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Page 63
"Come, brother," he said, "that was a bad business; I won't pretend
otherwise; but these things had better come swiftly."
"Yes," said Lucius, "but it is a cruel affair, and I can't say
otherwise. Why cannot God leave us alone?"
"Lucius," said Amroth very gravely, "here you may say and think as you
will--and the thoughts of the heart are best uttered. But one must not
blaspheme."
"No, no," said Lucius, "I was wrong. I ought not to have spoken so. And
indeed I know in my heart that somehow, far off, it is well. But I was
thinking," he said, turning to me, and grasping my hand in both of his
own, "not of you, but of Cynthia. I am glad with all my heart that you
took her from me, and have made her happy. But what miserable creatures
we all are; and how much more miserable we should be if we were not
miserable!"
And then we started. It was a dreary hour that, full of deep and gnawing
pain. I pictured to myself Cynthia at every moment, what she was doing
and thinking; how swiftly the good days had flown; how perfectly happy
I had been; and so my wretched silent reverie went on.
"I must say," said Amroth at length, breaking a dismal silence, "that
this is very tedious. Can't you take some interest? I have very
disagreeable things to do, but that is no reason why I should be bored
as well!" And he then set himself to talk with much zest of all my old
friends and companions, telling me how each was faring. Charmides, it
seemed, had become a very accomplished architect and designer; Philip
was a teacher at the College. And he went on until, in spite of my
heaviness, I felt the whole of life beginning to widen and vibrate all
about me, and a sense almost of shame creeping into my mind that I had
become so oblivious of all the other friendships and relations I had
formed. I forced myself to talk and to ask questions, and found myself
walking more briskly. It was not very long before we parted with Lucius.
He was left at the doors of a great barrack-like like building, and
Amroth told me he was to be employed as an officer, very much in the
same way as the young man who was sent to conduct me away from the
trial; and I felt what a good officer Lucius would make--smart, prompt,
polite, and not in the least sentimental.
So we went on together rather gloomily; and then Amroth let me look for
a little deep into his heart; and I saw that it was filled with a kind
of noble pity for me in my suffering; but behind the pity lay that
blissful certainty which made Amroth so light-hearted, that it was just
so, through suffering, that one became wise; and he could no more think
of it as irksome or sad than a jolly undergraduate thinks of the
training for a race or the rowing in the race as painful, but takes it
all with a kind of high-hearted zest, and finds even the nervousness an
exciting thing, life lived at high pressure in a crowded hour.
XXXI
And thus we came ourselves to a new place, though I took but little note
of all we passed, for my mind was bent inward upon itself and upon
Cynthia. The place was a great solid stone building, in many courts,
with fine tree-shaded fields all about; a school, it seemed to me, with
boys and girls going in and out, playing games together. Amroth told me
that children were bestowed here who had been of naturally fine and
frank dispositions, but who had lived their life on earth under foul and
cramped conditions, by which they had been fretted rather than tainted.
It seemed a very happy and busy place. Amroth took me into a great room
that seemed a sort of library or common-room. There was no one there,
and I was glad to sit and rest; when suddenly the door opened, and a man
came in with outstretched hands and a smile of welcome. I looked up,
and it was none but the oldest and dearest friend of my last life, who
had died before me. He had been a teacher, a man of the simplest and
most guileless life, whose whole energy and delight was given to
teaching and loving the young. The surprising thing about him had always
been that he could meet one, after a long silence or a suspension of
intercourse, as simply and easily as if one had but left him the day
before; and it was just the same here. There was no effusiveness of
greeting--we just fell at once into the old familiar talk.
"You are just the same," I said to him, looking at the burly figure, the
big, almost clumsy, head, and the irradiating smile. His great charm had
always been an entire unworldliness and absence of ambition.
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