The following, recounted in broken sentences, and with many abrupt pauses, is the story to which I listened:
Mr St Aubyn was a widower. His only child, a boy twelve years of age, had been for a year past afflicted with loss of speech and hearing, the result of a severe typhoid fever, from which he barely escaped with life. Last summer, his father, following medical advice, brought him to Switzerland, in the hope that Alpine air, change of scene, exercise, and the pleasure of the trip, would restore him to his normal condition. One day father and son, led by a guide, were ascending a mountain pathway, not ordinarily regarded as dangerous, when the boy, stepping aside to view the snowy ranges above and around, slipped on a treacherous fragment of half-detached rock, and went sliding into the ravine beneath. The height of the fall was by no means great, and the level ground on which the boy would necessarily alight was overgrown with soft herbage and long grass, so that neither the father nor the guide at first conceived any serious apprehensions for the safety of the boy's life or limbs. He might be bruised, perhaps even a few cuts or a sprained wrist might disable him for a few days, but they feared nothing worse than these. As quickly as the slippery ground would permit, they descended the winding path leading to the meadow, but when they reached it, the boy was nowhere to be seen. Hours passed in vain and anxious quest; no track, no sound, no clue assisted the seekers, and the shouts of the guide, if they reached, as doubtless they did, the spot where the lost boy lay, fell on ears as dull and deadened as those of a corpse. Nor could the boy, if crippled by his fall, and unable to show himself, give evidence of his whereabouts by so much as a single cry. Both tongue and ears were sealed by infirmity, and any low sound such as that he might have been able to utter would have been rendered inaudible by the torrent rushing through the ravine hard by. At nightfall the search was suspended, to be renewed before daybreak with fresh assistance from the nearest village. Some of the new-comers spoke of a cave on the slope of the meadow, into which the boy might have crept. This was easily reached. It was apparently of but small extent; a few goats reposed in it, but no trace of the child was discoverable. After some days spent in futile endeavour, all hope was abandoned. The father returned to England to mourn his lost boy, and another disaster was added to the annual list of casualties in the Alps.
So far the story was sad enough, but hardly romantic. I clasped the hand of the narrator, and assured him warmly of my sympathy, adding, with as little appearance of curiosity as I could command:—
"And your object in coming back is only, then, to—to—be near the scene of your great trouble?"
"No, Mr Roy; that is not the motive of my journey. I do not believe either that my boy's corpse lies concealed among the grasses of the plateau, or that it was swept away, as has been suggested, by the mountain cataract. Neither hypothesis seems to me tenable. The bed of the stream was followed and searched for miles; and though, when he fell, he was carrying over his shoulder a flask and a thick fur-lined cloak,—for we expected cold on the heights, and went provided against it,—-not a fragment of anything belonging to him was found. Had he fallen into the torrent, it is impossible his clothing should not have become detached from the body and caught by the innumerable rocks in the shallow parts of the stream. But that is not all. I have another reason for the belief I cherish." He leaned forward, and added in firmer and slower tones: "I am convinced that my boy still lives, for—I have seen him."
"You have seen him!" I cried.
"Yes; again and again—in dreams. And always in the same way, and with the same look. He stands before me, beckoning to me, and making signs that I should come and help him. Not once or twice only, but many times, night after night I have seen the same thing!"
Poor father! Poor desolate man! Not the first driven distraught by grief; not the first deluded by the shadows of love and longing!
"You think I am deceived by hallucinations," he said, watching my face." It is you who are misled by the scientific idiots of the day, the wiseacres who teach us to believe, whenever soul speaks to soul, that the highest and holiest communion attainable by man is the product of physical disease! Forgive me the energy of my words; but had you loved and lost your beloved—-wife and child—as I have done, you would comprehend the contempt and anger with which I regard those modern teachers whose cold and ghastly doctrines give the lie, not only to all human hopes and aspirations towards the higher life, but also to the possibility of that very progress from lower to nobler forms which is the basis of their own philosophy, and to the conception of which the idea of the soul and of love are essential! Evolution presupposes possible perfecting, and the conscious adaptation of means to ends in order to attain it. And both the ideal itself and the endeavour to reach it are incomprehensible without desire, which is love, and whose seat is in the interior self, the living soul—the maker of the outward form!"
He was roused from his melancholy now, and spoke connectedly and with enthusiasm. I was about to reassure him in regard to my own philosophical convictions, the soundness of which he seemed to question, when his voice sank again, and he added earnestly:—