Читать книгу Scholar Gispies - John Buchan - Страница 4

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IN a grey university town in the north it was once my good fortune to know one who passed among his fellow students with something of the air, I fancy, that the Scholar-Gipsy of Matthew Arnold must have had when by a rare chance he fell in with his friends of past years. He was courteous and kind to all, with a gracious condescension which was not that of a great man to an inferior, but rather of a stranger from some wiser planet who had strayed for awhile among us. With his keen, handsome face he passed through the gaunt quadrangle amid the crowd of pale, overworked weaklings, as one to whom learning came easily. He was a ripe scholar, beyond us all in classics, in philosophy, a lover of strange lore, learned in the literatures of many tongues; but beyond these tangible acquirements there was that baffling sense of deeper knowledge which lurked in his presence and puzzled the best of us with its evasive magic. In many of our memories his inscrutable figure long remained till it was effaced by more sordid impressions.

Some years afterwards I met him. It was one golden afternoon in the end of July, as I returned to the inn from the river with my rod and a scantily furnished creel. Sitting outside I saw my friend of former years and hastened my steps to meet him. He was much changed. His face was thin and his back bent, but he had still the same kindly look and smile. We passed the evening together in the garden thick with Jacobite roses; and, as we talked, he told me bit by bit the history of his past. His parents had died when he was young and left him a sufficient patrimony; and his boyhood and youth had been passed much as he pleased in a moorland country. Here he had grown up, spending his days between study and long wanderings over a romantic country-side. In his college vacations it had been the same; seasons of grim work varied with gipsying journeys, fishing and travelling in high, wild places. He became learned in the knowledge of the woods, and many other things not taught in the schools, though he read his books with a finer zest and a widened humanity. After an honourable course at our college he had gone to one of the southern universities, and there after a career of unusual distinction he had settled down to the profession on which his heart was set.

But while his life was yet beginning he was mortally stricken with the national disease, of which the seeds were in his race; and young, rich, brilliant as he was, he had to face the prospect of a lingering death. His mind was soon made up. To him the idea of ending his life in the town, like a rat in its hole, was too awful to be endured. He got together some few necessaries and books, and quietly, with no false bravado, set out on his last journey. He was able to go only short distances at a time; so through all the pleasant spring and early summer he travelled among the lowland country places, gaining contentment and a gallant cheerfulness from the companionship of nature. When I met him he had reached the borders of the great upland region in which his boyhood had been passed. He had only a few months at the most to live, but, though as weak as a child in body, he had lost not a whit of his old, gay humour.

The next morning I bade him good-bye; and as I watched his figure disappearing from view round the bend of the road, I uncovered my head, for of a truth he of all men had found Natura Benigna, the Kindly Mother.