But at the time when I fell under his influence, he stood more aloof; and this made him the more impressive to a youthful atheist. He had a keen sense of language and its imperial influence on men; language contained all the great and sound metaphysics, he was wont to say; and a word once made and generally understood, he thought a real victory of man and reason. But he never dreamed it could be accurate, knowing that words stand symbol for the indefinable. I came to him once with a problem which had puzzled me out of measure: what is a cause? why out of so many innumerable millions of conditions, all necessary, should one be singled out and ticketed "the cause"? "You do not understand," said he. "A cause is the answer to a question: it designates that condition which I happen to know and you happen not to know." It was thus, with partial exception of the mathematical, that he thought of all means of reasoning: they were in his eyes but means of communication, so to be understood, so to be judged, and only so far to be credited. The mathematical he made, I say, exception of: number and measure he believed in to the extent of their significance, but that significance, he was never weary of reminding you, was slender to the verge of nonent.i.ty. Science was true, because it told us almost nothing. With a few abstractions it could deal, and deal correctly; conveying honestly faint truths. Apply its means to any concrete fact of life, and this high dialect of the wise became a childish jargon.
Thus the atheistic youth was met at every turn by a scepticism more complete than his own, so that the very weapons of the fight were changed in his grasp to swords of paper. Certainly the church is not right, he would argue, but certainly not the anti-church either. Men are not such fools as to be wholly in the wrong, nor yet are they so placed as to be ever wholly in the right. Somewhere, in mid air between the disputants, like hovering Victory in some design of a Greek battle, the truth hangs undiscerned. And in the meanwhile what matter these uncertainties?
Right is very obvious; a great consent of the best of mankind, a loud voice within us (whether of G.o.d, or whether by inheritance, and in that case still from G.o.d), guide and command us in the path of duty. He saw life very simple; he did not love refinements; he was a friend to much conformity in unessentials. For (he would argue) it is in this life as it stands about us, that we are given our problem; the manners of the day are the colours of our palette; they condition, they constrain us; and a man must be very sure he is in the right, must (in a favourite phrase of his) be "either very wise or very vain," to break with any general consent in ethics. I remember taking his advice upon some point of conduct. "Now," he said, "how do you suppose Christ would have advised you?" and when I had answered that he would not have counselled me anything unkind or cowardly, "No," he said, with one of his shrewd strokes at the weakness of his hearer, "nor anything amusing." Later in life, he made less certain in the field of ethics. "The old story of the knowledge of good and evil is a very true one," I find him writing; only (he goes on) "the effect of the original dose is much worn out, leaving Adam"s descendants with the knowledge that there is such a thing-but uncertain where." His growing sense of this ambiguity made him less swift to condemn, but no less stimulating in counsel. "You grant yourself certain freedoms. Very well," he would say, "I want to see you pay for them some other way. You positively cannot do this: then there positively must be something else that you can do, and I want to see you find that out and do it." Fleeming would never suffer you to think that you were living, if there were not, somewhere in your life, some touch of heroism, to do or to endure.
This was his rarest quality. Far on in middle age, when men begin to lie down with the b.e.s.t.i.a.l G.o.ddesses, Comfort and Respectability, the strings of his nature still sounded as high a note as a young man"s. He loved the harsh voice of duty like a call to battle. He loved courage, enterprise, brave natures, a brave word, an ugly virtue; everything that lifts us above the table where we eat or the bed we sleep upon. This with no touch of the motive-monger or the ascetic. He loved his virtues to be practical, his heroes to be great eaters of beef; he loved the jovial Heracles, loved the astute Odysseus; not the Robespierres and Wesleys. A fine buoyant sense of life and of man"s unequal character ran through all his thoughts. He could not tolerate the spirit of the pick-thank; being what we are, he wished us to see others with a generous eye of admiration, not with the smallness of the seeker after faults. If there shone anywhere a virtue, no matter how incongruously set, it was upon the virtue we must fix our eyes. I remember having found much entertainment in Voltaire"s _Saul_, and telling him what seemed to me the drollest touches. He heard me out, as usual when displeased, and then opened fire on me with red-hot shot. To belittle a n.o.ble story was easy; it was not literature, it was not art, it was not morality; there was no sustenance in such a form of jesting, there was (in his favourite phrase) "no nitrogenous food" in such literature. And then he proceeded to show what a fine fellow David was; and what a hard knot he was in about Bathsheba, so that (the initial wrong committed) honour might well hesitate in the choice of conduct; and what owls those people were who marvelled because an Eastern tyrant had killed Uriah, instead of marvelling that he had not killed the prophet also. "Now if Voltaire had helped me to feel that," said he, "I could have seen some fun in it." He loved the comedy which shows a hero human, and yet leaves him a hero, and the laughter which does not lessen love.
It was this taste for what is fine in human-kind, that ruled his choice in books. These should all strike a high note, whether brave or tender, and smack of the open air. The n.o.ble and simple presentation of things n.o.ble and simple, that was the "nitrogenous food" of which he spoke so much, which he sought so eagerly, enjoyed so royally. He wrote to an author, the first part of whose story he had seen with sympathy, hoping that it might continue in the same vein. "That this may be so," he wrote, "I long with the longing of David for the water of Bethlehem. But no man need die for the water a poet can give, and all can drink it to the end of time, and their thirst be quenched and the pool never dry-and the thirst and the water are both blessed." It was in the Greeks particularly that he found this blessed water; he loved "a fresh air"
which he found "about the Greek things even in translations"; he loved their freedom from the mawkish and the rancid. The tale of David in the Bible, the _Odyssey_, Sophocles, aeschylus, Shakespeare, Scott; old Dumas in his chivalrous note; d.i.c.kens rather than Thackeray, and the _Tale of Two Cities_ out of d.i.c.kens: such were some of his preferences. To Ariosto and Boccaccio he was always faithful; _Burnt Njal_ was a late favourite; and he found at least a pa.s.sing entertainment in the _Arcadia_ and the _Grand Cyrus_. George Eliot he outgrew, finding her latterly only sawdust in the mouth; but her influence, while it lasted, was great, and must have gone some way to form his mind. He was easily set on edge, however, by didactic writing; and held that books should teach no other lesson but what "real life would teach, were it as vividly presented."
Again, it was the thing made that took him, the drama in the book; to the book itself, to any merit of the making, he was long strangely blind. He would prefer the _Agamemnon_ in the prose of Mr. Buckley, ay, to Keats.
But he was his mother"s son, learning to the last. He told me one day that literature was not a trade; that it was no craft; that the professed author was merely an amateur with a door-plate. "Very well," said I, "the first time you get a proof, I will demonstrate that it is as much a trade as bricklaying, and that you do not know it." By the very next post, a proof came. I opened it with fear; for he was indeed, as the reader will see by these volumes, a formidable amateur; always wrote brightly, because he always thought trenchantly; and sometimes wrote brilliantly, as the worst of whistlers may sometimes stumble on a perfect intonation. But it was all for the best in the interests of his education; and I was able, over that proof, to give him a quarter of an hour such as Fleeming loved both to give and to receive. His subsequent training pa.s.sed out of my hands into those of our common friend, W. E.
Henley. "Henley and I," he wrote, "have fairly good times wigging one another for not doing better. I wig him because he won"t try to write a real play, and he wigs me because I can"t try to write English." When I next saw him, he was full of his new acquisitions. "And yet I have lost something too," he said regretfully. "Up to now Scott seemed to me quite perfect, he was all I wanted. Since I have been learning this confounded thing, I took up one of the novels, and a great deal of it is both careless and clumsy."
V.
He spoke four languages with freedom, not even English with any marked propriety. What he uttered was not so much well said, as excellently acted: so we may hear every day the inexpressive language of a poorly-written drama a.s.sume character and colour in the hands of a good player. No man had more of the _vis comica_ in private life; he played no character on the stage, as he could play himself among his friends.
It was one of his special charms; now when the voice is silent and the face still, it makes it impossible to do justice to his power in conversation. He was a delightful companion to such as can bear bracing weather; not to the very vain; not to the owlishly wise, who cannot have their dogmas canva.s.sed; not to the painfully refined, whose sentiments become articles of faith. The spirit in which he could write that he was "much revived by having an opportunity of abusing Whistler to a knot of his special admirers," is a spirit apt to be misconstrued. He was not a dogmatist, even about Whistler. "The house is full of pretty things," he wrote, when on a visit; "but Mrs. -"s taste in pretty things has one very bad fault: it is not my taste." And that was the true att.i.tude of his mind; but these eternal differences it was his joy to thresh out and wrangle over by the hour. It was no wonder if he loved the Greeks; he was in many ways a Greek himself; he should have been a sophist and met Socrates; he would have loved Socrates, and done battle with him staunchly and manfully owned his defeat; and the dialogue, arranged by Plato, would have shown even in Plato"s gallery. He seemed in talk aggressive, petulant, full of a singular energy; as vain you would have said as a peac.o.c.k, until you trod on his toes, and then you saw that he was at least clear of all the sicklier elements of vanity. Soundly rang his laugh at any jest against himself. He wished to be taken, as he took others, for what was good in him without dissimulation of the evil, for what was wise in him without concealment of the childish. He hated a draped virtue, and despised a wit on its own defence. And he drew (if I may so express myself) a human and humorous portrait of himself with all his defects and qualities, as he thus enjoyed in talk the robust sports of the intelligence; giving and taking manfully, always without pretence, always with paradox, always with exuberant pleasure; speaking wisely of what he knew, foolishly of what he knew not; a teacher, a learner, but still combative; picking holes in what was said even to the length of captiousness, yet aware of all that was said rightly; jubilant in victory, delighted by defeat: a Greek sophist, a British schoolboy.
Among the legends of what was once a very pleasant spot, the old Savile Club, not then divorced from Savile Row, there are many memories of Fleeming. He was not popular at first, being known simply as "the man who dines here and goes up to Scotland"; but he grew at last, I think, the most generally liked of all the members. To those who truly knew and loved him, who had tasted the real sweetness of his nature, Fleeming"s porcupine ways had always been a matter of keen regret. They introduced him to their own friends with fear; sometimes recalled the step with mortification. It was not possible to look on with patience while a man so lovable thwarted love at every step. But the course of time and the ripening of his nature brought a cure. It was at the Savile that he first remarked a change; it soon spread beyond the walls of the club.
Presently I find him writing: "Will you kindly explain what has happened to me? All my life I have talked a good deal, with the almost unfailing result of making people sick of the sound of my tongue. It appeared to me that I had various things to say, and I had no malevolent feelings, but nevertheless the result was that expressed above. Well, lately some change has happened. If I talk to a person one day, they must have me the next. Faces light up when they see me.-"Ah, I say, come here,"-"come and dine with me." It"s the most preposterous thing I ever experienced.
It is curiously pleasant. You have enjoyed it all your life, and therefore cannot conceive how bewildering a burst of it is for the first time at forty-nine." And this late sunshine of popularity still further softened him. He was a bit of a porcupine to the last, still shedding darts; or rather he was to the end a bit of a schoolboy, and must still throw stones, but the essential toleration that underlay his disputatiousness, and the kindness that made of him a tender sicknurse and a generous helper, shone more conspicuously through. A new pleasure had come to him; and as with all sound natures, he was bettered by the pleasure.
I can best show Fleeming in this later stage by quoting from a vivid and interesting letter of M. Emile Trelat"s. Here, admirably expressed, is how he appeared to a friend of another nation, whom he encountered only late in life. M. Trelat will pardon me if I correct, even before I quote him; but what the Frenchman supposed to flow from some particular bitterness against France, was only Fleeming"s usual address. Had M.
Trelat been Italian, Italy would have fared as ill; and yet Italy was Fleeming"s favourite country.
Vous savez comment j"ai connu Fleeming Jenkin! C"etait en Mai 1878.
Nous etions tous deux membres du jury de l"Exposition Universelle.
On n"avait rien fait qui vaille a la premiere seance de notre cla.s.se, qui avait eu lieu le matin. Tout le monde avait parle et reparle pour ne rien dire. Cela durait depuis huit heures; il etait midi.
Je demandai la parole pour une motion d"ordre, et je proposai que la seance fut levee a la condition que chaque membre francais, _emportat_ a dejeuner un jure etranger. Jenkin applaudit. "Je vous emmene dejeuner," lui criai-je. "Je veux bien." . . . Nous partimes; en chemin nous vous rencontrions; il vous presente et nous allons dejeuner tous trois aupres du Trocadero.
Et, depuis ce temps, nous avons ete de vieux amis. Non seulement nous pa.s.sions nos journees au jury, ou nous etions toujours ensemble, cote-a-cote. Mais nos habitudes s"etaient faites telles que, non contents de dejeuner en face l"un de l"autre, je le ramenais diner presque tous les jours chez moi. Cela dura une quinzaine: puis il fut rappele en Angleterre. Mais il revint, et nous fimes encore une bonne etape de vie intellectuelle, morale et philosophique. Je crois qu"il me rendait deja tout ce que j"eprouvais de sympathie et d"estime, et que je ne fus pas pour rien dans son retour a Paris.
Chose singuliere! nous nous etions attaches l"un a l"autre par les sous-entendus bien plus que par la matiere de nos conversations. a vrai dire, nous etions presque toujours en discussion; et il nous arrivait de nous rire au nez l"un et l"autre pendant des heures, tant nous nous etonnions reciproquement de la diversite de nos points de vue. Je le trouvais si Anglais, et il me trouvais si Francais! Il etait si franchement revolte de certaines choses qu"il voyait chez nous, et je comprenais si mal certaines choses qui se pa.s.saient chez vous! Rien de plus interessant que ces contacts qui etaient des contrastes, et que ces rencontres d"idees qui etaient des choses; rien de si attachant que les echappees de cur ou d"esprit auxquelles ces pet.i.ts conflits donnaient a tout moment cours. C"est dans ces conditions que, pendant son sejour a Paris en 1878, je conduisis un peu partout mon nouvel ami. Nous allames chez Madame Edmond Adam, ou il vit pa.s.ser beaucoup d"hommes politiques avec lesquels il causa.
Mais c"est chez les ministres qu"il fut interesse. Le moment etait, d"ailleurs, curieux en France. Je me rappelle que, lorsque je le presentai au Ministre du Commerce, il fit cette spirituelle repartie: "C"est la seconde fois que je viens en France sous la Republique. La premiere fois, c"etait en 1848, elle s"etait coiffee de travers: je suis bien heureux de saluer aujourd"hui votre excellence, quand elle a mis son chapeau droit." Une fois je le menai voir couronner la Rosiere de Nanterre. Il y suivit les ceremonies civiles et religieuses; il y a.s.sista au banquet donne par le Maire; il y vit notre de Lesseps, auquel il porta un toast. Le soir, nous revinmes tard a Paris; il faisait chaud; nous etions un peu fatigues; nous entrames dans un des rares cafes encore ouverts. Il devint silencieux.-"N"etes-vous pas content de votre journee?" lui dis-je.-"O, si! mais je reflechis, et je me dis que vous etes un peuple gai-tous ces braves gens etaient gais aujourd"hui. C"est une vertu, la gaiete, et vous l"avez en France, cette vertu!" Il me disait cela melancoliquement; et c"etait la premiere fois que je lui entendais faire une louange adressee a la France. . . . Mais il ne faut pas que vous voyiez la une plainte de ma part. Je serais un ingrat si je me plaignais; car il me disait souvent: "Quel bon Francais vous faites!" Et il m"aimait a cause de cela, quoiqu"il semblat n"aimer pas la France. C"etait la un trait de son originalite. Il est vrai qu"il s"en tirait en disant que je ne ressemblai pas a mes compatriotes, ce a quoi il ne connaissait rien!-Tout cela etait fort curieux; car, moi-meme, je l"aimais quoiqu"il en eut a mon pays!
En 1879 il amena son fils Austin a Paris. J"attirai celui-ci. Il dejeunait avec moi deux fois par semaine. Je lui montrai ce qu"etait l"intimite francaise en le tutoyant paternellement. Cela reserra beaucoup nos liens d"intimite avec Jenkin. . . . Je fis inviter mon ami au congres de l"_a.s.sociation francaise pour l"avancement des sciences_, qui se tenait a Rheims en 1880. Il y vint. J"eus le plaisir de lui donner la parole dans la section du genie civil et militaire, que je presidais. Il y fit une tres interessante communication, qui me montrait une fois de plus l"originalite de ses vues et la surete de sa science. C"est a l"issue de ce congres que je pa.s.sai lui faire visite a Rochefort, ou je le trouvai installe en famille et ou je presentai pour la premiere fois mes hommages a son eminente compagne. Je le vis la sous un jour nouveau et touchant pour moi. Madame Jenkin, qu"il entourait si galamment, et ses deux jeunes fils donnaient encore plus de relief a sa personne.
J"emportai des quelques heures que je pa.s.sai a cote de lui dans ce charmant paysage un souvenir emu.
J"etais alle en Angleterre en 1882 sans pouvoir gagner Edimbourg.
J"y retournai en 1883 avec la commission d"a.s.sainiss.e.m.e.nt de la ville de Paris, dont je faisais partie. Jenkin me rejoignit. Je le fis entendre par mes collegues; car il etait fondateur d"une societe de salubrite. Il eut un grand succes parmi nous. Mais ce voyage me restera toujours en memoire parce que c"est la que se fixa defenitivement notre forte amitie. Il m"invita un jour a diner a son club et au moment de me faire a.s.seoir a cote de lui, il me retint et me dit: "Je voudrais vous demander de m"accorder quelque chose.
C"est mon sentiment que nos relations ne peuvent pas se bien continuer si vous ne me donnez pas la permission de vous tutoyer.
Voulez-vous que nous nous tutoyions?" Je lui pris les mains et je lui dis qu"une pareille proposition venant d"un Anglais, et d"un Anglais de sa haute distinction, c"etait une victoire, dont je serais fier toute ma vie. Et nous commencions a user de cette nouvelle forme dans nos rapports. Vous savez avec quelle finesse il parlait le francais: comme il en connaissait tous les tours, comme il jouait avec ses difficultes, et meme avec ses pet.i.tes gamineries. Je crois qu"il a ete heureux de pratiquer avec moi ce tutoiement, qui ne s"adapte pas a l"anglais, et qui est si francais. Je ne puis vous peindre l"etendue et la variete de nos conversations de la soiree.
Mais ce que je puis vous dire, c"est que, sous la caresse du _tu_, nos idees se sont elevees. Nous avions toujours beaucoup ri ensemble; mais nous n"avions jamais laisse des ba.n.a.lites s"introduire dans nos echanges de pensees. Ce soir-la, notre horizon intellectuel s"est elargie, et nous y avons pousse des reconnaissances profondes et lointaines. Apres avoir vivement cause a table, nous avons longuement cause au salon; et nous nous separions le soir a Trafalgar Square, apres avoir longe les trottoirs, stationne aux coins des rues et deux fois rebrousse chemin en nous reconduisant l"un l"autre. Il etait pres d"une heure du matin! Mais quelle belle pa.s.se d"argumentation, quels beaux echanges de sentiments, quelles fortes confidences patriotiques nous avions fournies! J"ai compris ce soir la que Jenkin ne detestait pas la France, et je lui serrai fort les mains en l"embra.s.sant. Nous nous quittions aussi amis qu"on puisse l"etre; et notre affection s"etait par lui etendue et comprise dans un _tu_ francais.
CHAPTER VII. 18751885.
Mrs. Jenkin"s Illness-Captain Jenkin-The Golden Wedding-Death of Uncle John-Death of Mr. and Mrs. Austin-Illness and Death of the Captain-Death of Mrs. Jenkin-Effect on Fleeming-Telpherage-The End.
AND now I must resume my narrative for that melancholy business that concludes all human histories. In January of the year 1875, while Fleeming"s sky was still unclouded, he was reading Smiles. "I read my engineers" lives steadily," he writes, "but find biographies depressing.
I suspect one reason to be that misfortunes and trials can be graphically described, but happiness and the causes of happiness either cannot be or are not. A grand new branch of literature opens to my view: a drama in which people begin in a poor way and end, after getting gradually happier, in an ecstasy of enjoyment. The common novel is not the thing at all. It gives struggle followed by relief. I want each act to close on a new and triumphant happiness, which has been steadily growing all the while. This is the real ant.i.thesis of tragedy, where things get blacker and blacker and end in hopeless woe. Smiles has not grasped my grand idea, and only shows a bitter struggle followed by a little respite before death. Some feeble critic might say my new idea was not true to nature. I"m sick of this old-fashioned notion of art. Hold a mirror up, indeed! Let"s paint a picture of how things ought to be and hold that up to nature, and perhaps the poor old woman may repent and mend her ways."
The "grand idea" might be possible in art; not even the ingenuity of nature could so round in the actual life of any man. And yet it might almost seem to fancy that she had read the letter and taken the hint; for to Fleeming the cruelties of fate were strangely blended with tenderness, and when death came, it came harshly to others, to him not unkindly.
In the autumn of that same year 1875, Fleeming"s father and mother were walking in the garden of their house at Merchiston, when the latter fell to the ground. It was thought at the time to be a stumble; it was in all likelihood a premonitory stroke of palsy. From that day, there fell upon her an abiding panic fear; that glib, superficial part of us that speaks and reasons could allege no cause, science itself could find no mark of danger, a son"s solicitude was laid at rest; but the eyes of the body saw the approach of a blow, and the consciousness of the body trembled at its coming. It came in a moment; the brilliant, spirited old lady leapt from her bed, raving. For about six months, this stage of her disease continued with many painful and many pathetic circ.u.mstances; her husband who tended her, her son who was unwearied in his visits, looked for no change in her condition but the change that comes to all. "Poor mother,"
I find Fleeming writing, "I cannot get the tones of her voice out of my head. . . I may have to bear this pain for a long time; and so I am bearing it and sparing myself whatever pain seems useless. Mercifully I do sleep, I am so weary that I must sleep." And again later: "I could do very well, if my mind did not revert to my poor mother"s state whenever I stop attending to matters immediately before me." And the next day: "I can never feel a moment"s pleasure without having my mother"s suffering recalled by the very feeling of happiness. A pretty, young face recalls hers by contrast-a careworn face recalls it by a.s.sociation. I tell you, for I can speak to no one else; but do not suppose that I wilfully let my mind dwell on sorrow."
In the summer of the next year, the frenzy left her; it left her stone deaf and almost entirely aphasic, but with some remains of her old sense and courage. Stoutly she set to work with dictionaries, to recover her lost tongues; and had already made notable progress, when a third stroke scattered her acquisitions. Thenceforth, for nearly ten years, stroke followed upon stroke, each still further jumbling the threads of her intelligence, but by degrees so gradual and with such partiality of loss and of survival, that her precise state was always and to the end a matter of dispute. She still remembered her friends; she still loved to learn news of them upon the slate; she still read and marked the list of the subscription library; she still took an interest in the choice of a play for the theatricals, and could remember and find parallel pa.s.sages; but alongside of these surviving powers, were lapses as remarkable, she misbehaved like a child, and a servant had to sit with her at table. To see her so sitting, speaking with the tones of a deaf mute not always to the purpose, and to remember what she had been, was a moving appeal to all who knew her. Such was the pathos of these two old people in their affliction, that even the reserve of cities was melted and the neighbours vied in sympathy and kindness. Where so many were more than usually helpful, it is hard to draw distinctions; but I am directed and I delight to mention in particular the good Dr. Joseph Bell, Mr. Thomas, and Mr.
Archibald Constable with both their wives, the Rev. Mr. Belcombe (of whose good heart and taste I do not hear for the first time-the news had come to me by way of the Infirmary), and their next-door neighbour, unwearied in service, Miss Hannah Mayne. Nor should I omit to mention that John Ruffini continued to write to Mrs. Jenkin till his own death, and the clever lady known to the world as Vernon Lee until the end: a touching, a becoming attention to what was only the wreck and survival of their brilliant friend.
But he to whom this affliction brought the greatest change was the Captain himself. What was bitter in his lot, he bore with unshaken courage; only once, in these ten years of trial, has Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin seen him weep; for the rest of the time his wife-his commanding officer, now become his trying child-was served not with patience alone, but with a lovely happiness of temper. He had belonged all his life to the ancient, formal, speechmaking, compliment-presenting school of courtesy; the dictates of this code partook in his eyes of the nature of a duty; and he must now be courteous for two. Partly from a happy illusion, partly in a tender fraud, he kept his wife before the world as a still active partner. When he paid a call, he would have her write "with love"
upon a card; or if that (at the moment) was too much, he would go armed with a bouquet and present it in her name. He even wrote letters for her to copy and sign: an innocent subst.i.tution, which may have caused surprise to Ruffini or to Vernon Lee, if they ever received, in the hand of Mrs. Jenkin the very obvious reflections of her husband. He had always adored this wife whom he now tended and sought to represent in correspondence: it was now, if not before, her turn to repay the compliment; mind enough was left her to perceive his unwearied kindness; and as her moral qualities seemed to survive quite unimpaired, a childish love and grat.i.tude were his reward. She would interrupt a conversation to cross the room and kiss him. If she grew excited (as she did too often) it was his habit to come behind her chair and pat her shoulder; and then she would turn round, and clasp his hand in hers, and look from him to her visitor with a face of pride and love; and it was at such moments only that the light of humanity revived in her eyes. It was hard for any stranger, it was impossible for any that loved them, to behold these mute scenes, to recall the past, and not to weep. But to the Captain, I think it was all happiness. After these so long years, he had found his wife again; perhaps kinder than ever before; perhaps now on a more equal footing; certainly, to his eyes, still beautiful. And the call made on his intelligence had not been made in vain. The merchants of Aux Cayes, who had seen him tried in some "counter-revolution" in 1845, wrote to the consul of his "able and decided measures," "his cool, steady judgment and discernment" with admiration; and of himself, as "a credit and an ornament to H. M. Naval Service." It is plain he must have sunk in all his powers, during the years when he was only a figure, and often a dumb figure, in his wife"s drawing-room; but with this new term of service, he brightened visibly. He showed tact and even invention in managing his wife, guiding or restraining her by the touch, holding family worship so arranged that she could follow and take part in it. He took (to the world"s surprise) to reading-voyages, biographies, Blair"s _Sermons_, even (for her letter"s sake) a work of Vernon Lee"s, which proved, however, more than he was quite prepared for. He shone more, in his remarkable way, in society; and twice he had a little holiday to Glenmorven, where, as may be fancied, he was the delight of the Highlanders. One of his last pleasures was to arrange his dining-room.
Many and many a room (in their wandering and thriftless existence) had he seen his wife furnish with exquisite taste, and perhaps with "considerable luxury": now it was his turn to be the decorator. On the wall he had an engraving of Lord Rodney"s action, showing the _Prothee_, his father"s ship, if the reader recollects; on either side of this on brackets, his father"s sword, and his father"s telescope, a gift from Admiral Buckner, who had used it himself during the engagement; higher yet, the head of his grandson"s first stag, portraits of his son and his son"s wife, and a couple of old Windsor jugs from Mrs. Buckner"s. But his simple trophy was not yet complete; a device had to be worked and framed and hung below the engraving; and for this he applied to his daughter-in-law: "I want you to work me something, Annie. An anchor at each side-an anchor-stands for an old sailor, you know-stands for hope, you know-an anchor at each side, and in the middle THANKFUL." It is not easy, on any system of punctuation, to represent the Captain"s speech.
Yet I hope there may shine out of these facts, even as there shone through his own troubled utterance, some of the charm of that delightful spirit.
In 1881, the time of the golden wedding came round for that sad and pretty household. It fell on a Good Friday, and its celebration can scarcely be recalled without both smiles and tears. The drawing-room was filled with presents and beautiful bouquets; these, to Fleeming and his family, the golden bride and bridegroom displayed with unspeakable pride, she so painfully excited that the guests feared every moment to see her stricken afresh, he guiding and moderating her with his customary tact and understanding, and doing the honours of the day with more than his usual delight. Thence they were brought to the dining-room, where the Captain"s idea of a feast awaited them: tea and champagne, fruit and toast and childish little luxuries, set forth pell-mell and pressed at random on the guests. And here he must make a speech for himself and his wife, praising their destiny, their marriage, their son, their daughter-in-law, their grandchildren, their manifold causes of grat.i.tude: surely the most innocent speech, the old, sharp contemner of his innocence now watching him with eyes of admiration. Then it was time for the guests to depart; and they went away, bathed, even to the youngest child, in tears of inseparable sorrow and gladness, and leaving the golden bride and bridegroom to their own society and that of the hired nurse.
It was a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits; but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable duties for which Fleeming lived, and he could not pardon even the suggestion of neglect.
And now, after death had so long visibly but still innocuously hovered above the family, it began at last to strike and its blows fell thick and heavy. The first to go was uncle John Jenkin, taken at last from his Mexican dwelling and the lost tribes of Israel; and nothing in this remarkable old gentleman"s life, became him like the leaving of it. His sterling, jovial acquiescence in man"s destiny was a delight to Fleeming.
"My visit to Stowting has been a very strange but not at all a painful one," he wrote. "In case you ever wish to make a person die as he ought to die in a novel," he said to me, "I must tell you all about my old uncle." He was to see a nearer instance before long; for this family of Jenkin, if they were not very aptly fitted to live, had the art of manly dying. Uncle John was but an outsider after all; he had dropped out of hail of his nephew"s way of life and station in society, and was more like some shrewd, old, humble friend who should have kept a lodge; yet he led the procession of becoming deaths, and began in the mind of Fleeming that train of tender and grateful thought, which was like a preparation for his own. Already I find him writing in the plural of "these impending deaths"; already I find him in quest of consolation. "There is little pain in store for these wayfarers," he wrote, "and we have hope-more than hope, trust."
On May 19, 1884, Mr. Austin was taken. He was seventy-eight years of age, suffered sharply with all his old firmness, and died happy in the knowledge that he had left his wife well cared for. This had always been a bosom concern; for the Barrons were long-lived and he believed that she would long survive him. But their union had been so full and quiet that Mrs. Austin languished under the separation. In their last years, they would sit all evening in their own drawing-room hand in hand: two old people who, for all their fundamental differences, had yet grown together and become all the world in each other"s eyes and hearts; and it was felt to be a kind release, when eight months after, on January 14, 1885, Eliza Barron followed Alfred Austin. "I wish I could save you from all pain,"
wrote Fleeming six days later to his sorrowing wife, "I would if I could-but my way is not G.o.d"s way; and of this be a.s.sured,-G.o.d"s way is best."
In the end of the same month, Captain Jenkin caught cold and was confined to bed. He was so unchanged in spirit that at first there seemed no ground of fear; but his great age began to tell, and presently it was plain he had a summons. The charm of his sailor"s cheerfulness and ancient courtesy, as he lay dying, is not to be described. There he lay, singing his old sea songs; watching the poultry from the window with a child"s delight; scribbling on the slate little messages to his wife, who lay bed-ridden in another room; glad to have Psalms read aloud to him, if they were of a pious strain-checking, with an "I don"t think we need read that, my dear," any that were gloomy or b.l.o.o.d.y. Fleeming"s wife coming to the house and asking one of the nurses for news of Mrs. Jenkin, "Madam, I do not know," said the nurse; "for I am really so carried away by the Captain that I can think of nothing else." One of the last messages scribbled to his wife and sent her with a gla.s.s of the champagne that had been ordered for himself, ran, in his most finished vein of childish madrigal: "The Captain bows to you, my love, across the table."
When the end was near and it was thought best that Fleeming should no longer go home but sleep at Merchiston, he broke his news to the Captain with some trepidation, knowing that it carried sentence of death.
"Charming, charming-charming arrangement," was the Captain"s only commentary. It was the proper thing for a dying man, of Captain Jenkin"s school of manners, to make some expression of his spiritual state; nor did he neglect the observance. With his usual abruptness, "Fleeming,"
said he, "I suppose you and I feel about all this as two Christian gentlemen should." A last pleasure was secured for him. He had been waiting with painful interest for news of Gordon and Khartoum; and by great good fortune, a false report reached him that the city was relieved, and the men of Suss.e.x (his old neighbours) had been the first to enter. He sat up in bed and gave three cheers for the Suss.e.x regiment. The subsequent correction, if it came in time, was prudently withheld from the dying man. An hour before midnight on the fifth of February, he pa.s.sed away: aged eighty-four.
Word of his death was kept from Mrs. Jenkin; and she survived him no more than nine and forty hours. On the day before her death, she received a letter from her old friend Miss Bell of Manchester, knew the hand, kissed the envelope, and laid it on her heart; so that she too died upon a pleasure. Half an hour after midnight, on the eighth of February, she fell asleep: it is supposed in her seventy-eighth year.
Thus, in the s.p.a.ce of less than ten months, the four seniors of this family were taken away; but taken with such features of opportunity in time or pleasant courage in the sufferer, that grief was tempered with a kind of admiration. The effect on Fleeming was profound. His pious optimism increased and became touched with something mystic and filial.
"The grave is not good, the approaches to it are terrible," he had written in the beginning of his mother"s illness: he thought so no more, when he had laid father and mother side by side at Stowting. He had always loved life; in the brief time that now remained to him, he seemed to be half in love with death. "Grief is no duty," he wrote to Miss Bell; "it was all too beautiful for grief," he said to me; but the emotion, call it by what name we please, shook him to his depths; his wife thought he would have broken his heart when he must demolish the Captain"s trophy in the dining-room, and he seemed thenceforth scarcely the same man.
These last years were indeed years of an excessive demand upon his vitality; he was not only worn out with sorrow, he was worn out by hope.
The singular invention to which he gave the name of telpherage, had of late consumed his time, overtaxed his strength and overheated his imagination. The words in which he first mentioned his discovery to me-"I am simply Alnaschar"-were not only descriptive of his state of mind, they were in a sense prophetic; since whatever fortune may await his idea in the future, it was not his to see it bring forth fruit.
Alnaschar he was indeed; beholding about him a world all changed, a world filled with telpherage wires; and seeing not only himself and family but all his friends enriched. It was his pleasure, when the company was floated, to endow those whom he liked with stock; one, at least, never knew that he was a possible rich man until the grave had closed over his stealthy benefactor. And however Fleeming chafed among material and business difficulties, this rainbow vision never faded; and he, like his father and his mother, may be said to have died upon a pleasure. But the strain told, and he knew that it was telling. "I am becoming a fossil,"
he had written five years before, as a kind of plea for a holiday visit to his beloved Italy. "Take care! If I am Mr. Fossil, you will be Mrs.
Fossil, and Jack will be Jack Fossil, and all the boys will be little fossils, and then we shall be a collection." There was no fear more chimerical for Fleeming; years brought him no repose; he was as packed with energy, as fiery in hope, as at the first; weariness, to which he began to be no stranger, distressed, it did not quiet him. He feared for himself, not without ground, the fate which had overtaken his mother; others shared the fear. In the changed life now made for his family, the elders dead, the sons going from home upon their education, even their tried domestic (Mrs. Alice Dunns) leaving the house after twenty-two years of service, it was not unnatural that he should return to dreams of Italy. He and his wife were to go (as he told me) on "a real honeymoon tour." He had not been alone with his wife "to speak of," he added, since the birth of his children. But now he was to enjoy the society of her to whom he wrote, in these last days, that she was his "Heaven on earth." Now he was to revisit Italy, and see all the pictures and the buildings and the scenes that he admired so warmly, and lay aside for a time the irritations of his strenuous activity. Nor was this all. A trifling operation was to restore his former lightness of foot; and it was a renovated youth that was to set forth upon this reenacted honeymoon.
The operation was performed; it was of a trifling character, it seemed to go well, no fear was entertained; and his wife was reading aloud to him as he lay in bed, when she perceived him to wander in his mind. It is doubtful if he ever recovered a sure grasp upon the things of life; and he was still unconscious when he pa.s.sed away, June the twelfth, 1885, in the fifty-third year of his age. He pa.s.sed; but something in his gallant vitality had impressed itself upon his friends, and still impresses. Not from one or two only, but from many, I hear the same tale of how the imagination refuses to accept our loss and instinctively looks for his reappearing, and how memory retains his voice and image like things of yesterday. Others, the well-beloved too, die and are progressively forgotten; two years have pa.s.sed since Fleeming was laid to rest beside his father, his mother, and his Uncle John; and the thought and the look of our friend still haunt us.