The Count sank into an easy-chair, and panted a little.
“Who then are these dear children, I pray you?” he said. “Why come they, why go they, in this so little ordinary a fashion? That the music should make itself to vanish—that the hats, the boots, should make themselves to vanish—how is it, I pray you?”
“I’ve no idea where they are!” was all I could say, on finding myself appealed to, by general consent, for an explanation.
The Count seemed about to ask further questions, but checked himself.
“The hour makes himself to become late,” he said. “I wish to you a very good night, my Lady. I betake myself to my bed—to dream—if that indeed I be not dreaming now!” And he hastily left the room.
“Stay awhile, stay awhile!” said the Earl, as I was about to follow the Count. “You are not a guest, you know! Arthur’s friend is at home here!”
“Thanks!” I said, as, with true English instincts, we drew our chairs together round the fireplace, though no fire was burning—Lady Muriel having taken the heap of music on her knee, to have one more search for the strangely-vanished song.
“Don’t you sometimes feel a wild longing,” she said, addressing herself to me, “to have something more to do with your hands, while you talk, than just holding a cigar, and now and then knocking off the ash? Oh, I know all that you’re going to say!” (This was to Arthur, who appeared about to interrupt her.) “The Majesty of Thought supersedes the work of the fingers. A Man’s severe thinking, plus the shaking-off a cigar-ash, comes to the same total as a Woman’s trivial fancies, plus the most elaborate embroidery. That’s your sentiment, isn’t it, only better expressed?”
Arthur looked into the radiant, mischievous face, with a grave and very tender smile. “Yes,” he said resignedly: “that is my sentiment, exactly.”
“Rest of body, and activity of mind,” I put in. “Some writer tells us that is the acme of human happiness.”
“Plenty of bodily rest, at any rate!” Lady Muriel replied, glancing at the three recumbent figures around her. “But what you call activity of mind—”
“—is the privilege of young Physicians only,” said the Earl. “We old men have no claim to be active! What can an old man do but die?”
“A good many other things, I should hope,” Arthur said earnestly.
“Well, maybe. Still you have the advantage of me in many ways, dear boy! Not only that your day is dawning while mine is setting, but your interest in Life—somehow I can’t help envying you that. It will be many a year before you lose your hold of that.”
“Yet surely many human interests survive human Life?” I said.
“Many do, no doubt. And some forms of Science; but only some, I think. Mathematics, for instance: that seems to possess an endless interest: one can’t imagine any form of Life, or any race of intelligent beings, where Mathematical truth would lose its meaning. But I fear Medicine stands on a different footing. Suppose you discover a remedy for some disease hitherto supposed to be incurable. Well, it is delightful for the moment, no doubt—full of interest—perhaps it brings you fame and fortune. But what then? Look on, a few years, into a life where disease has no existence. What is your discovery worth, then? Milton makes Jove promise too much. ‘Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.’ Poor comfort, when one’s ‘fame’ concerns matters that will have ceased to have a meaning!”
“At any rate, one wouldn’t care to make any fresh medical discoveries,” said Arthur. “I see no help for that—though I shall be sorry to give up my favorite studies. Still, medicine, disease, pain, sorrow, sin—I fear they’re all linked together. Banish sin, and you banish them all!”
“Military science is a yet stronger instance,” said the Earl. “Without sin, war would surely be impossible. Still any mind, that has had in this life any keen interest, not in itself sinful, will surely find itself some congenial line of work hereafter. Wellington may have no more battles to fight—and yet—
‘We doubt not that, for one so true,
There must be other, nobler work to do,
Than when he fought at Waterloo,
And Victor he must ever be!’ ”
He lingered over the beautiful words, as if he loved them: and his voice, like distant music, died away into silence.
After a minute or two he began again. “If I’m not wearying you, I would like to tell you an idea of the future Life which has haunted me for years, like a sort of waking nightmare—I can’t reason myself out of it.”
“Pray do,” Arthur and I replied, almost in a breath. Lady Muriel put aside the heap of music, and folded her hands together.
“The one idea,” the Earl resumed, “that has seemed to me to overshadow all the rest, is that of Eternity—involving, as it seems to do, the necessary exhaustion of all subjects of human interest. Take Pure Mathematics, for instance—a Science independent of our present surroundings. I have studied it, myself, a little. Take the subject of circles and ellipses—what we call ‘curves of the second degree.’ In a future Life, it would only be a question of so many years (or hundreds of years, if you like), for a man to work out all their properties. Then he might go to curves of the third degree. Say that took ten times as long (you see we have unlimited time to deal with). I can hardly imagine his interest in the subject holding out even for those; and, though there is no limit to the degree of the curves he might study, yet surely the time, needed to exhaust all the novelty and interest of the subject, would be absolutely finite? And so of all other branches of Science. And, when I transport myself, in thought, through some thousands or millions of years, and fancy myself possessed of as much Science as one created
