Master of His Fate

Julius Courtney.

The Hyacinth Club has the reputation of selecting its members from among the freshest and most active spirits in literature, science, and art. That is in a sense true, but activity in one or another of those fields is not a condition of membership; for, just as the listening Boswell was the necessary complement of the talking Johnson, so in the Hyacinth Club there is an indispensable contingent of passive members who find their liveliest satisfaction in hearing and looking on, rather than in speaking and doing. Something of the home principle of male and female is necessary for the completeness even of a club.

The Hyacinth Club-house looks upon Piccadilly and the Green Park. The favourite place of concourse of its members is the magnificent smoking-room on the first floor, the bow-windows of which command a view up and down the fashionable thoroughfare, and over the trees and the undulating sward of the Park to the gates of Buckingham Palace. On a Monday afternoon in the beginning of May, the bow-windows were open, and several men sat in leather lounges (while one leaned against a window-sash), luxuriously smoking, and noting the warm, palpitating life of the world without. A storm which had been silently and doubtfully glooming and gathering the night before had burst and poured in the morning, and it was such a spring afternoon as thrills the heart with new life and suffuses the soul with expectation-such an afternoon as makes all women appear beautiful and all men handsome. The south-west wind blew soft and balmy, and all nature rejoiced as the bride in the presence of the bridegroom. The trees in the Park were full of sap, and their lusty buds were eagerly opening to the air and the light. The robin sang with a note almost as rich and sensuous as that of the thrush; and the shrill and restless sparrows chirped and chattered about the houses and among the horses' feet, and were as full of the joy of life as the men and women who thronged the pavements or reclined in their carriages in the sumptuous ease of wealth and beauty.

Of the men who languidly gazed upon the gay and splendid scene from the windows of the Club, none seemed so interested as the man who leaned against the window-frame. He appeared more than interested-absorbed, indeed-in the world without, and he looked bright and handsome enough, and charged enough with buoyant health, to be the ideal bridegroom of Nature in her springtide.

He was a dark man, tall and well built, with clear brown eyes. His black hair (which was not cropped short, as is the fashion) had a lustrous softness, and at the same time an elastic bushiness, which nothing but the finest-tempered health can give; and his complexion, though tanned by exposure, had yet much of the smoothness of youth, save where the razor had passed upon his beard. Thus seen, a little way off, he appeared a young man in his rosy twenties; on closer view and acquaintance, however, that superficial impression was contradicted by the set expression of his mouth and the calm observation and understanding of his eye, which spoke of ripe experience rather than of green hope. He bore a very good English name-Courtney; and he was believed to be rich. There was no member of whom the Hyacinth Club was prouder than of him: though he had done nothing, it was commonly believed he could do anything he chose. No other was listened to with such attention, and there was nothing on which he could not throw a fresh and fascinating light. He was a constant spring of surprise and interest. While others were striving after income and reputation, he calmly and modestly, without obtrusion or upbraiding, held on his own way, with unsurpassable curiosity, to the discovery of all which life might have to reveal. It was this, perhaps, as much as the charm of his manner and conversation, that made him so universal a favourite; for how could envy or malice touch a man who competed at no point with his fellows?

His immediate neighbours, as he thus stood by the window, were a pair of journalists, several scientific men, and an artist.

"Have you seen any of the picture-shows, Julius?" asked the painter, Kew.

Courtney slowly abstracted his gaze from without, and turned on his shoulder with the lazy, languid grace of a cat.

"No," said he, in a half-absent tone; "I have just come up, and I've not thought of looking into picture-galleries yet."

"Been in the country?" asked Kew.

"Yes, I've been in the country," said Courtney, still as if his attention was elsewhere.

"It must be looking lovely," said Kew.

"It is-exquisite!" said Courtney, waking up at length to a full glow of interest. "That's why I don't want to go and stare at pictures. In the spring, to see the fresh, virginal, delicious green of a bush against an old dry brick wall, gives a keener pleasure than the best picture that ever was painted."

"I thought," said Kew, "you had a taste for Art; I thought you enjoyed it."

"So I do, my dear fellow, but not now,-not at this particular present. When I feel the warm sun on my back and breathe the soft air, I want no more; they are more than Art can give-they are Nature, and, of course, it goes without saying that Art can never compete with Nature in creating human pleasure. I mean no disparagement of your work, Kew, or any artist's work; but I can't endure Art except in winter, when everything (almost) must be artificial to be endurable. A winter may come in one's life-I wonder if it will?-when one would rather look at the picture of a woman than at the woman herself. Meantime I no more need pictures than I need fires; I warm both hands and heart at the fire of life."

"Ah!" said Kew, with a wistful lack of comprehension.

"That's why I believe," said Courtney, with a sudden turn of reflection, "there is in warm countries no Art of our small domestic kind."

"Just so," said Kew; while Dingley Dell, the Art critic, made a note of Courtney's words.

"Look here!" exclaimed Dr. Embro, an old scientific man of Scottish extraction, who, in impatience with such transcendental talk, had taken up 'The St. James's Gazette.' "What do you make of this queer case at the H?tel-Dieu in Paris? I see it's taken from 'The Daily Telegraph;'" and he began to read it.

"Oh," said Kew, "we all read that this morning."

"Dr. Embro," said Courtney, again looking idly out of window, "is like a French journal: full of the news of the day before yesterday."

"Have you read it yourself, Julius?" asked Embro, amid the laughter of his neighbours.

"No," said Julius carelessly; "and if it's a hospital case I don't want to read it."

"What!" said Embro, with heavy irony. "You say that? You, a pupil of the great Dubois and the greater Charbon! But here comes a greater than Charbon-the celebrated Dr. Lefevre himself. Come now, Lefevre, you tell us what you think of this Paris hospital case."

"Presently, Embro," said Lefevre, who had just perceived his friend Courtney. "Ha, Julius!" said he, crossing to him and taking his hand; "you're looking uncommonly well."

"Yes," said Julius, "I am well."

"And where have you been all this while?" asked the doctor.

"Oh," said Julius, turning his gaze again out of window, "I have been rambling everywhere, between Dan and Beersheba."

"And all is vanity, eh?" said the doctor.

"Well," said Julius, looking at him, "that depends-that very much depends. But can there be any question of vanity or vexation in this sweet, glorious sunshine?" and he stretched out his hands as if he burgeoned forth to welcome it.

"Perhaps not," said Lefevre. "Come and sit down and let us talk."

They were retiring from the window when Embro's voice again sounded at Lefevre's elbow-"Come now, Lefevre; what's the meaning of that Paris case?"

"What Paris case?"

Embro answered by handing him the paper. He took it, and read as follows:-

"About a month ago a strange case of complete mental collapse was received into the H?tel-Dieu. A fresh healthy girl, of the working class, about twenty years of age, and comfortably dressed, presented herself at a police-station near the Odéon and asked for shelter. As she did not appear to be in full possession of her mental faculties, she was sent to the H?tel-Dieu, where she remained in a semi-comatose condition. Her memory did not go farther back than the hour of her application at the police-station. She was entirely ignorant of her previous history, and had even forgotten her name. The minds of the medical staff of the H?tel-Dieu were very much exercised with her condition; but it was not till about a week ago that they succeeded in restoring to any extent her mental consciousness and her memory. She then remembered the events immediately preceding her application to the police. It had come on to rain, she said, and she was hurrying along to escape from it, when a gentleman in a cloak came to her side and politely offered to give her the shelter of his umbrella. She accepted; the gentleman seemed old and ill. He asked her to take his arm. She did so, and very soon she felt as if her strength had gone from her; a cold shiver crept over her; she trembled and tottered; but with all that she did not find her sensations disagreeable exactly or alarming; so little so, indeed, that she never thought of letting go the gentleman's arm. Her head buzzed, and a kind of darkness came over her. Then all seemed to clear, and she found herself alone near the police-station, remembering nothing. Being asked to further describe the gentleman, she said he was tall and dark, with a pleasant voice and wonderful eyes, that made you feel you must do whatever he wished. The police have made inquiries, but after such a lapse of time it is not surprising that no trace of him can be found."

"Well?" asked Embro, when Lefevre had raised his eyes from the paper. "What do you think of it?"

"Curious," said Lefevre. "I can't say more, since I know nothing of it but this. Have you read it, Julius?"

"No," said Julius; "I hate what people call news; and when I take up a paper, it's only to look at the Weather Forecasts." Lefevre handed him the paper, which he took with an unconcealed look of repulsion. "If it's some case of disease," said he, "it will make me ill."

"Oh no," said Lefevre; "it's not painful, but it's curious;" and so Julius set himself to read it.

"But come," said Embro, posing the question with his forefinger; "do you believe that story, Lefevre?"

"Though it's French, and from the 'Telegraph,'" said Lefevre, "I see no reason to disbelieve it."

"Come," said Embro, "come-you're shirking the question."

"I confess," said Lefevre, "I've no desire to discuss it. You think me prejudiced in favour of anything of the kind; perhaps I think you prejudiced against it: where, then, is the good of discussion?"

"Well, now," said the unabashed Embro, "I'll tell you what I think. Here's a story"-Julius at that instant handed back the paper to him-"of a healthy young woman mesmerised, hypnotised, or somnambulised, or whatever you like to call it, in the public street, by some man that casually comes up to her, and her brain so affected that her memory goes! I say it's inconceivable!-impossible!" And he slapped the paper down on the table.

The others looked on with grim satisfaction at the prospect of an argument between the two representatives of rival schools; and it was noteworthy that, as they looked, they turned a referring glance on Courtney, as if it were a foregone conclusion that he must be the final arbiter. He, however, sat abstracted, with his eyes on the floor, and with one hand propping his chin and the other drumming on the arm of his chair.

"I'm not a scientific man," said the journalist who was not an Art critic, "and I am not prejudiced either way about this story; but it seems to me, Embro, that you view the thing through a very ordinary fallacy, and make a double mistake. You confound the relatively inconceivable with the absolutely impossible: this story is relatively inconceivable to you, and therefore you say it is absolutely impossible."

"Is there such a thing as an absolute impossibility?" murmured Julius, who still sat with his chin in his hand, looking as if he considered the "thing" from a long way off as one of a multitude of other things.

"I do not believe there is," said the journalist; "but--"

"Don't let us lose ourselves in metaphysics," broke in Embro. Then, turning to Courtney, whose direct intelligent gaze seemed to disconcert him, he said, "Now, Julius, you've seen, I daresay, a good many things we have not seen,-have you ever seen or known a case like this we're talking about?"

"I can't say I have," said Julius.

"There you are!" quoth Embro, in triumph.

"But," continued Julius, "I don't therefore nail that case down as false."

"Do you mean to say," exclaimed Embro, "that you have lived all your years, and studied science at the Salpétrière,-or what they call science there,-and studied and seen God knows what else besides, and you can't pronounce an opinion from all you know on a case of this sort?"

"Oh yes," said Julius, quietly, "I can pronounce an opinion; but what's the use of that? I think that case is true, but I don't know that it is; and therefore I can't argue about it, for argument should come from knowledge, and I have none. I have a few opinions, and I am always ready to receive impressions; but, besides some schoolboy facts that are common property, the only thing I know-I am certain of-is, as some man says, 'Life's a dream worth dreaming.'"

"You're too high-falutin for me, Julius," said Embro, shaking his head. "But my opinion, founded on my knowledge, is that this story is a hallucination of the young woman's noddle!"

"And how much, Embro," laughed Julius, rising to leave the circle, "is the argument advanced by your ticketing the case with that long word?"

"To say 'hallucination,'" quoth Lefevre, "is a convenient way of giving inquiry the slip."

"My dear Embro," said Julius,-and he spoke with an emphasis, and looked down on Embro with a bright vivacity of eye, which forewarned the circle of one of his eloquent flashes: a smile of expectant enjoyment passed round,-"hallucination is the dust-heap and limbo of the meanly-equipped man of science to-day, just as witchcraft was a few hundred years ago. The poor creature of science long ago, when he came upon any pathological or psychological manifestation he did not understand, used to say, 'Witchcraft! Away with it to the limbo!' To-day he says, 'Hallucination! Away with it to the dust-heap!' It is a pity," said he, with a laugh, "you ever took to science, Embro."

"And why, may I ask?" said Embro.

"Oh, you'd have been great as an orthodox theologian of the Kirk; the cocksureness of theology would have suited you like your own coat. You are not at home in science, for you have no imagination."

It was characteristic of the peculiar regard in which Julius was held that whatever he said or did appeared natural and pleasant,-like the innocent actions and the simple, truthful speech of a child. Not even Embro was offended with these last words of his: the others laughed; Embro smiled, though with a certain sourness.

"Pooh, Julius!" said he; "what are you talking about? Science is the examination of facts, and what has imagination to do with that? Reason, sir, is what you want!"

"My dear Embro," said Julius, "there are several kinds of facts. There are, for instance, big facts and little facts,-clean facts and dirty facts. Imagination raises you and gives you a high and comprehensive view of them all; your mere reason keeps you down in some noisome corner, like the man with the muck-rake."

"Hear, hear!" cried the journalist and the artist heartily.

"You're wrong, Julius," said Embro,-"quite wrong. Keep your imagination for painting and poetry. In science it just leads you the devil's own dance, and fills you with delusions."

Julius paused, and bent on him his peculiar look, which made a man feel he was being seen through and through.

"I am surprised, Embro," said he, "that one can live all your years and not find that the illusions of life are its best part. If you leave me the illusions, I'll give you all the realities. But how can we stay babbling and quibbling here all this delicious afternoon? I must go out and see green things and beasts. Come with me, Lefevre, to the Zoological Gardens; it will do you good."

"I tell you what," said Lefevre, looking at the clock as they moved away; "my mother and sister will call for me with the carriage in less than half an hour: come with us for a drive."

"Oh yes," said Julius; "that's a good idea."

"And I," said Lefevre, "must have a cup of tea in the meantime. Come and sit down, and tell me where you have been."

But when they had sat down, Julius was little inclined to divagate into an account of his travels. His glance swept round and noted everything; he remarked on a soft effect of a shaft of sunshine that lit up the small conservatory, and burnished the green of a certain plant; he perceived a fine black Persian cat, the latest pet of the Club, and exclaimed, "What a beautiful, superb creature!" He called it, and it came, daintily sniffed at his leg, and leaped on his lap, where he stroked and fondled it. And all the while he continued to discuss illusion, while Lefevre poured and drank tea (tea, which Julius would not share: tea, he said, did not agree with him).

"It bothers me," he said, "to imagine how a man like Embro gets any satisfaction out of life, for ever mumbling the bare dry bones of science. Such a life as his might as well be passed in the receiver of an air-pump."

"Still the old Julius!" said the doctor, with a smile. "Still dreaming and wandering, interested in everything, but having nothing to do!"

"Nothing to do, my dear fellow?" said Julius. "I've all the world to enjoy!" and he buried his cheek in the soft fur of the cat.

"A purpose in life, however," said Lefevre, "gives an extraordinary zest to all enjoyment."

"To live," said Julius, "is surely the purpose of life. Any smaller, any more obvious purpose, will spoil life, just as it spoils Art."

"I believe, my boy, you are wrong in both," said Lefevre. "Art without a purpose goes off into all sorts of madness and extravagance, and so does life."

"You really think so?" said Julius, his attention fixed for an instant, and looking as if he had set up the point and regarded it at a distance. "Yes; perhaps it does." But the next moment his attention seemed given to the cat; he fondled it, and talked to it soothingly.

"I am sure of it," said Lefevre. "Just listen to me, Julius. You have wonderful intelligence and penetration in everything. You are fond of science; science needs men like you more than the dull plodders that usually take to it. When you were in Charbon's class you were his favourite and his best pupil,-don't I remember?-and if you liked you could be the greatest physician of the age."

"It is treason to yourself to say such a thing."

"Your fame would soon eclipse mine."

"Fame! fame!" exclaimed Julius, for an instant showing irritation. "I would not give a penny-piece for fame if all the magicians of the East came crying it down the streets! Why should I seek fame? What good would it do me if I had it?"

"Well, well," said Lefevre; "let fame alone: you might be as unknown as you like, and do a world of good in practice among the poor."

Julius looked at him, and set the cat down.

"My dear Lefevre," said he, "I did not think you could urge such common twaddle! You know well enough,-nobody knows better,-first of all, that there are already more men waiting to do that kind of thing than can find occupation: why should I go down among them and try to take their work? And you know, in the next place, that medical philanthropy, like all other philanthropy, is so overdone that the race is fast deteriorating; we strive with so much success to keep the sickly and the diseased alive, that perfect health is scarcely known. Life without health can be nothing but a weariness: why should it be reckoned a praiseworthy thing to keep it going at any price? If life became a burden to me, I should lay it down."

"But," said Lefevre, earnestly, "your life surely is not your own to do with it what you like!"

"In the name of truth, Lefevre," answered Julius, "if my life is not my own, what is? I get its elements from others, but I fashion it myself, just as much as the sculptor shapes his statue, or the poet turns his poem. You don't deny to the sculptor the right to smash his statue if it does not please him, nor to the poet the right to burn his manuscript;-why should you deny me the right to dispose of my life? I know-I know," said he, seeing Lefevre open his mouth and raise his hand for another observation, "that your opinion is the common one, but that is the only sanction it has; it has the sanction neither of true morality nor of true religion! But here is the waiter to tell you the carriage is come. I'm glad. Let us get out into the air and the sunshine."

The carriage was the doctor's own; his mother, although the widow of a Court physician, was too poor to maintain much equipage, but she made what use she pleased of her son's possessions. When Lady Lefevre saw Julius at the carriage-door, she broke into smiles and cries of welcome.

"Where have you been this long, long while, Julius?" said she. "This is Julius Courtney, Nora. You remember Nora, Julius, when she was a little girl in frocks?"

"She now wears remarkable gowns," chimed in the doctor.

"Which," said Julius, "I have no doubt are becoming."

"My brother," said Nora, with a sunny smile, "is jealous; because, being a doctor, he must wear only dowdy clothes of dingy colours."

"We have finished at school and college, and been presented at Court," laughed Lady Lefevre.

"And," broke in the brother, "we have had cards engraved with our full name, Leonora."

"With all this," said Lady Lefevre, "I hope you won't be afraid of us."

"I see no reason," said Julius. "For, if I may say so, I like everything in Nature, and it seems to me Nature has had more to do with the finishing you speak of than the schoolmistress or the college professor."

"There he is already," laughed Lady Lefevre, "with his equivocal compliments. I shouldn't wonder if he says that, my dear, because you have not yet had more than a word to say for yourself."

By that time Lefevre and Julius were seated, and the carriage was rolling along towards the Park. Julius sat immediately opposite Lady Lefevre, but he included both her and Nora in his talk and his bright glances. The doctor sat agreeably suffused with delight and wonder. No one, as has been seen, had a higher opinion of Courtney's rare powers, or had had more various evidence of them, than Lefevre, but even he had never known his friend so brilliant. He was instinct with life and eloquence. His face shone as with an inner light, and his talk was bright, searching, and ironical. The amazing thing, however, was that Julius had as stimulating and intoxicating an influence on Nora as, it was clear, Nora had on him. His sister had not appeared to Lefevre hitherto more than a beautiful, healthy, shy girl of tolerable intelligence; now she showed that she had brilliance and wit, and, moreover, that she understood Julius as one native of a strange realm understands another. When they entered the Park, they were the observed of all. And, indeed, Leonora Lefevre was a vision to excite the worship of those least inclined to idolatry of Nature. She was of the noblest type of English beauty, and she seemed as calmly unconscious of its excellence and rarity as one of the grand Greek women of the Parthenon. She had, however, a sensuous fulness and bloom, a queenly carriage of head and neck, a clearness of feature, and a liquid kindness of eye that suggested a deep potentiality of passion.

They drove round the Row, and round again, and they talked and laughed their fill of wisdom and frivolity and folly. To be foolish wisely and gracefully is a rare attainment. When they had almost completed their third round, Julius (who had finished a marvellous story of a fairy princess and a cat) said, "I can see you are fond of beasts, Miss Lefevre. I should like to take you to the Zoological Gardens and show you my favourites there. May we go now, Lady Lefevre?"

"By all means," said Lady Lefevre, "let us go. What do you say, John?"

"Oh, wherever you like, mother," answered her son.

Arrived in the Gardens, Julius took possession of his companions, and exerted all his arts to charm and fascinate. He led the ladies from cage to cage, from enclosure to enclosure, showed himself as familiar with the characters and habits of their wild denizens as a farmer is with those of his stock, and they responded to his strange calls, to his gentleness and fearlessness, with an alert understanding and confidence beautiful to see. His favourites were certain creatures of the deer species, which crowded to their fences to sniff his clothes, and to lick his hands, which he abandoned to their caresses with manifest satisfaction. His example encouraged the queenly Nora and her sprightly mother to feed the beautiful creatures with bread and buns, and to feel the suffusion of pleasure derived from the contact of their soft lips with the palm of the hand. After that they were scarcely astonished when, without bravado, but clearly with simple confidence and enjoyment, Julius put his hand within the bars of the lion's cage and scratched the ears of a lioness, murmuring the while in a strange tongue such fond sounds as only those use who are on the best terms with animals. The great brute rose to his touch, closing its eyes, and bearing up its head like a cat.

Then came an incident that deeply impressed the Lefevres. Julius went to a cage in which, he said, there was a recent arrival-a leopard from the "Land of the Setting Sun," the romantic land of the Moors. The creature crouched sulking in the back of the cage. Julius tapped on the bars, and entreated her in the language of her native land, "Ya, dudu! ya, lellatsi!" She bounded to him with a "wir-r-r" of delight, leaned and rubbed herself against the bars, and gave herself up to be stroked and fondled. When he left her, she cried after him piteously, and wistfully watched him out of sight.

"Do you know the beautiful creature?" asked Lady Lefevre.

"Yes," answered Julius quietly; "I brought her over some months ago."

Lefevre had explained to his mother that Julius had always been on friendly or fond terms with animals, but never till now had he seen the remarkable understanding he clearly maintained with them.

"Look!" said Lady Lefevre to her son as they turned to leave the Gardens. "He seems to have fascinated Nora as much as the beasts."

Nora stood a little aloof, regarding Julius in an ecstasy of admiration. When she found her mother was looking at her, her eyes sank, and as it were a veil of blushes fell over her. Mother and son walked on first, and Julius followed with Nora.

"He is a most charming and extraordinary man," said the mother.

"He is," said the son, "and amazingly intelligent."

"He seems to know everything, and to have been everywhere,-to have been a kind of rolling stone. If anything should come of this, I suppose he can afford to marry. You ought to know about him."

"I believe I know as much as any one."

"He has no profession?" queried the lady.

"He has no profession; but I suppose he could afford it," said Lefevre musingly.

"You don't like the idea," said his mother.

"Not much. I scarce know why. But I somehow think of him as not having enough sense of the responsibility of life."

"I suppose his people are of the right sort?"

"I suppose they are; though I don't know if he has any people," said he, with a laugh. "He is the kind of man who does not need parents or relations."

"Still, hadn't you better try to find out what he may have in that line?"

"Yes," said Lefevre; "perhaps I had."