Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle | Page 8

drawing-room, whose windows command the west, I was again in the
same dusky light.
I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed
in the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading.
The corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and
the gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what
was sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place.
The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall
figure of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with
quiet stealthy steps, into the room.
We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was
still light enough to enable us to see each other's faces, he sat down
beside me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of
preface began his narrative.
CHAPTER VI

How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion
The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of
Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room,
and on the stony face of the sufferer--for the character of his face,
though still gentle and sweet, was changed--rested that dim, odd glow
which seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden
though faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness. The
silence, too, was utter: not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from
without; and within the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelor's
house.
I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of the
revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that
so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalken's, before its
background of darkness.
"It began," he said, "on the 15th of October, three years and eleven
weeks ago, and two days--I keep very accurate count, for every day is
torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.
"About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much
thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the
ancients."
"I know," said I, "the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism,
quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting field."
"Yes, but not good for the mind--the Christian mind, I mean. Paganism
is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their
religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a
degrading fascination and the Nemesis sure. God forgive me!
"I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on the
subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly
infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected
with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself delightfully
interesting, and I, then, without a care."

He sighed heavily.
"I believe, that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his
work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on something--tea, or coffee, or
tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly
supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted,
and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded
often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt
the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion--at first the ordinary
black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good
deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced an
uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I
found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of
thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one
might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so quiet,
and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a habit with
me to sip my tea--green tea--every now and then as my work proceeded.
I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp, and made tea
two or three times between eleven o'clock and two or three in the
morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every day. I
was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a library,
hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I was in
no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty much as
usual and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence had never
been, I think, so pleasant before.
"I had met with a man who had some