Dolores (3 page)

But he was not a man to be carried away by modern tendency to narrowness; and medicine was not the only subject in which he felt interest. He delighted in gathering knowledge under any head; preferring it in promiscuous fragments complete in themselves, and adapted for retailing—a process in which his delight was keener. His ideas of knowledge, and the traits which marked his imbibing it, though it can hardly be claimed for him that they were
peculiar to himself, were not those common amongst gentlemen with degrees. If he wished to connect some ideas with a well-known name, which to him was merely a name—and there were a good many well-known names standing to him in this which he naturally felt a somewhat bald relation—he would commit to memory some anecdotes of the owner's history, in preference to perusing any part of his works. He never alluded to the fact that he did not read imaginative literature, perhaps hardly realised he did not read it; but he avoided it by instinct, as barren of material suited for transmission in pithy fragments, and hence in all senses barren. He was, in a word, a “self-educated man” in the fullest sense of that subtle term. He was regarded in Millfield as a person of infinitely broad information, capable of pouring forth erudition upon any subject at a moment's notice—a view accepted without question by Mr Blackwood, but not accepted at all by the Reverend Cleveland Hutton; who had himself obtained a second-class in classics at Oxford, and who had once, in talking with his wife, gone so far as to observe that Cassell was an illiterate, canting fool.

The reason of the first of the epithets selected by Mr Hutton we have perhaps learnt enough of Dr Cassell to gather. The second leads us to consider him under a final head. He was a
man whose personality had many sides; and in addition to his medical and encyclopaedic preeminence, he was the third of the trio of local religious leaders, of which the Reverend Cleveland Hutton and Mr Blackwood were the first and second. In the religious accommodation of the district he was not so fortunate as his colleagues; for he was neither a member of the Establishment nor of the Wesleyan body. What he was, it is a less simple matter to make clear; and resort must be had to his own account of his abstract experience. He was accustomed to begin from the point where, at the age of twenty - seven, he had been converted, and to pass to a stage at which he had become a Plymouth Brother. From this body, for some scruple of conscience upon which he was vague, he had later seceded, though he always retained a tenderness for it, referring to its members collectively as “the brethren”; and at the time when this story opens, he had reached, at the age of thirty - nine, the emancipated stage of holding worship with his wife in his dining-room. His religious attitude was simpler, and may be given with more exactness, than might be presumed from the trouble of meeting its needs. The teachings of the Bible, interpreted according to the letter and without the commentator's aid,—he thought the tendency to put the word of man before that of divine revelation
one of the gravest signs of the times,—formed the larger part; and the remainder consisted of an antipathy to Roman Catholicism. The doctor's horror of Roman Catholicism is entitled to a word. It was not an everyday, easy horror. It had a subtlety and force of its own. Mohammedans, Buddhists, and worshippers of wood and stone were in his eyes simply mistaken races; obstinately mistaken perhaps, and inexplicably ungracious in their reception of evangelising offices; but nevertheless brother-men, unfortunate in knowledge and environment, and very fit objects for missionary effort. To members of the Romish Church his attitude was one of utter condemnation; which never faltered to the extent of weakly admitting reason in the place of dogmatism; and which extended to any truckling or pandering in the shape of over-broad views upon religious tolerance, or high ritual on the part of clergymen; and even caused him to look askance at the little gold cross which dangled on the waistcoat of the Reverend Cleveland Hutton. That his intercourse with Mr Hutton was confined to his medical capacity it is hardly needful to state; but there had been an occasion on which he felt urged to transcend the professional boundary, and send the latter an anonymous postcard—we must remember in judging him that his early experience had not been that which is usual to professional gentle
men,—asking him what justification he had, even granted that he felt entire indifference on his own ultimate and infinite prospects, for extending this callousness to those of others.

Dr Cassell's claim to be held a religious leader rested on his willingness—more exactly, perhaps, eagerness—to “speak” on religious subjects in the building in the field, whenever occasion demanded, or, with further concession to exactitude, permitted; to as large an audience as previous notices on its walls, and hints offered in person on professional rounds could gather. This leaning was a natural strain on his amity with Mr Blackwood; and might have put an end to it, had it rested on foundations whose undermining was possible. Happily it did not. Mr Blackwood and Dr Cassell stood in an indissoluble relation. Each was the other's chief repository for his recurring effluence of thought and opinion. Each had the same views upon Roman Catholicism—though Mr Blackwood could not but regard his friend as somewhat lacking in the gift of charity in his attitude to definite persons of this persuasion;—and the same fondness for repeating them, and resignation in hearing them repeated. Moreover, Mr Blackwood found a revelling-ground for his controversial talents in the winning of Dr Cassell to enthusiasm for Temperance; for which the latter's tolerant sympathy was prevented from
taking a fervid form by the relation of wine to his personal habits. He also combated his tendency to be what he considered somewhat narrow and over-literal, and regardless of the bearing of the context in his interpretation of isolated texts—not that Mr Blackwood had leanings to the over-broad in such matters, or ever faltered in his position as regards the higher criticism. Dr Cassell on his part found his neighbour a faithful believer in himself as a qualified retailer of tit-bits of knowledge; appreciative of their interest, and never acquainted with them beforehand, and, if not an eager, a resigned and considerately responsive auditor of anecdotes.

The other local families of not ungentle blood were chiefly members of the church; holding the relation of friendship only to Mr Hutton, merely of patients to Dr Cassell, and hardly any relation to Mr Blackwood; to whose mind in their turn they had a negligible bearing on things in their practical aspect, since such was the extent of their connection with the meeting-house and the chapel. Mr Hutton was held by most of them in strong esteem; Mr Blackwood in half contemptuous disregard; and Dr Cassell in views so various, that the best to be done is to quote two typical comments uttered one morning within an hour of each other,—a gentleman observing, that any skill Cassell might have in physic was balanced by his unprofessional trick of obtruding
his grandmother's notions; and a lady, that “the doctor” was such a dear friend and counsellor—really as good as a physician and a clergyman put together.

Now the moment may be meet for a word of warning given in kindness, lest there occur any waste of superior sentiment. Upon Mr Blackwood and Dr Cassell would be wasted both the disdain of philosophy and the indulgence of charity. They would have been as proof against the one as oblivious of the other. Let us think of them, simply, that they are of a race which has lived straightly and is dying hard; and whose death, if it marks a progressive step in our vulgar dogmatics, must rob our kind—if not of its most beneficent—of its most ingenuous and blithe. For it were idle to try and bring home with what exquisite innocent experience they would mount the extemporised platform in the building in the field—the subtle delectation involved in the staying of the cravings of the inward self, in its rarest and happiest union, with a sense of suppressing, and being known to suppress that self in disinterested effort; or to scan the present or past for men of gentler domestic living, and doings more cleanly and kind. Let us follow them down the country road as far as their ways are the same: for the burial service has come to its close; its rustic attendants are dispersing in gossiping groups;
and the Reverend Cleveland Hutton and the Reverend James Hutton are walking up the path that leads from the churchyard to the parsonage.

“Poor Hutton!” said Mr Blackwood, in the loud emphatic voice which he employed when he felt he was giving the gist of a matter—“poor Hutton! This has been about as great a blow to him as any he could have had. We shall see him altered, I expect—I expect we shall see him altered.”

“Yes,” said Dr Cassell, who did not excel in conversational parts, unless they were employed in an amiably didactic direction—“yes, yes, that is so. That can hardly be otherwise.”

“Well,” continued Mr Blackwood in the same tone, “a funeral is a solemn thing—a solemn thing. Whatever our religion is, and whatever opinions we have on other subjects, that is the same for us all. A funeral is a universally solemn thing.”

“Curiously enough,” said Dr Cassell, coming to a pause in the road, as was his wont when in the grip of the didactic spirit; and employing his didactic tone, which was marked by pauses tending to occur at unnatural junctures, and had a peculiar, neutral sound as if he had withdrawn his own personality from it; “curiously enough; it is not
universally
solemn. Among some early races—I do not recollect at this
moment exactly to what nations they belonged—it is, or rather it was, the custom to rejoice over death and to mourn at birth. It would seem rather—dissentient with our notions, would it not?”

“Ah,” said Mr Blackwood, walking on, “there is a great deal of truth underlying that notion—a great deal of truth, I daresay. Those old ancients could have taught us a great deal—there's no doubt of that. When we mourn at death, we mourn for ourselves—there is no getting out of that. But still a funeral is a
solemn
thing in every way—at any rate for those who are left behind to see it; there is no getting out of that either.”

“I fancy there have been—on some occasions—episodes to relieve the solemnity,” said Dr Cassell, coming to a pause, in which his friend complied this time with less alacrity; and summoning a twinkle to his eyes; his compunction on yielding to levity drowned in the flood of his ideas. “A country parson was once—leaving the churchyard, after burying one of the villagers;—and—meeting another at the gate, observed: ‘Well, Johnson, so Roberts is no longer amongst us—has joined the great majority, eh?' and was somewhat startled at receiving the reply: ‘Oh, I don't know about that, sir. He was a good sort of man, wasn't he, as far as anybody could judge?'”

Mr Blackwood laughed with good-natured heartiness, though not with full approval; for he happened to be an exception to the rule that enthusiasm for religious subjects is coupled with a tendency to pleasantry upon them. Dr Cassell walked on, trying to repress a twitch about his mouth, under a sense of having in the last minutes done himself justice.

“Well, Doctor,” resumed Mr Blackwood after a minute's silence—he always addressed Dr Cassell emphatically as “Doctor,” and the Reverend Cleveland Hutton as “Vicar”—“are you coming to support us at the temperance meeting next Wednesday? I am engaged to speak, you know. It was very much against
my
will, I am sure; but people seemed to desire that I should; and I could not refuse my services to such a cause, so I shall just do my best—and make a terrible hash of the business into the bargain, I daresay.” Mr Blackwood paused, awaiting contradiction of the conclusion of his speech, rather than an answer to its opening question; but Dr Cassell chose to give the latter.

“No, I think not,” he replied—“I think not.”

“Well, but come now, Doctor,” said Mr Blackwood in loud, genial tones, laying a stress upon occasional words, as was his custom in argument. “You can't
deny
that the cause of
Temperance
is one of the
finest causes
in the country.
There's no possibility of expressing in words the harm that the
drink
does to the nation; and as for the harm it does to individuals—well, there is no need to tell a
man
of
your
knowledge of life that.”

“Perhaps not,” said Dr Cassell, unable but to recognise something in this ending which did not call for the throwing of doubt; “but one cannot always judge—of the right and wrong of principles—by the amount of apparent good or harm resulting from them.”

“Oh, come now, Doctor,” said Mr Blackwood, not choosing to adopt a philosophic standpoint, “you have to look at these things
practically
. The amount of
practical
benefit done by the fighting of the drink is
enormous
. Why, only last week, when I was visiting the place where I used to live, and where I used to give a weekly address on Temperance, an old fellow came up to me—an old Irish fellow, I think he was—a working man, and a
fine-looking
old fellow too; and he said: ‘Well, sir,' he said, ‘I have to thank
you
for something—if you call the saving of myself and my wife and the whole of my family from
ruin
something. I went once or twice to your addresses,' he said, ‘and I
assure you
that I was a different
man
from that time.'” Mr Blackwood brought the fist of one hand down upon the palm of the other. “I can tell you the old fellow was
grateful,
and it did me
good
to hear him; it did that, upon my word. It was encouraging—very encouraging—I can tell you.”

“Talking of the drink in connection with Irishmen,” said Dr Cassell, coming to a pause; and interposing quickly without regard to congratulations; “have you heard of the Irishman in the barn and his bottle of whisky?”

“No,” said Mr Blackwood, rather weakly, as he also stopped.