A Poppy's Tears

Front matter

BY MANNINGTON CAFFYN, iUIHOE OF "MISS MILNE AND I," " 0PAI8," ETC, ETC. " The life of the poppy is the history of the man who gathers it, writ small; it cometh up as a flower, a white innocent flower reckless in its short-lived beauty. Then follows the fruit with its black potent tears— tears potent enough to wash away destinies, the love of God— nay, in the end, even the love of woman." LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited. 1890. [AU rights reserved.] CHAELES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYKTAL PALACE PEESS. TO HENRY MAUDSLEY, ESQ., M.D., STijis ¥o\wnt is KrtJtratrtJ, AS A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A GREAT DEBT OWING FOR NEW TRUTHS TAUGHT.

Introduction

. I wish you fellows would step into my smoking-room one minute, I am anxious to tell you something about these people I have asked you to meet. "Well, now, to begin with, there's a big fellow on the right as you enter the drawing-room — when I came out he was talking to my wife — his name is Angus Kennedy; he's the son of a Scotch landowner who died about nine months since, and left him well off. He was educated for the medical profession, in fact I believe he is a fully-fledged doctor • but of course that is all thrown up. His friend, Paul Stewart, is the man with long, light curly hair, a clean-shaved face, and good teeth. He's a poet, and I think decidedly interesting; he has just taken a scholarship at Oxford, and is going into the Church, I believe. His father was a clergyman of some note, but died when he was a boy, and left him some two hundred a year.

INTRODUCTION.

. Then there is one other man — the dark man leaning on the mantelpiece — his name is Moule; he's not very interesting, a queer chap, mostly cynical. But the girl — who, by the way, is a distant relation of Kennedy's — you must take particular notice of her ; her name is Miss Dorothy Luxford. She and her aunt have just taken "The Pines" down here, and these men are staying with them. She is rich and romantic, can ride, skate, fish, do anything, like a native ; and is probably in love with one of these men — which, I don't know, but it's obvious two of them are in love with her. But let's go in and "vet" them, as they say of horses. A POPPY'S TEAKS.

Chapter I

To know Angus Kennedy was to love him. He had brains enough to entitle him to the respect of "the brainy," his tremendous physique won for him the admiration of women, his native goodness of heart enlisted the love of the poor, and his careless savoir faire secured the vote of his own set.. He was the outcome of that wise crossing that is essential to the making of the best humans : a father of much practicality, perseverance, and common sense, and for mother a blue-blooded woman of much refinement. From the one he inherited his capacity to live with some intensity, and from the other an impulse to live rightly and well. Helped of his great health, he had hitherto romped through a life that had been all sunlight, all but one three-months, the three months that followed the death of his mother.

It was during this three-months of intense misery, and while struggling through the dark valley of sorrow that these men's natures make for them, that he had found a friend with a capacity for the sympathy he pined B for, and, as is the wont of such men, he had taken him entirely to his heart. There are no friendships that for intensity can com pare with those that young men make among themselves. The love of a man for a woman is very beautiful, and during its period of incubation and early growth, helpful and soul-satisfying ; the love of a mother for her child is perhaps beyond all loves blessed and pure ; but neither of these can compare with the love of a man for a man. They have possibly some physiological origin, this has no such foundation ; they are more or less matters of necessity, this is a matter of free will — free selection, the rush of kindred soul to soul ; and yet not always " kindred," because one finds the men that love each other often entirely unlike.

The great Johnson chose for his friend the little Boswell ; Carlyle selected Froude ; and Coleridge left his college friends and cultivated the acquaintance of Amos Cottel. The man that Angus Kennedy took to his heart was also unlike himself, unlike him in everything. In physique, he was of medium height, but thin and wiry ; in temperament, quiet and thoughtful ; in mental tendency, philosophical and poetical ; a sort of man who, when the things of this world were being discussed, could honestly say with Tennessee's partner, " I take no hand in this yer game." He belonged to that beautiful race of pure souls ot whom the world knows nothing, because they are mute and live not after the flesh but after the spirit. They would make good clergymen if they had energy and some fixity of belief ; great poets if they had a voice ; leaders of men if they could lead themselves ; but as it is they, saunter through a hazy life in a fog of half formulated theories, now and then intensely miserable and again extatically happy ; but their fellow-man has neither part nor lot in their pleasures nor their pains, and the only text of their religious life (when con ventional religion intervenes at all) is " God's in His heaven, and all's well with the world."

I don't know how two such antithetical characters as Angus Kennedy and Paul Stewart ever came to love each other. It may have been that each man found in the other something he himself lacked; Anyhow, they did love each other most intensely. The one, for a boy, was rich, the other poor ; and Angus, out of his multitude of half-crowns, in his own free-handed way did much for the poor clergyman's son. There was a great tincture of native uncultivated goodness in the composition of each of these men. In Angus Kennedy it was a natural part of his manhood ; in Paul Stewart it rather spoilt his manhood. He would have been better, from the world's point of view, if he had had more of the devil in him. Years hence, perhaps, when our debating clubs have done with Free Trade, Reform Bills, and the relative merits of poets who differ fundamentally, they may possibly choose as a fit subject for debate, " What percentage of the Devil in a man is necessary for his perfect development ?

" or to put it differently, " Why does the prodigal son always get the fatted calf ? " In the race for beautiful women, as in the striving for a mother's love, the good boy is always nowhere. It is B only in goody-goody books that virtue and worth go hand in hand, and these books, if you could gauge men's hearts, are never quite believed. There came a time when these two men separated ; the one — Paul Stewart — went to coach for a scholarship, the other, to George's to be made a doctor of. And when they met again, two years after, they were both changed. Paul Stewart had in the two years gone through that indescribable tragedy of re formation — the labour pains and travail of a soul seeking its destiny. Almost unhelped of man he had trodden step by step that terrible road that leadeth to the peace that passeth all understanding and all efforts to describe, which so few seek and fewer find.

Ill content with the dim light of the schools, fashioned for a younger world, he had — I cannot say buckled on bis armour, because that implies some energy and some fixity of purpose, aud of these he had nothing, but — been forced on by the divine current of evolution (or what you will) through the " Everlasting Nay " — through the " Centre of Indifference " into the God-given glory of the " Everlasting Yea." Some of us who knew something of the intuitive greatness of him envied him his greatness, but I doubt now, knowing all, if he was to be envied. It is better to be in the world and of it, with all its happy brother hoods, than to be a little nearer heaven and alone. There is no loneliness like the loneliness of great hearts ; the path heavenwards is whitened with the dry bones of men who have died alone, unblessed and uncomforted of their fellow-men.

And what had two years done for Angus Kennedy ? He also, remember, was a child of Nature, made after another pattern ; he, too, left a quiet home with all its peaceful environments, taking with him more of the sinews of war than his fellow-students were blessed (or cursed) with, and also his tremendous capacity for living. And the world offers no such opportunities for living as those found in a medical school amid medical students. His nature forbade him to wade quietly into this sea of opportunities, but bade him take a header and plunge ; and plunge he did, coming to the surface once in three months when the vacation sent him back to the bosom of his family. And great was the rejoicing of the family when he did return. He was not as yet a prodigal son, but the fatted calf was killed nevertheless ; the mother's heart was glad, and from the bottom of her eyes a new light shone.

The father looked at the big fellow across the table with anxious pride ; his sisters gathered about his chair, and ran their fingers through his curls, and his younger brothers looked up to him and worshipped him as younger brothers only can, and for a month the old house, usually so quiet, threw off its lethargy, and rang all day with laughing echoes. The effect of four years of London life upon the character of Angus Kennedy the reader must gather from the coming pages. Suffice it here to say his body was a big tenement, and into it his Maker had placed a big tenant — a great heart and soul ; A POPPTS TEARS. and great hearts and souls demand great surround ings. And he found them and grew in proportion ; but not exactly in the direction his good mother would have chosen.

Chapter II

" Which do I like best ? I don't know. Do I like either of them? Again I don't know. I am sure I hope I don't. I should hate to be in love ; no, they shall both go to Hong-Kong for me, there now ! " The speaker was a girl of twenty-two, known among her friends as " Queenest," among those who had not the privilege of her friendship as Miss Dorothy Luxford. She was leaning over the mantelpiece in her bedroom alone, with her head resting upon her arms, and staring into the fire ; she had been boating all day with Angus Kennedy and Paul Stewart, who were down staying with her and her aunt, and both of these men were in love with her. She too was a child of Nature. You will begin to think that Nature has a large family, but you would be mistaken ; these three are the only ones I know, the rest are more or less illegitimate.

Then Dorothy sat down in the little chair at tha fireside and reasoned with herself, and ran through the day and its history ; every look and word of these men was stored up in her memory, and she unpacked them all before going to bed, "just to have one more look at them ; " shaking her bonny arms free, she clasped her hands behind her head, and tilting her chair back, stared as people will at the line at the top of the wall opposite, at the point where the ceiling meets it. After a considerable silence she said, still of course to herself — and I want you to notice how very philosophical she was for a girl who would have been quite justified in allowing " her beauty to be her sole duty ; " for I ought to have told you she was very tall and very beautiful, with clear, clean-cut, classical features, a figure that was Junoesque, and a waist like the Venus of Milo, that, knowing no stays, breaks no law of art, and allows of perfect oxidization and consequent wholesomeness — " I don't know," then very deliberately, " I really do not know ; you see a girl does want some one she can look up to and reverence, a big man like — like — well, yes ; but then would it not be delightful to swallow up in my love for him all the sadness and the yearning of the other, with his great black eyes ?

" Then again : " I really do not know." Nor did she know, for if one only thinks seriously of it, the chances are all against a girl when she selects a lover ; she must either entirely obey or altogether disregard the standard law that makes, in the absence of any gross abnormality, all men love all women. If she obeys it, then the chances against her are multiplied by the number of men un suitable ; if she disregards it and sets herself studiously to work to find the, for her, best man, then she is certain to go wrong, because she is no longer natural, and good men do not select unnatural women for wives. Verily marriage, especially in English communities, where the unchangeable English law obtains, is a great lottery*. And so, in the dim twilight of her awakening intellect, Dorothy Luxford felt it.

There were two necessities within her, warring against each other, that she was terribly conscious of ; the one, some hero to worship, some one to look up to, or, as she put it to herself, "to lean upon," "a still, strong man " ; the other — a phase, perhaps, of maternal instinct — the consciousness of some one leaning upon her. It was very pretty to watch these two instincts, both peculiar to good women, struggling alternately for supre mac}*, as she reasoned with herself there at the fireside, when all the house was mute. " He is such a big fellow, aud big men have such big hearts." Then she thought of the day Angus lifted her into the saddle, and with all her good physical development what a child she felt in his grasp. Then she thought of the other, and no stranger herself in a woman's way to " the infinite passions and the pains of finite hearts that yearn," she felt drawn towards him by cords of tenderness that were heart-begotten.

Dorothy's extreme adaptability, her willingness to cling, or be clung to, places her so nearly alone — now that the good old times are dead — that one trembles at having to follow her through even a few steps of her history. Five centuries ago, in those rare days " when every morning brought a noble chance, and every chance brought out a noble knight," her smile would have been a sufficient incentive to the best among them ; but in that she is neither "blue" nor a society beauty, the modern world knows her not nor knows quite what to do with her.

Chapter III

At the same hour the same night, the same momentous question was simmering in the warm hearts of the two men I have introduced to you — my hero and his friend. (I don't know yet which to select for my hero, I don't even know which man I like the best ; we will wait and see how they develop, and then decide.) They were sitting at this time in Angus's room, his go-as-you-please room, as he called it. Both men were smoking, and each had a book on his knees, but neither was reading. Paul was making the pretence, Angus was not even doing that, but was lying back in his chair watching the rings of smoke as they rose from his pipe. Here's another subject for debate. Why do men watch rings of smoke when thinking earnestly ? Is it because their thoughts are hazy and ill-defined ? That both these men's were ill-defined at this moment there was no questioning ; both were thinking of Dorothy, both, in a vague sort of way, estimating their chance of success, and both wondering which man would win in the long run ; for although the subject had never been spoken of yet, they were perfectly aware of each other's Jeelings and aspirations.

Of the two Angus was by far the most hopeful ; his position in life was the most assured, and then his rival was poor. But he might become rich. " I say, old man, what are you going to be ? I mean what profession are you going for?" " I haven't a notion." " Why not medicine ? " "I hate it as it is now — there's no mystery or poetry about it. When the medicine man was treated with reverence and looked upon with awe, then medicine was a glorious profession. But cheap literature has spoiled all that ! If one could mix a love potion, now ? " " Ah ! by Jove, yes." Then both men were silent again — the word " love potion" had set the same chord vibrating in both minds. Angus was the first to speak ; picking up the same thread he continued : " I should think you would make a good parson ; why not the Church ?

" " That, too, and for very similar reasons, is now impossible. Even if I felt it to be my mission to teach, the last method I would adopt would be that of preaching. The world has had too much preach ing in the past ; it is example men want." " No," he continued, after a pause, " I have gone the whole round of creation many a time to see if I could find anything that life offers worth the having — worth working for — and I can see nothing. I used to think that to be a leader of men beauty-wards, Christ-wards (I don't use that word in its religious sense), was the noblest of all ambitions ; but a long course of laisser faire literature has spoiled me for that, and now I see with infinite sadness how utterly impotent man is to alter the course of events." " But men do alter the course of events."

"I doubt it very much; and even the men that are supposed to, are they whose half vision allows them to be enthusiastic. No ; they whom the gods use they first blindfold." " Is there according to you, then, nothing in this world worth having ? " "The love of poetry, and the love of art, are the only things." Nothing else ? " " Nothing else." Nothing else ? " "Well, there is one other love, perhaps— the love of woman. I don't think I would quite exclude that." " I should think you wouldn't, when it, of all others, is the one refining influence of life." " Or damning." " Why do you say that ? " " My dear fellow, don't you know perfectly well that the two first loves I mentioned are omniscient, omni present, and omnipotent, and the other is often transient and always varying ? " " If those are your views, I shall lie very sorry for the girl you marry."

" You need not be. The girl I marry, if I do marry, will have a very different time of it to other women, I can tell you." "In what way ? " " Well, I shall in the first place make her my com panion—educate her. We will be as men together— we will drink together the clear wine of life without its sickly sediment. We will " Walk haud iu hand to the gate." You remember old J. N. Hawkins, don't you ? " " Yes, he was a third year's man when I joined. What of him?" " Well, he is married. I knew him all through his engagement, and talk of the ecstasy of young love, I never read or heard of anything like it ! Well, as I say, he was married two years since — and look at him now ! " " Why, what's happened to him ? " " Nothing, only the total downfall of all his hopes." " But I thought they were very happy together i" " So they are, as things go ; but compare all his golden dreams with their sombre realisation. 'Tis his own fault, I admit ; he was fool enough to think they would be always young, and that they, at any rate, would never know anything of 'love's sad satiety.' Well, they have been married two years, aud now he finds that though his wife is very lovely to look upon, yet they have neither thought nor ambition in common.

He still dabbles in poetry, and he told me the other day that sometimes when he has written a good line he rushes into the drawing-room — as men will — to read it to her, and she listens dutifully and says : ' How sweetly pretty ! Would you mind stirring the fire now you are here ? ' And he, poor beggar, stirs the fire and goes back to his den, and pines for the good old days at college, when birds of a feathcr flocked together, and every man could find in the hearts of his friends a ready market for his wares, and get a good price for them, more than their worth, in genuine congratulations. My God ! How I pitied him as he told me all his troubles, but broke in every now and then with ' But, old man, she is a grand girl, nevertheless.' " " You are an awful heretic, Paul, upon my word you are.

I suppose you have never been in love with any one ? " " Indeed, I have ! I believe I am a greater fool than most men that way, but I am not fool enough to suppose a necessity is always a luxury. A wife may be either ; she is seldom both." " But in our list of loves, old man, we left out the principal one. I mean the love of one's own children ; surely that is a perfect love ? " " Yes, I believe it is quite unique, and yet, some thing like the love for a good line written. The love of Tennyson for the ' Mort d' Arthur ' must have been very similar in its intensity and ill its character, to the love of a father for his child. 'Twas essentially a part of himself, that poem, and I can picture him dwelling on every tone and harmony of it as a fond father on the movements and features of his child."

Then there was another long pause, broken by Paul. "Do you know, old man," he broke in, "I often wonder when I hear of a certain man being in love with a certain girl, what part of her character it is that attracts him. Sometimes the girl is very beautiful, and then men say it is her beauty ; but the man, very likely, has no capacity for loving the beautiful, so it can't be that. I've noticed 'tis seldom money ; a man is very far gone before he deliberately marries for money. 'Tisn't companionship either, because in conversation, I have discovered that that idea has never struck them. And yet these mediocre souls go mad for once, become quite enthusiastic and write rhymes." " Yes," broke in Stewart, who felt that these remarks had some slight personal import, " and feel them too." " No doubt they feel them for the time most in tensely.

But, look you here, old man, isn't the whole thing most perplexing ? Here are two women loving two men ; the one because her hero is at once A maD, and folds her with his arm, A god, and holds her with a charm ; the other because, like poor old Charley at your hospital, he cannot keep straight without her strong guiding hand, nor out of the clutches of the police if she's away. Now, are these two people under the influence of the same law?" " Probably, and under your favourite law, that all men love all women unless there is something abnormal on one side or the other. But, as a matter of fact, old fellow, it's another of those things that a fellow can't find out. There is only one thing I believe in, and that is, that there is no matrimonial salvation for the man who goes into the matter studiously, as he would buy shares in a company ; who selects his wife as he selects his profession.

Look at J. J. Lewis." " What about him ? " " He, you know, was a double first man — a gold medalist and a Fellow of his college. Well, he went to his brother's factory at Manchester, and from among the girls there — who, remember, are only girls from a natural history point of view — picked out one with good looks and a fine physique, but with a brain that — but for blasphemy and a knowledge of evil — was an entire blank. Well, he proposed to her, and she accepted him on his own terms, which were, that she was to come out from among all her old associates ; go to Germany and Paris for three years, and be educated under the best possible tutors ; come back and be married. Mark you, this scheme of his was the outcome of years of thought and most anxious deliberation. She came back not reformed, but re-formed, a different creature, a perfect Galatea.

None of the blase languor of your society beauty about her ; but the touch of refinement had suddenly awakened her into a life of energetic appreciation of all things beautiful. And to that was added the knowledge of the fact that she herself was beautiful." " But did not her self-consciousness, the knowledge of her own beauty, harm her ? " "Indeed, no! There's a strange law about self consciousness that I have worked out, and that applies equally to men and women. Every man worth any thing knows his own worth, and every beautiful woman knows her beauty. That professed self-abnegation so much admired is really assumed. I never mind a man's knowing his worth or a woman her beauty as long as they don't bore you with it, and try to live up to it. Well, she knew her beauty just as your cousin did after seeing her own portrait and asking naively, ' Am I really as pretty as that ? ' He had her dresses even made after his own heart, and the little trim hat she wore he chose.

By Jove ! old man, had you seen them as I saw them, walking round the Grosvenor Gallery to gether just after ten, when there was no one but our selves there, you would have thought that he, anyhow, to use a vulgarism, ' had struck it rich.' There was no finery about her at all. She wore a perfectly plain ulster, into which she might have been melted and poured like wax, it fitted her so perfectly. She actually walked at his side. You know what I mean, she didn't waddle as women and ducks do. She wore no stays, I am sure, from the shape of her. Every now aud then she took his hand in hers and looked up into his face as Galatea did into Pygmalion's, or as Alcestis might have looked into that of Hercules, and, if you think of it, for the same reason. This man had gone to hell for her, and brought her back with him, and breathed into her the breath of life."

" What a lovely picture ! What a lucky man \ Didn't he ever say anything about his success ? " " Yes, perhaps I ought not to tell you, but one day he finished a long conversation by saying, ' After all, old man, I like men best ! ' They are the best of men, it strikes me, who can say with Byron, Love of man's life's a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence. C A man never feels himself so real and earnest as when he's in love, but to his friends he never appeared a greater ass." " But excuse me, Paul, one moment, don't you believe a man's career is made or marred by the kind of girl he marries ? " " Not much. If a girl is actively objectionable she might drive a man to the devil if he tended that way, but careers worth anything are not made of such slight elements that a girl can twist them."

After another pause Angus gave out a long, deep sigh, and with the end of it said : " Ah ! well, perhaps not, but it does seem to me that there are girls living, girls I have met, that could alter the whole course of my life ; who would but have to put their arm around my neck, and whisper a wish in my ear, to make me strong and desperate enough to do it, whatever it was." " 'Tis beastly hard lines, old fellow, to throw cold water on you," replied Paul, as he rose from his chair and took his candle to the fire to light, " but that senti ment is, I fear, very common and very transient, and after looking round among my married friends I have come to the conclusion that it is not of very great service in after life. Anyhow, I am not going to enter tain it. I am going to say to the girl I propose to, not in these words you know, but to this effect : ' Will you be my wife and join me in this tragedy called living \ Will you let me live out myself with the much non interference and the little help you can render ?