position which demands one of two sacrifices: the sacrifice of
the other person, or the sacrifice of his own interests and his
own desires. His neighbor's happiness, or his neighbor's life,
stands, let us say, between him and the attainment of something
that he wants. He can wreck the happiness, or strike down the
life, without, to his knowledge, any fear of suffering for it
himself. What is to prevent him, being the man he is, from going
straight to his end, on those conditions? Will the skill in
rowing, the swiftness in running, the admirable capacity and
endurance in other physical exercises, which he has attained, by
a strenuous cultivation in this kind that has excluded any
similarly strenuous cultivation in other kinds--will these
physical attainments help him to win a purely moral victory over
his own selfishness and his own cruelty? They won't even help him
to see that it _is_ selfishness, and that it _is_ cruelty. The
essential principle of his rowing and racing (a harmless
principle enough, if you can be sure of applying it to rowing and
racing only) has taught him to take every advantage of another
man that his superior strength and superior cunning can suggest.
There has been nothing in his training to soften the barbarous
hardness in his heart, and to enlighten the barbarous darkness in
his mind. Temptation finds this man defenseless, when temptation
passes his way. I don't care who he is, or how high he stands
accidentally in the social scale--he is, to all moral intents and
purposes, an Animal, and nothing more. If my happiness stands in
his way--and if he can do it with impunity to himself--he will
trample down my happiness. If my life happens to be the next
obstacle he encounters--and if he can do it with impunity to
himself--he will trample down my life. Not, Mr. Delamayn, in the
character of a victim to irresistible fatality, or to blind
chance; but in the character of a man who has sown the seed, and
reaps the harvest. That, Sir, is the case which I put as an
extreme case only, when this discussion began. As an extreme case
only--but as a perfectly possible case, at the same time--I
restate it now."
Before the advocates of the other side of the question could open
their lips to reply, Geoffrey suddenly flung off his
indifference, and started to his feet.
"Stop!" he cried, threatening the others, in his fierce
impatience to answer for himself, with his clenched fist.
There was a general silence.
Geoffrey turned and looked at Sir Patrick, as if Sir Patrick had
personally insulted him.
"Who is this anonymous man, who finds his way to his own ends,
and pities nobody and sticks at nothing?" he asked. "Give him a
name!"
"I am quoting an example," said Sir Patrick. "I am not attacking
a man."
"What right have you," cried Geoffrey--utterly forgetful, in the
strange exasperation that had seized on him, of the interest that
he had in controlling himself before Sir Patrick--"what right
have you to pick out an example of a rowing man who is an
infernal scoundrel--when it's quite as likely that a rowing man
may be a good fellow: ay! and a better fellow, if you come to
that, than ever stood in your shoes!"
"If the one case is quite as likely to occur as the other (which
I readily admit)," answered Sir Patrick, "I have surely a right
to choose which case I please for illustration. (Wait, Mr.
Delamayn! These are the last words I have to say and I mean to
say them.) I have taken the example--not of a specially depraved
man, as you erroneously suppose--but of an average man, with his
average share of the mean, cruel, and dangerous qualities, which
are part and parcel of unreformed human nature--as your religion
tells you, and as you may see for yourself, if you choose to look
at your untaught fellow-creatures any where. I suppose that man
to be tried by a temptation to wickedness, out of the common; and
I show, to the best of my ability, how completely the moral and
mental neglect of himself, which the present material tone of
public feeling in England has tacitly encouraged, leaves him at
the mercy of all the worst instincts in his nature; and how
surely, under those conditions, he _must_ go down (gentleman as
he is) step by step--as the lowest vagabond in the streets goes
down under _his_ special temptation--from the beginning in
ignorance to the end in crime. If you deny my right to take such
an example as that, in illustration of the views I advocate, you
must either deny that a special temptation to wickedness can
assail a man in the position of a gentleman, or you must assert
that gentlemen who are naturally superior to all temptation are
the only gentlemen who devote themselves to athletic pursuits.
There is my defense. In stating my case, I have spoken out of my
own sincere respect for the interests of virtue and of learning;
out of my own sincere admiration for those young men among us who
are resisting the contagion of barbarism about them. In _their_
future is the future hope of England. I have done."
Angrily ready with a violent personal reply, Geoffrey found
himself checked, in his turn by another person with something to
say, and with a resolution to say it at that particular moment.
For some little time past the surgeon had discontinued his steady
investigation of Geoffrey's face, and had given all his attention
to the discussion, with the air of a man whose self-imposed task
had come to an end. As the last sentence fell from the last
speaker's lips, he interposed so quickly and so skillfully
between Geoffrey and Sir Patrick, that Geoffrey himself was taken
by surprise,
"There is something still wanting to make Sir Patrick's statement
of the case complete," he said. "I think I can supply it, from
the result of my own professional experience. Before I say what I
have to say, Mr. Delamayn will perhaps excuse me, if I venture on
giving him a caution to control himself."
"Are _you_ going to make a dead set at me, too?" inquired
Geoffrey.
"I am recommending you to keep your temper--nothing more. There
are plenty of men who can fly into a passion without doing
themselves any particular harm. You are not one of them."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't think the state of your health, Mr. Delamayn, is quite
so satisfactory as you may be disposed to consider it yourself."
Geoffrey turned to his admirers and adherents with a roar of
derisive laughter. The admirers and adherents all echoed him
together. Arnold and Blanche smiled at each other. Even Sir
Patrick looked as if he could hardly credit the evidence of his
own ears. There stood the modern Hercules, self-vindicated as a
Hercules, before all eyes that looked at him. And there,
opposite, stood a man whom he could have killed with one blow of
his fist, telling him, in serious earnest, that he was not in
perfect health!
"You are a rare fellow!" said Geoffrey, half in jest and half in
anger. "What's the matter with me?"
"I have undertaken to give you, what I believe to be, a necessary
caution," answered the surgeon. "I have _not_ undertaken to tell
you what I think is the matter with you. That may be a question
for consideration some little time hence. In the meanwhile, I
should like to put my impression about you to the test. Have you
any objection to answer a question on a matter of no particular
importance relating to yourself?"
"Let's hear the question first."
"I have noticed something in your behavior while Sir Patrick was
speaking. You are as much interested in opposing his views as any
of those gentlemen about you. I don't understand your sitting in
silence, and leaving it entirely to the others to put the case on
your side--until Sir Patrick said something which happened to
irritate you. Had you, all the time before that, no answer ready
in your own mind?"
"I had as good answers in my mind as any that have been made here
to-day."
"And yet you didn't give them?"
"No; I didn't give them."
"Perhaps you felt--though you knew your objections to be good
ones--that it was hardly worth while to take the trouble of
putting them into words? In short, you let your friends answer
for you, rather than make the effort of answering for yourself?"
Geoffrey looked at his medical adviser with a sudden curiosity
and a sudden distrust.
"I say," he asked, "how do you come to know what's going on in my
mind--without my telling you of it?"
"It is my business to find out what is going on in people's
bodies--and to do that it is sometimes necessary for me to find
out (if I can) what is going on in their minds. If I have rightly
interpreted what was going on in _your_ mind, there is no need
for me to press my question. You have answered it already."
He turned to Sir Patrick next
"There is a side to this subject," he said, "which you have not
touched on yet. There is a Physical objection to the present rage
for muscular exercises of all sorts, which is quite as strong, in
its way, as the Moral objection. You have stated the consequences
as they _ may_ affect the mind. I can state the consequences as
they _do_ affect the body."
"From your own experience?"
"From my own experience. I can tell you, as a medical man, that a
proportion, and not by any means a small one, of the young men
who are now putting themselves to violent athletic tests of their
strength and endurance, are taking that course to the serious and
permanent injury of their own health. The public who attend
rowing-matches, foot-races, and other exhibitions of that sort,
see nothing but the successful results of muscular training.
Fathers and mothers at home see the failures. There are
households in England--miserable households, to be counted, Sir
Patrick, by more than ones and twos--in which there are young men
who have to thank the strain laid on their constitutions by the
popular physical displays of the present time, for being broken
men, and invalided men, for the rest of their lives."
"Do you hear that?" said Sir Patrick, looking at Geoffrey.
Geoffrey carelessly nodded his head. His irritation had had time
to subside; the stolid indifference had got possession of him
again. He had resumed his chair--he sat, with outstretched legs,
staring stupidly at the pattern on the carpet. "What does it
matter to Me?" was the sentiment expressed all over him, from
head to foot.
The surgeon went on.
"I can see no remedy for this sad state of things," he said, "as
long as the public feeling remains what the public feeling is
now. A fine healthy-looking young man, with a superb muscular
development, longs (naturally enough) to distinguish himself like
others. The training-authorities at his college, or elsewhere,
take him in hand (naturally enough again) on the strength of
outward appearances. And whether they have been right or wrong in
choosing him is more than they can say, until the experiment has
been tried, and the mischief has been, in many cases,
irretrievably done. How many of them are aware of the important
physiological truth, that the muscular power of a man is no fair
guarantee of his vital power? How many of them know that we all
have (as a great French writer puts it) two lives in us--the
surface life of the muscles, and the inner life of the heart,
lungs, and brain? Even if they did know this--even with medical
men to help them--it would be in the last degree doubtful, in
most cases, whether any previous examination would result in any
reliable discovery of the vital fitness of the man to undergo the
stress of muscular exertion laid on him. Apply to any of my
brethren; and they will tell you, as the result of their own
professional observation, that I am, in no sense, overstating
this serious evil, or exaggerating the deplorable and dangerous
consequences to which it leads. I have a patient at this moment,
who is a young man of twenty, and who possesses one of the finest
muscular developments I ever saw in my life. If that young man
had consulted me, before he followed the example of the other
young men about him, I can not honestly say that I could have
foreseen the results. As things are, after going through a
certain amount of muscular training, after performing a certain
number of muscular feats, he suddenly fainted one day, to the
astonishment of his family and friends. I was called in and I
have watched the case since. He will probably live, but he will
never recover. I am obliged to take precautions with this youth
of twenty which I should take with an old man of eighty. He is
big enough and muscular enough to sit to a painter as a model for
Samson--and only last week I saw him swoon away like a young
girl, in his mother's arms."
"Name!" cried Geoffrey's admirers, still fighting the battle on
their side, in the absence of any encouragement from Geoffrey
himself.
"I am not in the habit of mentioning my patients' names," replied
the surgeon. "But if you insist on my producing an example of a
man broken by athletic exercises, I can do it."
"Do it! Who is he?"
"You all know him perfectly well."
"Is he in the doctor's hands?"
"Not yet."
"Where is he?"
"There!"
In a pause of breathless silence--with the eyes of every person
in the room eagerly fastened on him--the surgeon lifted his hand
and pointed to Geoffrey Delamayn.
CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.
TOUCHING IT.
As soon as the general stupefaction was allayed, the general
incredulity asserted itself as a matter of course.
The man who first declared that "seeing" was "believing" laid his
finger (whether he knew it himself or not) on one of the
fundamental follies of humanity. The easiest of
all evidence to
receive is the evidence that requires no other judgment to decide
on it than the judgment of the eye--and it will be, on that
account, the evidence which humanity is most ready to credit, as
long as humanity lasts. The eyes of every body looked at
Geoffrey; and the judgment of every body decided, on the evidence
there visible, that the surgeon must be wrong. Lady Lundie
herself (disturbed over her dinner invitations) led the general
protest. "Mr. Delamayn in broken health!" she exclaimed,
appealing to the better sense of her eminent medical guest.
"Really, now, you can't expect us to believe that!"
Stung into action for the second time by the startling assertion
of which he had been
made the subject, Geoffrey rose, and looked the surgeon,
steadily and insolently, straight in the face.
"Do you mean what you say?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You point me out before all these people--"
"One moment, Mr. Delamayn. I admit that I may have been wrong in
directing the general attention to you. You have a right to
complain of my having answered too publicly the public challenge
offered to me by your friends. I apologize for having done that.
But I don't retract a single word of what I have said on the
subject of your health."
"You stick to it that I'm a broken-down man?"
"I do."
"I wish you were twenty years younger, Sir!"
"Why?"
"I'd ask you to step out on the lawn there and I'd show you
whether I'm a broken-down man or not."
Lady Lundie looked at her brother-in-law. Sir Patrick instantly
interfered.
"Mr. Delamayn," he said, "you were invited here in the character
of a gentleman, and you are a guest in a lady's house."
"No! no!" said the surgeon, good humoredly. "Mr. Delamayn is
using a strong argument, Sir Patrick--and that is all. If I
_were_ twenty years younger," he went on, addressing himself to
Geoffrey, "and if I _did_ step out on the lawn with you, the
result wouldn't affect the question between us in the least. I
don't say that the violent bodily exercises in which you are
famous have damaged your muscular power. I assert that they have
damaged your vital power. In what particular way they have
affected it I don't consider myself bound to tell you. I simply
give you a warning, as a matter of common humanity. You will do
well to be content with the success you have already achieved in
the field of athletic pursuits, and to alter your mode of life
for the future. Accept my excuses, once more, for having said
this publicly instead of privately--and don't forget my warning."
He turned to move away to another part of the room. Geoffrey
fairly forced him to return to the subject.
"Wait a bit," he said. "You have had your innings. My turn now. I
can't give it words as you do; but I can come to the point. And,
by the Lord, I'll fix you to it! In ten days or a fortnight from
this I'm going into training for the Foot-Race at Fulham. Do you
say I shall break down?"
"You will probably get through your training."
"Shall I get through the race?"
"You may _possibly_ get through the race. But if you do--"
"If I do?"
"You will never run another."
"And never row in another match?"
"Never."
"I have been asked to row in the Race, next spring; and I have
said I will. Do you tell me, in so many words, that I sha'n't be
able to do it?"
"Yes--in so many words."
"Positively?"
"Positively."
"Back your opinion!" cried Geoffrey, tearing his betting-book out
of his pocket. "I lay you an even hundred I'm in fit condition to
row in the University Match next spring."
"I don't bet, Mr. Delamayn."
With that final reply the surgeon walked away to the other end of
the library. Lady Lundie (taking Blanche in custody) withdrew, at
the same time, to return to the serious business of her