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diff --git a/41682-0.txt b/41682-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..28552f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/41682-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4013 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41682 *** + + The Youth of Parnassus + + and Other Stories + + by Logan Pearsall Smith + + + London + Macmillan and Co. + and New York + 1895 + _All rights reserved_ + + + + + To + Philip Morrell + + + + +Contents + + + Page + + The Youth of Parnassus 1 + + The Will to Live. I. 79 + + The Will to Live. II. 99 + + The Claim of the Past 125 + + A Broken Journey 143 + + The Sub-Warden 183 + + Idyll 201 + + Buller Intervening 243 + + The Optimist 259 + + + + +_The Youth of Parnassus_ + + +I. + +He came straight to Oxford from his American home, Parnassus City, a +town in the Western State of Indiana. + +The first time Foley saw him was one wet October evening, when, +splashing across the quadrangle towards his rooms, he noticed a large +umbrella moving through the dripping twilight--an umbrella which, from +its undecided motion, must belong, he had told himself, to some tourist, +who, in spite of the rain and darkness, was finishing a day of +sight-seeing at St. Mary's. But when the umbrella collapsed in front of +his own staircase, and Foley saw the spectacles and pale face of a young +man who turned to enter there, he decided that it must be an agent, come +to collect money for missions or something of the kind. And as he +followed upstairs, in the wet footprints of the feet he could still hear +mounting above him, he asked himself with vague annoyance what right +they had--people like that--to push themselves into the rooms of Oxford +men. + +The melancholy footsteps went on till they reached the top; nor did +Foley hear them again descend. Soon after he was told that an American +had come into College, and was living above him; and when he went to +call, he recognized, in the person who awkwardly rose to receive him, +the young man he had taken for a mission agent in the rain that evening. +A thin, small young man, in a long, black broadcloth coat of provincial +cut, he seemed at first sight nothing but the traditional Western +American Foley had read of in books, or seen in the theatre sometimes--a +student who looked curiously out of place in that old panelled room. + +The young Englishman talked to him as best he could, asking the +questions always asked of a new-comer; questions which this one answered +with the usual shyness, but in a very unusual voice and accent. + +He had just come from America; he had left there on the sixth. He had +come to study under Dr. Joseph at the new Methodist College. Dr. Joseph +had arranged for him to come to St. Mary's; their own College wasn't +built yet. Foley asked if he thought he would like Oxford. "Yes, sir," +the other replied, drawing a large handkerchief from his coat-tails, "I +guess I will; though," he added cautiously after a moment, "it does +seem kind of old and mouldy." + +Foley thought he had done his duty in calling, and meant for the future +to see as little as possible of his new neighbour. And yet there had +been something pleasant and sensitive in his face, he remembered +afterwards; and at times he was haunted by the thought of this stranger +sitting as he had found him, alone and lonely in the room upstairs, with +two or three books in the empty shelves, a few photographs of home that +made the mantelpiece and bare walls look all the more homeless and +unfriendly. Now and then he would hear footsteps above moving vaguely +about, or he would meet the American on the stairs, or see him walking +out alone, and at last, out of kindness, he went again to call. + +Before long he began to take a certain liking to Sutton, and would +often go up in the evenings with a cigarette to his rooms. To the young +Englishman the American was certainly a curious and amusing study. How +curious were the views and impressions of Oxford, that, breaking through +his shy reserve, he would once in a while express, in his prim +middle-aged way! He was a good deal shocked by the wine-drinking, +card-playing, and Sabbath-breaking that seemed so prevalent there; what +religion there was, (well, he didn't guess there was much,) he thought +mechanical and dead. Of course there was a great deal of culture in +Oxford; but in other things, like telephones and electric lights, why +England was behind the Mississippi Valley! + + +II. + +Foley began to have ideas of his own about this Mississippi Valley. He +had already read of its rivers and railways and mushroom towns, and he +remembered some of the proud things that Sutton had said at different +times of Parnassus City and its importance--it was almost the only +subject on which the reticent young man ever seemed willing to talk--the +thought-out comparisons he would draw between that place and Oxford, in +his attempts to explain to himself what he saw, and account for it all, +according to his principles. + +One evening, in a burst of unusual talkativeness, he described how +Parnassus City had been laid out twenty years before, on what had been +till then an unploughed prairie; but now there were thousands of +inhabitants, rows of business buildings, and elegant residences in the +outskirts. There were electric trolleys too in the streets; and the +whole town was lighted by natural gas. Not only had the place grown fast +in trade and population, but there had been, he explained, a pretty +rapid growth in culture. Oh, they didn't intend to let the moss grow on +them out in Indiana! Schools and churches were built--the most elegant +was the First Methodist, the Reverend Dr. Turnpenny's. It was Dr. +Turnpenny, he added, who started the Forward Movement among the Indiana +Methodists which made such a stir. Then, after the churches, they had +built a lecture hall and library, and, at last, the Parnassus College. + +Foley asking more about this college, Sutton explained that though it +had been built a few years before as a college for Methodist theology +and liberal learning, it was already larger than the neighbouring +institute at Corinth Creek, and only second in those parts to the +University of Miomi. It wasn't of course like the universities in the +Eastern States, but still they were proud of it there. + +He had pinned up on the old panelling of his wall a photograph of this +Parnassus College: a rather gaunt frame building, standing in a ploughed +field among a few new-planted trees. About the steps were grouped a +number of young men and women, many of them wearing spectacles, and all +with earnest faces and provincial dress. "That's my class," Sutton +explained, pointing at his own figure in the group. "It's the biggest +class we've had so far, thirteen gentlemen and seven ladies." + +Foley studied the photograph of the college, and the pictures on the +mantelpiece--several college friends, with lank serious faces; an +intellectual young lady, her hand resting on a copy of the Bible; and an +old, mild, white bearded minister--Dr. Turnpenny, no doubt. There was a +picture too of a wide city street. Then it really existed, this remote +place, and people lived there! he thought, amused at the curious chance +which had brought Sutton, the promise and pride, perhaps, of his native +town, and set him down in so different a world. + +But at last Foley turned from the yellow lamplight, the photographs, and +the voice of the American sawing in his ear. Going to the window he +opened the lattice and leaned out into the night. Cool, fresh, and dark +was the air that breathed on his face, while before him, blue and vague +under the white moon, there grew on his sight the towers, the dome-like +trees, and shining roofs of Oxford; dim, romantic, and steeped in +silence, save for the even tinkle of a distant bell. With sudden +unaffected sentiment, he felt how much he cared for Oxford and all that +Oxford stood for. + +"Do come here," he called out with a friendly impulse, turning his head +into the yellow light of the room, "I don't think I ever saw such a +view." + +The American came and leaned beside him at the open window. "Yes, it is +nice," he said at length, and Foley was surprised by a fugitive sound of +real feeling and appreciation in his voice. + + +III. + +Gradually he came to take a more real interest in his neighbour. The +books that Sutton read, Sutton's love of poetry--surprised him; little +things he would say now and then seemed to show indications of sensitive +fancies and shy feelings hardly in accordance with his dry exterior. +What a thing it would be for him, Foley thought, if the poor young +man's taste could be really cultivated; if he could only be set free +from his narrowing ideas and made to look at life for himself, instead +of seeing it always through the grey fog of Puritan prejudice! + +Sutton took everything that Foley said with delightful seriousness; the +well-worn arguments against Democracy and Republicanism were new to him, +and seemed to puzzle him--he would come days afterwards with carefully +thought-out answers to them. Or he would give his friend tracts to read, +as if he was worried by Foley's ritualistic tastes, and hoped to convert +him to Methodism; and once he persuaded him to go and hear Dr. Joseph +preach. Foley was really impressed by the good sense and vigour of +Sutton's master, but to Sutton himself he criticized what he thought a +want of beauty in the service. + +And it was only once that Foley felt even for a moment the least +uncomfortable about the things he said to his friend--one evening when +he happened to run upstairs with some specious argument about the +Apostolic Succession, (for when an idea occurred to him he liked to make +use of it at once,) and going into the American's room, he found him on +his knees in prayer. + +In that old place--for St. Mary's was not one of the more liberal +Colleges, but a sleepy, ancient, aristocratic society, very conservative +of its own beliefs and manners and prejudices--Eliaphet Sutton lived on +at first, unknown to almost everybody, and only noticed for the oddness +of his looks, as he went in and out to his lectures or solitary walks. +But after a while Foley's interest in him, and his own shy charm +of manner, gained him a more friendly welcome in the College, and +little by little he began to modify, it was remarked, the quaint +unconventionalities of his speech and ways. + +A curious life it was, this Oxford life into which the inexperienced +American had chanced to drift! A community of young men, generously bred +and taught, living together so intimately in that mediaeval place, with +its own old usages and traditions and ways of thinking; shut out, as by +a high wall, from the world outside; aloof from the vulgar needs of +life; concerned, many of them, only with its theoretic problems, +interested more, perhaps, in the ancient Greeks than in contemporary +affairs--and, indeed, not unlike the Greeks in their care for the +clearness and beauty of the mind, the athletic strength of the +body--surely, Foley thought, the young Methodist could not have found so +delightful a place in all the world beside. + +How much he was really influenced by it Foley could not tell; certainly +as the months went by he seemed to be more aware of the beauty of +Oxford; he would stop sometimes of his own accord to look through a blue +gateway or down a sunlit street, and once Foley saw him standing, a +quaint figure, under the University Church, and gazing up at the +spire--at the religious statues there, which seemed to be voyaging +through the windy sky and among its great white clouds. He started to +join him, but Sutton, seeing he was noticed, moved hastily away. + +Then Foley remembered an evening when, coming out into the quadrangle, +he saw a figure he recognized as Sutton's standing at a barred gate +opening on the street. In front of the American, through that one small +opening in the great dark walls, was the gas-lit yellow of the street, +the noise of the passing crowd and traffic--for it was the evening of a +market day--but at his back the deep shadow and silence of the old +quadrangle. + +"It's rather absurd to be locked up in this way," Foley said, joining +him; but Sutton replied after a moment, "Why, I was just thinking I +rather liked it! Of course it is absurd, but still--" He stopped, as he +so often stopped, in the middle of his sentence. + +Other times there were when Sutton seemed curiously narrow and stubborn; +times when some of his dissenting acquaintances had just been to see +him--the elderly undergraduates, with bald heads and big moustaches, +whom Foley took to be pupils of Dr. Joseph's when he met them mounting +the stairs. One of these dissenting friends of the American's, a +friendly, awkward young man, named Abel, who was assistant tutor to Dr. +Joseph, and had come with him to Oxford when the college moved there +from Birmingham, seemed to have a special supervision over the +American. Abel had no very high idea of Oxford and Oxford people, and +once, when they met in Sutton's rooms, he and Foley argued a little +about the University. + +Anyhow he envied Sutton, Abel said at last, turning, as he rose to go, +to the silent American; it wasn't everybody who had the luck to live in +such a place. But Sutton suddenly coloured, and answered, "You can't +blame me, Abel, Dr. Turnpenny wanted me...." + +"I'm not blaming you, my friend, it's only envy," Abel replied +good-humouredly. He still lingered a moment, looking at the books, and +cross-questioning Sutton about his work, and how he spent his time. + +Foley, who liked anything new, was interested by this intelligent, +tactless man, and wondered why Sutton should be so obviously glad when +at last the young dissenter went his way. + + +IV. + +The next day Foley found his friend in a mood of deep depression. He +would not go out anywhere, he said; he must spend the afternoon--indeed, +he meant to spend all his afternoons now--on his work; he had been +neglecting it too long. And though this desperate resolve was often +broken, yet from this time on he seemed subject now and then to moods of +troubled conscience--moods in which he would shut himself up, sometimes +for days, working feverishly alone, or only coming to his friend late at +night to talk in an uneasy, interrupted way about the sinfulness of the +world, and its pleasures, and how wrong it was to enjoy yourself. At +these notions Foley would laugh, or argue seriously against them. That +Sutton could have any real reason for feeling as he did, Foley never +suspected, but thought it simply the old moroseness which haunted him, +the unreasoned hatred of the Puritans for gaiety and life. And Sutton +had very little to say in answer to his friend. Yes, he was getting on +with his work well enough, he admitted, and there was nothing really to +keep him from going out, except--except--somehow he felt it was wrong. + +But the wrong thing, Foley declared, was to stay in-doors all those +beautiful summer days; and then more seriously he added, that he was +sure what Sutton needed was to see more of the world and life. Living in +his lonely retired way, what could he know of other people and the +things they cared for, and how could he ever hope to have any influence +on them? And, once convinced that it was his duty, Sutton became +curiously eager to shut up his books and go. + +Indeed, for the most part, the poor young man was not hard to influence, +Foley found; any strong assertion attracted him, and he was often only +too willing to resign to someone else the responsibility of deciding +what he ought to do. But then again he would grow suddenly so stubborn +and prejudiced; and at all times he was so reserved about himself and +his own feelings, that the young Englishman, in spite of his theories, +never felt he really understood him. Perhaps, he sometimes fancied, +Sutton had no very real ideas or impressions of his own; perhaps he was +not influenced by Oxford in the least, and was not aware of any real +difference between the ancient town, with its traditions and memories, +and the new-built Parnassus City. + + +V. + +But when Foley had left Oxford and gone abroad that summer, the long +letters that came to him now and then, written in Sutton's fine +clerklike hand, surprised and touched him a little. It was odd, he +thought, that a person who had talked with so much reserve, should write +him such charming and intimate letters, and he told himself he had +always believed there were real feelings and tastes behind Sutton's mask +of awkward silence. + +The first of the letters was written in the vacation just after Foley +had gone abroad. It was Sutton's first summer in Europe; he was staying +on at Oxford, having friends nowhere else, and not being able, of +course, to go back to America. But from the way he wrote, America was +plainly a good deal in his thoughts, and often in those long still days +he wished himself back there, haunted as he was by the idea that he +might be wasting his time, that what he was learning in Oxford might not +be of any use to him out in Indiana after all. But then he really knew, +he wrote, that he was doing the best thing in staying on. The church out +there, and indeed the whole country, was growing so rapidly, that there +would be need in the ministry for young men who were well trained, and +familiar with the thought and culture of the day. He had come to see +that Foley was right in saying it was your duty to get familiar with +modern ideas, and read modern books; he was getting on with the list of +books Foley had made for him. Of course you ought to understand, or at +least try to understand, your opponent's views. If you were afraid of +this, it showed, as Dr. Turnpenny always said, that you could not be +very sure of yourself. Indeed, when Dr. Turnpenny had advised him to +come to Oxford, he had felt it would prove to the world that, at any +rate the Indiana Methodists were quite assured of their position. + +In the next letter there was a mention of the American tourists who were +coming through the summer in such numbers to Oxford. Sutton used to +watch them when they walked into the quiet College garden, where he sat +alone, wishing he knew them and could talk to them about America. Their +voices and ways made them seem like old friends to him there in that +strange country. Once two ladies had asked him the way to the chapel, +and he had been delighted to show them the sights of the College. They +were from Buffalo, New York; he must be sure to call on them, they said, +if he ever came to Buffalo. They told him how much they would like to +stay on in Oxford--but they had to go back to America in a month. Sutton +envied them their quick return; but after all, he added, when the time +came, probably he might be a little sorry to leave Oxford.... + + +VI. + +Then in the autumn, Sutton wrote about the coming together of the +College, the beginning of busy life after the long quiet of the vacation +days. For the first time he had gone to service in the College chapel. +He did not like the way of worship, finding it formal and meaningless; +but gradually, as the twilight faded away, and the great painted windows +filled with darkness--growing black in the candle-lit walls about +them--another impression came to him, looking at all those faces in the +dim light, and listening to their voices--an impression of the unity and +living spirit of the College, as being a small, ancient commonwealth, +with a history and traditions of its own. There they all were, just +themselves, shut in from the world outside, gathered together, as the +College had gathered together in the same place for five or six hundred +years. Though he was only there as a spectator, who had chanced to +wander in from the outside, yet he realized how great an influence such +a place, with all its old ways and customs, might have on the young +Englishmen who came there. Indeed, if the influence had not been so +obviously narrow and deadening he himself might have been a little +affected by it.... + +"Yes, you were right," he said in another letter, "when you told me that +the antiquity of England belongs to us Americans as much as to you.... +Sometimes I fancy I had an ancestor here once; I am sure he was a +Puritan, and disapproved of the ecclesiasticism and worldliness of the +place. And yet, poor man, he could not help loving Oxford too. A +retired, melancholy person, he liked it best in the days like these when +the buildings and yellow and greenish trees are half veiled in the +autumn mist. But at last he went over with the Puritans to New England, +and was much better and more active there, and free from all the dreamy +influences that held him in Oxford. And it will be much better for me +too, when I go back next year." + + +VII. + +But he had almost decided to go back at once, he wrote in the next +letter. He saw now, and indeed all along he had felt deep down in his +soul, that he was doing wrong in staying there; that there was nothing +really in Oxford to help him. If Foley only knew all the circumstances +he would understand. And, in any case, it was not wholesome to be always +living in the past. + +And in Oxford you _were_ in the past; the dead were about you +everywhere; you dwelt in the buildings they had built, you read their +books, you thought their thoughts, and the weight of their dreary +traditions crushed down on you, forcing your life into the shape of +theirs. Surely there was something evil and haunted about the place! And +during all those dripping autumn days, Sutton's one thought had been a +longing to be back again under the keen skies of his prairie-home; life +was new and hopeful there, unshadowed by the gloom of antiquity and +death.... + +But soon after Sutton wrote that he had had a talk with Dr. Joseph. "He +advises me by all means to stay here. He says that all I am getting at +Oxford will certainly be very useful to me when I go back. I never had +an idea how strong our position is; I wish you might have a talk with +him sometime, when you return. He explains that religion is progressive; +that there is no real antagonism between the new and the old; the one +has grown out of the other by a natural evolution. Indeed he laughed at +the idea of being afraid of the Past; one ought to enjoy it, not fear +it, he said. Then when I asked him if there wasn't a danger in the new +criticism, and too much reasoning about things, he said that there never +could be any real danger in following one's best reason, and that we +need not be the least afraid of what it will lead us to." + + +VIII. + +Other letters came to Foley now and then. Sutton spoke of his work and +occupations, the taciturn young man taking a certain pleasure, as it +seemed, in writing down the ideas and impressions that he found it hard +to express in any other way. + +But Foley at this time was travelling in the East; he could only read +the American's letters with haste and small attention. Some, however, he +put aside to keep, and now and then would write back in a disconnected +way, for he felt a certain friendliness for this assiduous +correspondent. As time went on, however, the letters grew more +infrequent, and at last the correspondence died. Foley, with his new +interests, had almost forgotten Sutton, or would only think of him +vaguely as a preacher somewhere in America, whither doubtless he had +returned some time ago. + + +IX. + +After Foley had spent a year or two almost entirely abroad, he returned +to England, began working hard at his profession, and it was some time +before he found the leisure to go back to Oxford. At last he went one +mid-summer alone, for an idle visit. It was the vacation; the old +College was almost deserted, and sometimes in the evening he would go +into the garden there, and, sitting under one of the great trees, would +read, or idly watch the fading of the twilight. And now memories of the +old days, and sentiments towards a place which he had once loved with a +certain enthusiasm--though half forgetting it afterwards, amid his other +occupations--came back to him with unexpected vividness. How much more +delightful it made life, he told himself one evening, as he sat there, +half lost in sentimental musing, how much more delightful it made life +to have been at Oxford, to have learned to love the place as one did +learn to love it--to have it always as a charming memory! It was so +perfect, that evening, with the sunset still lingering faint and red +behind the blue trees and towers, up there above the dusky garden +stretches. And that figure of a cloistered student which Foley could +vaguely distinguish on the twilight path; it was no real person, surely, +but a part of the picture, a figure painted into the grey landscape to +give the final touch of tranquil life! But as the figure drew nearer and +became more real, Foley began to wonder, who could it be who seemed so +familiar to him? + +"Why, Sutton!" he called out, as he joined him, surprised at finding the +American still at Oxford, "You still here?" + +Sutton started, and then greeting Foley in his old reserved way, they +paced together slowly on the garden path. After Foley had talked a +little about his travels and work, he turned to his companion and said +in a friendly way, "But tell me about yourself, Eliaphet, it's three +years since I have seen you; what have you been doing, and when are you +really going back to America?" + +Sutton replied with all his old vagueness and reticence that he had +stayed; he had found it necessary; he had not decided yet about going +back. + +"Probably you will be sorry to leave Oxford when the time comes?" Foley +suggested, but the American did not answer. + +Eliaphet was a good deal changed, Foley thought when they parted; he +seemed so much thinner and more melancholy looking, and his voice was +almost like that of another person. What a difference a few years made! + + +X. + +Several times in the following days Foley met his friend again--indeed, +they two just then seemed almost alone together in Oxford--and more than +once, in the long summer afternoons, they walked together in a desultory +way among the vacant streets and empty Colleges. Sutton was even more +reserved than of old, but there was a charm in his silent company and in +his affectionate, scrupulous knowledge of the place. Each of the +churches, dim College chapels, and libraries was dear and familiar to +him now; he had found remnants of Norman architecture, and little early +Gothic windows in obscure old places which Foley, who had thought he +knew Oxford so well, was forced to admit he had never visited. And even +for the despised classicism, Sutton seemed to have a certain fondness, +for everything that bore the stately quaint mark of the Stuart +times--Laud's quadrangle at St. John's, and its Italian-looking busts +and arches; the chapel at Trinity; the little Ashmolean museum, and the +prim old Botanic garden, with its battered statue of Charles I. over the +gate, the half neglected formality of its urns and fountain, its walls +and walks within. + +Then the old names of places seemed all to have a meaning for him. He +could trace the remains of the Religious Houses, the Friars Minor, the +Friar Preachers, the Carmelites, after which some of the more ancient +streets are called; showing Foley the gateways or ruined arches, bits +of College buildings which now alone remain of their former stately +precincts. And on their walks together Sutton often chose by preference +the little back streets, or those ancient footpaths that wind through +the old heart of the city, through the mediaeval town whose gables and +walls and gardens still sleep in the sun, almost untouched, behind the +modern fronts and the traffic of many of the busy streets. + +To Foley in his sentimental mood just then, the quiet of Oxford was very +pleasant, after the noise of the London season; and there seemed to be +something almost poetic in the life of this solitary student. How wise +he was after all, Foley thought, to stay there among the old colleges +and churches, where the ambitions and obligations of the world could +scarcely trouble him; nor the noise of its busy life break in on his +tranquil moods, or disturb the old memories he loved. And yet a vague +suspicion crossing his mind, once or twice, made him ask himself, was +Sutton really so happy after all? + + +XI. + +One morning this vacation quiet of the College was rather noisily broken +by the arrival of a number of undergraduates, who had returned to +prepare for an examination, bringing with them the noise and influences +of the outside world. Now the American was no longer to be met with in +the garden or quadrangle, whither he had been wont to come almost every +day, as if fond of the place and not averse from Foley's company. +Wondering that he did not see him any more, Foley one evening asked the +undergraduates if they knew Sutton or had ever heard anything about +him. + +By sight and reputation they knew him very well,--a solitary person, who +led in Oxford a most melancholy life, without friends or apparent +occupation; staying there, it was reported, because of something in his +past which kept him from going back to America. + +Foley knew how distorted gossip of this kind would grow in coming +through the minds of undergraduates; and yet there was enough in what +they told, to make him uneasy about his friend. Sutton had given up +studying theology, had tried history, making however a complete failure +in the schools; he was said to have adopted strange religious ideas and +had been heard, it was rumoured, groaning and scourging himself at +night. There was a report too that some Americans had come to Oxford, +and, after visiting him, had gone to the Warden and accused Sutton of +keeping some money which was not his own. + + +XII. + +As soon as he could, Foley went off to find his friend, getting the +address from the College books. At last in a dark alley he discovered +the house. Mr. Sutton had gone away from Oxford the day before, the +landlady told him, and had not said when he would be back. Perhaps the +gentleman would like to leave his card? The room was at the top; he must +be mindful of the stairs. Climbing up with care, Foley opened the door +and lighted a match in the darkness; the poverty and destitution of the +little room growing vivid for a moment, and then fading again into +blackness, affected him somewhat sadly. Just two chairs, a table, a +bed, and a few signs of human habitation,--several books, a coat hanging +on the wall, and three photographs over the fireplace, the familiar one +of Dr. Turnpenny, the dreamy face of Philip Gerard, and a picture that +Foley was touched to recognize as his own. All the pictures of Parnassus +City, his class mates, the young lady, the street, and college, had +disappeared, and a few old religious prints were in their place. + +Feeling as if he had intruded where he had no right, Foley turned away; +lingering on the stairs, however, for he was loth to leave the house +till he had learned something more definite about his friend. Then in +the hall below he met the landlady, and began to talk to her about the +American. Mr. Sutton was such a kind gentleman, she said, and always +very quiet; but lately he had been, she thought, very lonesome and +melancholy, and he didn't seem to have any friends in Oxford now. And +though he had paid her regular, she couldn't complain of that, yet she +was afraid the poor gentleman had very little money. Indeed, he had +seemed to be in some trouble, and now he had gone away mysterious-like. +The voice of this woman, plainly so poor herself, her anxiety on +Sutton's account, remained in Foley's mind in a haunting way. And yet, +what could have happened, he asked himself, unable in common sense to +imagine any definite trouble, and nevertheless disturbed by a sense of +mystery, as if he had suddenly found himself face to face with something +more real and sad than most of the sentiments and troubles of his own +experience. + +Certainly the American had greatly changed--the narrow, rustic young man +who had come there first, and the pale scholar Foley had met years +afterwards, in the twilight of the garden--there was difference enough +between the two! he thought, putting them side by side in memory. But +what this change was Sutton had not told; probably never would tell, for +in his reserve and reticence he was just the same. + +And yet in his letters he had written with much less reserve, Foley +remembered. He began to wonder whether, if he should read the letters +again, with more attention, he might not find in them some hint of +Sutton's trouble. Friendless as the American seemed to be in Oxford, a +little advice and sympathy from some one who understood his +circumstances, might make perhaps all the difference to him. + +When Foley got back to his own rooms, he began looking through the +portfolio of papers that he had brought with him from Germany. Yes, +there they were, the envelopes addressed in Sutton's neat fine writing. +Arranging them in order of their dates, he began to go through them. +Letters written during two or three years of his friend's life, in half +an hour he could read them all. + + +XIII. + +First came the letters Foley remembered: Sutton's first Long Vacation; +his home-sickness in Oxford; his thoughts of Parnassus; the American +tourists he would watch and speak with sometimes. Then in the autumn his +impression of the chapel, his growing fondness for Oxford, followed by +the sudden determination to go home, from which Dr. Joseph had dissuaded +him, telling him that there was nothing he need be afraid of in Oxford, +or in the Past. + +Then came the letters which had come to Foley in the East, and been +hardly regarded by him in the hurry of travel. Letters which read +pleasantly for the most part, as he went through them now, with their +echoes of charming Oxford life--charming for a time, though troubled +afterwards. With Dr. Joseph's theology to rely on, and Dr. Joseph's +approval of his life, Sutton's uneasy conscience had been at rest for a +while, and he had let himself enjoy life without questioning--just the +simple human joy of the world and youth, with the weather growing +warmer, and the Spring blossoming in the gardens of that beautiful old +city, where he was quite at home now. + +"I have so enjoyed the Spring," he wrote "your tardy, veering English +Spring, with its gusts of snow and black weather, and yet enough warm +days to woo from the earth the English flowers that till last year I +only knew of in books. But I greet them as old friends now, the +primroses, and cowslips, and daffodils.... May is here, the air is +full of the greenness of leaves and the songs of birds, the lank rose +trees are budding on the Gothic walls, and when I breathe the fragrant +air and look about me I rub my eyes, and wonder whether May was ever so +beautiful at home. Some beautiful days, of course, I can remember +vividly; but I lived then for the most part, I think, among pale +thoughts and theories, growing old before I was young, and looking so +rarely out--indeed, thinking somehow that it was almost wrong to look +out on the beauty and colour of the world...." + +He had written a good deal about Oxford; and really it wasn't true, what +Foley had told him once, that he didn't deserve to live in so beautiful +a place; he did care, and was learning more and more to look at things +and enjoy them. On May morning he had gone to Magdalen to hear them +salute the rising sun from the tower. "I wish I could describe it all," +he wrote, "the streets, as I went out, cold and vacant in the early +dawn, the pale flames in the street lamps, and the silence of those rows +of sleeping houses, only broken, as I passed under garden walls, by the +acute music of the birds awake already in the trees. Birds, millions of +them! I never heard such a clamour. At the College gate there was a +group of shivering people; and soon they let us in, to climb the steep +tower stairs, with its narrow windows here and there in the darkness, +with views like little old pictures of grey castles and green country. +On the windy platform at the top we found almost all the College +gathered, the President, and Fellows, and undergraduates, with the +group of white choristers. Gradually, as we waited, the formless sky all +round and above us grew white and blue; the sky-line reddened; and then, +bringing a sudden hush in the crowded talk, a sudden baring of all our +heads, the May sun began to blaze in the East; and as it rose into the +sky the boys, facing the light, chanted loud, with their shrill young +voices, the old Latin hymn. Well, you can hardly imagine what a solemn +moment it was, with the slow hymn, the stately yellow sun rising over +all that great view of green country. Turning toward Oxford we saw black +figures like dots on the sun-flushed towers and roofs of the other +Colleges. Our tower, and, indeed, the whole sky, seemed to rock with the +pealing bells; and the undergraduates, engaging in a wild scuffle, tore +off each other's caps and gowns, throwing them out into the air, to fall +with giddy swirls on the roofs, or into the street below. It seemed +almost an outburst of Pagan turbulence, after the Pagan sun-worship, up +there on that windy tower-top over the sleeping town! I wrote describing +it to Dr. Turnpenny; I only hope he won't be shocked!" + + +XIV. + +In Sir Philip Gerard, whom Foley had known slightly as a youth, of poor +and ancient Catholic family, Sutton, it appeared, had found a congenial +companion; and he described how they would often spend their afternoons +together on the river; rowing up the windings of the Cherwell, past +little woods and garden walks, or between the sliding horizons of meadow +banks, where the tangled edge of grass and flowers fringed the near sky. +"I lie on luxurious cushions in the bow, and Gerard pushes me along, +through sleepy sunshine and shadow, and under the unwilling branches of +trees; and then, anchoring in some secluded place, we read together some +poet or old book, while the endless afternoon glides by, and boats float +down the shady river." + +"This sounds dreadfully lazy, I'm afraid! But I am taking a rest; I have +been feeling rather tired, and Dr. Joseph says I had better do nothing +but enjoy myself for a week or two now...." + +"... I discovered the other day the old market. I wonder if you know +it? It is a delightful place! People from the villages about Oxford have +stalls there, and you see the ruddy, old-fashioned cottagers' wives, +seated each one behind a fresh bank of vegetables and flowers she +herself has grown at home in her quaint garden. Sweet, old-fashioned +flowers, flags and peonies and roses, made up into tight bouquets and +set out for sale in trim rows, not unlike, I fancy, the trim rows in +which they grew in their formal cottage flower beds...." Letters came +to him from home, he said, telling of all that was going on in Parnassus +City: the Bryant Literary Society they had started, the church bazaar +for the missionary work, the Monday evening prayer meetings at the +College; and he often felt that he ought to be back there, that he was +dreaming away his time. Yes, it was like a dream in Oxford; but such an +enchanted dream!... + +He wrote, in another letter, of the Oxford bells. More and more he was +conscious of them, sounding always in the near or distant sky; and if +ever he woke up in the night, restless with his dreams, he had only to +wait a little and they would ring out--first the silver voices of the +Colleges, and then the slow booming tones of the great church, so near +at hand. And he found a comfort, he said, in the nearness of the +churches, and their wakefulness through the night. + +Although of course he did not approve, he said, of a religion of +external forms, yet he confessed that he had come to take a certain +interest in noticing how, almost every time he went out, he discovered +some new symbol of the old Catholic religion--old stone crosses, statues +gazing out from the towers, images of the Virgin, hands raised in +prayer, the adoration of kings and queens in the painted windows; and +even in the gardens stone fragments, covered with ivy, of old +saints--everywhere tokens of ancient faith, and intimations of another +world, shining and immanent, about this world of sense. It was curious, +but he had never noticed these things when he had first come to Oxford! +Indeed, he grew to love all the antiquity of the place; was no longer +oppressed or frightened by it; and for the old portraits in the hall and +library, the tombstones in the cloisters, with their quaint epitaphs and +names, he felt a certain fondness, he said, looking on the dead now, not +as enemies, frowning on his creed and life, but as friends rather, and +kindly predecessors. + + +XV. + +The lives of many of those old scholars and worthies had become familiar +to him, since he had read Anthony à Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_, and he +had gone sometimes with his friend on antiquarian walks about Oxford, +and the colleges Wood described. Or Gerard would lend him a horse, and +they would ride out to visit the historic places and villages that lie +in the old country about--Woodstock, Cumnor, Abingdon--the names were +familiar to him of long date; had he not first read of some of them, and +the scenes they were famous for, in Jones' _Excelsior Reader_, out in +Indiana as a boy? + +He spoke of the village churches, that seemed so beautiful on those June +afternoons, as they stood among their old trees and flowers, with the +white clouds in the sky above, a shiver of wind in the long grass over +the graves. And then, through the scent of roses about the open door, +the dim interior, with its white Norman arches, and light falling from +painted windows on the crusaders' tombs--on all the many monuments of +the dead. The dead! Sutton wrote that he had always known of the times +gone by, and the faith of the Middle Ages, but only in an unreal way, +through books. And it made such a difference--to him at least--if he saw +the proof of a thing, actually existing with the daylight on it! + +"Once, Gerard says, these churches were filled in the morning and +evening light with labouring people kneeling in silent prayer. But that, +of course, was in the Dark Ages. Gerard thinks that the world has done +nothing but go back since the Middle Ages; certainly he does hate +everything that is modern. How he will detest Parnassus City, if he +comes to see me there, as he says he will. It has been bad for him, I am +sure, living out of the world, as he has lived, among old memories and +dreams of his own. He is a Catholic, you know, but he respects my +religion; he knows, of course, what my views are, and we never talk +about theology. There is a friend of his I meet sometimes a priest, and +I suppose a Jesuit. But he seems really quite a cultivated person." + +Foley took up another letter: They had ridden out, Sutton wrote, to an +old country house and park, where Charles I. had stayed once, while +Parliament was being held in Oxford. The house, all save one wing, now a +farm-house, had been torn down; but on the hill overlooking the lake, in +the midst of the green shade of beeches, the chapel was still standing, +abandoned now, and almost untouched, save by decay and time, since the +polite court of the Stuarts had said their worldly devotions there. What +rich brocades, what hushed gallantries and frivolous prayers had once +rustled and whispered under the graceful high arches of those pews! But +birds had their nests there now, he said, while through the decaying +roof the rain dripped down on the frail woodwork, the classic columns +and fading colours of this deserted place of elegant worship and old +fashion. + +The American Puritan confessed to a certain tenderness for the generous +lost cause, for the fine futile courage of the gay Cavaliers and lovely +forgotten ladies. And as they rode homeward through the twilight, his +companion sang snatches of some old Cavalier songs--tunes with a certain +pathos and grace in their gallant wistful music. + + +XVI. + +Then there was a long letter, dating from the autumn after this +delightful summer, in which he wrote again about Anthony à Wood, the old +Oxford antiquary. He had been reading Wood's diaries, finding in them, +he said, in spite of their old-fashioned pedantry and long genealogies, +a vivid picture of the University and Wood's life in it, two hundred +years ago. A calm life, Sutton described it, in curious contrast to the +times in which Wood lived, when the academic quiet was so often +disturbed by armies, and royal visits, and great events; and the noise +of tumults in the Oxford streets, and troops marching by, reaching the +old antiquary's ears, would draw him from the chronicles of the past, to +look with blinking eyes from his library window on the turmoil and +disquiet of contemporary history. For his life was spent in his own +study, or in "Bodlie's Library," or among the dusty archives of the +Colleges, reading and transcribing the monastic registers, the old +manuscripts and histories. Sutton quoted from his diary a sentence in +which he speaks of the exceeding pleasure he took in "poring on such +books." + +"Heraldry, musick, and painting did so much crowd upon him, that he +could not avoid them, and could never give a reason why he should +delight in those studies more than in others, so prevalent was nature." +"My pen cannot enough describe," he writes in his enthusiasm, when he +first read Dugdale's _Antiquities of Warwickshire_, "how A. Wood's +tender affections and insatiable desire of knowledge were ravish'd and +melted down by the reading of that book. What by music and rare books +that he found in the public library, his life at this time and after was +a perfect Elysium." + +"Wood often went for long, solitary walks, collecting arms and +monumental inscriptions from the churches, and visiting all the ruined +religious Houses and old halls in the country about Oxford. He describes +in his diary how, as he returned towards Oxford in the evening, 'after +he had taken his rambles about the country to collect monuments,' he +would hear the bells of Merton, his own College, ringing clearly in the +distance." + +"Wood had small love for the Puritans," Sutton wrote, "who in his +lifetime were so long in power; and in his record of contemporary +events, sudden deaths, and alleged appearances of the devil, he more +than once mentions their destruction of antiquities, their contempt for +the Fathers and Schoolmen, and hatred of all authority, and 'everything +that smelt of an Academy, never rejoicing more than when he could +trample on the gowne, and bring humane learning and arts into +disgrace.'" + +"Then came the Restoration, and almost the last event that Wood records +is the revival of Catholicism under James II. Wood himself was suspected +of being a Papist; his writings had made him enemies, and before he died +he was expelled from the University, and his book burned by order of the +Vice-Chancellor's Court." + +"And yet, on the whole, his life was a happy one," Sutton said, writing, +it was plain, with a certain envy for the tranquil occupations and +lettered tastes of the old Oxford antiquary. + + +XVII. + +The next two letters that Foley found (and they were the last) were +dated in the Long Vacation, nearly a year later. Either Sutton had not +written again for some time, or Foley had lost the letters. It was the +American's third summer in England; as before, he had stayed in Oxford. +He described the quiet afternoons he spent in the College garden; how he +seemed to be alone with Oxford and the past, and how even the city +noises, which came in over the walls--the rattle of carts, the shrill, +faint voices of newsboys, crying the world's events--only added a deeper +hush to the stillness and solitude within, the sunlight on the grass, +the shadows of the trees. + +He remembered how homesick he had been the first summer he had spent in +Oxford, and how he had longed to go back. But now that his work was +almost finished, and he was soon to go to America, he could not help +admitting that he shrank a little from it--felt a certain reluctance, +after all. He would watch, as he had watched before, the tourists who +now and then came into the quiet garden. Then he had enjoyed seeing +them, and wished he could talk to them; but now!... + +And one day some people whom he had known in Indiana came in. He spoke +to them, showed them about, and tried to be friendly, and yet they +seemed so far away somehow! He hated himself for it, and tried to +believe that it was all the fault of Oxford and its fastidious +standards; he had let himself be too much influenced, but when he got +back to Parnassus again, he hoped he should see things as he used to see +them, and feel the same towards the Slocums and all his old friends. + +But in the last letter, "It will never be the same now," Sutton had +written; "I have come too far and stayed too long. At first I was always +thinking of Parnassus City; I would dream of it at night, and wake in +the morning to wonder at the strangeness of my dim little windows and +the voices of the rooks outside. But then it began to fade, and +gradually everything changed. And yet, poor fool that I was, all the +time I tried to think that I was preparing myself to go back. Of course +I _shall_ go back; if I can't be a Minister, I can still teach in their +university, perhaps--I _must_ do something to help them, it would be +treachery if I did not. But my heart will be far away from it all, I +know. I try to think of the excellent people there, and how fatally kind +they have been to me; but when I shut my eyes, I can see nothing but the +ugly church, the wooden 'university,' and a great sun-baked street, with +sparse houses and dusty trees straggling off on the prairie. How can I +ever live there now? And yet, if I had never come away, I might have +been happy. Why did they send me to Oxford, I wonder. Yet was it not my +fate? It seems to me that I _must_ have come here sometime!" + + +XVIII. + +With this the letters ended. From the undergraduates Foley had heard how +Sutton tried to study history, but failed rather badly in it. What had +happened afterwards he had not heard, save by vague report. He only knew +that Sutton was still in Oxford. + +But no wonder he had stayed there, Foley thought, remembering the +passion for the place that breathed in Sutton's letters, his growing +preoccupation with, and interest in, everything that was ecclesiastical +and ancient. Indeed, the beauty and antiquity of Oxford, the libraries +and cloisters and old places he haunted, now seemed to have grown into +an almost necessary part of the American's environment, the needful +background of his life. As if, like old Anthony à Wood, one could not +imagine him living anywhere except in Oxford, walking through its almost +doorless streets, or on the lawns of its College gardens, and ordering +his studies and ways by the sound of its bells. Why then should he not +stay there; was it anything more than a false conscience that had made +him feel he ought to go back to America? + +The next morning, as if in answer to this question, Foley received an +unexpected visit from Abel, Dr. Joseph's assistant. He had come, he +said, to find out where Sutton was; they were a good deal worried about +him; they must be allowed to see him again before he took any step. +Foley was greatly surprised at the way Abel spoke; he knew nothing of +the American's whereabouts, he said; they had told him at his lodgings +the night before that he was away from Oxford. + +"Yes, I know, I saw your card there. But I supposed you would know where +he has gone, or would be willing to tell me how I could find out. We +have heard again from America, and really, for your own sakes you must +allow us to see him once." + +With still greater astonishment Foley protested that he knew nothing; he +had feared Sutton might be in trouble, but having just returned, after +two years abroad, he had no idea of what the trouble was. His assurances +were so evidently sincere, that Abel, who had looked at him suspiciously +at first, now shut the door and came forward into the room. The trouble +was that Sutton had absolutely refused to go back to America. They might +have known it would happen, he added; and, in answer to a question of +Foley's, he gave his version of all that had occurred. + +Sutton had come to Oxford with a letter from Dr. Turnpenny, his pastor +and guardian, requesting Dr. Joseph to see that he should live under +some kind of care and protection. Dr. Joseph, as their own buildings +were not yet finished, had arranged with the Warden of St. Mary's that +the young man should enter that College and live there, while he +carried on his theological work with his own tutors. + +It was a mistake; Abel had thought it a mistake all along. With another +man it might not have mattered; but Sutton, thrown into the society of +rich young men, who had no sympathy with his ideas, and who ridiculed +his ways, had not been able to withstand their influence. And just when +he was on the point of ordination, he had thrown it all over; said he no +longer believed in Methodism, or wished to be a minister. He had stayed +for another year in Oxford, studying, or pretending to study, history; +but he could not have worked very seriously; the examiners said, indeed, +that his papers were full of the most absurd ideas. And now he refused +to go back to America at all. Abel didn't know who it was who had tried +to pervert him; it was reported to be the Jesuits--and there was a man +called Gerard, Sir Philip Gerard--; but at any rate they ought to know +what trouble they had made. + +Foley said he was certain there had been no deliberate attempt to +pervert Sutton. If any of his friends had tried to influence him, it was +probably because they believed in culture, and thought it would help him +in his work. + +"Help him to be a minister out in Indiana! How could the ideas of a +narrow university set and its expensive tastes help a man for that?" + +"But everyone surely was the better for being cultivated!" Foley +exclaimed. + +Even to this Abel could not agree entirely; he admitted that of course +culture had its charm and value; only in cases it might be dangerous, he +thought. But how could that be? Foley asked, and for a moment, in their +discussion of the larger question, they almost forgot Sutton. Abel +thought that an undue cultivation of taste, of the sense of beauty, +without an equal training of the reason, would make you into a narrow +and fastidious person, judging things by the eyes and ears, and caring +only for what was well-expressed and beautiful. And surely for the most +part, he said, (and he seemed anxious to be fair and moderate,) for the +most part it was the ideals of the past, the out-worn, romantic, and +old-fashioned things, that had had time to be well-expressed, while the +modern--"But all this has very little to do with Sutton!" he said, +stopping suddenly. + +"Oh, I don't know, isn't he the kind of person you mean--a sensitive +poetic person--" + +"Eliaphet Sutton! he never wrote poetry, did he?" + +"No, I don't mean exactly that. Only it seems to me natural enough that +a man of his temperament, coming to Oxford from an ugly new town, +should not want to go back." + +"Temperament!" Abel exclaimed, as if the word annoyed him. Then more +quietly he added that he did not think anything could excuse Sutton for +behaving in the way he had behaved. Why he himself had come to Oxford +from a new town that was probably as ugly as Parnassus City. They were +angry enough in Parnassus, you couldn't talk of temperaments out there! +It had really broken Dr. Turnpenny's heart. "If you could only see his +letters! No, after spending all the old man's money--" + +"His money?" Foley asked. + +"Yes, didn't you know? He was sent over on a subscription got up by the +Methodist church there, and Dr. Turnpenny, who had adopted him and +brought him up, gave all his savings. He was to go back of course, and +help support Dr. Turnpenny. He was engaged to a girl out there too. And +now he says he won't go back. But really he must, it doesn't matter what +he says. It's the only honest and decent thing for him to do." + +"Indeed he must go back," exclaimed Foley. "I hadn't the least idea!--" + + +XIX. + +Foley went to Sutton's rooms again, but for several days he could hear +nothing of him. One evening, however, when he was sitting in the garden, +happening to look up, he saw the melancholy figure of the American +coming down the garden path. Now that he actually saw Sutton, and was +vividly aware of the atmosphere of reserve and solitude that enveloped +him, Foley shrank from saying the things that he felt he ought to say. +And yet someone must speak to him; someone must tell him his duty, and +make him go back to the good simple people who had cared for him, +supported him, and who relied on him so much! + +He had been away, Sutton said, as the two young men walked slowly down +the garden path. It was very still there in the twilight; and they were +alone, shut in as it seemed, and very remote from the world outside. + +"Have you decided yet when you are going home?" Foley asked. + +"Home?" + +"Yes; home to America." + +"I don't know," Sutton replied. After a moment he added, in the same +quiet voice, "perhaps I shall never go back." + +"Then you have found some occupation in England?" + +Sutton shook his head. + +But didn't he think he ought to go back then, Foley asked. One had +duties--and, trying to speak more lightly, he added, "You must have +learned a great deal, Eliaphet, after studying all these years. Oughtn't +you to go back and teach them out there?" + +"I have nothing to teach them--nothing they would be willing to learn." + +"Oh, but surely, if you tried you could find something! It seems to me +you _ought_ to try." + +"Oh, I _have_ tried!" he said, his cheeks flushing with painful emotion; +"but now they don't want me to come back any more--they never want to +see me again! I used to pray I might never change;--and when you would +argue with me,--but now I see it was all wrong, and all my liberal +ideas--" + +"I hope," Foley interrupted, for this had been on his conscience ever +since his talk with Abel, "I hope your change, whatever it is, has +nothing to do with anything I ever said; you must have misunderstood +me," and he went on to explain that he had never been really +reactionary. He had always believed in compromise, and a conservative, +reasonable progress. + +"Do you know, Eliaphet," he went on, "I think you have made a mistake in +staying here so long in this old place. It isn't wholesome to live so +far from real life; you ought to get away, you ought to go home." + +But Sutton had only listened to two or three of his friend's words. +"No," he cried eagerly, "no, we can make no compromise. We must give up +the human reason, we must go back to the Past, we must submit. Oh, +Foley," he cried, and there was a strange appeal in his voice, "we have +been friends, but now we may never see each other again,--let me warn +you, you must decide whether you will be on the right or the wrong +side--oh, if you only knew at what peril you refuse to listen!" + +For a moment Foley was almost frightened. Then, reminding himself of +reason and reality, he said, "But, Eliaphet, are you quite sure that you +yourself are doing what is right in staying here? When so much depends +on you out there--Dr. Turnpenny and all. And they have sacrificed so +much too. Have you thought--" + +"As if I was not always thinking of it!" Sutton cried; "but I could not +go back to them a Roman Catholic; they would rather I was dead. And +Foley, when you judge me, remember that I have had to make sacrifices +too--I have given up everything, everything! What can I do?" + +A Roman Catholic! Of course he could not go back. Foley was dismayed. +Why had he not foreseen it? + +For a moment they stood in silence. Then Sutton turned away. + +"You don't understand," he said, in a voice that his friend always +remembered afterwards; "No one understands," and he went down the path +alone and out of Foley's sight. + + +XX. + +When Foley went the next day to Sutton's lodgings, he was told that +Sutton had already left Oxford; had gone away early that morning. Where +he had gone, however, no one seemed to know. Certainly Foley never found +out; he never saw Sutton again, nor, in spite of all his inquiries, did +he ever hear anything but the most vague and uncertain news about him. +Abel said he had never gone back to Parnassus City. And then, years +after, it was reported that an Oxford man, when visiting some old shrine +in Italy, had recognized, or thought he recognized, Sutton in the monk +who showed him about the church. + +Foley never got rid of a certain feeling of remorse, a sense that at the +beginning he had too lightly interfered in the life of the young +Dissenter. + +But then he would tell himself, that it was probably after all nothing +less than Oxford itself, with its old ways and memories, that had +gradually changed and influenced the American. Influenced him not for +good, surely! he thought. And indeed, remembering Sutton's slow +estrangement from his early ideas and friends, his poor attempts to +remain faithful, the trouble and mystery in which he had disappeared at +last, Foley would ask himself, (and he took a strange sort of pleasure +in the question,) whether there were not something really dangerous in +the venerable and Gothic beauty of Oxford, a chill in the old shadows, +an iron sound in the bells. + + + + +_The Will to Live_ + + +Part One + +"Moral Philosophy," notwithstanding all its modern ideas and +developments, is still taught at Oxford from the Greek texts of Plato +and Aristotle. Something indeed of the old Academic discipline might be +said still to exist there, the tradition of it coming down through the +Schools of the Middle Ages. Certainly the discussions between tutor and +pupils, by means of which so much of the philosophic training is carried +on, are not without a certain resemblance to the Socratic dialogues. +And the young men who are so eager and amusing in Plato's writings--one +might find the like of these, perhaps, among the English undergraduates, +as well as the types with which modern novels have made us more +familiar. The questions they talk and think about would at least be much +the same as those so eagerly debated in the Athenian garden--the old +questions about Truth and Justice and Beauty; and then the meaning or +purpose of Life--that question which is the oldest of all, and which +each generation of youth tries to solve in some new way. + + * * * * * + +"Good night, sir"--"Good night"--"Good night"--and their discussion +ended, the young men took their caps and books, and clattered noisily +down the stone staircase from the tutor's room. They still lingered a +moment, outside in the quadrangle, four or five together, vaguely +talking in the darkness. + +"Ames was right, you know--what he said about Pleasure." + +"Old Ames! what does he know about it?" Waters interrupted. More than +once, during the argument that evening, Waters had dropped a book or +shuffled his feet impatiently; and now, declaring that all such talk was +great waste of time and "rot" anyhow, he went off, after vainly inviting +the others to join him, to an interrupted game of cards. In a minute the +others separated, some to work, one or two to the concert in the college +hall. Walter Cornish walked away alone across the quadrangle. Finding a +bench, he sat listlessly down, his hands in his pockets, his feet +stretched out in front of him. He would do no more work that night; it +would be better to rest there for a while, listening to the music of the +concert. + +Cornish, with the others, would be in for his last examinations in a few +weeks; then he would be leaving Oxford. But as he had money enough of +his own, and belonged moreover to that fortunate class of young Oxford +men to whom success at everything seems easy, he could look into the +future, untroubled by most of those commonplace difficulties and +despairs that beset the ordinary unknown, untried, young man, when he is +leaving the university to go out into the world. + +It seemed very hot that evening; no breath of air was stirring within +the enclosure of those trees and walls. From the open windows of the +college hall tinkling piano notes came faintly now and then across the +darkness; while, drifting in over the roofs of the college, and +deadening at times the music, there came, like a dim smoke of sound, the +rumour of city noises, of carts, footsteps, and high faint voices in +the street outside. But as Cornish sat there lazily, his hands deep in +his pockets, his eyes fixed on the ground, he soon ceased to hear either +the music or the sounds of the streets. Vagrant thoughts about himself, +his own affairs and prospects, were going through his head. Then phrases +from their argument--Pleasure wasn't the End, and the End wasn't +Pleasure; but whose pleasure, and the end of what? To his tired mind, +however, the words were little more than empty sounds. Other things he +had been studying floated past in large dim masses; he remembered the +armies, invasions, and old battles of history; the Roman Empire seemed +to be near him, like something immense and heavy in the night. And +behind it in the past were the Persian, Assyrian, Egyptian Dominations, +with the weight of all their millions and millions of lives! + +He was going to do well in the examinations, he knew; more or less +mechanically he repeated over what his tutor had said, and some +flattering words the Warden had written to his father--"We consider him +one of our best men; he is certain to distinguish himself." + +"But what's the good of it all?" he found himself asking. He looked up +at the college buildings, dark about him, save for their squares of +yellow windows. Gradually he began to wake out of his vacant reverie. +What was the good of doing well?--why, it was an absurd question; of +course, he wanted to do well, to win honour for himself and his College. +He assured himself of this, in conventional phrases, but somehow, just +then, he did not seem to care in the least for success like that, and +honour. Yet here he had been, all this time, working for nothing else! + +He was ashamed of this want of ambition, this deadness of desire. Of +course, there were other things he cared for, he told himself, and to +prove this he brought to mind the interests and pleasures of his +ordinary life--his friendships, the ideas and books he believed in, his +public speaking, the positions he held in various societies. But somehow +all these seemed utterly foolish, futile, and unimportant. In +desperation he began to think of simpler things--of boating, good +clothes, and horses, and some riding boots he was having made. But +everything, even the most universal pleasures of life, struck him now as +tasteless and absurd. Why did people do such things, and what could they +find in them to enjoy? + +"But it's against common sense to feel this way!" he said to himself. He +had always thought the disillusions of youth somewhat ridiculous, and +often had made fun of the modern philosophy, or pseudo-philosophy, of +disenchantment, with its literature of passion and despair. And now, as +he sat there in the familiar quadrangle, with the rooms of his friends +about him, all the people he knew so well, in there at the concert, he +was uncomfortably aware of how absurd they would think it, should they +know that he too had secretly begun, in the old, foolish, hackneyed way, +to meditate on the nothingness of life. He of all people, who had always +taken such sensible, commonplace views of things! + +"Well, it will be different soon; I shall have things to work for that +really are worth while," he told himself. Hitherto, when he had felt any +futility in his life, he had put it down to the youthfulness of his +occupations, feeling sure that the world beyond his school or college, +with its great interests and ambitions, would give endless objects of +desire. But now, in spite of himself, he could not help asking--what +were those great interests and ambitions after all? + +Almost comically there rose before his mind pictures of all the +middle-aged people he knew--his relatives, his father's friends--large, +solemn, successful people, who were thought, and thought themselves, +very important. And the dull speeches they made, and the way they often +grew red and angry, as they argued about the Government, or the Eastern +question! And their houses, their wives and dinner parties, their social +differences and ambitions, and the way they pushed and struggled for +money and titles! What was the value of it all; to succeed or fail, what +difference did it make? He tried to imagine himself at the head of what +would be his profession, as Lord Chancellor--a fat and bald Lord +Chancellor in stuffy robes--wasn't that the position that young men were +supposed to be ambitious of attaining? Or if he should make a fortune, +or write a famous book, or carry some great reform through Parliament? +But, somehow, he did not seem to care; and gradually, as he listened to +the far-off rumour of the city, it came to sound faintly in his ears +like a voice of blind craving--as if the agitation of the world and life +were meaningless and vain. And he would go out into it, he knew, would +struggle and push with the others.... + +Now from the open windows, sounds of music floated again across the +quadrangle. He could picture to himself the audience, all those rows of +young men, sitting there in the hot air and gaslight. Indeed, he could +almost see, he felt, into the rows of minds--if you could call them +minds--behind all those heads: the ridiculous images of hope and cheap +romance wakened by the music, the foolish dreams of the future, and +false, poetic ideas of life. + +Pity the poets and novelists could not invent something a little more +true to life! Cornish thought. For after all they had but two receipts: +either they enlarged the world into a glorious and unreal place, full of +love, success, and eternal sunshine, or else they magnified poor human +nature, and invented towering, Byronic heroes, who could find nothing in +a shrunken universe worthy of their passionate souls. + +The music finished in a noise of long and loud applause. How all of them +enjoyed it; how all of them believed in it, he thought; finding +something foolish and inane in these sounds of clapping hands and +pounding feet. A little while afterwards the concert ended, and the +audience, a vague press of people, began to murmur and move down the +steps of the hall, and pass him in the darkness. But now the sound of +their footsteps and cheerful retreating voices came back to him almost +sadly. A whole generation of youth, they seemed to him, as he sat there +almost like some remote spectator--a whole generation of youth, those +young men, pouring out of that ancient hall and passing away into the +silence. + +They were all gone at last; one by one the bright windows in the hall +grew dark. Cornish still sat there alone. These voices and footsteps and +dim figures, moving past him thus in the darkness, had left his mind +curiously vibrating. So life went by, he thought, a few careless steps +together on the brief-trodden path, a few words, a few greetings, and +then the darkness and silence of death. What a curious mystery it was, +this life, so vivid and brief in each of those passers by; the life he +was conscious of in himself, as he sat there alone--the sound of his +breath, the blood beating at his temples, the "soul" within--what was +the meaning of it all, and for what reason was it given? + +Surely this was the question of philosophy--the very question they had +discussed that evening! And now, for the first time, he realized that +the theories and systems he had been studying so long were not mere +exercises of thought, and abstract speculations, but almost passionate +attempts to explain the meaning of existence--of his own existence! + +But the great solutions of the philosophers--Aristotle's +"Contemplation," Kant's "Moral Law," the "Calculated Pleasure" of the +Hedonists, and all the rest--there seemed to be a mortal coldness in +them all. Surely they could never give a motive, or make life desirable +to anyone! Vaguely dismayed at this conclusion, he repeated over to +himself all the words again. Still he could find in them no motive for +existence; and in a dim way he began to feel half proud of this +discernment. Yes, Waters had been right after all, (and somehow he +pitied both Waters and himself), philosophy was but a barren waste. And +the picture of a great desert filled his mind--a desert of endless sand. + + * * * * * + +When he was again conscious of himself, for a moment he wondered where +he was, confused by the discomfort of his position, and the coolness of +the air. Then through the darkness he saw, outlined against the starry +sky, the trees and buildings of the College quadrangle, and remembered +how he had sat down there to rest after their discussion. He must have +fallen asleep, and now it was late--the night had grown completely +silent, and only one or two windows shone yellow in the blackness of the +walls. What had their argument been about? he began to ask himself; but, +chancing to look up again, he forgot everything in his wonder at the +brilliance of the stars. The whole patch of sky, shut in by the dark +College roofs, quivered and glowed with shining stars; he thought he had +never seen the vault of heaven so wonderful and luminous. + +The long, faint sigh of a passing train on the distant railway brought +back his thoughts at last, out of their vague wonder, to the earth and +himself again. His imagination wandered after the train as it went +through the night towards London. Soon he would be in London himself, he +thought, smiling. It was not three weeks now. There were some dances he +was going to, and a cricket match, and the theatre, of course.... + +But then a vague sense of misfortune weighed him down, and in a moment +he remembered how, a little while before, he had decided that life was +altogether inane and meaningless. How was it that he had grown so +foolishly eager again? No secret had been revealed to him; he had found +no meaning behind desire, no purpose in existence. Yet here he was, +looking forward to dances, actually counting the days to a cricket +match! It was absurd for a self-conscious spirit to desire such things +as these, especially after surveying life and philosophy, and finding +there was no reason why you should desire anything at all! + +But somehow Cornish did not seem to need a reason now; success, love, +friendship, and even dances and cricket matches, he desired these things +for themselves, they shone with their own brightness; no theory, no +sanction of Greek or German philosophy could possibly make him want +them more. How was it that there were desires that reason did not give? +He puzzled over this, till at last he saw the question was rather a +meaningless one, a question of words only. For desire of life came long +before reasoning about it; reason did not sit aloft in a purer air, +creating out of itself the meanings of experience. It could create no +desires, could give us indeed none of the ultimate facts of life, for +the ideas it used were all abstracted from things our direct perceptions +gave us. And the existence of these things themselves--the blue sky, the +solid earth, the sweetness of youth and sunshine--it could never prove, +it did not need to prove! When, a little while before, he had felt no +desire, reason had not helped him. And now he did not want its help. + +The striking clocks told Cornish the lateness of the hour, and he got +up to go in. As he walked across the quadrangle he heard voices and +laughter in the darkness, and dimly saw a group of young men come out of +a doorway in front of him. + +"Well, have you had a good game, Waters?" he asked, as he joined them. + +"Oh, a ripping game. What have you been doing?" + +"Nothing much--thinking." + +"Thinking! Lord, I'd turn looney if I thought so much. What's the good +of it? You'd much better have taken a hand." + +Cornish laughed. "Well, I believe you're right," he said. + + + + +_The Will to Live_ + + +Part Two + +William Waters had dreamed that the Persians, in a fleet of Canadian +canoes, had come up the Thames to attack the College barge, and that he +himself had been sent on foot to demand reinforcements from the Oxford +examiners at Sparta. And after the weary, breathless running, the +hopeless search, in his dream, for the right Greek words, it was most +delightful to open his eyes and find himself comfortably lying in his +familiar bedroom, with the sunlight glowing on the blinds. + +"Why am I so happy?" he asked himself, and then he remembered that it +was all over now; for the future he would never have to trouble about +Greek or examinations, or getting up in the morning, or any of their +stupid rules and worries. For the future! As he lay there, lazily +opening and shutting his eyes, vague, bright pictures of the life before +him floated through his mind, and set his heart beating a little +quicker. + +William Waters was the son of a business man in a northern town, who, +with some sacrifice, had sent him, the eldest son, to the University, in +order that his education, and the connections he would form, might help +him on in the world. Now that the young man, after a lucky scramble +through the examinations, had just finished four pleasant years of +Oxford life, it was his vague purpose to find some occupation in London, +something pleasant and gentlemanly, which would enable him to live as +he liked. + +"Of course, sir, I know one can't expect anything very much at first," +he said, half aloud, as he imagined himself talking modestly and +sensibly to his tutor. For he was going to talk about it to Ames; old +Ames wasn't such a fool about things of that kind. "There is no nonsense +about that young Waters," Ames would say afterwards; "a modest, sensible +chap, the kind of man who'll always do well." Waters was determined to +do well of course; he would get on, he told himself, when people came to +realize how hard he worked. And as the young man lay there in bed, he +decided that in the future no one should ever accuse him of laziness and +neglecting work. By simply making up his mind to it, he thought he would +entirely change his character, and begin life anew, winning position +and wealth by his own unremitting industry. + +Buller and Antrobus would be in London, he told himself, and Philpotts, +most likely, and they would belong to the same club, where they would go +on Sunday mornings to smoke and read the sporting papers. He would work +tremendously hard, of course, spending laborious nights over his books, +but he would also go out a great deal into society. He would not be +dissipated--he didn't care much for that--but still he would not be +Puritanical either. He meant to be moral and steady, and at the same +time he would enjoy the pleasures of a man of the world. But he would be +always kind and popular; people in fashionable society would say that +William Waters was such a good fellow, and in the Park ladies would +smile at him from their carriages, and smart young men would walk with +him arm in arm. And he would live well; but still he would save money, +and would soon pay off his Oxford bills, and send money to his father. +For he would always be very kind to his people, having his sisters to +visit him, helping them to marry well (he himself meant to marry someone +for love who was very rich), and sometimes he would give up parties at +country houses in order to pay them visits at home. How his fur coat and +knowledge of the great world would impress all the neighbours! + +"But I must get up," Waters said to himself, remembering how he was to +go and see his tutor and talk over plans. And after luncheon Buller was +going to drive them out, three of them, with his tandem to Woodstock. +And thinking vaguely of this drive, and of some new clothes that he +meant to wear, Waters was just falling off to sleep again, when his +bull-dog came rushing up the stairs, and began to whine and scratch at +the door. Rousing himself, Waters jumped up, and went with a call of +affection to the door to let Lo-Ben in. + +After he had bathed and dressed himself in his new fresh-smelling +clothes, the young man sauntered into the sitting-room of his lodgings, +and rang the bell for breakfast. The day was bright; Waters felt +wonderfully fresh and well; there were pleasant aches in his arms and +legs as he moved, for the whole of the day before he had been rowing on +the river. + +After breakfast he was just sitting down to smoke his pipe comfortably, +when, looking at his watch, he snatched up his cap and rusty gown, and +started out towards College. By Jove! what a day it was! He walked along +through the sunshine, smiling to himself, while Lo-Ben barked and +bounced from side to side. It was a good world, Waters thought a good +world, and now he was really going to enjoy it. + +As Waters was tying up Lo-Ben in the College porch, he was seized on +suddenly from behind. + +"Come along, fat William," they cried, pulling and pushing him along, +"we're going to have a little game--you must take a hand." + +Twisting himself around, as he struggled, Waters recognized two of his +friends, and appealed to reason breathlessly; he had to go and see old +Ames, on his honour he had; he would look in afterwards, in about +half-an-hour, and stay to luncheon if they liked. So he started across +the quadrangle, looking back and smiling and shaking his head, as he +dodged the bits of gravel with which they pelted him. It was a good +place after all, the old College, Waters thought, when he was out of +danger and could look about. He remembered the two years he had lived +in rooms looking out on this quadrangle; the pleasant hours he had +spent, sitting in the window with his pipe, or lying on the grass whole +Sunday afternoons, lazily reading, or talking with his friends; he +thought of the beautiful chapel, and the old hall that was so much +admired, and how he had sat up a tree one evening and poured water on +the Dean, and how at night the stealthy bonfires had blazed up red and +sudden in the dark. + +He was really sorry to leave the old place, he thought sentimentally, +remembering the emotions he had read of as felt by young men in books +when about to leave their school or college. But then, with healthy +common-sense, he told himself that all they wrote in books about your +college days, and life never being so happy afterwards, was damned +nonsense. Waters knew how men lived in London! + +"Sorry I'm late, sir," he said as he entered his tutor's room, +addressing the spare shining head that was bent over a heap of papers. + +Mr. Ames raised his worn, cynical, kind face, and looked at Waters with +short-sighted eyes. "Oh, no matter, sit down won't you, Waters," and he +gave a last hurried shuffle to his papers. Waters thought that Ames must +spend his life looking for lost papers; and although occasionally +surprised by flashes of almost supernatural knowledge in his tutor, for +the most part he entertained--as a heathen might towards his helpless, +yet vaguely awful, idol--a certain good-natured pity for the +absent-minded, easily outwitted man. + +"I thought I'd like to talk things over with you a little," Waters said, +sitting down in a chair that groaned with his athletic weight. "I must +decide what I shall choose, what to go in for." + +"To go in for?" Ames repeated, looking at him vaguely. + +"I mean, I must choose"; Waters found a pleasure in talking, not as an +undergraduate, but as a serious young man. "One must do something of +course." + +"Of course it _is_ better," Ames assented, though he still looked rather +puzzled. + +"I thought I'd talk to you about the Bar, or something of the kind." + +Ames looked at him blankly. "Talk to me about the Bar?" + +"Yes, I thought I'd better ask your advice." + +"Do you mean for yourself?" Ames asked after a moment, "but I +supposed--I always supposed you were going into your father's business; +he has some business, hasn't he, or am I wrong?" + +"Into my father's business!" Waters laughed comfortably. "No, I +shouldn't ever think of that. No, I want to live in London." + +"Oh, I see!" + +"Yes, of course if anything very good was offered me somewhere +else,--but no, I think I prefer London. What would you advise?" + +"What I should advise!" Ames said, looking at him hopelessly. "I suppose +you've thought of something for yourself; you have some preference?" + +"Preference? Oh no, nothing special. I thought I'd ask you." + +Again Ames looked at him with an odd expression. Then in his polite, +weary, equable voice, he said, "Well, I must try and think. I suppose +your father--what does he want you to do?" + +"My father--!" Waters' voice showed what he thought of fathers. "Oh, he +said that if I had a university education, there would be something." + +"Ah, did he! Well, I suppose he ought to know," Ames said doubtfully. + +"Oh, he doesn't know of anything definite," Waters explained; and then, +speaking loudly, as if to a deaf man, he added, "It was only what he +thought." + +"Ah, that's quite different, isn't it?" Ames exclaimed, his face +brightening. + +"But surely there is a great deal to do in London," Waters continued. + +Yes, there must be a good deal, Ames admitted doubtfully; at least +everyone seemed very much occupied there. + +"All I want is some work, that isn't too much grind, and decent pay." + +"Ah, that is all that most people want," Ames observed, with half a +sigh. + +"Of course at first I shouldn't expect anything very much," Waters went +on, hardly heeding his tutor's vague remarks; and he explained again +that he only wanted some decent occupation, with pay enough to live on. +Then he waited, gazing at his tutor's blank face as one might gaze at a +revolving lighthouse, waiting for its flash of light. As nothing came, +however, he said, "Surely there are lots of places where they want +Oxford men?" + +"Possibly there were"; Ames looked as if he, however, had never heard of +them. + +"But Grant and Vaughan had got good places, and Sturdy, they said, was +doing well at the Bar." + +"Ah, I see you mean those clever men, who do so well in the Schools and +all. You're quite right; a man like Cornish for instance; I thought you +meant more the average man." + +No, it wasn't Cornish, Waters meant; it wasn't the average man either. +"I mean more the man--what you call an all-round-man." + +"What I call an all-round-man?" Ames looked bewildered. + +"I mean," Waters continued, with desperate efforts to explain himself, +"I mean the man who is rather good all round, rows, and that sort of +thing. Perhaps he didn't get a First; didn't care much what he got, +didn't approve of the system." + +Ames seemed busy looking for his glasses. + +"There are people who don't approve of the system," Waters went on. "I +read an article once by someone, Professor something, not approving of +examinations. I forget just who it was." + +"Professor Freeman, perhaps?" + +"Yes, that's it! Well now, a man like that, what is he going to do?" +Waters asked, with renewed confidence. + +"But Professor Freeman is dead, you know." + +"But,--but,--I'm not speaking of Professor Freeman." + +"How would you like to be a solicitor?" Ames asked, putting on his +glasses. + +"A solicitor! oh, I shouldn't care for that," Waters promptly replied. +"You see it isn't the kind of work I like, and then the vacations are +too short." + +Ames said nothing. He was sitting unusually still, and his large glasses +reflecting the light, resembled two enormous shining oval eyes in the +smoothness of his face. What he was really looking at Waters could not +tell, and he grew more and more uncomfortable. At last, with diminished +confidence, "There _are_ men who get on well at the Bar?" he said. + +"There are." + +"And if I were living in London I might do some writing? They do that, +don't they?" + +"They do." Then Ames sighed and shook his head. "I think you had better +go home, Waters," he added; "I'm afraid there's nothing else. If you had +spoken to me before, I should have told you this." + +"Oh, good Lord, Mr. Ames, you don't mean there's nothing!" Waters sat up +in his chair, with open mouth, staring at his tutor. + +"Well, you know, I'm afraid there isn't." + +"Oh but, Mr. Ames, there must be something!" + +"Well you can try; but honestly, I think you had--if your father can +have you--I think you had better go home." + +Waters looked at him. "He knows I helped to paint his door red last +week," the young man muttered to himself, "and now he's furious about +it." + +But the comfort of this ebbed away gradually, as Ames went on to +describe the different professions, the struggle for success, the cruel +competition. Ames indeed seemed to have focussed himself, and instead of +the vague astonished way in which he was wont to speak of practical +affairs, he now showed a precision, and clearness, and knowledge of life +that was really appalling. "I am sorry it is so, Waters," he ended. "We +live pleasantly here, and we almost forget what the world outside is +like." + +"I do think some one might have told me, Mr. Ames; I do indeed." Waters +could have cried with disappointment. + +"You would never have believed it, Waters; we none of us can believe +that the world doesn't need us. It's hard, but whether we live or die, +the world doesn't care, can get on perfectly well without us. We each +have to find it out for ourselves." He sighed as if he too had once +known youth and hope, and the indifference of the world. + +"But, Mr. Ames, I can't go home, indeed I can't. My other brother was +going into the business, and I always told people,--and everybody +supposed,--and to think that all my time here is wasted." + +"Oh, not exactly wasted," Ames answered kindly. "It will always help +you, to be an Oxford man, and you will be sure to find it pleasanter at +home than you expected." Then beginning again to look at his papers, he +added, more in his old distant way, "I'll see you again, I hope, before +you go down. They'll miss you in College," he added politely, as Waters +moved towards the door. "I'm sure the 'Torpid'--" + +"I might be a solicitor, Mr. Ames," Waters said in a meek voice, as he +stood disconsolately, his hand on the door-knob. + +"Well, talk it over with your father," Ames replied, without looking up. +"It takes time and money you know. You think he wouldn't mind?" + +"Oh no, he won't mind," Waters said, although he knew his father would +mind very much indeed. + +He walked away slowly through the familiar quadrangle. His father!--how +would he ever dare tell his father? But no, it couldn't be true that +there was nothing for him, that nobody wanted him. He was well known in +College, had played in the football team, and rowed in the "Torpid," and +people liked him. Besides it was such a thing, they always said, to be +an English gentleman; and then Oxford culture--and you read of the +successful careers of rowing men, how they became Cabinet Ministers, +and Bishops, and things. No, it couldn't be true.... + +"Poor Lo-Ben," he said, patting his dog tenderly, as he unchained him in +the porch. "Poor old Lo-Ben, you'll stick to your master, won't you?" +The dog whined and licked the young man's hand, and they went out into +the street together. + +Well, they would live alone, he and Lo-Ben, and they would go out for +lonely walks, after the long dreary days of work in his father's office. +And the people there would see him, and wonder about him; but he would +always be distant, only coldly polite when they met. Sometimes his old +College friends would come to stay in the neighbourhood; but they would +not look him up: all his friends would forget him, though he would +always remember them. And that afternoon they would all drive off +without him, probably they would be really glad not to have him. And +they would be perfectly happy; but he would never be happy again. + +For no, it was not true, what Ames had said, about his getting to like +it at home. He would always hate it, he told himself desperately; and +life and everything was hateful; there was a chill in the sunshine, the +streets seemed full of noise and work and ugly working people. What was +the good of it? he wondered. And Ames said it was all like that. What +was the good of it, he asked again, when he flung himself down into one +of the great easy chairs in his lodgings. If you had to live in a dirty +provincial town, and sit on a stool all day, what was the good? Of +course some of the men at home seemed happy enough; they had their +cricket on Saturdays and things; but then they weren't university men. +For himself, Waters decided, for the first time in his life considering +in his concrete way the problem of existence, for himself it was all +finished; there was nothing more in life which could give him pleasure. + +The servant brought up luncheon. At first Waters thought he could eat +nothing, and when he did begin in a melancholy way, he bitterly +contrasted his lonely meal with the happy party in College. He felt an +immense pity for himself; he would die young, he was sure; the life +might even drive him to suicide--such things had happened. + +After his luncheon and beer he lit his pipe. By this time Buller and +Philpotts must have finished their luncheon too, and have started for +the stables. They would wonder at first why he did not come, but they +would not really care. + +And now they must have started. He had done well not to go with them; he +would not have enjoyed it, Waters assured himself, repeating the old +phrases; he would never enjoy anything again. He looked at his watch +furtively. What! they wouldn't start for three minutes yet. Then he had +still just time enough to catch them. He seized his hat, and without +waiting for a reason--he had no time to wait--he hurried out, Lo-Ben +barking at his heels. + + + + +_The Claim of the Past_ + + +They had all been to luncheon with Mr. Windus, and now, under his +guidance, they started out to see the College, walking together across +the quadrangle through the summer sunshine. Mr. Windus talked to Mrs. +Ellwood of Dalmouth, the Devonshire town where she lived, and he had +friends; the others were gossiping of the heat, the Oxford dances, while +Ruth Ellwood and young Rutherford came last of all. + +Rutherford too belonged to Dalmouth, was, indeed, a cousin of the +Ellwoods--all the Dalmouth families were somehow related; but going +away early to school, and afterwards to Oxford, he had come at last to +seem more like a stranger to them than a friend or cousin. And this +invitation to meet the Ellwoods he had accepted merely out of +politeness; he was busy with his work, felt in no mood for the Oxford +gaieties, and anyhow cared, or thought he cared, very little indeed for +Dalmouth or the Dalmouth people. + +But soon he had begun to listen with pleasure and interest to the home +news, as his charming cousin told it. + +"And so the town isn't much changed?" he asked; "and the different +cousins, what has become of them all?" + +With eager interest she went on telling him of all the old families, who +lived in the different houses; how the young girls had grown up--there +were so many pretty ones among the cousins!--and the young men had gone +into the family offices. Some of them were married and settled down +already. + +"And Aunt Warner's house under the beeches, with its lawn, where we used +to play, is it just the same?" + +"Oh, yes, just the same, only the Bartons live there now--Uncle James's +family; and on Thursdays we meet there--I mean the cousins' Tennis +Club--and when it rains we dance in the old drawing room. But how +shocked dear old Aunt Warner would have been to see us!" Then, as they +went through the gateway into the College garden, she added, "I'm afraid +all this gossip bores you; it's interesting for us who live at home, but +for other people--" + +"Oh, but I belong to Dalmouth!" he protested. + +"Of course you do, only it's so long since you've been there," she said +in half apology, "and we thought--I thought you didn't care." + +It was indeed a long time, it was years since he had been there, he +remembered with a certain regret for the preoccupation, the youthful +intolerance, that had made him half despise his home. It was a charming +place after all, the grey seaport town with its wharves, and shipping, +and narrow streets, and the pleasant homes and gardens just outside +where his cousins and uncles, the merchants, lived--where as a boy he +had lived. How well he remembered watching, on summer afternoons, the +white sails of the family ships, as they floated up with the tide past +the green lawns and square old houses. A pleasant life it must be there, +he thought, and quite untroubled in its tranquil interests by any great +ambitions or ideas--the echoes of which, indeed, could hardly reach +them in their quiet old corner of the world. + +And, as they talked, the young man began to fancy idly what his own life +would have been, had he never gone away from the old Devonshire town. It +had been intended, of course, that he should stay there, and take his +own part in the family concerns; even yet his uncles were keeping a +place for him; and although they feared he was quite spoiled by Oxford, +yet they would welcome him back, he knew, should he only give up those +ambitions, that to them--and to himself sometimes!--seemed so +impossible, so dreamy and unreal. + +Ruth Ellwood stopped now and then to look at the garden flowers. "What +lovely irises, and how quaint those roses are, trained so stiffly on the +old walls." + +"Are you fond of gardening?" he asked. + +She was very fond of it, she said--not that she knew much about it! But +she liked planting things and tying them up, and she always gathered the +flowers for the house. Things grew so well at Dalmouth--roses and +peonies, and great chrysanthemums in the autumn. Only it made her a +little sad to see the chrysanthemums; their summers were so lovely! + +Rutherford knew the house in which his cousin lived, and now he could +almost see her there, moving over the sweet grass, hatless, in the +morning light, to gather roses, filling old china bowls with their +fragrant leaves; or walking home on rainy evenings past the great cedar, +the wet lawn, and borders of dripping flowers. + +"How beautiful she is!" he thought, looking furtively at her. The +impression of this beauty, her pleasant voice, the friendly people she +spoke of, and all the memories that made them seem so intimate together, +affected him with a curious fresh sense of happiness, coming into his +life, which had been of late somewhat discouraged and lonely, with a +charm as real and actual as that of the warmth of the sun, the scent of +roses. + +They had reached the end of the garden, and as they turned back, still +following the others, he said hesitatingly to his companion something +about coming to Dalmouth soon for a visit. + +"Oh, do come!" she cried, "I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and they will all +be so glad to see you." + +"I hope so--but I'm afraid they must think rather badly of me--will be +prejudiced against me; you will have to introduce me." + +"Oh, I will--only really, they won't be prejudiced against you." Then +she added, "Oxford is so charming!" in a way that touched Rutherford a +little. She at least, in spite of all she had heard at home, plainly +could see nothing so dreadful or dangerous in Oxford, or her cousin, +after all! + +Yes, Oxford was charming, she said again, and not at all what she had +expected--at first she had been really almost afraid to come! But it was +all so pleasant; why had people such a prejudice against the +University?--her two brothers wanted to come, but her father would not +hear of it. But how could it unfit them for living at home? She had seen +how the undergraduates lived. And her brothers would have enjoyed it so. +She had been in several of the Colleges now, and had been on the river, +and was going out to tea that afternoon, and afterwards, to a dance. + +"Tell me," she asked, as they followed the others towards the chapel +door, "are you going to any of the dances?" + +He was afraid he wouldn't have the time, he said. + +"Oh, what a pity, you ought to come," she cried; but her voice was +hushed when, out of the glare and sunshine, they went into the blue +obscurity, the cool old smell and quiet of the chapel. + +The ladies looked at the windows, the religious carving; and their +movement, as they went about, filled with a rustling sound the vacant +silence of the place. Then they all gathered in a group while one of the +Fellows told them something of the history of the chapel: how it had +been built in the fourteenth century, and how ever since then the +members of the College had worshipped there, and among them many whose +names had afterwards grown famous. + +"Tell me," Ruth Ellwood whispered, as they walked away, "is this where +the undergraduates sit; where do you sit?" He showed her the Scholars' +seats, and the old brass eagle from which they read the lessons, and +then, when they went through the ante-chapel, she paused a moment, +looking at the inscriptions and monuments. + +"Were there any nice old epitaphs?" she asked. "Do show them to me, if +there are." + +The rest of the party had left the chapel, but could still be seen +through the open door standing not far off in the sunshine, and the +gossip of their voices came in faintly now and then. + +The old brasses, dating from Gothic times, bore inscriptions in rhyming +Latin, that Rutherford read and translated to his companion; there were +monuments of a later time, adorned with urns, cherubs, and +garlands--old trappings of death that made death itself seem almost +quaint and charming. But in the seventeenth century the tranquil records +of the scholars' lives were disturbed by echoes of old war and exile. +"Reader, look to thy feet! Honest and Loyal men are sleeping under +Thee," one inscription ran; and the name of more than one was recorded +"who, when Loyalty and the Church fainted, lay down and Died." + +Other monuments were put up to the memory of young men who had died at +College. Well-born and modest, the old Latin described them, and dead, +centuries ago, in the flower of their fruitless years. "Vivere dulce +fuit!" one of them had complained, as four hundred years before, in +florid Latin, he bade farewell to youth and hope. + +Of another it was quaintly said, "Talis erat vita, qualis stylus, +elegans et pura"; while another undergraduate's virtues were recorded in +verses ending with the line, + + "Expertus praedico, tutor eram." + +Then there was an inscription in English verse, from some Cavalier poet, +Rutherford thought, + + "Him while fresh and fragrant Time + Cherisht in his golden prime; + Ere Hebe's hand had overlaid + His smooth cheeks with downy shade, + The rush of Death's unruly wave + Swept him off into his grave. + + * * * * * + + Eyes are vocall, teares have tongues, + And there be words not made with lungs; + Sententious showres: Oh let them fall! + Their cadence is rhetoricall." + +Another of the same date recorded the deeds of the young +scholar-soldiers "who, at the news of Battle, changed their Gownes for +Armour, and Faithfully served King Charles I. from Edge Hill fight, to +the End of those unhappie Wars." But one youth in that early conflict +had been killed in the pursuit of victory "after Gloriously redeeming, +with his own hands, the banner Royal of the King." + +So they linger there for a few moments, passing from one to another of +the epitaphs, with their records of knightly effort, of the ideal and +romantic hopes of youth, completed afterwards, or quenched long ago by +early death. And to the young man, as he spells them out, they seem at +last to form a continuing tradition of lives dauntlessly lived and lost, +and then recorded here, briefly, in this ancient corner of the College. +His companion, too, was vaguely charmed and touched by the old +inscriptions, and as they turned at last to go out she stopped in front +of another tablet. Would he read it? It was too high for her to see. + +Rutherford looked at it. "It's a modern one, I don't think it will +interest you--" + +"Oh yes, it will--do read it." + +He looked at it in silence for a minute. Faint sounds of music floated +into the dim chapel from the world outside--music, and distant voices +calling. Then he read the name and date; a young man who had been +drowned the year before. "His companions at School and College have +erected this tablet, wishing to preserve the recollection of one who was +much beloved, and whose influence for good was greatly felt in this +place. He was of a courageous and enthusiastic nature; the example, had +he lived, of his generous ambitions--" But in the middle, Rutherford's +voice changed a little, and with a shiver his cousin turned and went +away. Had she guessed that they had been friends, these two, or was it +merely that she felt at last the chill of the place, and of all the old +dead about her? + +In a moment the young man turns to go out too. But as he looks through +the dimness of the chapel on the summer and sunlight, and his cousin +standing there outside the door, how far it all seems, how unreal! Only +real to him is a sense of the briefness of life, and of the great, +difficult things that may nevertheless be done or attempted before death +comes. And as he walks away again with his cousin, he is quite certain, +now at last, that this is no mere emotion or boyish enthusiasm, but an +influence that for evil or good must rule his life--must come, at least, +between him and any choice of ease and the common happiness. + + + + +_A Broken Journey_ + + +I. + +The air tasted fresh; through the sunshiny mist the London houses shone +beautiful and vague; the passers-by seemed to be whistling and singing +as they went to their morning work. Already at Paddington cabs were +arriving; they drove down under the clock in an endless procession; the +family luggage was unloaded, and the passengers, muffled for winter +journeys, hurried into the station. + +Then a hansom pulled up sharply, and a young man got out, whose air of +fashion and slim figure, as he stood there paying his driver, drew for a +moment the notice of the other travellers. + +On the platform within, by the waiting trains, all was movement; the +great adventurous station was full of grey light, and a confusion of +sounds and echoes. Arthur Lestrange, as he walked across, looked about +with quick eyes on the orderly tumult, the heaps of moving luggage, the +hurrying people. They were all starting off on pleasant holiday +journeys, he fancied; indeed, everything seemed eager and gay that +morning. + +He chose an empty first-class carriage in the train going northwards; +but in a moment he hurried out back to the bookstall to get a paper, and +returned with several novels in his hands. On the top of one was +pictured, in bright tragic colours, a young man suspended over the edge +of a perilous cliff. + +"Why did I buy them?" Arthur wondered, looking at the books with +amusement. + +Settling himself again, he watched through his window the anxious +procession of people who came peering by, looking for corner seats. Then +he saw his own luggage passing. + +"Oh, you can put those things in here with me," he called out to the +porter. + +"I've labelled them, sir," the porter said, looking up with a stupid +face. + +"Put them in, put them in, don't you see there's plenty of room," Arthur +said with a certain sharpness and nervous agitation. + +There were two young men standing on the platform near his window. + +"Well, good-bye," one of them said, as he looked at the other with +friendly eyes, "you mustn't wait, and you'll come up and see us, won't +you?" + +They were Oxford men, young Lestrange thought, as he watched them, +feeling envious, and almost lonely for a moment as he remembered the +times when he had travelled down so often with friends from Paddington +to Oxford. + +But surely it was time for the train to start! The movement on the +platform seemed to be increasing; the tumult and screaming whistles +sounded louder and louder in his ears, as he waited, leaning +uncomfortably forward. + +At last all the doors were shut; the platform grew more vacant; a few +belated people hurried up; a green flag was waved; a whistle blown; +everything about him seemed to glide backwards, and then, with the +shaking and noise of travel, the train drew itself slowly out of the +station. Arthur leaned back with a sensation of immense relief. He was +really away at last. Away from everybody! He had been almost afraid that +they might come to the station and try to stop him. But it was absurd, +he told himself, as he opened the morning paper, it was absurd to make +so much trouble; for what was there to bother about? He could take care +of himself; and anyhow his relations had better mind their own business. +As for talking about ruin! He thought of his pompous uncle and dull pale +cousins, and then of the people with whom he was going to stay. + +"Good old ruin," he said half aloud, running down the news of the day +with eyes that hardly noticed what he read. In a moment he turned to +look out of the window. + +After making its way through the suburbs, the train had begun at last to +travel more quickly through the open country. The trees and earth and +houses near at hand drifted backwards; the more distant fields moved +back with a slower motion, while the horizon seemed to glide forward +with the train. The sun shone on the brown earth and mist and leafless +trees; a young horse galloped the length of his field in a playful race +with the moving carriages. + +Young Lestrange changed his seat restlessly. Then he began to rearrange +his luggage on the rack; he looked at himself in the mirror, caressing +his slight moustache. His hair was smooth and dark over his handsome +young face. Only his straight eyebrows, twitching nervously now and +then, would give him rather a harassed, anxious look for a moment. + +What was the use of bothering, he said to himself, smiling as he turned +carelessly away. If one was young! Men sowed their wild oats; he would +settle down soon enough, but in the meantime he would enjoy himself. You +have only one life to live.... + +The winter morning seemed unusually bright and clear; the train went +swiftly; its wheels beat on the rails an unquiet and delicious measure, +answering and echoing his thoughts. Restless and excited, he again threw +down the paper, for the bright images of desire, that floated before his +eyes, made the printed words seem almost meaningless. + +He pictured to himself the end of his journey--the trap that would +probably meet him--a dog-cart, with shining bay horse and man in livery, +standing in the gravel sweep of a country station. The drive up, and +then at tea, or just before dinner, he and she would meet in the drawing +room, greeting each other with pretended indifference. How he hated and +loved her! + +After a while the train, going more slowly now, began to draw into +Reading. With the beginnings of weariness and headache Arthur looked at +the waste of railway trucks, the heaps of coal and blackened snow, the +red factory buildings, and the dreary streets beyond. Biscuit +factories--who could eat all the biscuits they made? he wondered; +"Clapper's Restaurant"--suppose you should dine there, they would give +you nothing but biscuits, probably. Did the train stop at Reading?--he +could get some spirits at the refreshment room. + +At the bar, Lestrange saw the figure and long grey coat of a man he +thought he recognized; and then, getting sight of Boyle's smooth-shaven +face, and remembering his supercilious manners and reputation, he felt +with sudden repulsion how much he hated men of that kind--men of +pleasure, who were no longer young. When you were young it was +different--but to go on always.... + +But when Boyle turned and greeted him in an indifferent, half-friendly +way, and then walked up and down with him on the platform, Arthur could +not help feeling, in spite of himself, somewhat flattered and pleased. +After all, Boyle knew most of the best people, and went everywhere. + +"I have an empty carriage; you might as well come in with me, if you are +by yourself." Boyle seemed not unwilling, and soon appeared at Arthur's +carriage. + +"I'm just on my way to Marcham," Arthur said, as if casually; "the +Vallences', you know." There was a slight lisp in his pleasant musical +voice. + +Boyle was putting his golf clubs in the rack, but turned round at this +and glanced at Arthur oddly. However he said nothing, and after a +moment he sat down, and, lighting a cigarette, began looking at the +paper. + +As the train went out of Reading they began to talk, or rather Arthur +talked. Soon he was discussing horses and actresses and gambling debts. +It was a good game, baccarat, Arthur said, but you had to pay for it +sometimes. He had just dropped a cool thousand or two, which was rather +a bore. There was a music hall singer to whom Arthur referred more than +once as "Mamie." + +"And how about Lulu, hey?" Boyle asked, with his disagreeable laugh. + +"Oh, Lulu--good old Lulu!" Arthur said, but he really had no idea of +what Boyle meant. + +Boyle told a story in his short, indifferent way, and Arthur exclaimed, +"Capital! capital!" and laughed loudly in the fashion of a popular man +he knew. + +Had he ever been to the Vallences' before? Boyle asked. + +No, he had never gone before. Did Boyle know them?--Boyle had been +there; was going there now, in fact, he said. + +"Really, are you going there now? How odd we should meet like this!" +They talked a little about the place and people. It would be rather a +lively set, wouldn't it? Arthur asked; and he boasted that his uncle, +Lord Seabury, had warned him against them. But, good God! what did he +care if people were amusing. "Do you know who else will be there?" + +"Oh, a lot of people. Mrs. Stair (Arthur blushed at this), and that +young Glass." + +"Glass?" Arthur exclaimed; "oh, not really that man! They can't like +him." + +"They like his money." + +"You don't mean they ask a man--a stupid boy like that--to get his +money." + +"They don't say they do," and Boyle looked up from his paper with an +expression that seemed to say, "You young fool, you don't know much." + +("Is that what I'm asked for?" Arthur wondered for a second.) + +"I say, did you read about that young Hughes?" Boyle was saying. "It +seems he's gone and played the fool--shot himself; wrote to his mamma he +was ruined. So he won't be there." + +"Used he to go to Marcham?" + +"Oh, always there." + +"Well, it's the pace that kills," Arthur said sententiously, though his +hand, as he lighted another cigarette, shook a little. "It isn't +everyone that can stand the racket." + +"If they weren't all such sickening young fools," Boyle replied in a +short contemptuous way, as if the talk bored him. + +"He thinks a damned lot of himself," Arthur thought, looking with a +sidelong glance at Boyle. His head began to ache again; a sudden disgust +came over him; he felt he hated Boyle. And he hated himself too, for +talking and boasting as he had talked and boasted but a few minutes +before. And they were all like Boyle, all those people; they cared only +for his name and money. "Name and money, name and money," the wheels +beat on the rails. Well, soon he would lose them, most likely--his name +and money--like the young suicide, who had lost them both and his life +too. + +Still he made an effort to ward off the mood that was settling down on +him--the mood he knew so well! He was not ruined, he told himself, and +there was nothing ruinous in an ordinary visit. He could take care of +himself. The chief of his debts were gambling debts, and he was going to +stop playing soon; would settle down quietly; he would make a +resolution, and keep to it. + +But what was he doing now in that rattling train? Only the day before he +had resolved not to come; had promised solemnly that he would not come; +had made a resolution to break with all that set, and not yield to the +passion which people said would ruin him. Yet here he was, going on to +it all! There seemed to him something sinister in his journey, something +fatal in the swiftness of the rattling train, as if he were being +carried on to a dreadful place, and into misfortune, against his will. +He leaned away from Boyle, and touched his cheek to the cool pane of the +window. Masses of steam enveloped the train, but Arthur saw the quiet +landscape now and then, glimpses of faded green fields with snow, and, +over the hedges, the shining river, and bluish hills beyond. He saw a +boat on the river; recognized a bit of wood, a church tower. Those were +the hills that he had ridden over; the lanes through which he had so +often walked; the river down which he had floated in the summer +sunshine, pulling up refreshed and strong after bathing. With an eager, +almost childish interest he waited for the green visions, through the +shifting steam, of these familiar places. + +He opened the window; the singing air tasted pleasantly cool and fresh. +Over the flooded fields and the moving trees he saw the spires and +towers of Oxford. He could well remember the quiet streets there; seemed +to see himself, indeed, moving through them; and he almost believed that +in a few minutes he would be driving up, as he had driven up so often +before, in that procession of racing cabs to the old College, and to all +his friends. + +The steam blew again about the train, wrapped his face in its warm +breath, and blotted out the view. Inside the shaking carriage was the +tobacco smoke, and his luggage. "Where am I going with that man?" he +asked himself suddenly, for the picture of Oxford had filled his mind +entirely for a moment. The buildings and towers were so near now, the +water of the reservoir gleamed slowly past. Arthur took down his luggage +from the rack. At the bottom of his mind he had been wanting for a long +time to go back to Oxford, and see it all, and see an old friend there; +and so, eagerly, almost before the train had stopped, he hailed a porter +and got out of the carriage. + +"I must stay over here a few hours," he said to Boyle, with apparent +calmness. "There is something I have just thought of, and must attend +to. I'll telegraph, but you'd better tell them, though, not to meet me." +He turned and walked away. + +But as he drove up to Oxford, "What a fool I am," he kept saying to +himself. Indeed Boyle's surprise, the commonplace platform, the +ticket-collector's questions, the sight outside of his own luggage being +lifted up on a hansom, had soon made his foolish, helpless impulse fade, +like the flame of a candle, taken out into the daylight and windy air. +But to go back to the train would have seemed doubly foolish, so, borne +on by the impetus of his dead desire, he drove away. The next train was +not till half-past six. He would get luncheon, and, after all, it might +be pleasant to see the old place. But he was resolved that never again +would he act on those stupid, sudden ideas--they made him seem like a +fool. + + +II. + +After luncheon Arthur went out--the time had to be spent somehow--and +walked idly along the High Street. It was all so familiar: the shops, +the windows of the club to which he had belonged, the rooms where his +friends had lived. But he knew no one now. The streets were wet with +winter mud, there was a commonplace light on the houses, and Arthur +looked about him with very little interest and emotion. Walking past the +Colleges, he loitered for a little on Magdalen Bridge, and then turned +back again. It was still early, and he began to meet now the young men +who were starting out of Oxford for the open air and country. Some were +dressed for football; three or four in brown coats rode by on horses, +talking and laughing as they passed; but the greater number were in +flannels, and moving towards the river. These Arthur followed--he had +nothing else to do--through the streets and meadows, coming at last to +the barges and windy river. Men were calling to each other, boats were +pushing out, and the turbid current of the Thames ran swiftly with the +winter floods. + +But for him there was too much sound about the wind and water, the cold +sunshine was too bright and harsh, and he felt doubly weary, as he +looked at all that life and activity and health. And yet once he would +have delighted in it. + +When Arthur Lestrange had come first from school to Oxford, he had +entered with eagerness and youthful ambition into the pleasures and +activities of university life, wishing to do everything well that he +tried to do, and with distinction if he could. And all these ambitions +and activities he came to share, in the pleasant, intimate Oxford way, +with a friend, slightly older than himself. + +But after a while he began to grow discontented; success was not so +easy;--and what was the good of it after all? he asked himself, with +impatient lassitude. Finding new friends and more exciting pleasures, he +gradually drifted away from his old companions. What was the harm? he +said impatiently to Austen, resenting his friend's affectionate advice. +He would enjoy life as other people enjoyed it; he only wanted to be +left alone. So they grew less intimate; and when Lestrange found himself +in trouble, serious enough to make him leave Oxford, he had been too +angry and proud to see Austen, or answer his friendly letter. "How +stupid it has all been," he said to himself, the memory of all this +coming over him rather drearily, as he walked back towards Oxford. + +But his feeble attempts to make some change in his life--these were the +stupidest of all his memories; how, when his father died abroad, he was +really frightened, fearing for himself a death like that, and going back +to the half-neglected place that was now his own, he remembered his old +plans of life, and tried to do his duty there, and be a good landlord +and neighbour. But in a few months he grew weary of it all; it was too +lonely, too depressing.... + +And then a year after, when he hoped for a while that a nice girl he +knew might care for him; and this last time, when his losses at play +had made him mortgage his property still more heavily. Then, sobered for +a moment by his uncle's warnings, and by the ruin that seemed not far +off, he suddenly resolved to change, to give up playing, to keep away +from all those people. + +But he had started for Marcham after all. It was no good trying, and no +one cared. Of course no one cared--why should they? With worldly +derision he remembered now the foolish, tattered hope he had cherished +all along--the hope that some day, coming back to Oxford, he would find +the old life, the old friend, who _had_ cared once. And without stopping +he walked past his College, the place where Austen was still living. He +did not want to see any of them, nor would they want to see him. + +Oppressed by the slowness of the time, the afternoon quiet of the +streets, he resolved to go back to the station and wait there, watching +the railway clock slowly eat up the hours. But passing by chance the +livery stable where he had always kept his horses, with an aimless +impulse he sauntered into the open court. One of the stable grooms +coming up, addressed him by name, and asked him if he wanted to order a +horse. + +"It's a long while since we've seen you in Oxford, sir." + +This recognition and friendly look in the man's face, touched Arthur, +and, with a revival of eagerness, he felt that a ride would be just the +thing to kill the time. So, ordering a horse to be sent to the hotel +where he had left his luggage, he hurried back to get ready. + + +III. + +As he rode back towards Oxford, two hours afterwards, the light was +already fading from the winter sky. Sleepily and quietly he jogged along +now, his horse tired at last after the quick gallop through grass lanes +and over the wet fields and commons. The young man, too, was tired; but +with a healthy, physical fatigue, pleasant in all his body. He felt +almost happy after the motion, the wide light, the freshness of the air. +And when he rode into the old city, walking his horse through the +darkening streets, it seemed to him as if he were riding home now, as +often he had ridden home into Oxford before, at just this hour of the +twilight. The groups in the doorways, the lighted windows in the dim +buildings, the sounds about him of bells and footsteps and friendly +voices, brought back to him confusedly, mixed with the memory of this +and that, the charm and comfort of that old life--that life of order and +disciplined ways, and high old-fashioned purposes. How quietly the days +had gone by: the mornings of work, the rides with friends, or afternoons +on the river, between the yellowing autumn willows; the evenings with +the white lamplight and pleasant talk and books. He had quarrelled with +the restraint, the subordination, sometimes; had thought it too severe, +too painful, to go out on the river in the wind and rain, to get up so +early in the cold of winter mornings. But now, after the stale +dissipation of his life, it was only the friendly warmth, the +lazily-wasted hours he remembered, the pleasant fatigue after exercise, +and the taste of the winter air when he had hurried out to chapel +through the earliest sunlight. + +If he could only go back to it all; if, putting up his horse, he could +walk to his rooms through the twilight, and find his books, and the fire +burning there, and friends not far off! But things had been against him +somehow. And yet he had meant it all to be so different. And with half a +sigh he remembered the summer evenings when he and Austen had walked in +the old garden, talking of their plans in life--of all they meant to +do--together! if they could. But then, people never did remain friends +like that. + +When he gave up his horse, however, he looked at his watch, and, after +standing in hesitation for a moment, he turned with a sudden impulse, +and walked quickly towards his old College. + +In the porch stood a group of undergraduates, just up from the river, +and vaguely gossiping before they separated. But they were all strangers +to Arthur, and the porter, who answered his questions, was a stranger +too. Crossing the darker quadrangle, the young man went into a staircase +and up two flights of steps. Then he stopped, and stood breathing +quickly for a moment. There was the door, and the name over it, but he +had grown suddenly ashamed of his errand. Austen might have forgotten +him, or might not want to see him.... But, bah! what did he care? and +his footsteps must have been heard.... + +"I'm afraid you don't recognize me," Arthur said, in his assured voice, +as he went forward into the room. "I was in Oxford; I thought I'd look +you up." + +Austen, who was sitting by a lamp, turned round with a puzzled +expression on his staid, pleasant face. Then, pushing aside a heap of +papers, he got up and said: "Oh, Lestrange, I didn't recognize you at +first, it's so dark there. But I'm glad to see you--do sit down; you'll +have tea, won't you?" + +He was passing through Oxford, Arthur said; and having a few hours on +his hands after riding over Shotover, he had come back, and happened to +look in at the old College. The plausibility of this explanation, and +Austen's voice as he said politely, "That's right, that's right, I'm +delighted to see you again," soon overcame most of the shyness behind +Arthur's easy, unembarrassed manner. They still talked to each other +rather formally, however, as men do who have not met for years. + +"It's a long time since you've been in Oxford, isn't it?" Austen asked. + +"Yes, it is; I've been at home, in London. But I suppose it hasn't +changed much." + +No, there wasn't much change, Austen said; old people went and new +came. + +What had become of all the men who had been with them in College, Arthur +asked; he had lost sight of them somehow. + +Austen said that some were at the Bar; some in the government offices; +one or two in Parliament already; the most of them seemed to be getting +on pretty well, he thought, though he had lost sight of many of them, as +one did. + +"And you've been living on here ever since? I heard you had been made a +Fellow. You like it, I suppose?" + +Yes, Austen said, he liked it well enough, the work was tiring +sometimes; that afternoon he had been going through papers. Arthur +noticed that he looked fatigued, and a good deal older. It was dry, hard +work no doubt, but still it was not the kind of thing that changed you. + +"I say, you have jolly rooms here, Austen; I envy you living in a place +like this. Do you remember your old rooms over the garden? I think I +used to live in them almost." + +As the old memories revived they seemed to grow less shy of each other. +Arthur leaned forward, talking in a vague, intermittent way as he stared +into the fire. Sometimes he would gaze at nothing, with a vacant, dazed +look, for minutes together; or he would take the fire-irons and break up +the coals. Once the tongs slipped and fell with a sudden clatter; he +started nervously. + +"Well," he said at last, rousing himself from a reverie in which he +seemed conscious of nothing but the warmth and comfort and pleasant, +physical fatigue, "Well, it seems very jolly here, like old times; I +almost wish I had never gone away. But then, of course, I couldn't help +it," he added; "I wasn't asked." + +"You had hard luck," Austen said; "I hope it hasn't made any +difference." + +The words sounded friendly and sympathetic to Arthur. Hard luck, yes, +that was it; he had always had hard luck. + +"What have you been doing since?" Austen said politely. + +"What have I been doing, Charles? Oh, nothing much; seeing about things +at home a little. There were some cottages I had rebuilt. You remember +we used to talk about it. It isn't so easy though, or I suppose I'm not +so clever at it. But of course you know a great deal more about those +things." + +"No, oh no! I've been so busy. That sort of thing is good in moderation, +and I'm glad you keep it up." + +"Oh yes, in a way ... but no, what am I saying? I don't really keep it +up. It was all two years ago. I haven't done much of anything +since--anything good. Things, you know," he went on, as he stared into +the fire, "haven't gone just--I mean, it's been rather stupid--stupid, +and worse, I'm afraid; I don't seem good for much somehow." + +The familiar Oxford room, with its order, and books, and shaded light, +seemed so shut in, so far from the friendless world in which he lived, +that for the moment Arthur almost forgot the lonely distrust, the +derision of everything, which his life had taught him. "I suppose it's +fate," he added, staring into the fire, as if he were half-ashamed of +what he was saying. "I suppose it _is_ fate--but still, I +wonder--sometimes it seems if--that if I had had a chance, if anybody--" +He waited a minute indecisively. But Austen said nothing. Arthur +glanced at him, and then, flushing slightly, he got up. "But I must be +going now," he said, with a curious change and coldness in his voice; "I +have a train to catch." + +"Oh, don't go," Austen replied awkwardly, "don't go just yet. I'm sorry +to hear what you say; but don't you think, if you will allow me to say +so, don't you think it is a mistake to blame fate for such things? If +you would tell me more--" + +"Oh, thanks," Arthur said, "I think I must be going." + +"But you were going to say something," Austen urged, "and if you would +tell me more, I might be able to help you, or give you advice at least." + +Arthur glanced at him quickly. Then suddenly the idea seemed to amuse +him, and coming back a step or two he said, with a smile, "Tell you +more, Austen? Oh, I was only going to tell you what everyone knows, +that I've turned out a bad lot, that's all." + +"I'm sorry to hear that," said Austen, in a rather shocked voice; "I +hope it's not so bad." + +Arthur smiled pleasantly. "Oh well, you know, it _is_ pretty bad, I'm +afraid." + +"But what do you mean, Lestrange?" + +"What do I mean? Oh, all the usual things--bad company, gambling, and +women." + +Austen looked still more shocked. "But surely you could change if you +wanted to!" + +"I suppose I might, if I wanted to," Arthur said, playing with his +riding whip. "But I'm afraid I don't want to. What's the good?" + +"What's the good?" Austen repeated. "I don't see how you can ask such a +question; if what you say is true, you ought to want to change." + +Arthur mused a moment. Then looking up, with apparent candour, he said, +"Well, I suppose it is odd; but honestly, you know, I don't want to +change in the least. You see, your respectable people, they don't want +to have anything to do with me; and anyhow, the things they care for +bore me to death, really they do. You only have one life, so why not be +happy in your own way? that's my principle." + +"But surely, Lestrange, you can't go on--" + +"No, I suppose I can't for ever; but you try to enjoy it while it lasts; +and anyhow, my father, you know how he died--I suppose it's fate; +heredity you call those things, don't you?" + +"Really, I'm shocked to hear you talk so recklessly, as if you didn't +care. You seem very much changed." + +"Am I changed? I don't know; I suppose I am. We've both changed a +little, don't you think? At least, things seem different. I wonder where +I put my gloves,--I really must be going." + +"Well, of course, I can't keep you, Lestrange; I can only give you my +advice. But I can't believe you're happy." + +For a moment Arthur looked at him sullenly. + +"Well, what if I ain't?" he asked. "What's that to you?" + +"I was only going to say," Austen went on, "I was only going to say that +it seems to me that if you would try--" + +"Try! Good Lord, I've tried enough, but what's the good?" Arthur said, +with his old calmness and indifference, as he turned away towards the +door. "I don't care, and no one else does, either. But I must be off. +Good bye." + +He went down the steps quickly, whistling as he walked away through the +darkness. He was angry at himself, and bitterly ashamed of his visit to +Austen. They were all like that--he ought to have known. And yet it was +a pity, too! + + + + +_The Sub-Warden_ + + +The two old gentlemen walked out of the Common Room, across the +quadrangle to the porter's lodge: the Vicar of North Mims, who had been +spending a few hours in Oxford and dining in College, wanted to catch +the evening train back to North Mims, the College living he had held for +the last ten years, and the Sub-Warden wanted to see the last of him. + +"The point I make is this," the old Vicar said again, frowning with his +bushy eyebrows in the moonlight; "the point I make is this: There would +be no trouble at all, if it wasn't for the drinking. If they want +meetings, let them have Temperance meetings; and I say that those +Socialist fellows from London have absolutely no business meddling in +the affairs of my parish. And as for the undergraduates who come out +from Oxford to speak"--the Vicar's voice grew more solemnly irate--"as +for those undergraduates, they should be punished. It is, I consider, a +case in which both college and university authorities should intervene +with prompt severity." + +They walked on for a little in silence, and then the Sub-Warden said, as +he looked at his companion, "Really, Philpotts, you know, you ought to +tricycle." + +The truth is, that, as they had sat in the Common Room over their port, +the Rev. Mr. Philpotts had repeated himself a great many times; and, the +Sub-Warden's mind at last beginning to wander, he had said to himself, +as he looked at his glass and then at his old friend, "Really, Philpotts +is getting very heavy! I used to be heavier, and probably should be now, +if it wasn't for tricycling!" And, his mind being full of the thought, +he had suddenly said, "Really, Philpotts, you know, you ought to +tricycle!" + +"What!" said the Vicar, in a voice of slow amazement. "What on earth has +tricycling got to do with it?" + +"Oh, I beg your pardon!" the Sub-Warden cried, who was the soul of +good-nature, "I am so absent-minded. You were speaking of the Radicals; +it is certainly shocking." + +"Radicals! Pestilent Socialists I call them," and the Vicar's mind, +after its jolt, got back into the old groove. "Why, you would hardly +believe it, but they had the impertinence to advertise some young ninny +as a member of this College, and they actually posted it on the +vicarage gate. My wife had to soak it off with a sponge. Now, what I say +is--" + +But they had arrived in the porch, and the Sub-Warden, telling the Vicar +it was late, hurried him out of College, and then turned and walked back +to his rooms. + +"He certainly is getting heavy," he said to himself. "He has changed +very much. These country livings! And if I had only started to ride a +little earlier this afternoon, he wouldn't have caught me. Another time +when I miss my exercise I mustn't drink port! At my age one begins to +feel it." + +The Sub-Warden reached his staircase, and, resting one hand on the wall +of the building, he turned and looked at the moon. Then he went +upstairs, but, instead of sitting down at his table, he went to the +window and opened the sash. There was a curious look about the trees +and buildings, as if they had been turning round, and had just stopped. +It was odd. Poor old Philpotts! What an undergraduate he had been--up to +anything! What times they had had! And now he was on his way back to his +wife at North Mims! The Sub-Warden sighed; then smiled, and, +straightening himself, after a moment's hesitation, he went and put on +an old coat, and stole with soft steps out of the College. Perhaps it +was the moonlight; perhaps an old memory or two that had come back to +him, or the thought of the exercise he had missed; or, again (but this +is mere conjecture), the glass or two of College port may have done +something to put his mind in a mood for adventure. Anyhow, he got on his +tricycle, and started for a ride into the country. He only hoped the +Bursar had not seen him; not that there was any reason why he shouldn't +ride at night, but the Bursar made up such funny stories about the +Sub-Warden and his tricycle rides. + +And so he rode lightly along, over the vague roads, barred here and +there by the blue shadows of the trees--rode lightly along through the +ancient Oxfordshire country; and he laughed in his genial Tory heart as +he thought of the Vicar's absurd political panic. No, a ripple of +Radical excitement in the towns perhaps, but it would hardly touch the +country. The labourers must know who were their real friends and +leaders. And yet it was outrageous, he thought, as he began pushing his +machine up a hill, it was outrageous that anyone should have such views. +But that members of the University should go and speak at their dreadful +meetings! The Sub-Warden shook his head and sighed, as he thought of +the University--its sad change, its evil state. Could it, indeed, be +still called a University? Ah, in the old days, before the Royal +Commissions! But when he mounted his machine again at the top of the +hill, he forgot these black thoughts, and rode quickly down--indeed, he +almost felt himself on wings--into the village he saw below him, an old +village, spread out asleep in the moonlight. He went on slow wheels +through the blue-shadowed streets; he breathed in the night air, +sweet-scented from the village gardens; he felt young in his soul, and +would hardly recognize as his own the respectable, fat shadow that +wheeled after him across each moon-lit space. + +All at once, in the midst of the sleeping village, there appeared in +front of him a square red building, with brightly lighted windows. +Curious to know what was going on, he rode his machine up to one of the +windows, and, looking through the glass, misty from the heat and +perspiration within, he saw vague rows of dark figures, and an upright +shape moving its arms at the end of the hall. What could it be? Around +at the door, whither he wheeled himself, there was a big poster, partly +torn, with the word "Temperance" on it, and something else pinned across +it. "That's right, that's right!" the Sub-Warden exclaimed, "that's the +way to cut the ground from under the Radicals! Philpotts was right; it's +a question of drink, not of politics." + +And so he got down from his tricycle and went in for a moment. Dazed by +the heat and light, he stood still and stared about. The orator also +stopped and stared at him. There were bright texts of Scripture and +temperance mottoes on the walls; but the Sub-Warden kept gazing at these +words, "The Lord is at Hand," hung in large letters over the orator's +head. But this orator was Thomas Woolley, his own pupil! Soon it all +seemed clear to him. Woolley was known as a Temperance speaker, and here +he had come to hold a meeting in a little village. The Sub-Warden +applauded, and Woolley began to speak again. But as he gasped a good +deal, and stuttered, the Sub-Warden could only catch phrases here and +there--cold remnants, they seemed to be, of what must have been written +as a fiery peroration. "The down-trodden--I mean the inactive ... the +great heart of humanity--and--and--things--.... Now is the time for +hand to join in hand, and rush to the banner--I mean, it would be better +if you would sign your names." + +("That's the pledge-book," the Sub-Warden thought. "Yes, I dare say it's +right; you could not preach moderate drinking to labourers.") + +"Deliver yourself from the classes--that--that profit by your +weakness...." + +("That's the public-house keepers," the Sub-Warden reflected. "But why +does he call them classes?") + +Woolley stared hard at the notes which he gripped in his hand, and then +he turned and pointed at a place at the back of the platform, which he +called "the Future," and began to speak about a model dwelling, a cow, +and a vine and fig-tree; then his voice sank, and he wavered and sat +down. + +"He expects a good deal from Temperance," the Sub-Warden thought; "what +a thing it is to be young!" And he applauded with vigour, such vigour +that several rustics in the audience turned and fixed him with their +ruminating eyes. Then the Sub-Warden rose (he never spoke in public, but +as he had interrupted this meeting!), rose with dignity and internal +tremors, and made a few smiling remarks; nothing very definite, for, +after all, he was not a total abstainer; just his sympathy with the +speech of his young friend, his entire approval of the objects of the +meeting, his regret that academic duties held him back from a more +active participation in the work.... But if there was anything that +he or the College authorities could do to forward the cause--he believed +that their College owned land in the neighbourhood--they must not +hesitate to call upon him. Then a mild joke, and he sat down and wiped +his face. + +Certainly his speech was a great success. Woolley stared wildly at him, +but the audience applauded with vigour, and, as they were giving three +cheers for "the old College gentleman," the Sub-Warden slipped modestly +out. It was hot in there, and they might be handing pledge-books about. + +The mood in which he rode home was a pleasant one. Really he had never +heard applause that was quite so warm, so evidently sincere, so +spontaneous. There had been nothing like it when the Warden of St. +Mary's had spoken at the Corn Exchange. And Temperance was such a dull +subject! It was a bore, of course, for a man who loved his quiet to find +he had the power of moving an audience; but still, if the Radicals were +working so hard, the other side must come forward. + +The Sub-Warden went back into College, and, as he was walking across the +quadrangle, he heard a tumult of cheers and cries burst out on the +moon-lit stillness of the night. He started--the sounds fitted in so +well with his dreams! But, of course, it was a Debating Society; and the +window being open, the Sub-Warden went up and listened in his new +quality of an amateur. A small young man, with a round face and deep +voice, was thumping on a table. "What is the meaning, the outcome of +this agitation? It is putting blood into the mouth of a +tiger"--(applause)--"and when once the tiger has tasted blood, has +tasted property that is not his own, it demands more, and it will have +it! Yes, sir," he said, turning with a fierce look at the good-natured +president of the society, "mark my words, when the poor have divided, +like the tiger, everything there is to be divided; when there is nothing +left to feed their rage, then, sir, they will turn and rend +themselves--like the tiger!" + +Great shouts of applause roared through the window, and the bald-headed +old gentleman listening outside smiled an indulgent smile. But as the +speaker went on, denouncing more definitely the Radical agitators, and +even Woolley, by name, the smile faded from the Sub-Warden's face. It +must have been a Temperance meeting; and yet--and yet--"Temperance" had +been printed on the poster--but hadn't there been something pinned over +that, something which he hadn't read? The Sub-Warden looked about. He +could see one or two towers against the faint sky, and near each College +tower was a Common Room, and in each Common Room the Fellows sat after +dinner, telling stories. But suppose he had really spoken at a meeting +which--which wasn't a Temperance meeting, and the Bursar should hear of +it! + +The Sub-Warden lurked about in the quadrangle, holding his hat in his +hand, and spying out for Woolley. He came at last. + +"Good evening, Woolley," he said, "you have come from the Temperance +meeting?" + +"Oh, sir, it wasn't a Temperance meeting, that was the night before!" + +"Oh!" said the Sub-Warden, coldly. + +"No, sir, it was a different meeting; in fact, the Radical League. I was +so afraid--" + +"What! Then it was very wrong of you, Woolley, to give me to understand +it was a Temperance meeting." + +"Oh, please, sir--" + +"Don't try to explain it, it admits of no explanation," the Sub-Warden +said severely. "I should be sorry to get you into trouble, Woolley, but +if this should get to be known, I couldn't answer for the consequences. +I shall take no steps personally to make it known, and I should advise +you to mention it to no one--to no one at all, do you understand? +It's--it's nothing to be proud of." + +He walked indignantly away; and, indeed, for the moment his words had +made him feel really indignant. But when, on turning a corner, he +glanced back and saw the honest Woolley still standing there, he +hesitated. Should he return and explain? He took a step back, then he +thought of the Bursar, and, with a sudden, sinking fear he went quickly +to his room. + + + + +_Idyll_ + + +I. + +"I wish they hadn't asked me," said Matthew Craik, the Logic tutor of +St. Mary's, as he looked down at the party in the old secluded College +garden. "I wonder," he added, glancing at the reflection of his red tie +in the glass, his new tie, his black coat, his young and scholarly face, +"I wonder--but no, it isn't too red; they wear them red," he continued, +with attempted cheerfulness. "No--," but hearing the laughter of ladies +below his window, he scuttled back hastily. + +His rooms were high up in the garden tower, almost up amongst the +topmost boughs of the College elms; and when, after a moment, he +returned to his window and peered down, he could see, through the green +of the trees, the white and pink of ladies' dresses, dappling the lawn, +and moving and meeting on the College paths. Among the summer leaves the +summer wind was breathing; now and then it blew in at the window, laden +with scents from the garden, and the happy stir and hum of human voices; +and Matthew Craik, or the Corn-Craik, as the undergraduates called him, +felt his heart beating high with an unwonted emotion of youth and +excitement. + +The early philosophers of Asia Minor were very remarkable and suggestive +men; but they had lived a long while ago, and now that he had finished +and published his book about them, he meant to enjoy himself a little. +And what shallow wisdom it was, moreover, to live in the almost solitary +way he had been living all the winter. All the winter! All his life +really; wasting his youth among books, and almost shut out from +everything that is light and amiable in experience. Why, the greenest of +his undergraduate pupils might easily know more of modern life than he +did. + +"Oh, don't harp so on modern life!" his friend Ranken, the junior Dean +of St. Thomas', often said to him in his acrid way. "Do for pity's sake +leave it alone and stick to your Asia Minor." + +But then Ranken was absurdly cynical. Craik recalled with amusement some +of the remarks he had made during the winter, when they walked out +together for their Sunday walks; remembering how, as they returned in +the dusk through the red fringe of villas between Oxford and the +country, Ranken had sometimes paused opposite an uncurtained window, and +made merry, with bitter merriment, over the domestic picture they saw in +the golden light within,--a family at tea very likely, or an academic +parent romping with his children. Craik had always listened in +uncontradicting silence; only, standing in the chill gray of the +twilight, he would draw his coat about him more tightly; and afterwards, +alone in his rooms, these visions would sometimes haunt him, and not +unpleasantly. + +As he looked down now, it was agreeable to him to see so many ladies in +the old garden; he had never quite believed that Ranken had very +authentic grounds for his narrow prejudice. For Ranken would have liked +to shut ladies out of Oxford altogether; and would have liked to keep it +a tranquil home of learning and celibacy, as it used to be before the +Royal Commission had granted the Fellows the liberty of marrying. For +this unblest liberty, he maintained, had filled the University with +frivolity and ladies, and so destroyed the old character of the place +that now, as was notorious, the whole of the Summer Term, with a good +part of the rest of the academic year, was given over to dances, and +picnics, and parties, and other silly and deteriorating trifles. Craik +had not been able to contradict his friend, for hitherto the sounds and +echoes of this social dissipation had hardly reached his retired corner, +save as he had heard them reverberating through the gloomy caverns of +Ranken's imagination. But he could not quite believe--here Craik began +to laugh, for his eye at that moment was caught by the gargoyle just +above him, which was also leaning over and looking into the sunshiny +garden. For hundreds of years it had sat there making faces, but now its +visage seemed more than ever twisted with a look of Gothic cynicism. As +Craik lingered, looking out, himself almost like a second gargoyle, he +thought he could see in the garden below two ladies of his acquaintance, +Mrs. Cotton and Mrs. Trotter. How ridiculous Ranken was in his views! +almost as grotesque as the gargoyle. Craik took his hat and stick, and +started downstairs. He would see for himself. + + +II. + +It was very worldly and very brilliant in the garden. Beside a crowd of +ladies and young men, three Professors and two Heads of Houses had +already arrived, and others were expected. + +Mr. White, Mr. Long, and Mr. Maple Fetters, the young unmarried Fellows +who were giving the party, kept glancing toward the gateway, over the +shoulders of their arriving guests--all smiles, however, as they greeted +their friends with apposite remarks. On tables under the trees white +cloths were spread, looking almost blue in the vivid green, and on them +were plates of red strawberries, ancient silver bowls of sugar, and dewy +jugs of lemonade. Sounds of discreet gaiety, voices and laughter, and +the tinkling of glasses, quickened the sleepy silence of the garden; +while from beneath a high and fleecy cloud the rays of the westering sun +brightened the tree-tops and walls, lingered on the ladies' dresses, and +streaked with blue shadows the old green lawn. It put Craik in mind of +old coloured French pictures he had seen, or the courtly fêtes he had +read of; he thought, too, of the garden party in "_Love's Cottage_," a +pretty novel he had looked at lately, the party where Miss Molyneux +first meets Pastorel the poet. + +He kept smiling as he moved about, but he really felt rather shy and +alien; if he only knew more people, and could be seen laughing and +talking and moving his hands, like the other young men! + +He came across one of his pupils at last, and began to speak to him of +the recent boat-races in an animated way. But the undergraduate moved +off suddenly, with a hasty excuse, to join some ladies who had just +arrived, and Craik heard himself observing to a bush that "Brazenose had +rowed very well." The observation, he felt, was not brilliant, even for +conversation with a freshman; but as a fragment of soliloquy! He looked +round; no one could have overheard him? Soon he met his friend, Mrs. +Cotton, the wife of Professor Cotton, and he begged to be allowed to get +her an ice, or some other refreshment. The pink ice and biscuit were +inadequate, it struck him, as he carried them with care toward the large +presence of Mrs. Cotton; but was not this inadequacy, after all, of a +piece with the delicious and conventional unreality of an affair like +this? He noticed a brilliant purple feather conspicuously waving from +the top of Mrs. Cotton's bonnet, and was glad that everything was so +bright. How pleasant it was on a summer day, how pleasant and harmless +to play brilliantly at life! And, he thought with a smile, did not old +Aristotle himself place Magnificence high among the virtues? + +But Maple Fetters still had his anxious eye-glass fixed on the garden +entrance. + +"Miss Lamb--has Miss Lamb come?" Craik heard voices murmuring about +him. + +"No, not yet, but she's coming. Just heard Maple Fetters telling some +one." + +"Long says he can't understand it. In her note she said--" + +"So quiet, so different!" + +"They say in London--" + +"Oh, yes; and here everybody, Professors, Heads of Houses. It's too +amusing--" + +"Well, she says she wants to study all the types." + +"Ah, look, there she comes!" + +Craik turned with the others, and saw Miss Lamb coming in through the +Gothic archway. Her face was shaded with a large white hat, and her +white dress, falling in long plain lines to her feet, brightened with +the sun as she walked over the grass, out of the shadow of the building. + +Long and Maple Fetters started forward, and escorted Miss Lamb and her +aunt across the lawn. They drew near to Craik and Mrs. Cotton. + +"Oh, there is Mrs. Cotton," Miss Lamb exclaimed, and turned towards +them. "Dear Mrs. Cotton," she said, "I was so hoping I should see you +here!" + +Craik looked at Miss Lamb. She rested her eyes on him for a second, then +pressing Mrs. Cotton's hand, she stooped down with a graceful impulse +and kissed the fat old thing. Craik overheard Mrs. Lyon, the wife of the +president of All Saints, talking to the Warden of St. Simon's. + +"Dear Miss Lamb!" she said in a deep and sentimental voice; "she is just +as nice to women as she is to men." + +"She is much nicer, surely," the ancient Warden replied with a cackling +laugh; "she never kissed me!" + +Miss Lamb had disappeared. And Mrs. Cotton was busy discussing with +philanthropic friends the affairs of Oxford charities. + +"These Oxford parties are so nice," she said to Craik, as she turned her +benevolent spectacles away from him; "they save one writing such heaps +of notes." + +Again Craik walked about alone, smiling and conspicuous; and although he +tried to think that he was enjoying himself, he really wished very much +to be up in his tower again, up there in its pleasant green shade and +solitude. That, after all, was his place, the only place he was fit for; +and he had better stick to it, and stick to his books, and not cast +again the gloom of his presence on the social enjoyment of other more +fortunate people. For he could not talk agreeably, and laugh and be gay; +and, even if he could, which of the ladies who swept so prettily past +him on the grass would ever care to listen to him? Thus resignedly +musing, he retreated into the near shade of a laburnum tree, and, +ceasing to smile in his fixed and weary way, he watched through the +flowering branches the shining colours and placid agitation of the +garden party. All the men except himself were moving among the groups of +ladies, weaving darker threads into the brilliant pattern. Young Cobbe +he saw, the captain of the College boat club, walking with Miss Lamb, +walking and talking pleasantly, and he sighed; for although he was +Cobbe's tutor, and well versed in his stupidity, he could not help +envying the easy manners of the undergraduate. + +But the half-real picture ceased to be a mere picture to him, and the +sequence of images grew almost too vivid, when he noticed that Miss Lamb +and her companion were coming directly to his tree. Could he manage to +slip away without being seen? She was coming probably to pick a spray of +the yellow flower to put in her white dress, or carry away perhaps as a +memory of the party. And if he were found standing there like a +policeman, it would be so awkward. + +Miss Lamb fortunately met Maple Fetters, and, stopping herself, seemed +to be sending him on to the tree alone. When he reached it, he pushed +aside the branches and said, with a smile, "I say, Craik, I want to +introduce you to Miss Lamb." + +"Me?" + +"Yes, you. We saw you here; she wants to meet you." + +"Wants to meet _me_?" + +"Yes, _you_. Come along." + +Craik came out from beneath the tree. + +"Miss Lamb--does she live in Oxford?" + +"You don't mean to tell me you've never heard of Miss Lamb?" Fetters +paused in astonishment. "You must be the only man in Oxford then who has +not. Miss Lamb is an American!" + +"An American?" Craik had heard that American ladies were so brilliant. + +"Miss Lamb, let me introduce Mr. Craik, our philosopher." + +"Mr. Craik, I am glad to meet you." + +Craik bowed; then he saw that Miss Lamb had put out her hand; he tried +to take it, but was too late. The American young lady however smiled, +and put out her hand again, and gave it to him frankly, almost as if it +were a present. + +"We ought to shake hands, oughtn't we? It's the English way, isn't it?" + +Craik stifled a guffaw, and his awkward sensations began to go. + +"Mr. Cobbe, would you mind getting me an ice?" + +Cobbe's face wore an odd expression as he bowed and disappeared. Maple +Fetters fluttered off to other occupations. Craik and Miss Lamb were +left alone, and they began to walk with vague steps, and, on the lady's +part, vague, unfinished scraps of conversation, through the sunshine +along the garden path. Then stopping, and resting her hands on her +parasol, she said, as if they were old friends already, "I wonder--would +you take me into your old College cloisters? I have heard so much about +them, and it wouldn't be wrong for us to run away from the party for +just a few minutes? I should so love to! You won't mind?" + +"Oh dear, no!" Craik exclaimed. "Certainly we can go. It's through the +quadrangle. But Mr. Cobbe, will he find you?" + +"Oh, he'll know where I am; and if he doesn't it's no matter. Come!" + +They went under the garden tower, and through the little old quadrangle, +into the entrance of the cloisters. Of the history and traditions of the +place, and of the whole College, Craik spoke almost with eloquence, +while Miss Lamb listened with murmurs and interruptions of enthusiastic +interest. The cloisters, as he explained, were once the cloisters of a +monastery; the tower was the monastery tower; and the bell that hung +there, and twice a day rang the College into chapel, was the bell that +once sounded for the matins and vespers of the monks. + +"What! monks? Did monks really once live here? Oh, how I should have +liked to have seen it then!" + +"Ah, but you couldn't, you know. They never allowed ladies inside the +gates." + +"How silly!" + +"Yes," Craik said, smiling, "wasn't it silly?" + +They walked with slow steps around the shadowed cloisters, and Miss Lamb +talked idly of the party. It was such a pretty party, so amusing. Did he +often go to garden parties? No! How odd! She did--to ever so many, in +America, in London, and now in Oxford. The Oxford parties were the best +though. Then suddenly she cried in a changed voice, "But how frivolous I +am, Mr. Craik! I can see that you are quite shocked." + +"Shocked! oh no, not at all." + +"Well, then, you ought to be! Imagine being so frivolous in a solemn +place like this. Tell me, you study philosophy, don't you? It must be +splendid; I do envy you so! When I am in a place like Oxford I feel so +frivolous, somehow, and ignorant. Why, I feel afraid--" Then after a +moment's charming hesitation, "Yes, quite afraid to talk to clever +people. You mustn't mind what I say, will you?" + +"But I'm not clever!" he exclaimed. "Why--" + +"Oh, but Mr. Craik! Why, you've written a book!" + +"But that's nothing. And it's only a sort of study, nothing really." + +"I wish I could read it." + +"Oh no! don't try; it's a stupid thing, only meant for students." + +Miss Lamb paused, and, turning her eyes to Craik with a look full of +reproach, she said: "Ah! you are like the others, you don't think I am +serious; you think I would not understand it!" + +"Oh no, not that!" Craik urged in quick distress. "You would understand +it, of course, what there is to understand. I only meant," he +stammered, "I only meant that it was not well written, not +interesting--not really worth reading, I mean." + +"Oh, I'm sure it is worth reading, and I hear it's so clever. It is +about Asia Minor, isn't it. Asia Minor is so interesting; I wish you +would tell me something about it, and about your work. Do you like it +here? Of course you do. Have you been in Oxford long?" + +For a third time they passed round the cloister square, loitering with +slow footsteps, through the old arches and past the epitaphs of the +ancient celibate Fellows, and Craik, talking with an unreserve that was +intimate and sudden, and yet somehow seemed quite natural to him, told +about his work, and the writing of his book. Then, in answer to a +question of Miss Lamb's, he described his quiet bringing up in an +obsolete old town where his parents were tradespeople; his early +schooling, how he had come to Oxford on a scholarship, and how he had +stayed there ever since, living in the same College, his parents having +died, and the Logic tutorship being offered to him just when he had +taken his degree. So he seemed to have lived a long while there, in that +sleepy old College, within its high walls and buildings: as an +undergraduate first, busy and almost solitary, save for a few friends +similar to himself; then as a tutor, still more busy with his work, and +still more solitary; and above all, during the last few years, when all +his thought and leisure had been given to his book on Ionic +philosophers. How many years was it altogether? Eight; no, ten. And +then, as she seemed to be really interested, he gave a sketch, half +humorous and half serious, of his life in College, his amusements, his +walks with Ranken. A bare, monastic life it seemed to himself when he +came to describe it. So little to tell of in so many years; and how long +ago it seemed! + +"But dear me!" Craik exclaimed at last, with a blush, "I don't think I +have ever talked so much of myself before. It sounds rather dull, I'm +afraid." + +Miss Lamb stopped for a moment. + +"Dull, Mr. Craik," she cried, "oh no, I think it is noble! To have +achieved so much already. You don't know how I have been interested! +Only it is so--I mean it makes me seem so--so--. I suppose you hate +women." + +"Oh no--_no_!" + +"I mean look down on them, despise them." + +"No! why I--" + +"I'm afraid you really do, only you're too polite to say so. You don't +think, do you, that they could understand philosophy?" + +"Of course they could, quite as well as we do, if they would only try." + +"Do you think it would be any use my trying? Really, do you really? I +should so love to, if it would be of any use. You know, I have always +wanted to understand about it, and there is hardly anyone in the world I +admire so much as the philosophers. They are the real leaders of the +world--Socrates, and Emerson, and Herbert Spencer. And a frivolous life +like mine seems sometimes so--; But then people will never believe I am +in earnest, and they all make fun of me and discourage me so. Perhaps +they are right; but I have never had any one to help me." + +"Oh, I am sure they are wrong!" Craik cried. "If you would only try. Do +you think I could--could help you?" + +"Oh, you are too kind! And perhaps, if you wouldn't mind coming to see +me some afternoon to talk to me about it. And maybe you would bring +your book; I should so love to see it! And then if you would let me look +at one or two of your lectures, those you have for just the stupidest of +your pupils. No! don't tell me I'm not stupid, for I am, I assure you. +And I have no right to ask you to come; you are so busy." + +"Oh, but I should be only too delighted! If I may; if you don't think I +should be a--with ladies, you know, I am always so afraid of being a +bore." + +She smiled at him. + +"Ah, you do yourself injustice, Mr. Craik. Indeed you do! But come," she +added suddenly, "we must be going back to the garden. How I hate to +leave this dear old cloister!" + +"Must we really go?" + +"Yes, we really must. Isn't it horrid, when you have had such an +interesting talk, to have to go back and say stupid and silly things to +stupid and silly people?" + +They left the cloisters and, crossing the quadrangle, they stopped for a +moment, and looked at the blue picture set in an archway of grey walls, +the blue picture of the afternoon light and air in the depth and +distance of the garden. + +"How pretty! It's like,--what is it like?" + +"Like standing in the past, and looking into the present?" Craik +romantically suggested. + +"Yes, it's like that. But I mean the people, the way they look so far +off and blue, as if they were under water. There's something else it +reminds me of." + +"A tank at an aquarium, when you look through the plate glass?" + +"Yes, it _is_ like that, really!" + +"With Professors and Heads of Houses swimming about like old fat carp." + +"Oh, Mr. Craik, how can you? For shame!" + +She paused again when she got through the archway. + +"Tell me, Mr. Craik," she said, "is this the tower you live in? And +the gargoyle you told me about? I should so like to see him. He +must be charming. That face up there, peering over the roof? Oh yes, +I see. How too delightful! My! isn't that quaint? Just think, he +looks back on the past, and on the present, and on the town; and it +symbolizes--symbolizes--Life, doesn't it?" + +"Yes,--perhaps it does," Craik said rather dubiously. + +"He hasn't exactly a kind expression," said Miss Lamb, looking up +again. + +"No," Craik answered, looking up himself and laughing. "That's his way. +Then to-day he's shocked at seeing so many ladies here. He doesn't like +ladies, you know." + +"How horrid of him! Why, what harm can we do here?" + +"Harm! Why, Miss Lamb," Craik said with quaint politeness, "your visits +are our greatest blessings!" + +Craik knew the old garden well, he thought, and he had certainly been in +it in all weathers. But to-day it came over him that he had never seen +the place before looking so oddly green and shining. Certainly, when he +and Ranken had walked there--poor Ranken! Craik smiled a little. + +"What are you smiling at?" Miss Lamb asked. + +"Smiling?" Craik said in embarrassment. "Why, was I smiling?" + +"Certainly you were. It is strange, really it is, how much you are like +a friend of mine in America. The way you smile reminds me so much of +him. Really it is quite funny, the resemblance. But perhaps you don't +like to be told you look like other people?" + +"Oh yes, I do." Then he added, after a pause, with desperate and awkward +courage, "if they are friends of yours." + +Miss Lamb did not seem to notice either his compliment or his blush. + +"How odd you should know Mr. Ranken," she said musingly. "I've not seen +him lately. Is he as sentimental as ever?" + +"Ranken of St. Thomas'! Why, he's not sentimental. It must be someone +else." + +"He used to be then; I'm sure it is Mr. Ranken of St. Thomas'. I met him +last summer at Dieppe. We went on picnics. But, Mr. Craik," she added, +laughing, "really this garden is like Paradise! The undergraduates must +fancy they have got back into the Garden of Eden." + +"Indeed you would think so," said Craik, "from the way they avoid the +tree of knowledge! They are so much cleverer than Adam." + +They were in the midst of the party now, and Craik was proud, though +somewhat embarrassed, with the attention they attracted, and Mrs. +Cotton's smiles of obvious encouragement. Indeed he was almost glad when +Cobbe joined them and, planting himself in front of Miss Lamb, +exclaimed, "Well, Miss Lamb, well! Here I've been waiting half-an-hour +with this ice, it's melted into soup." + +"I'm so sorry," Miss Lamb cried. "Come, let's get another." Then she +turned her eyes to Craik and said, giving him her hand in her friendly +manner, "Good-bye, Mr. Craik, good-bye; you won't forget? To-morrow, +isn't it?" + + +III. + +Craik took off his hat; wiped his forehead; tried to get rid of some of +the dust on his boots, and then he rang the bell. + +"Is Miss Lamb at home?" + +"Yes, sir; Miss Lamb is in the garden." + +Entering, Craik saw a number of hats and sticks in the hall. Miss Lamb, +he thought, must have several brothers. He put down his stick, and the +book with it, after a moment's hesitation; that was better, he would +leave it there and would come and fetch it when the conversation turned +that way. Then, buttoning up his black coat over the lecture notes that +filled his pocket, he followed the servant through the house out into +the little garden. It was full of strong sunlight, and there were +several undergraduates there. One was up in a tree; Cobbe lay in a +hammock smoking, and another of Craik's pupils lay on the grass at Miss +Lamb's feet, rolling lemons. He stopped for a moment. + +"Oh Mr. Corn--Mr. Craik, I mean," Miss Lamb called out in a friendly +voice, "I am so glad to see you." + +Craik advanced with an awkward smile, and Miss Lamb reached out her +right hand most cordially. In her left hand she held a lemon-squeezer. + +"How good of you to come! And isn't it hot? Exactly like America, I've +been saying. We've just come out into the garden without our hats. Won't +you sit down on that rug, if you don't mind? Oh, I nearly forgot; let me +introduce you to my aunt, Mrs. Stacey. I guess you know everybody else." + +Craik shook hands with a lady who was sitting and knitting in an arbour, +nodded to the undergraduates, and then settled down on a rug in the +sunshine. How he wished that he had not decided at the last moment to +wear a tall hat and a long coat! The undergraduates were all in +flannels. + +Miss Lamb spoke of the garden party. + +"Your lovely college! It is _too_ ideal; it is like a dream. And the +cloisters too! You don't know how solemn it made me feel. Now, you +needn't laugh, Mr. Cobbe, I really did feel solemn--more solemn, I +guess, than you have ever been. Gracious, it _is_ hot!" she added, with +a sudden change of subject. "Mr. Craik, let me give you some of this +lemon squash; I made it myself." + +"Thanks! I shall be most pleased to have some." Craik's voice seemed to +himself to be formal, and his phrase pedantic. + +"Oh, but what was I saying?" Miss Lamb went on, looking at the company +generally. + +"You were telling us how solemn you were," Cobbe suggested. "Wasn't it +rather a new experience?" + +"Now, Mr. Cobbe, what a horrid thing to say," she replied, with great +good-nature. "You're his tutor, Mr. Craik, aren't you? Well, next time +you have a chance, I hope you'll set him some real horrid work to do. +I'm sure he needs it." + +Miss Lamb said this casually, with a pleasant laugh, as she fanned +herself. No one answered; Craik, and even Cobbe coloured, and the +undergraduate in the tree suppressed a titter. + +But Mrs. Stacey at this moment asked by happy chance some question of +Craik, addressing him as "Professor Craik," in her high American voice, +and he hastened to answer her with effusion. + +"Oh, I say," one of the undergraduates exclaimed, "that was a splendid +score of yours, Miss Lamb, off the Warden. Perhaps you've not heard it, +Mr. Craik, the joke about the Garden of Eden?" he said, turning to +Craik, who had come to an end of his conversation with Mrs. Stacey. "The +Warden was showing Miss Lamb the garden, when she said to him, 'Why it +is like the Garden of Eden here, Mr. Warden; only I suppose you are +wiser than Adam, and don't disturb the Tree of Knowledge.'" + +"My dear," Mrs. Stacey cried, "you didn't really speak so to the sweet +old Warden?" + +"But, I say," Cobbe exclaimed, "how's this, Miss Lamb? Long and Maple +Fetters tell that story as having been got off them, and they seemed to +think that they rather scored off you." + +"They didn't a bit; they were only silly!" + +"Then you did get it off on them?" + +"No, I didn't." + +"Oh, now, that explains," another undergraduate interposed, "that +explains the story Mrs. Cotton was trying to tell. It seemed, as she +told it, to have no point at all. 'Mr. Warden,' she made you say, 'Mr. +Warden, you have a lovely garden here, but I am told you never pick the +fruit.' 'The Warden, you know, is so particular about his figs,' Mrs. +Cotton added, 'it is quite a joke with all the Fellows.'" + +Miss Lamb was silent. After a little while, however, when a few other +anecdotes of Mrs. Cotton had been told, and they came to the well-known +story of that lady and the cow in St. Giles's, she began to smile, and +before long was quite consumed with merriment, for a siphon of +soda-water, fizzing off by mistake in the hands of one of the +undergraduates, had sprinkled itself over Cobbe. + +"You did that on purpose, Galpin, I know you did," he cried, jumping out +of the hammock and shaking himself. + +"Oh, no, he didn't!" Miss Lamb said, shaking with laughter. "Indeed, I'm +sure he wouldn't for worlds!" + +Her attention was then taken by the youth up in the tree, who had been +throwing down leaves and bits of sticks on the heads of the party below. +A piece of bark falling into the jug of lemon squash, Miss Lamb feigned +great wrath and indignation. + +"I wanted to give Mr. Craik some more; but oh, you haven't drunk what +you have! Isn't it sweet enough for you?" + +"It is just right, thank you," he said, and he took up the glass, tepid +now from standing in the sun, and was just going to drink it, when the +young lady cried: "Oh, wait a moment, please; there's a poor little +insect tumbled into it. Dear little thing! Do take it out--oh, be +careful! I can't bear to see anything suffer." + +Craik fished the insect out of the lemonade with a blade of grass, and +Miss Lamb, putting it down on the ground, poked it tenderly in aid of +its moist attempts to crawl away. Ultimately Craik rose from his +uncomfortable posture on the ground. It was a long while, it seemed to +him, that he had been sitting there, smiling and solemn in the sunshine, +and casting about in his mind for an excuse to go; while the others he +envied so--the youth perched up in the tree, Miss Lamb fanning herself +and squeezing lemons, Cobbe smoking and slowly swinging in the hammock, +laughed and lazily talked, as if their life was one afternoon of endless +Arcadian leisure. But Craik had a morbid sense that his shadow, which he +glanced at now and then, had been growing, almost as if he were +swelling, he and his top hat, and casting a larger shade on the little +garden. + +"Well, I must be going! We college tutors, you know," he said, feeling +pretty stiff in body and mind, but attempting nevertheless a little +jauntiness of air. + +"Oh, but, Mr. Craik, you mustn't go now!" Miss Lamb cried, "really you +mustn't. Why, we're all going up the river to have late tea at Godstow, +and come home by moonlight; and I'm going to take my banjo. I hoped you +would come with us!" + +"I'm sorry, but I must be back." + +"Well, I'm really sorry, too; I am, indeed. You must come again." She +held his hand in hers for a second, and there was something appealing in +her manner. "Now you will come again, won't you? It's--it's rather hot +just to-day for philosophy, isn't it?" she added, her face brightening +with a friendly and apologetic smile. + +Craik found his hat and stick, but not his book, in the hall. + +"I've left a book here," he said to the maid. + +"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, I thought it was for Miss Lamb, so I put it +on the shelf where she puts the other university gentlemen's books that +they sends. I'll go and bring it, sir." + +"Is this it?" she called from a neighbouring room--"'Elements of +Pishcology?'" + +"No," said Craik, hurriedly; "it's about Asia Minor. 'Life and Thought +in--'" + +"'In Hearly Asia Minor,' sir?" + +"Yes, that's mine," Craik answered, in a voice that was not without a +touch of melancholy. + + + + +_Buller Intervening_ + + +As Vaughan was walking towards the underground station one of those +bleak mornings last winter, he saw, coming the same way, a man who had +been at College in his time--one Buller by name; and Buller, when he +caught sight of Vaughan, began to smile, but when they met, he +exclaimed, in a mock mournful voice, "I say, have you heard about poor +Crabbe?" + +"You mean his political speech, when his spectacles were smashed, and he +had to take to the woods?" asked Vaughan, beating his hands and +stamping, for the cold was bitter. + +"Oh no, that's ancient. I mean"--and Buller's voice broke with +laughter--"I mean his engagement!" + +"Crabbe! oh, nonsense!" + +"Gospel fact, I'll take my oath on it. Fancy Crabbe!" and again his +laughter froze into white puffs of breath about his head. They went into +the station together, and bought their tickets. Crabbe engaged! Vaughan +tried to picture him as an accepted lover. Poor Crabbe! They had all +hoped that his Fellowship and his work on the metres of Catullus would +keep him out of mischief. But they might have known--those prize +fellows, with so much time on their hands; and Crabbe above all, with +his fixed idea that he was cut out for a man of action! + +"But tell me about Crabbe," Vaughan said, as they waited on the +platform; "have you seen him?" + +"Oh yes. The other day I ran up to have a look at the 'Torpid.' It's all +right now." + +"The Torpid?" + +"No; I mean about Crabbe." + +"You think it's a good match, then?" + +"Good match! No, I mean that I went and talked to him myself." + +"And he was engaged?" + +"He _was_," said Buller, laughing; "poor old beast!" The train drew in, +and when they had taken their seats, Buller leaned over, and, with a low +voice, went on telling his story in Vaughan's ear. "You see, I went up +to Oxford, and down at the barge Blunt tells me about old Crabbe; and +when I go into College the first person I meet is the Dean, looking as +chirpy as ever. How those old parsons do keep it up! + +"'Well, sir,' says I, 'and what do you think of Crabbe's engagement?' + +"'Perfect rot,' says the Dean. 'The girl had no money; how were they +going to live? Crabbe would have to chuck his Catullus--everything.' + +"'How did it happen?' I asked. 'Crabbe never used to be sweet on the +ladies.' 'No; but in reading Catullus, Crabbe had got some ideas,' the +Dean said, with a kind of wink." + +Here Vaughan could not help interrupting the story. "Come, Buller," he +whispered, "it must have been Blunt who said that. The old Dean couldn't +talk in that way." + +But Buller felt sure it was the Dean. "You see, you don't know the old +boy; he's quite another person with me. Anyhow, that's the way Crabbe +got into it. And he went on, the Dean said, to read all sorts of other +poetry, especially that man--what you may call him? They had a +society--" + +"Browning?" + +"Yes, that's the man. Well, Crabbe thought it all very fine and +exciting, the Dean said; he used to read them Browning in the Common +Room, and there was one thing he seemed specially taken with--Browning's +theory of love." + +"What was that?" Vaughan asked, for it was a joy to hear Buller talking +of literature. + +"Well," Buller whispered, "you see this man Browning hates all your +shilly-shallying about; he thinks that when you fall in love, you ought +to go your whole pile, even if you come a cropper after. It's all rot, +of course, the Dean said; but poor Crabbe thought it was real, and went +and proposed to a young woman he had met once or twice. So there he +was, engaged! And he seemed to think himself the hell of a duke, the +Dean said; but everyone else in Oxford thought he was making a bl--" + +"Oh, Buller," Vaughan interposed, "really, you mustn't put such words +into the Dean's mouth!" + +"Well, I don't quite remember the old boy's lingo, but, at any rate, the +Dean thought Crabbe was making a fool of himself. 'I think I can settle +it,' says I to the Dean. 'I wish you would,' said the Dean; so off I go +to Crabbe's rooms. He came in just as I got there; I wish you could have +seen him--a frock-coat, top-hat, flower in his button-hole, his hair +plastered down. And only last year, it was, that he got up as a +Socialist, with a red silk handkerchief in his hat! But now he shook +hands with me up in the air; was most affable and condescending; assured +me he was glad to see his old pals--especially friends from London. +Oxford people were very well in their way, but narrow, and rather +donnish. Didn't I notice it in coming from London? + +"Well, this was almost too much from Crabbe, but I thought it would be +more sport to draw him out a bit. So we got to talking; I didn't let on +I knew he was engaged, but after a bit I began to talk about marriage +and love and all that in a general sort of way. Old Crabbe swallows it +all, talks a lot of literary stuff. 'Fall in love, Buller,' says he, +'fall in love, and live! Let me read you what thing-a-majig says,' and +he gets down a book--who did you say he was? Browning, yes, that's the +man--he gets down a book of Browning's and begins to read--you ought to +have seen him, his face got pink; and at the end he says, with a proud +smile, as if the poem was all about him, 'Isn't that ripping, Buller, +isn't that brave, isn't that the way to take life!' + +"'Do you mind if I smoke?' said I. + +"'Smoke? Oh, do certainly,' and Crabbe sits down looking rather foolish. +But after a moment, he says in an easy sort of way, 'Ah, I meant to ask +you about all the chaps in London--getting on all right? any of them +married?' + +"'Married!' says I, 'O Lord, no; _they_ don't want to dish themselves.' + +"'Dish themselves,' says Crabbe, 'why, what do you mean?' + +"'I mean what I say; if you get married without any money, you're +dished, that's all--I mean practical people, who want to get on.' + +"Then Crabbe began to talk big; one shouldn't care only for success--it +might be practical, perhaps, but he did not mean to sacrifice the +greatest thing in life for money. + +"'The greatest thing in life--what's that?'" + +Buller laughed so loudly at this part of his story, that the other +people in the carriage began to stare at him and Vaughan. So he went on +in a lower whisper. "'What's that?' says I. + +"'I mean,' says Crabbe, 'why, what I have been talking about.' + +"'Well, what is it?' + +"'What I was saying a little while ago.' + +"'But you talked too fast--I couldn't catch it; give us the tip, out +with it.' + +"'I mean love, passion,' says he. + +"'What? say it again.' + +"'Well, I mean--and it's always said that love--the poets--' + +"'The who?' + +"'The poets.'" Again Buller laughed out loud. + +"'Oh, poets!' says I, 'I thought you said porters. Poets! so you've +been reading poets, have you? but you oughtn't to believe all that--why, +they don't mean it themselves; they write it because they're expected +to, but it's all faked up--I know how it's done.' + +"Old Crabbe begins to talk in his big way. I let him go on for a while, +but then I said, 'See here, Crabbe, it's all very well to read that +literary stuff, and I suppose it's what you're paid for doing. But don't +go and think it's all true, because it isn't, and the sooner you know it +the better.' 'There was a man I knew once,' says I, 'who got fearfully +let in by just this sort of thing; Oxford don too, Fellow of Queen's +named Peake; took to reading poetry; he went to Brighton in the Long, +with his head full of it all. Wild sea waves, the moon and all the rest +of it; and back comes Peake married; had to turn out of his College +rooms, went to live at the other end of nowhere, stuffy little house, +full of babies, had to work like a nigger, beastly work too; coached me +for Smalls, that's how I know him; no time for moon and sea waves now; +and it all came from reading poetry.' + +"Old Crabbe begins to sit up at this. 'But I don't see,' he says, 'I +don't see why--didn't he have his Fellowship money?' + +"'But you don't suppose that's going to support a wife and a lot of +children.' + +"'Oh, if he had children,' says Crabbe, and the old boy begins to blush +and says, 'I don't see the need.' + +"'Much you know about it, Crabbe,' says I, and I couldn't help laughing, +he looked such an idiot. + +"'Well, anyhow,' he says, 'your friend may have been unfortunate, but I +respect him all the same; he was bold, he lived.' + +"'What does all that mean?--he didn't die, of course!' + +"'I mean he loved--he had that.' + +"'Oh yes, he had, but I rather think he wished he hadn't. He said it +didn't come to much--and even when he was engaged she used to bore him +sometimes.' + +"'Really!' says old Crabbe, 'that's odd now,' and then he goes on, as if +he was talking to himself, 'I wonder if everyone feels like that?' + +"'Of course they do! But after you're married, just think of it--never +quiet, never alone; Peake said it nearly drove him wild. And to think he +was tied up like that for the rest of his life!' + +"'Yes, it is a long time.' Crabbe began to look rather green. 'Your +friend--his name was Peake, I think you said--I suppose he couldn't have +broken off the engagement?' and he smiled in a sort of sea-sick way. + +"'Of course he could,' says I, as I got up to go. 'Perfect ass not +to--but good-bye, Crabbe, you've got jolly rooms here.' + +"'Yes, they are nice,' says Crabbe in a kind of sinking voice. + +"So, a day or two after, I meet the Dean; the old boy seems very much +pleased. 'Well Buller, I think you've done the biz,' says he; 'I don't +believe old Crabbe will do it after all.'" + +When he had finished his story, Buller leaned comfortably back. "I felt +sure he would get out of it somehow," he said aloud, "I think that story +finished him." "You know what I mean," he added, nodding significantly, +"that story of Peake." + +"I don't believe Peake ever existed!" Vaughan answered, as low as he +could. + +Buller leaned forward again, he was almost bursting with laughter. "Of +course he didn't!" he hissed in Vaughan's ear. "But wasn't Crabbe in a +blue funk though!" + +"Oh, I don't believe Crabbe minded you a bit. I'm sure he won't break it +off," Vaughan whispered indignantly. "And what right had you to talk +that way? I never heard of such impertinent meddling!" + +"Bet you three to one he does," Buller whispered back. "Come, man, make +it a bet!" The train drew into the Temple station and Vaughan got up. + +"I won't bet on anything of the kind," he said, as he stood at the door. +"And what do you know about love anyhow, Buller? Then think of the poor +girl, she probably believes that Crabbe is a hero, a god--" + +"Well, she won't for long," Buller chuckled. + + + + +_The Optimist_ + + +What was he doing there? why didn't he ride on? Mrs. Ross wondered, as +she watched with some astonishment the tall young man who was staring in +at the gate. But in a moment her husband left the hedge he was trimming, +and waved his shears at the stranger, who thereupon came in, pushing his +bicycle with him along the drive. When the two young men met, they +seemed to greet each other like old acquaintances. Probably he was one +of George's Oxford friends, she thought, beginning to feel a little shy, +as they walked towards her across the grass. The bicyclist was thin and +very tall; his shadow, in the late sunshine, seemed to stretch endlessly +over the grass. His face was bathed in perspiration; he was grey with +dust, and altogether he looked very shabby by the side of her +good-looking husband. + +"Mary, I want to introduce my friend, Mr. Allen, to you." Mrs. Ross was +always a little afraid of her husband's friends; then Allen was a don at +Oxford, and she knew he was considered extremely clever. However she +greeted him in her friendly, charming way. He would have tea, of course? + +Allen gripped her hand, smiling awkwardly. No, he wouldn't have tea, and +he was afraid it was very late for calling; he must apologize; indeed, +when he got to the gate, he had hesitated about coming in. + +Oh, no! it wasn't late, she assured him; and her husband declared he +must stay to dinner. He had never seen the Grange before and, of course, +they must show him everything. + +"Oh, I don't think I can stay to dinner," Allen murmured, looking +through his spectacles at his dusty clothes. But at last he consented +though doubtfully; he was staying at Sunbridge, he explained, and it was +rather a long ride over. + +Ross took him to the house; soon he reappeared, well brushed, his pale +and thoughtful face pink with scrubbing. They walked with him about the +gardens, then they went to their little farm, showing him the cows and +horses, and the new-built hayrick. + +George Ross was a young land agent who, not long after leaving Oxford, +had had the luck to get a good appointment; and for more than a year he +and his young wife had been living here in the most absurdly happy way. +Now and then his Oxford friends would come to visit him, and it filled +Ross with delight and pride to show them over his new domain. + +As they came back from the farm through the garden, Ross stopped a +moment. "Doesn't the house look well from here!" he said to Allen. The +roofs, gables, and trees stood out dark against the golden west; the +garden, with its old red walls, sweet peas, and roses, was filled with +mellow light. + +Allen gazed at the view through his spectacles, and expressed a proper +admiration. But of himself he seemed to notice nothing, and Mrs. Ross +was rather hurt by the way he went past her borders of flowers without +ever looking at them. + +"You see it's just the kind of life that suits me--suits both of us," +Ross explained; "I don't see how I could have found anything better. Of +course," he added modestly, "of course some men might not think much of +work like this. But I consider myself tremendously fortunate--I didn't +really deserve such luck." + +"Quite so," Allen assented in a way that Mrs. Ross thought rather odd, +till she decided that it was merely absent-mindedness. Every now and +then she would look at Allen--the tall, thin, threadbare young man +puzzled her a little; he seemed so extremely dull and embarrassed; and +yet there was a thoughtful, kind look in his eyes that she liked. And +anyhow he was George's friend; so, as they walked rather silently and +awkwardly about, waiting for dinner, she tried to talk to him, making +remarks in her eager way, and glancing sometimes at her husband for fear +he might be laughing at her. Such subjects as bicycling, the roads, the +weather, and life in Oxford, were started, and they both talked to their +guest with the exaggerated politeness of newly married people, who would +much rather be talking to each other. Yes, the road over was very +pretty, Allen agreed. But was there a river? He remembered noticing how +pretty the road was, but he had not noticed that it ran by any river. +And all their questions he answered with a certain eagerness, but in a +way that somehow made the subject drop. + +"Well, I finished the hedge," Ross said at last, turning to his wife. +"You said I wouldn't." + +"Oh, but wait till I see it for myself!" + +The young man looked at her gloomily. "You see how it is, Allen, she +doesn't believe her husband's word!" + +"Oh, hush, George," she said, and they both began to laugh like +children. Then they turned to Allen again. Was he comfortable where he +was staying? she asked. + +Well no, honestly, it wasn't very comfortable, Allen replied. To tell +the truth, he was rather disappointed in the place. He had gone there +after hearing some undergraduates describe it, and tell how amusing they +had found the people. But, somehow, he had not found the people +different from people anywhere else. But then he had only made the +acquaintance of one man-- + +"Well, didn't he turn out to be an old poacher, or a gipsy, or something +romantic?" asked Mrs. Ross. + +"No, not at all--he was a Methodist Calvinist deacon, who gave me a lift +one wet afternoon, and lectured me all the way about Temperance. And, of +course," Allen added, with rather a comic smile, "and, of course, I was +already a total abstainer." They all laughed at this. + +What was he working at over there? Ross asked him a few minutes +afterwards. He was writing a paper, Allen replied; but what it was about +Mrs. Ross did not understand. She hoped her husband would ask something +more, but he merely said, "I see," without much interest, adding that he +had not read any philosophy for years. + +When they sat down to dinner, the lady's evening dress, the silver and +flowers on the table, seemed to make Allen all the more awkward and +conscious of his appearance. However, he plainly meant to do his best to +talk, and, after a moment's silence, he remarked that he supposed the +theory of farming was very interesting. + +"Yes, it is," said Mrs. Ross, "and it's such fun ploughing in the +autumn, and in the spring seeing the young green things come up." + +"I suppose the climate is a great factor in the problem." + +"Oh, of course, everything depends on that; suppose it comes on to rain +just when you've cut your hay!" + +Ross began to laugh. "I believe my wife thinks of nothing but hay now." + +"You farm yourself, don't you?" Allen asked, looking at her rather +timidly. + +"Oh, a little; I always say I manage our little farm, and I'm going to +learn to plough. And I keep chickens--this is one of mine--poor little +thing!" she added. + +"She pretends to be sorry now, but when she has a chance to sell her +chickens I never saw anyone so bloodthirsty." + +"Oh, George, how can you say such things? Don't believe him, Mr. Allen. +And anyhow," she added (it seemed a platitude, but platitudes were +better than absolute silence), "anyhow, I suppose it is what the +chickens are meant for." + +To her surprise this mild remark led to an animated argument. For Allen, +in agreeing with her, said something about "the general scheme of +things." Ross began to laugh at this, and asked Allen if he still held +to that old system of his. Allen answered this question so earnestly, +that the lady looked at him with wonder. + +Yes! he held to it more firmly than ever; he was sure it could be +maintained! Indeed, seriously he had come to feel more and more that you +must accept something of the kind. Ross dissented in a joking way, but +Allen would not be put off; he began talking rapidly and eagerly, almost +forgetting his dinner as he argued. He drank a great deal of cold water, +and his thin face grew quite flushed with excitement. + +Mrs. Ross looked from one to the other with puzzled eyes; probably that +was the way they had been used to talk at Oxford, but what it was about +she could not understand. She only felt sorry for Allen, he evidently +cared so much, was as anxious to prove his point as if his whole life +depended on it, while her husband seemed to treat the whole thing rather +as a joke. + +Soon she gave up trying to listen, and though the sound of their voices +was in her ears, her mind wandered out into the garden, to the farm and +meadows. But Allen's voice, appealing to her, called her suddenly back. +"I'm sure you agree with me, Mrs. Ross," he said, without the least +shyness. He plainly looked on her now as nothing but a mind which might +agree or disagree. "I'm sure you must regard it as existing for rational +ends." + +"But what do you mean by 'It,' Mr. Allen?" she asked, very much puzzled. + +"Why, the universe, of course." + +"Oh, I don't know," she said, shaking her head and laughing. "It makes +me dizzy to think of it. As for George, I wouldn't mind what he says, +Mr. Allen; he believes all sorts of dreadful things, and he's always +making fun--look how he's laughing at me now. George, will you have your +coffee in here, or in the drawing-room?" + +"Oh, in the drawing-room--we'll come in a minute, when we've settled the +universe." As she went out, she heard them still arguing. + +And they had not ended it when they came into the drawing-room a little +later. + +"But I deny that pain is an evil. I appeal to you," Allen said, turning +to Mrs. Ross; "don't you think that pain is necessary?" + +"But necessary for what, Mr. Allen?" + +"Why, if we want to be really happy, I mean," he went on, trying to make +himself quite clear, "I mean, suppose we lived as they do in the +Tropics, sitting under trees all day." + +Ross also turned to her, "Well, Mary, tell us what you think?" + +Mrs. Ross laughed. "I'm afraid I'm not a fair judge, Mr. Allen, I'm so +fond of sitting under trees, and I must say I think it sounds rather +nice. Do you have sugar in your coffee?" + +"No sugar, thanks. But surely," he went on as if he had an argument now +that would be certain to convince a lady. "Surely a certain amount of +discomfort is an advantage! Now, take a child for instance, to educate +it you have to make it suffer." + +"Oh, indeed you don't, Mr. Allen," she said so promptly, and in such a +voice, that Allen seemed a little disconcerted. + +Ross begged for a little music. She sat down to the piano and began to +play--with a little emotion at first, which soon died out of the quiet +sounds. The window was open on the lawn; the faint light, the odours of +the garden, mingled with the soft music. + +They sat in silence for a moment. At last Allen rose; he must be going, +he said, he had his paper to finish. + +"But it is nice here," he added, with half a sigh, as if vaguely aware, +for a moment, of the romantic happiness about him. Then his mind seemed +to revert to the argument; if Ross would only read Hegel's _Logic_-- + +"Well, we might read it aloud in the evenings perhaps," the young man +answered, laughing. "Have you got a lamp on your machine?" "Yes, I think +there is." They went out to the gate and, lighting his lamp, they sent +him off into the twilight. Then they walked slowly back towards the +house. A few stars were kindled above the dim trees; the air was +fragrant with the scent of the hay, and through the stillness the faint +noise of life came across the meadows--a woman singing, the voices of +children, and sleepy sounds of cattle. + +"How good it is!" the young man said, drawing his companion closer to +him. "But people are always coming, aren't they? It's dreadful! we never +do seem to see anything of each other." + +"No, do we! But he's a nice man, Mr. Allen. I liked him." + +"Oh, old Allen's a good sort." + +"What does he do--how does he live in Oxford?" + +"He teaches philosophy, and lives on bread and tea in little lodgings." + +"It sounds awfully dreary--" + +"Well, it is rather dreary for him, poor man. I wouldn't be there for a +good deal." + +"But, tell me, what was that he was arguing about?" + +"Oh, that's his philosophy; he's always arguing about it. He believes in +a kind of Hegelianism." + +"What is that?" + +"Oh, it's a view of things; he's what you call an Optimist." + +"But I thought an Optimist was a person who was very happy?" + +"No; it only means a man who believes that you ought to be happy, that +you are meant to enjoy life--that the world is good." + +"But you don't mean that he was trying to _prove_ that?" + +"Why, yes, you heard him; he's always at it when you give him a chance. +He thinks it must be so, that you can deduce it from the first +principles of things." + +But Mrs. Ross could not be made to understand it. To her it seemed that +either you were happy or you weren't. "And, then, fancy trying to prove +it to us!" she kept saying. + +At last she took her husband's arm to go in; but still stood for a +moment in silence thinking it over. "That poor Mr. Allen!" she exclaimed +at last, "an Optimist, you said he was?" + + +Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose & Co. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Youth of Parnassus and Other +Stories, by Logan Pearsall Smith + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41682 *** |