Ships That Pass in the Night Part 3

There were some people in Petershof who were inclined to believe certain absurd rumours about his alleged kindness. It was said that on more than one occasion he had nursed the suffering and the dying in sad Petershof, and, with all the sorrowful tenderness worthy of a loving mother, had helped them to take their leave of life. But these were only rumours, and there was nothing in Robert Allitsen's ordinary bearing to justify such talk. So the foolish people who, for the sake of making themselves peculiar, revived these unlikely fictions, were speedily ridiculed and reduced to silence. And the Disagreeable Man remained the Disagreeable Man, with a clean record for unamiability.

He lived a life apart from others. Most of his time was occupied in photography, or in the use and study of the microscope, or in chemistry.

His photographs were considered to be most beautiful. Not that he showed them specially to any one; but he generally sent a specimen of his work to the Monthly Photograph Portfolio, and hence it was that people learned to know of his skill. He might be seen any fine day trudging along in company with his photographic apparatus, and a desolate dog, who looked almost as cheerless as his chosen comrade. Neither the one took any notice of the other; Allitsen was no more genial to the dog than he was to the Kurhaus guests; the dog was no more demonstrative to Robert Allitsen than he was to any one in Petershof.

Still, they were "something" to each other, that unexplainable "something" which has to explain almost every kind of attachment.

He had no friends in Petershof, and apparently had no friends anywhere.

No one wrote to him, except his old mother; the papers which were sent to him came from a stationer's.

He read all during meal-time. But now and again he spoke a few words with Bernardine Holme, whose place was next to him. It never occurred to him to say good morning, nor to give a greeting of any kind, nor to show a courtesy. One day during lunch, however, he did take the trouble to stoop and pick up Bernardine Holme's shawl, which had fallen for the third time to the ground.

"I never saw a female wear a shawl more carelessly than you," he said.

"You don't seem to know anything about it."

His manner was always gruff. Every one complained of him. Every one always had complained of him. He had never been heard to laugh. Once or twice he had been seen to smile on occasions when people talked confidently of recovering their health. It was a beautiful smile worthy of a better cause. It was a smile which made one pause to wonder what could have been the original disposition of the Disagreeable Man before ill-health had cut him off from the affairs of active life. Was he happy or unhappy? It was not known. He gave no sign of either the one state or the other. He always looked very ill, but he did not seem to get worse.

He had never been known to make the faintest allusion to his own health.

He never "smoked" his thermometer in public; and this was the more remarkable in an hotel where people would even leave off a conversation and say: "Excuse me, Sir or Madam, I must now take my temperature. We will resume the topic in a few minutes."

He never lent any papers or books, and he never borrowed any.

He had a room at the top of the hotel, and he lived his life, amongst his chemistry bottles, his scientific books, his microscope, and his camera. He never sat in any of the hotel drawing-rooms. There was nothing striking nor eccentric about his appearance. He was neither ugly nor good-looking, neither tall nor short, neither fair nor dark.

He was thin and frail, and rather bent. But that might be the description of any one in Petershof. There was nothing pathetic about him, no suggestion even of poetry, which gives a reverence to suffering, whether mental or physical. As there was no expression on his face, so also there was no expression in his eyes: no distant longing, no far-off fixedness; nothing, indeed, to awaken sad sympathy.

The only positive thing about him was his rudeness. Was it natural or cultivated? No one in Petershof could say. He had always been as he was; and there was no reason to suppose that he would ever be different.

He was, in fact, like the glacier of which he had such a fine view from his room; like the glacier, an unchanging feature of the neighbourhood.

No one loved it better than the Disagreeable Man did; he watched the sunlight on it, now pale golden, now fiery red. He loved the sky, the dull grey, or the bright blue. He loved the snow forests, and the snow-girt streams, and the ice cathedrals, and the great firs patient beneath their snow-burden. He loved the frozen waterfalls, and the costly diamonds in the snow. He knew, too, where the flowers nestled in their white nursery. He was, indeed, an authority on Alpine botany.

The same tender hands which plucked the flowers in the spring-time, dissected them and laid them bare beneath the microscope. But he did not love them the less for that.

Were these pursuits a comfort to him? Did they help him to forget that there was a time when he, too, was burning with ambition to distinguish himself, and be one of the marked men of the age?

Who could say?

CHAPTER VI.

THE TRAVELLER AND THE TEMPLE OF KNOWLEDGE.

COUNTLESS ages ago a Traveller, much worn with journeying, climbed up the last bit of rough road which led to the summit of a high mountain.

There was a temple on that mountain. And the Traveller had vowed that he would reach it before death prevented him. He knew the journey was long, and the road rough. He knew that the mountain was the most difficult of ascent of that mountain chain, called "The Ideals." But he had a strongly-hoping heart and a sure foot. He lost all sense of time, but he never lost the feeling of hope.

"Even if I faint by the way-side," he said to himself, "and am not able to reach the summit, still it is something to be on the road which leads to the High Ideals."

That was how he comforted himself when he was weary. He never lost more hope than that; and surely that was little enough.

And now he had reached the temple.

He rang the bell, and an old white-haired man opened the gate. He smiled sadly when he saw the Traveller.

"_And yet another one_," he murmured. "What does it all mean?"

The Traveller did not hear what he murmured.

"Old white-haired man," he said, "tell me; and so I have come at last to the wonderful Temple of Knowledge. I have been journeying hither all my life. Ah, but it is hard work climbing up to the Ideals."

The old man touched the Traveller on the arm. "Listen," he said gently.

"This is not the Temple of Knowledge. And the Ideals are not a chain of mountains; they are a stretch of plains, and the Temple of Knowledge is in their centre. You have come the wrong road. Alas, poor Traveller!"

The light in the Traveller's eyes had faded. The hope in his heart died.

And he became old and withered. He leaned heavily on his staff.

"Can one rest here?" he asked wearily.

"No."

"Is there a way down the other side of these mountains?"

"No."

"What are these mountains called?"

"They have no name."

"And the temple--how do you call the temple?"

"It has no name!"

"Then I call it the Temple of Broken Hearts," said the Traveller.

And he turned and went. But the old white-haired man followed him.

"Brother," he said, "you are not the first to come here, but you may be the last. Go back to the plains, and tell the dwellers in the plains that the Temple of True Knowledge is in their very midst; any one may enter it who chooses, the gate is not even closed. The Temple has always been in the plains, in the very heart of life, and work, and daily effort. The philosopher may enter, the stone-breaker may enter.

You must have pa.s.sed it every day of your life; a plain, venerable building, unlike your glorious cathedrals."

"I have seen the children playing near it," said the Traveller. "When I was a child I used to play there. Ah, if I had only known! Well, the past is the past."

He would have rested against a huge stone, but that the old white-haired man prevented him.

"Do not rest," he said. "If you once rest there, you will not rise again.

When you once rest, you will know how weary you are."

"I have no wish to go farther," said the Traveller. "My journey is done; it may have been in the wrong direction, but still it is done."

"Nay, do not linger here," urged the old man. "Retrace your steps.

Though you are broken-hearted yourself, you may save others from breaking their hearts. Those whom you meet on this road, you can turn back. Those who are but starting in this direction you can bid pause and consider how mad it is to suppose that the Temple of True Knowledge should have been built on an isolated and dangerous mountain. Tell them that although G.o.d seems hard, He is not as hard as all that. Tell them that the Ideals are not a mountain range, but their own plains, where their great cities are built, and where the corn grows, and where men and women are toiling, sometimes in sorrow and sometimes in joy."