
CHAPTER V
In April he was released from his engagement, and he immediately went abroad, alone. He travelled through Normandy into Brittany, spending two months at a little village called Chanteuil, not far from the Point du Sillon. Here he wandered about mostly alone, dressed in the roughest possible costume, and allowing his beard to grow. "At Chanteuil I first learnt how to think, or rather how to converse with myself as I had before done with other persons; I also found for the first time that I did not dislike my own company."
In June he went south, sailing from Brest to Bordeaux, and then descending by land into Spain, where he remained till August. Here he spent a long time in exploring the table-land between the Asturian Mountains and the sea, and then from Burgos visiting Madrid, Toledo, Ciudad, and Seville, and so to Gibraltar. From Gibraltar he sailed up the south-east coast, and settled himself for another month at a little village called Benigarcia, about five miles east of Sorrion, on the river Mijares. In November he sailed by Minorca, starting from Barcelona, to Sicily, and spent the rest of the year in the north of Italy, sailing from Sicily to Genoa, and settling at a village called Riviglio, not very far from Verona. He was obliged to adopt this plan of settling, as his exchequer was not large. From this place he visited Venice on foot, and early in the year visited Rome and Florence, sailing from Ancona in March for Spalatro, and worked up through Hungary to a little place called Bochnia, on the Vistula, down which river he went by boat to Königsberg, staying in Warsaw a few weeks. Once on the Baltic, he hired a fishing-boat, and spent a month in cruising about, during which time he discovered, or rather unearthed, an island, which formed the subject of the only letter he wrote to me during his entire absence.
"I am writing this on board the fishing-smack Paradys, which is at this moment lying in Copenhagen Roads, being myself owner by hire and supercargo of the same. The first object of my note is to assure you of my existence, as your letter which was forwarded after me to Danzig seemed to imply uncertainty on that point, and moreover expressed a strange solicitude as to my well-being which was by no means unpleasing to me; then to request you to perform several small commissions for me....
"Lastly, to tell you of a very curious adventure I met with. Some weeks ago I was cruising not very far from Danzig, when we sighted a low wooded island about seven miles off land. I discovered by dint of arduous questioning, for the lingo of these fellows is very uncouth, that it was uninhabited, because its owner, a Danish nobleman, devoted it to the growing of wood for firewood, etc.; a poor speculation, I should say, as the wind blows very fresh from the sea and stunts the trees; and also partly because of a bad name attaching to it, and many horrid superstitions—what, they could not tell me. It was a curious-looking place, not very large, but with deep indented bays all round running very far inland, so as to give it somewhat the shape of a starfish with seven or eight irregular arms; the woods come down very close to the sea and are mostly fir or larch. I could see a few trees further inland of a lighter green, but could not make out to what species they belonged. Between the woods and the sea there are sands loosely overgrown with that spiky grass that covers sand-hills, and at the extremity of two of the valleys a marsh formed by a freshwater spring. The place is frequented by birds, mostly pigeons, and a good many waterfowl of different kinds.
"We spent a hot oppressive day with very little wind in cruising leisurely round it as close in shore as we could get. I should guess that it was about eleven miles round, measuring from the ends of the promontories. We saw no signs whatever of habitation except the three or four old boats on props in one of the creeks used by the woodcutters as cabins when they come. I found out from my men that so great was the horror of the place, that even smugglers, when hard pressed, have been known to risk capture rather than put in to the island; and on my inquiring the cause of these rumours, they gave me various vague and grotesque stories about dead men and women, and a figure which sat on the seaward cape and wept, with long hair drooping all over her; and, worst of all, of two boys, dressed in an antique dress, whom to see was certain disaster, and to speak with certain death.
"Toward evening the breeze freshened; and as it was getting dark I proposed casting anchor in one of the creeks. My men manifested the greatest alarm; but as the channel is full of shoals and sands between the island and the mainland (which is at that place very much deserted), and we were not acquainted with the lie of them, and as I bound myself by the most solemn promises not to send any of them ashore, they at last reluctantly consented. However, as none of them would stir an inch, but crowded together in the most disgusting proximity into their hole of a cabin, I was left the sole patrol of the place.
"It was an oppressive evening, and I walked about a long time up and down, and finally sat down to smoke. The place was curiously silent, except that every now and then it was broken by those strange woodland sounds, like smothered cries or groans, seeming to proceed out of the heart of the wood at a great distance. We lay in a sandy creek with banks of pines on each side, rising up very black against the sky, which had that still green enamelled look that it gets on a very quiet evening. At the far end of the creek was a large marsh covered with the white cotton rush then in bloom; it caused a strange glimmering which I could see till it got quite dark. The only other sound was the wash of the short waves on the sands outside, and the gurgle and cluck of the water as it crept past the boat and out to sea.
"Toward midnight I saw a sight that I have never seen before nor expect to see again. I was surprised to see a light, apparently on the shore, in the direction of the marsh. It looked exactly like a lantern carried by a man. It was very indistinct, but wavered about, always floating about a foot or two from the surface, sometimes standing still as though he was looking for something on the ground, and sometimes moving very quickly. It was a will-o'-the-wisp—a phosphorescent exhalation.
"It was a foul pestilential place, there is no doubt. The mist was all about us by midnight, and smelt very heavy and cold. I awoke shivering in the morning, and not feeling by any means as fresh or vigorous as usual; but nevertheless I determined to explore the island—singly, if none of the men would accompany me.
"Straight up in front of me, apparently about a mile inland, was a very marked clump of trees projecting above the other foliage. I had noticed it several times from the sea the day before. You could see the red stems clearly above the other trees. It evidently marked a knoll or rising ground of some kind, and I determined to make that the object of my journey, and scale, if possible, the trees to get a bird's-eye view of the place.
"As I had expected, I could not get a single member of the crew to accompany me further than the shore, and they were frightened at that. Two of them, who were very much attached to me, implored me most earnestly not to go, but seeing that I was bent upon it, shrugged their shoulders and were silent. The instant I was deposited with my gun on shore, they turned back to the boat and immured themselves. I arranged that at twelve o'clock, if I did not return, they should leave the creek and go round the island within hailing distance, so as to pick me up at any point. I started along the shore, skirting the marsh which wound through the pines.
"The first thing that I came upon was a heronry. I had noticed several of these magnificent birds the day before sailing over the island, and this creek was evidently their settlement; up they went, floating away in all directions with a marvellous, almost magical rapidity and silence of flight. This persuaded me more than anything else that the island was unfrequented, as they are a very shy bird, and distrustful of human beings. I then left the stream and struck straight up into the woods, as nearly as possible toward the clump.
"I put up a few rabbits and a great many pigeons. I also saw an animal that I believe to have been a wolf, but it retreated with such rapidity that I lost sight of it among the tree stems. There was very little undergrowth, as often happens under pines, but the boughs overhead formed a close screen, and the heat was very oppressive. After about an hour's walking I emerged on a cliff above the sea, having mistaken my direction, and crossed the island diagonally. On getting clear of the trees I could again see the goal of my walk, the clump, this time a good deal nearer; and now resolutely plunging into the wood, and keeping always slightly to the right, for I saw that my bias was to the left, I came at last to a place where I could see the sides of a mound through the trees rather indistinctly.
"All of a sudden I came to a low wall among the trees, overgrown in some places, but opposite me almost entirely clear. It was built of large stones carefully fitted together, like the architecture that I remembered to have seen called Cyclopean in architectural histories of Greece. It was easily climbed, and I saw that it surrounded the mound at the distance of about fifty yards, in an irregular circle.
"The space which intervened between it and the mound was partially filled with great hewn stones planted all about, some of them lying on their side, some upright, many of them broken. Going through these I came upon the mound itself. It was crowned with a group of firs, which I could see at once to be much older than the surrounding trees. They were far larger and taller, for the height of the mound did not entirely account for the extraordinary way in which they overtopped the rest of the trees. The mound was very steep, and was apparently constructed of stones built carefully together; but only very small portions of the masonry were visible, it was so overgrown and hidden.
"Wandering round it I found a rude flight of steps leading to the top, also much overgrown. I ascended hastily, and found myself on the top of a smooth plateau, about fifty by thirty yards, surrounded by the gigantic firs; but what immediately arrested my attention was a strange rude altar in the middle, ornamented with uncouth figures and other ornaments. It was covered with moss at the top, and very much cracked and splintered in places.
"I concluded at once that I was in the presence of some remains, probably Druidic in origin, which, owing to the extraordinary desolation of the spot and the superstition attaching to the island, had been so long unvisited as to have been forgotten. I could see that the mound was quite surrounded by the wall, and that it was evidently a sacred enclosure of some kind.
"And gazing and wondering, the stories attributed to the place seemed not wholly without cause. There are certain atmospheres, I have always held, which, as it were, infect one; the very air has caught some contagion of evil which can not be got rid of. There is a baneful influence about some places which makes itself felt upon all sensitive beings who approach. I have felt it on actual battle-fields, as well as at other places that I have held to be the scenes of unrecorded, immemorial slaughters; and as I gazed round it seemed to gather and fall on me here. The very stillness was appalling, for there was now a good deal of wind blowing from the sea, as I could tell from the rustling and cracking of the fir boughs all about, and the sound of the sea on the sand; but here there was an oppressive heaviness, as if the place was still brooding over the ancient horror it had seen. And this was succeeded in my mind by a strange, overpowering, fascinating wonder and speculation as to what dismal deeds of darkness could have been done in the place; with whose blood, indeed, whether of innocent sheep and goats, or pleading men and frightened children, that grim uncouth altar had run and smoked; whether, in truth, as the ancient tales say, every one of those gray pillars all about had been set up, and still was based upon, the mouldering crushed remains of men. The sickening contagion of the sin of the place grew upon me every moment.
"To rid myself of it I applied myself to climb one of the trees to get a bird's-eye view of the island. This I effected without much difficulty, and found that it was of the shape, as I have said, of an irregular five-pointed star. From extremity to extremity, it must be, I believe, about five miles.
"But now follows the part of my story that I do not profess to explain. I marked in my mind the nearest path to the sea, which was to the north-east—the path I actually pursued—and descended; and then I became aware that the feeling I had experienced before was not purely physical—that there was a taint of a real kind in the air, which strangely affected the emotional atmosphere. I felt helpless, bewildered, sickened. I descended, however, from the platform, and walked straight, in what I had determined to be the right direction, when, just as I was about to scale the wall, heartily glad to be out of the place, I was—not exactly called, for there was no sound—but most unmistakably ordered to look round. Am I clear? The sensation produced mentally and emotionally was precisely like the receiving an imperative order that one has neither power nor inclination to resist—so strong and sudden that I kept thinking that my name had been called. In reflecting, however, I am certain that it was not.
"I turned at once, and saw, standing together, close by the platform, two boys, about twelve years of age I should have said, in a loose antique dress, of a bluish-white colour, reaching down to the knees, and girt about the waist, with leather buskins fastened by straps reaching up the leg; their heads were bare, and their hair, which was a dark brown, was loose and flowing. I could not clearly distinguish their faces, but they looked handsome, though desperately frightened. Accompanying this was an indescribable sense, which I have sometimes had in dreams, of an overwhelming intense vastness—space-immensity rushing over one with a terrible power; and at the same time the feeling of numbers, as if I was in the presence of a multitude of people. All this quite momentary; in an instant I was conscious of the tall avenues of red stems, with their dark background, and the heavy silence of the underwood, and nothing more.
"I went as if dazed through the wood, yet unconsciously obeying the tacit order of my determination, down a steep fully clad with pine trees, the needles very soft under my feet, till I suddenly came out of the stifling wood on to golden sands and blue water, and a great restful wash of air and sunlight.
"I fired my gun as a signal, and wandering on, as if only half awake, I came out upon another point, and saw the boat lying close below me, whereupon I fired again, and was taken on board.
"My sensation was one of strange languor and fatigue; certainly no fright, and very little wonder; rather as if I had been stunned or charmed by opiates into a kind of waking slumber. I have never felt anything like it before or since.
"But by morning I was shivering in an ague caught in that pestilential fever-swamp, and then the fever fiend himself came and took up his abode with me, and I am now only just convalescent, and can sun myself on the deck, and read and write a little; but the illness and the unconsciousness have done as such things often do—interposed a sort of blank between me and my past life—have deadened it, as one deadens sound by wool, so that memories no longer strike on my mind sharp and clear, but swim along hazy and undefined; and especially is it the case with later memories.
"What was the sight, my dear Carr, that I saw on that hill-top? Was it nothing but the uneasiness of mind and memory disturbed and disorganized by the seething of the foul poison-wine, throwing up pictures and ideas out of their due course, and without subordination to the master-will? Was it merely the story of those fisher-folk, half apprehended, and yet evoked and subtly clad with form and shape by the strange workshop of imagination?
"To all of these I am quite content to say 'Yes.' The sight does not trouble me, or, indeed, anything but interest me. I am not superstitious; I am not nervous in the least. Only I can not help feeling as if, catching, in my weakened state, the hideous leprosy of the place, I had received into my mind, then less able than usual to resist, the stamp and impress of some other mind forced to linger near that spot, and unable to avoid brooding over some haunting remorseful thought or image of a deed, ever dismally recalling how he stood in grim silence watching the tears and prayers of the two soft-faced smooth-limbed Roman boys, kidnapped from some sunny Italian villa, and carried to that gloomy place—held them pitilessly on the altar among the other fork-bearded Druids, with their white robes and glaring eyes—and smote the cruel blow, in spite of the trembling touch of the young fingers and the piteous entreaties, as they looked tearfully from side to side in the damp sunless Golgotha, among the glens of that sinister isle.
"That is the picture that somehow or other, even in my most material mood, is evoked by the thought of the place. The rationalist explanation of the coming fever is far more satisfactory and scientific; but the other keeps recurring—a curious experience anyhow.
"If you have nothing to do you might write me a line to Stockholm, Poste Restante. I am going north to have a look at the ice. Altogether, what with the East still open before me, I do not expect to come home for two or three years.
"You are one of the few friends I can rely upon, so I carry about with me a letter addressed to you; in case of my death you will be the first to be notified of the fact.