Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (57 page)

I
saw
him
go,
I
also
saw
him
return:
that
is,
I
saw
him
disappear and
re-appear.
This
was
my
unsought,
unwelcomed
privilege.
I
was with
him
when
he
went,
I
was
there
when
he
came
back.
That
final going
in
death
robbed
him,
I
firmly
believe,
of
a
burden
of
intense and
marvellous
confession,
while
it
robbed
me,
but
in
particular robbed
Dr.
Vronski,
his
fellow
student,
of
a
rich
harvest
that
was almost
within
my
grasp—a
revelation
possibly
that
might
have
extended
the
present
knowledge
of
the
race.

Sydney
Mantravers
remains
for
me
an
extraordinary,
even
terrible, problem.
The
mere
mention
of
his
name
brings
back
the
haunting radiance
of
his
skin
and
eyes,
the
breath
of
some
unearthly
atmosphere which
stimulates,
while
yet
it
cools,
the
blood.
Eyes,
skin
and
those thousand
unanswered
questions
will
haunt
me
till
I,
too,
enter
that silent
darkness
which
makes
reappearance
apparently
impossible.

His
story
is
not
really
complicated.
It
is
only
that
the
sequence of
its
details
covers
a
considerable
time,
a
somewhat
extensive
field as
well.
It
is
best
to
tell
it
precisely
as
it
happened.
It
began,
then, in
a
London
club,
of
which
we
were
both
members,
and
the
occasion was
August
4th,
the
night
of
the
Ultimatum.
War
had
been
declared. England
was
at
war
with
Germany.
It
was
a
night,
as
all
remember, of
intense
excitement,
of
strange
exaltation.
Emotion
was
deep
and real.
It
was
not
personal
emotion.
All
of
us,
old
and
young,
thought first
of
the
country.

Mantravers,
a
distant
cousin,
was
over
sixty;
I
was
a
young
officer of
twenty-five.
He
had
always
been
kind
to
me,
I
knew
him
fairly well,
he
had
given
me
good
tips
in
days
gone
by,
we
were
friends of
a
kind,
and
his
knowledge
of
life,
as
a
rich,
travelled,
experienced bachelor,
had
often
stood
me
in
good
stead.
I
respected,
if
rather dreaded,
him,
dreaded,
that
is,
his
strange
high-brow
theories,
his attainments
in
higher
physics,
his
amazing
ideas
about
space
and
time and
what
not.
Occasionally,
he
would
pour
something
of
all
this
into me,
leaving
me
breathless,
uneasy,
perhaps
a
little
scared.
My
main interests
being
horses,
women,
money
and
personal
advancement, the
dread
of
his
intellectual
attainments
was
understandable,
but he
declared
he
liked
to
talk
to
me
because,
if
ignorant,
I
was
what he
called
"open-minded
and
intelligent,"
while
I
think
he
twigged some
secret
curiosity
in
me
at
the
same
time.
I
used
to
think
of
those occasional
talks
as
"trying
it
on
the
dog,"
but
when
once
I
mentioned this
he
shook
his
head.
"No,
no,"
he
said,
"it
's
not
that.
You
happen to
have
an
unusual
mind,
an
original
make-up.
If
you
were
trained a
bit
I
could
tell
you
more.
You
could
do
things.
Your
ignorance
is
to
the
good,
for
you
would
have
nothing
to
un-learn."