"I'm boring you,"—he said—"I really have no business to inflict the recollections of my youth upon you."
Dr. Brayle's brown eyes showed a glistening animal interest.
"Pray go on!" he urged—"It sounds like the chapter of a romance."
"I'm not a believer in romance,"—said Mr. Harland, grimly—"Facts are enough in themselves without any embroidered additions. This fellow was a Fact,—a healthy, strong, energetic, living Fact. He stopped me in the quadrangle as I tell you,—and he laid his hand on my shoulder. I shrank from his touch, and had a restless desire to get away from him. 'What's the matter with you, Harland?' he said, in a grave, musical voice that was peculiarly his own—'You seem afraid of me. If you are, the fault is in yourself, not in me!' I shuffled my feet about on the stone pavement, not knowing what to say—then I stammered out the foolish excuses young men make when they find themselves in an awkward corner. He listened to my stammering remarks about 'the other fellows' with attentive patience,—then he took his hand from my shoulder with a quick, decisive movement. 'Look here, Harland'—he said—'You are taking up all the conventions and traditions with which our poor old Alma Mater is encrusted, and sticking them over you like burrs. They'll cling, remember! It's a pity you choose this way of going,—I'm starting at the farther end—where Oxford leaves off and Life begins!' I suppose I stared—for he went on—'I mean Life that goes forward,—not Life that goes backward, picking up the stale crumbs fallen from centuries that have finished their banquet and passed on. There!—I won't detain you! We shall not meet often—but don't forget what I have said,—that if you are afraid of me, or of any other man, or of any existing thing,—the fault is in yourself, not in the persons or objects you fear.' 'I don't see it,' I blurted out, angrily—'What of the other fellows? They think you're queer!' He laughed. 'Bless the other fellows!' he said—'They're with you in the same boat! They think me queer because THEY are queer—that is,—out of line—themselves.' I was irritated by his easy indifference and asked him what he meant by 'out of line.' 'Suppose you see a beautiful garden harmoniously planned,' he said, still smiling, 'and some clumsy fellow comes along and puts a crooked pigstye up among the flower beds, you would call that "out of line," wouldn't you? Unsuitable, to say the least of it?' 'Oh!' I said, hotly—'So you consider me and my friends crooked pigstyes in your landscape?' He made me a gay, half apologetic gesture. 'Something of the type, dear boy!' he said—'But don't worry! The crooked pigstye is always a most popular kind of building in the world you will live in!' With that he bade me good-night, and went. I was very angry with him, for I was a conceited youth and thought myself and my particular associates the very cream of Oxford,—but he took all the highest honours that year, and when he finally left the University he vanished, so to speak, in a blaze of intellectual glory. I have never seen him again—and never heard of him—and so I suppose his studies led him nowhere. He must be an elderly man now,—he may be lame, blind, lunatic, or what is more probable still, he may be dead, and I don't know why I think of him except that his theories were much the same as those of our little friend,"—again indicating me by a nod—"He never cared for agreeable speeches,—always rather mistrusted social conventions, and believed in a Higher Life after Death."
"Or a Lower,"—I put in, quietly.
"Ah yes! There must be a Down grade, of course, if there is an Up. The two would be part of each other's existence. But as I accept neither, the point does not matter."
I looked at him, and I suppose my looks expressed wonder or pity or both, for he averted his glance from mine.
"You are something of a spiritualist, I believe?"—said Dr. Brayle, lifting his hard eyes from the scrutiny of the tablecloth and fixing them upon me.
"Not at all,"—I answered, at once, and with emphasis. "That is, if you mean by the term 'spiritualist' a credulous person who believes in mediumistic trickery, automatic writing and the like. That is sheer nonsense and self-deception."
"Several experienced scientists give these matters considerable attention,"—suggested Mr. Swinton, primly.