Stella, and an Unfinished Communication. Studies of the unseen

Preface

In the following pages an attempt has been made to dwell upon the wider bearing of conceptions which, whatever their origin, have found more definite ex pression in the speculations of modern mathema ticians than at any other time. One line, one feature, of the landscape of the land to which these thoughts lead, and only one, has been touched upon. But there are many, and each explorer would probably select a different one. In that respect this age is a happy one ; for all doubt, all disputation, about the Higher World can be discarded — there is scope for all our energy in obtaining the necessary faculties of perception. Just as the study of the minute or the very large requires microscopes, telescopes, and other apparatus, so for the study of the Higher World we need to form within our minds the instrument of observation, the intuition of higher space, the perception of higher matter. Armed thus, we press on into that path wherein all that is higher is more real, hoping to elucidate the dark sayings of bright faith. STELLA

Chapter I Introductory

I DO not imagine that I can do better than tell you the story of Churton's experiences at Beechwood Hall in his own words. There has been nothing analogous in my range of observation, and I shall not attempt to add any commentary of my own, or to improve the manner of his telling. I will simply put down in his own words, as nearly as I can recollect it, what he told me that afternoon, when we met again and renewed an old intimacy — interrupted for over seven years. If you wish to omit the few details I can give you as to our life at the crammer's at Blackheath, and the origin of the friendship between Frank Cornish and Steddy Churton, you can plunge into the next chapter, in which I am reporter merely. Here, however, I can tell you what manner of man Churton was before the sobering and refining influ ences he tells of acted on him.

I can point out the defects of his character and record how those two, Cornish and he, in the shipwreck of their early opportunities, brought to shore their friendship merely. What interested us all the most, in those Black heath days, was London life — and a very worthless 1 B Stella 2 and corrupt side of London life. We never talked of any subject which could be set in an examination paper — and how few branches of learning are exempt ! Our French lecturer found that we got a slightly better percentage of marks on Zola than on other authors, and accordingly we all read Zola — it stuck in our minds better. Hugh Stedman Churton we called Steddy, short for Stedman, and felt a slight sense of amusement in doing so, as he got into more rows than any of us ; and yet we felt the name was somehow justified.

He had true parental encouragement for his propensities. He wore an old silver watch. One day, when I was chaffing him about the " turnip," he told me that his aunt sent him a gold watch when he was fourteen ; but that same evening he put it on his father's dressing-table with a note asking him to send it back. " I used to go about with another little chap," he said, "and we used to fight the louts together ; that day I was afraid of getting the watch smashed, so I let the other fellow go alone, and he got badly hurt. The governor and I haven't much to say to each other, but we understand each other. Next mornin?, as I was getting up, he brought this old watch and gave it to me. ' You needn't stand out of anything with this,' he said, ' I wore it in India.' " And Churton did not often stand out of thinsrs ; according to his philosophy there was not much good in going into them, but you felt worse afterwards if you didn't. "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me in my life," said Churton to me that afternoon, " was Stella 3 getting acquainted with Jim."

Jim was one of that numerous tribe of pugilists who have not quite grit enough for the profession, but earn their living as bar tenders and chuckers-out in the service of publicans. Churton was walking along Vine Street one night and saw Jim tugging at the arm of a drunken woman. Her body had got caught in the spring door, and he was pulling at her arm as if it had been a piece of rope. Churton knocked the man down, but he was up again in a moment. A crowd formed round them, it seemed a pretty even affair, when suddenly Jim said, " Beg pardon, sir, I was only doing what I was paid for ; step inside if you don't want to get me into trouble." Churton saw the crowd parting and a blue helmet appearing, so he slipped into the bar-room. He had to come back that night, as he was not exactly a presentable object, but he kept up the acquaintanceship with Jim, and used to make a point of taking him round to Morris's rooms for an hour's sparring, when he was up in town.

You must not imagine that Churton had been persuaded, as so many are, by ladies young or old, to look upon himself as possessing a chivalrous nature. They had no chance to influence him in any way, for he avoided their society with complete success. " They make a man good for nothing," he would say, if any friend of his showed symptoms of the weakness of succumbing to drawing-room fascinations. We met Frank Cornish first at Doctor Forsyth's. We read of painters, philosophers, doctors, in olden times as surrounded by a band of pupils, who, by contact with the great man, picked up his skill and Stella 4 method. Such companionship is a natural desire of youth the whole world over. I heard a Hindoo lad beg his professor to let him be his servant, that he might hear his scientific talk and witness his scientific actions.

But the rush of modern life does not allow a man of eminence to waste his time in educating others. Some of them, however, have the disposition to collect young men about them. Doctor Forsyth was of this kind ; he was a distant connection of Churton's, and Churton took me there. It strikes me that men who talk a good deal resemble one another very much in all ages. There is a mass of common knowledge, universally shared ideas, which require to be remodelled and rediscussed for every generation ; and the talkers do not so much say anything original as go over this common stock, restating it in accordance with the tendencies and views of their generation — each new fact slightly altering all. The doctor would run on, the whole evening, we making an observation occasionally, and as we went away would sometimes charmingly apologise for having " led the conversation."

" Opinions," he said one evening, " opinions — men used to be born with them like their noses ; to see a man change his opinions gave our forefathers the same feelings that it does us to see a lizard drop off his tail." " What has led to the change ? " " We are younger ; I mean that those qualities which are characteristic of childhood, curiosity and meddlesomeness, do not die out in us at so early an age as they used to ; that gives rise to a good deal of science ; a singularly grave person the young Greek or Stella 5 Roman used to be. But we owe a great deal to impostors and swindlers ; they find a way of getting round people of fixed opinions." " Then we ought to be grateful to them ? " " Are we not ? Those who try old tricks and antiquated swindles we put in prison, but those who supply the needs of the time, who engineer away our present stupidity, we reward liberally.

The decep tions which have done their work seem singularly pointless. For instance, there was a prescription for a remedy for the bite of a mad dog, which was sold for a hundred pounds — a large sum fifty years ago. The materials were secret, of course, but they were pub lished by the last owner of the remedy for the good of the public. There were various ingredients, but the most important one was a portion of the brain of the dog that had inflicted the wound. The inventor of that specific deserved well of the community." " I suppose," said Cornish, " that every case in which the dog was not really mad counted as a cure ? " " Exactly ; there was no denying it : the dog was dead. Nature does not put her problems to us in so pointed a way — it is the impostors who make us think — theirs is the credit."

" You would not do such a thing yourself, doctor," said a well-intentioned youth, who had found his way into our company ; and then seeing that his remark hung fire, he added, " Isn't the improvement in education the great means ? — the old parrot fashion of learning has gone out." " This congratulating ourselves that we are not as the animals," said the doctor, " is very gratifying, but I doubt if we gain the kingdom of heaven by it. I Stella studied my bird, ' Dickie,' here, as he was learning to talk, and it is my opinion that a parrot learns to talk exactly as a child does. Imitation, mere imitation, plays a large part in the acquisition of any power. A child learns that he is living by imitating living beings ; he learns he is a person by imitating persons ; he learns that he can think by imitating those who do think.

And this is the secret of the influence that is often exercised between older people ; one man unconsciously imitates another, and finds in himself faculties he had not been aware of before. Trace it out and you will find that many a friendship has its origin in this way." Of those at the table Churton and Frank Cornish presented the greatest contrast, and the doctor's words recurred to me afterwards with regard to them. Frank was slightly built, with delicately cut features and a look of remarkable intelligence, but his eyes moved restlessly, his temperament was nervously unsettled, he had a constant craving for stimulus from without. Churton's eyes, if he looked at you at all, gave you a very different impression. His nose stood out a prominent object to an adversary in battle ; there was a hard trained, almost ascetic look about his face, such as the rougher games give to their devotees.

But he had nothing ascetic in his conversation or manners. Unlike Cornish, he had a great faculty for doing nothing ; he would spend a whole morning over a novel ; the craving for excitement was quite absent in him. The two men from that day took every opportunity of meeting, or rather, I should say, Cornish let no Stella 7 occasion pass on which he could meet Churton. He always joined us on Saturday when we came up for our Sunday in town, went with us to the theatre, and accompanied us to all our haunts. I asked Churton one day about him. I had heard he was one of the best men of his year, and wanted to know Churton's opinion — "Yes, he's a clever fellow, but liquors up too much." If there was something in the one of these two men which the other had not, and sought the other's company to awaken in himself, it was not Cornish's intellectual brilliancy, but that latent quality in Chur ton which made us call him Steddy.

One day, about six months later, a telegram came from Mrs. Cornish — " Frank is very ill, he is always asking for you. Pray come ! " "I suppose," said Churton, " that Mrs. Cornish thinks I am a doctor ! — she has never seen me. I'll run up for an hour." He found Frank lying on his bed, struggling, three men there to hold him down. It was a case of D.T. Poor Mrs. Cornish was almost distracted ; it seemed as if her boy's violent struggles would wear his life out. " Mr. Churton, perhaps he will be quiet with you ; do try." He sat down by the bedside. Frank seemed to recognise him. Taking his hand, he signed to the men to go out of the room. "Save me, Steddy," gasped Frank, and crept up the bed towards him. " All right, Frank," he said ; " keep close to me." So Frank crept out of bed and huddled up on Churton's knees like a baby.

The sound of his voice soothed him. Churton kept talking to him, telling Stella him anything he could think of, but he could not keep quiet a minute without the paroxysms threaten ing to return. He talked to him of his chances in the examination, of the rest of us, and then told him one after another the coarse jokes and tales better left untold, that were the staple of our conversation — but I suppose, if Mrs. Cornish was listening out side, she scarce distinguished them from prayers. In a few weeks Frank seemed to have recovered perfectly. He refused to make any difference in his way of living. During that year Churton saw a good deal of him, till the exigencies of the approaching Civil Service Examination demanded all his time. On the morning of the fourth day of the examination Churton was breakfasting with his father, who happened to be in town.

The two were much alike, characterized like many Englishmen by a disinclina tion for a life of study amounting to incapacity. They were the kind of men who have the habit of being elected captains of their football or cricket teams when young, and of being people to be con sidered afterwards, but of a mental disposition which makes it an episode of a decidedly healthy tendency for them to attempt to be selected for administrative posts by competitive examination. The natives of India look on our ascendency with a dumb resignation to the designs of an inscrutable providence, which so often lets rude force hold sway over all the gentler virtues. In the mining company with which I became connected when the government took the opportunity of the fall in the value of silver to break faith with their servants, there are numbers of native employes, excellent men, most admirable Stella 9 in every private relationship ; but they all occupy subordinate positions.

We have to put over them some low-lived, swearing Englishmen, with one-tenth of their mental ability, if we want the work done. There is something the Hindoos lack and which Churton possessed in abundance. But his chances of passing the examination were poor at the best. As he sat with his father at breakfast a telegram, forwarded from Blackheath, was handed to him. He read it, crumpled it up, and went on with his chop. " What is that ? " He handed it to his father. " Frank is terribly ill," it ran ; " the doctors have given him up ; try to save him again." Churton explained the nature of the attack, and told about the previous one. " Do you think you could save him ? " " I expect it's all up this time." The old gentleman was silent, recalling bygone memories ; evidently some past episodes moved him deeply.

" Waiter," he said, " a hansom." " Think of all the money you have spent on me, and it's my last shot." The cab came, and as Steddy got into it the old gentleman replied, " I don't believe you'd pass." I cannot believe that Frank Cornish had been drinking steadily, as the doctor said, for the past year. He had passed his M.D. examination brilliantly. After it, according to my idea, a nervous reaction had left him a prey to his old craving. However that might be, his condition was terrible. Churton's presence for many hours produced no effect, but at Stella 10 length the paroxysms subsided of themselves, or the old spell made itself felt. It was a long and dangerous illness, but Frank gradually recovered. Mrs. Cornish's gratitude knew no bounds. She looked on Churton as a son of her own, and, what amused us very much, she formed the most exalted opinion of his capacities.

She would hear of no word of doubt as to his ability to pass the Civil Service or any other examination. Frank she referred to in comparison as a mere specialist. The description had something of justice, for Frank very wisely decided that he was not fitted for the strain of general practice. He took up the purely scientific side of the profession, and finally went to Vienna to prosecute his researches on Tuberculosis. Churton read for the bar — which is supposed to open the way to so many appointments. He had the prospect of a post in the Chinese customs, in which Sir Richard Part, an old friend of his father's, occupied a prominent position. When Mrs. Cornish's brother died, it was natural that she fixed on Churton to take Frank's place as executor. Mr. Michael Graham had not employed any man of business to transact his affairs, and there was much to be done.

In addition, there were several curious provisions in the will. One related to the house at Beechwood, in Yorkshire, which was to be left unoccupied in charge of his servant. Another related to a mass of writings, the work of his later years, which he directed should be examined by Frank with a view to publication. Mr. Graham had succeeded to his father's estates, but an early disappointment — an unhappy love affair, as Mrs. Cornish intimated — had unsettled him, Stella 11 and he spent many years on the continent. When he returned, he saw but little of any of the members of his family, and the last ten years of his life were spent in almost unbroken seclusion. It was arranged that Mrs. Cornish, her son, and Churton, should go to Beechwood together. But on the appointed day Mrs. Cornish wrote to say that Frank's conduct had made her too ill to travel.

En closed was a letter from Frank which explained her remark. He wrote that a patient had just died under a complication of disorders he might never have the opportunity of examining again. He was sure Chur ton would manage much better alone. The only practical suggestion he made was that the horses and dogs should be given to the neighbours, such, that is, as Churton did not care to keep for himself. " Frank," Mrs. Cornish complained, " does not care for anything that is not small enough to go under a microscope." So Churton started for Beechwood by himself. Shortly after this date I left England. On my return seven years later, I received a warm invitation from Churton to visit him at his father's place in Lancashire. We are neither of us in the habit of writing unnecessary letters, and so I had but a frag mentary knowledge of what had befallen him.

We fell back, however, into our old intimacy as naturally as if nothing had interrupted it. It was on the day of my arrival, and before I had entered the house, that, sitting under the great elms in the garden, Churton told me the following episodes in all their details, reinforcing his memory at one point in his narration by reference to a sheet or two of closely written paper.

Chapter II

churton's narrative After leaving the train at a small wayside station there were five miles of road between me and Beech wood. The dogcart from the inn was soon ready, and for an hour we followed a winding road amongst the moors, the country becoming at every mile more barren and more bold in its outlines. The sun was setting when the driver pointed to a little village at our feet, and thence to a hill beyond, on the brow of which, amongst some trees, I distinguished the outlines of a house — that was Beech wood. Behind it the moor stretched up and away. The pile stood dark and forbidding, but coming round to the front of the house, which faced away from the village below, a great flood of light streamed out from the open door. Instead of the gloomy and solitary impression I had expected on entering this house, vacated by death, there was an atmosphere of homelike welcome.

There were flowers in the vases, and through an open door I saw a table spread for a number of guests. Parker, Michael Graham's man, took me to my room, and then I heard him go to the front door, say a few words to the driver, and the noise of the wheels died away in the night. Coming downstairs I found a large reception room u Stella 13 brilliantly lighted, but there was no one in it. I crossed to the dining-room. Its only occupant was Parker, who asked me when I would dine. " Immediately," I said, and sat down in an easy chair. The whole of one wall was taken up by a book shelf; on the other wall the sideboards were built into the wainscoting. At one end was a large vase, at the other between the windows was a small table, on which rested a single book bound in dark leather. In the course of the meal Parker addressed me as Mr. Cornish.

I told him who I was, and learnt that he had not received word of the change of plans. He had expected Mrs. Cornish and Mr. Cornish as well as myself. " No," I said, " they are not coming." At that moment the door, which was almost closed, swung partially open. Immediately afterwards a great mastiff which was lying on the hearthrug got up, deliberately crossed the room, and went out. I noticed that the door swung open before the dog moved. It was as if some one from outside had opened the door and called him, and yet I heard no voice. After dinner I looked at the books. They were mostly scientific works, not only modern ones, but old Greek and Latin texts, with here and there a case of manuscripts, in what seemed to me Arabic charac ters. On the walls were a few fine engravings. There were no photographs.

The only object possessing any personal interest was the book on the window table. It looked large, owing to its heavy binding, but contained only about a hundred pages. These were filled with writing, childish at the beginning, but Stella 14 developing afterwards into a singularly delicate and very legible hand. On the title-page was written, " Michael Graham, copied by Stella." I opened it at random. There were passages of greater and less interest, obviously extracts from longer works of portions more or less complete in themselves. On one page I read : — " When we seek the secret of existence with the intellect, we do but pursue a phantom, vanishing be yond countless corridors. Never do we arrive at any ultimate, but each finality in turn proves to be dependent on that which is beyond, and this beyond itself revolves away.

" Being cannot be grasped by the intellect. And yet it can be known, for when we love we truly are, and love is being in and for another. Hence, neces sarily, existence appears as an endlessly linked-on series of phenomena, in which there is no first nor last. Such is the outward garb which is all the universe presents to thought — it is the heart which truly knows." " A curious turn," I thought, "to give to a painful certainty. We all know we can know nothing, but to take this fact that we can know nothing and prove from it what the universe really is, is a little too original." A good many pages further on was written : — " Compare the work of the sculptor and that of the painter. The sculptor makes an object resembling much more that which he represents than does a painter. " But the painter has a greater scope.

In the Stella »5 thinness of his medium lies his greater power ; in the remoteness of his representation from the thing represented he gains his power of wide pourtrayal. And Thought is an art, a representation of the world in mind-stuff, in ideas of space, motion, matter. To say the world is made of space, motion, matter, is as absurd as to say that it is made of paint. " The more that can be represented in any medium the less that medium resembles the things represented, and thought which pictures all reality uses a medium which is most unreal. Its power lies in the nothing ness of its means." So ran the extract — the error was perfectly obvious. The painter, however slight a coat of paint he uses, still uses something real, and so in thinking we shouldn't get anywhere if we didn't use realities.

Thinking reaches farthest because it investigates the fundamental realities. Every one knows that the world is made of matter, is shaped in space, and moves by motion. Towards the end of the book I read : — " The body and the moral sense are intimately connected. A Habit is morality of some kind become bodily. A lack of recognition of this fact is the source of the futility of our efforts in education. In its earliest movements a child incorporates, in its very constitution, tendencies which we afterwards, alas ! and rightly then, recognise as a part of its nature, which it may learn to restrain, from which it can never escape. Think of a little girl, almost from the time when she can first see, creeping up to a glass and looking at herself, decking herself with a ribbon or a string of beads.

We allow this thinking about Stella 16 self, this vanity, to become incorporate in the female child ; all subsequent education simply leads it to disguise itself, we can never eradicate it." I closed the book, pitying the poor child who had been employed posting up the ledger of a bankrupt philosophy, when she might have been playing tennis or dancing. The breakfast table next morning was decorated with flowers, showing a taste in arrangement which I had hardly expected from Parker, with his indirect glance and painfully correct manner, or from his wife, a subdued looking woman, who seemed to live in considerable awe of her husband. There was a fancifulness and grace in the disposition of the half opened rose buds which was unlike the work of a domestic. The table was laid for two. " Does the man intend to sit down with me ? ' I thought.

When he appeared I told him to take away the other plates. He seemed about to speak, then, after a moment's hesitation, removed the dishes, and took away a chair which was opposite to mine on the other side of the table. The centre of the house was occupied by the offices, and the two rooms I mentioned before. The right wing, the part which lay on the left as I came up from the valley, was taken up by a series of rooms fitted up as laboratories. The apparatus was in good order. There were many instruments with the use of which I was not acquainted. Whatever Michael Graham had required for the prosecution of his re- Stella U searches — apparently in the border land between chemistry and physics — he had obtained regardless of expense. One of the finest spectroscopes I had ever seen was there.

In the study were piles of manuscript neatly ticketed, arranged in formidable heaps — a distressing sight. The other wing was shut off by a door covered with green baize. On approaching it Parker told me that it was locked. In a couple of minutes he returned with the key. This part of the house was quite unlike the other, with its wainscotted walls and dark hangings. There was a light paper, my feet sunk in the soft carpet, and the windows of the passage were draped with a light Indian fabric. Opening one of the doors, I found myself on the threshold of a lady's boudoir, daintily furnished. " Are all the rooms furnished in this style ? " I asked. " Yes, sir." " Very well, you can keep the door locked. Mrs. Cornish will see to it when she comes." I retraced my steps and sat down in the study before the table spread with account books and memoranda.

Michael Graham might have found a real Egeria to inspire him, and Egerias now-a-days need art, not nature, to decorate their habitations — perhaps he made that fitting frame for loveliness, brooding in his solitary life on what might have been. 'Twas no concern of mine, this page in the history of an old man's heart, it was for others to unfold, not for me. It was evident that it would take some time to put C Stella the accounts before me into an intelligible form. Michael Graham, though methodical, had used no recognised system, and he had jotted down the items of his expenditure in an almost illegible handwriting, as if he had grudged the time. His property was large. Of accumulations, which in his way of life must have been considerable, I could find no trace, but large payments for some unexplained purpose were from time to time recorded.