Arthur was acquainted with the terrible news by telegraph. He came up to Cambridge at once, ill and broken with the shock as he was. They told me that he looked terribly pale, but with a quiet self-possessed manner he made all arrangements and settled all bills. The poor boy was buried in the north-west corner of the cemetery at Cambridge. Arthur put up a little tablet to him at Trinity and at St. Uny Trevise.
In Memory of
E. B.,
BORN AT TEHERAN;
DIED AT CAMBRIDGE, NOV. 9, 1883.
"What I do thou knowest not now, but
thou shalt know hereafter."
Arthur had an interview with Edward's companion on the fatal occasion. I subjoin the latter's account of it. He requested me, when I wrote to him to ask him for some particulars relating to Edward Bruce, to make what use I wished of the letter.
"I can't describe the effect the accident had on me. It half drove me mad, I think. I was very much attached to Edward Bruce, as, indeed, we all were. I don't attempt to condone the fault. It was due entirely to my carelessness. I pressed him to drive faster than he was willing to do. I laughed at his scruples. I whipped the horse on myself. I never clearly knew what happened—for I was stunned myself—till I woke up and was told.
"When Mr. Hamilton came to see me, I was sitting in my room, over my breakfast, which I could not eat. His card was brought in by my gyp, and it made me faint and sick. He came in with his hand out, looking very pale, but smiling just as he used to smile, only more sadly. 'Don't reproach me,' I said; 'I can't bear it.' 'Reproach you!' he said—and I shall never forget the tone of affectionate wonder with which it came, or the relief it was to me to hear it—'Reproach you! I know how you loved him.' I broke down at that, and cried wretchedly. I found him sitting by me. He put his hand on my shoulder and stroked my hair. 'I have only one more thing to say,' he said, at last. 'You will not mind my saying it, will you? Eddy had told me all about you—he was very open with me—that you were not doing justice to your opportunities here, not fulfilling your own ideals and possibilities. All I ask of you is to let this be the impulse to rise; do not let any morbid or fantastic remorse stand in your way, and baffle you. You know that he would have been the first to have forgiven any share of the fault that may be yours. What I wish most earnestly for you—it is what he, if he had lived, would have wished most—is that you should become a nobler man—as you can, I know; as you will, I believe.' I could not speak, or answer him then; but I have tried to do what he begged me. Perhaps you do not know—I hope you do not—what a struggle an attempt to forget is. I could not have believed that a memory could hang so heavily round my neck.
"He wrote to me once after, and sent me Edward's riding-whip and flask. I never saw him again. From what Edward told me, and from the little I saw of him myself, I knew that he was the humblest and gravest of men. In his dealing with me, he showed himself the most truly loving."
I was at Tredennis for a week just after this. At the end of that time he begged me not to stay—he could bear it better alone. My impression was that he was like a man half dazed with grief. He sat very silent, and would do nothing; if he ever spoke, it was with evident effort. He did not appear to be ill, only crushed and overwhelmed. Once he broke down. He was looking over some books, and found a notebook of Edward's, of some subject they had been reading together. Edward had tired of the subject, and the last page was occupied with a pen-and-ink sketch of Arthur himself, the discovery of which, done as it had been during working hours, had been the occasion of some affectionate strictures. He shut the book up quickly, and literally moaned.
Then, after a little, his frosty silence broke up, and he wrote me several letters about his boy, very full and detailed, with numbers of little stories, and ending with a passionate burst of grief at the loss. They are too private for publication.
One very notable one, some six months after, must be given here.
"People talk and write about instantaneous momentary conversions—I never realized what was meant till a week ago. Day after day, all that time, I had been filled with gloomy, reproachful, or bitter thoughts of God and the providence which took Edward from me. It was intolerable that he should be swept away into silence, leaving me so worn and hopeless, and, worst of all, so dissatisfied and discontented with the hand that did it—my vaunted philosophy failing and giving out utterly. I knew it was right, but could not feel it.