The Longest Journey
by
E. M. Forster
Part 1 out of 6
Etext created by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA
THE LONGEST JOURNEY
E. M. Forster
PART I CAMBRIDGE
I
"The cow is there," said Ansell, lighting a match and holding it
out over the carpet. No one spoke. He waited till the end of the
match fell off. Then he said again, "She is there, the cow.
There, now."
"You have not proved it," said a voice.
"I have proved it to myself."
"I have proved to myself that she isn't," said the voice.
"The cow is not there." Ansell frowned and lit another match.
"She's there for me," he declared. "I don't care whether she's
there for you or not. Whether I'm in Cambridge or Iceland or
dead, the cow will be there."
It was philosophy. They were discussing the existence of objects.
Do they exist only when there is some one to look at them? Or
have they a real existence of their own? It is all very
interesting, but at the same time it is difficult. Hence the cow.
She seemed to make things easier. She was so familiar, so solid,
that surely the truths that she illustrated would in time become
familiar and solid also. Is the cow there or not? This was better
than deciding between objectivity and subjectivity. So at
Oxford, just at the same time, one was asking, "What do our
rooms look like in the vac.?"
"Look here, Ansell. I'm there--in the meadow--the cow's
there. You're there--the cow's there. Do you agree so far?"
"Well?"
"Well, if you go, the cow stops; but if I go, the cow goes.
Then what will happen if you stop and I go?"
Several voices cried out that this was quibbling.
"I know it is," said the speaker brightly, and silence
descended again, while they tried honestly to think the
matter out.
Rickie, on whose carpet the matches were being dropped, did not
like to join in the discussion. It was too difficult
for him. He could not even quibble. If he spoke, he should
simply make himself a fool. He preferred to listen, and to
watch the tobacco-smoke stealing out past the window-seat
into the tranquil October air. He could see the court too,
and the college cat teasing the college tortoise, and the
kitchen-men with supper-trays upon their heads. Hot food
for one--that must be for the geographical don, who never
came in for Hall; cold food for three, apparently at
half-a-crown a head, for some one he did not know; hot
food, a la carte--obviously for the ladies haunting the next
staircase; cold food for two, at two shillings--going to
Ansell's rooms for himself and Ansell, and as it passed under
the lamp he saw that it was meringues again. Then the
bedmakers began to arrive, chatting to each other pleasantly,
and he could hear Ansell's bedmaker say, "Oh dang!" when she
found she had to lay Ansell's tablecloth; for there was not a
breath stirring. The great elms were motionless, and seemed still
in the glory of midsummer, for the darkness hid the yellow
blotches on their leaves, and their outlines were still rounded
against the tender sky. Those elms were Dryads--so Rickie
believed or pretended, and the line between the two is subtler
than we admit. At all events they were lady trees, and had for
generations fooled the college statutes by their residence
in the haunts of youth.
But what about the cow? He returned to her with a start, for this
would never do. He also would try to think the matter out. Was
she there or not? The cow. There or not. He strained his eyes
into the night.
Either way it was attractive. If she was there, other cows were
there too. The darkness of Europe was dotted with them, and in
the far East their flanks were shining in the rising sun. Great
herds of them stood browsing in pastures where no man came nor
need ever come, or plashed knee-deep by the brink of impassable
rivers. And this, moreover, was the view of Ansell. Yet
Tilliard's view had a good deal in it. One might do worse than
follow Tilliard, and suppose the cow not to be there unless
oneself was there to see her. A cowless world, then, stretched
round him on every side. Yet he had only to peep into a field,
and, click! it would at once become radiant with bovine life.
Suddenly he realized that this, again, would never do. As
usual, he had missed the whole point, and was overlaying
philosophy with gross and senseless details. For if the cow
was not there, the world and the fields were not there either.
And what would Ansell care about sunlit flanks or impassable
streams? Rickie rebuked his own groveling soul, and turned his
eyes away from the night, which had led him to such absurd
conclusions.
The fire was dancing, and the shadow of Ansell, who stood close
up to it, seemed to dominate the little room. He was still
talking, or rather jerking, and he was still lighting matches and
dropping their ends upon the carpet. Now and then he would make a
motion with his feet as if he were running quickly backward
upstairs, and would tread on the edge of the fender, so that the
fire-irons went flying and the buttered-bun dishes crashed
against each other in the hearth. The other philosophers were
crouched in odd shapes on the sofa and table and chairs, and one,
who was a little bored, had crawled to the piano and was timidly
trying the Prelude to Rhinegold with his knee upon the soft
pedal. The air was heavy with good tobacco-smoke and the pleasant
warmth of tea, and as Rickie became more sleepy the events of the
day seemed to float one by one before his acquiescent eyes. In
the morning he had read Theocritus, whom he believed to be the
greatest of Greek poets; he had lunched with a merry don and had
tasted Zwieback biscuits; then he had walked with people he
liked, and had walked just long enough; and now his room was full
of other people whom he liked, and when they left he would go and
have supper with Ansell, whom he liked as well as any one. A year
ago he had known none of these joys. He had crept cold and
friendless and ignorant out of a great public school, preparing
for a silent and solitary journey, and praying as a highest
favour that he might be left alone. Cambridge had not answered
his prayer. She had taken and soothed him, and warmed him, and
had laughed at him a little, saying that he must not be so tragic
yet awhile, for his boyhood had been but a dusty corridor that
led to the spacious halls of youth. In one year he had made many
friends and learnt much, and he might learn even more if he could
but concentrate his attention on that cow.
The fire had died down, and in the gloom the man by the piano
ventured to ask what would happen if an objective cow had a
subjective calf. Ansell gave an angry sigh, and at that moment
there was a tap on the door.
"Come in!" said Rickie.
The door opened. A tall young woman stood framed in the light
that fell from the passage.
"Ladies!" whispered every-one in great agitation.
"Yes?" he said nervously, limping towards the door (he was rather
lame). "Yes? Please come in. Can I be any good--"
"Wicked boy!" exclaimed the young lady, advancing a gloved finger
into the room. "Wicked, wicked boy!"
He clasped his head with his hands.
"Agnes! Oh how perfectly awful!"
"Wicked, intolerable boy!" She turned on the electric light. The
philosophers were revealed with unpleasing suddenness. "My
goodness, a tea-party! Oh really, Rickie, you are too bad! I say
again: wicked, abominable, intolerable boy! I'll have you
horsewhipped. If you please"--she turned to the symposium, which
had now risen to its feet "If you please, he asks me and my
brother for the week-end. We accept. At the station, no Rickie.
We drive to where his old lodgings were--Trumpery Road or some
such name--and he's left them. I'm furious, and before I can stop
my brother, he's paid off the cab and there we are stranded. I've
walked--walked for miles. Pray can you tell me what is to be done
with Rickie?"
"He must indeed be horsewhipped," said Tilliard pleasantly. Then
he made a bolt for the door.
"Tilliard--do stop--let me introduce Miss Pembroke--don't all
go!" For his friends were flying from his visitor like mists
before the sun. "Oh, Agnes, I am so sorry; I've nothing to say. I
simply forgot you were coming, and everything about you."
"Thank you, thank you! And how soon will you remember to ask
where Herbert is?"
"Where is he, then?"
"I shall not tell you."
"But didn't he walk with you?"
"I shall not tell, Rickie. It's part of your punishment. You are
not really sorry yet. I shall punish you again later."
She was quite right. Rickie was not as much upset as he ought to
have been. He was sorry that he had forgotten, and that he had
caused his visitors inconvenience. But he did not feel profoundly
degraded, as a young man should who has acted discourteously to a
young lady. Had he acted discourteously to his bedmaker or his
gyp, he would have minded just as much, which was not polite of
him.
"First, I'll go and get food. Do sit down and rest. Oh, let me
introduce--"
Ansell was now the sole remnant of the discussion party. He still
stood on the hearthrug with a burnt match in his hand. Miss
Pembroke's arrival had never disturbed him.
"Let me introduce Mr. Ansell--Miss Pembroke."
There came an awful moment--a moment when he almost regretted
that he had a clever friend. Ansell remained absolutely
motionless, moving neither hand nor head. Such behaviour is so
unknown that Miss Pembroke did not realize what had happened, and
kept her own hand stretched out longer than is maidenly.
"Coming to supper?" asked Ansell in low, grave tones.
"I don't think so," said Rickie helplessly.
Ansell departed without another word.
"Don't mind us," said Miss Pembroke pleasantly. "Why shouldn't
you keep your engagement with your friend? Herbert's finding
lodgings,--that's why he's not here,--and they're sure to be able
to give us some dinner. What jolly rooms you've got!"
"Oh no--not a bit. I say, I am sorry. I am sorry. I am most
awfully sorry."
"What about?"
"Ansell" Then he burst forth. "Ansell isn't a gentleman. His
father's a draper. His uncles are farmers. He's here because he's
so clever--just on account of his brains. Now, sit down. He isn't
a gentleman at all." And he hurried off to order some dinner.
"What a snob the boy is getting!" thought Agnes, a good deal
mollified. It never struck her that those could be the words of
affection--that Rickie would never have spoken them about a
person whom he disliked. Nor did it strike her that Ansell's
humble birth scarcely explained the quality of his rudeness. She
was willing to find life full of trivialities. Six months ago and
she might have minded; but now--she cared not what men might do
unto her, for she had her own splendid lover, who could have
knocked all these unhealthy undergraduates into a cocked-hat. She
dared not tell Gerald a word of what had happened: he might have
come up from wherever he was and half killed Ansell. And she
determined not to tell her brother either, for her nature was
kindly, and it pleased her to pass things over.
She took off her gloves, and then she took off her ear-rings and
began to admire them. These ear-rings were a freak of hers--her
only freak. She had always wanted some, and the day Gerald asked
her to marry him she went to a shop and had her ears pierced. In
some wonderful way she knew that it was right. And he had given
her the rings--little gold knobs, copied, the jeweller told them,
from something prehistoric and he had kissed the spots of blood
on her handkerchief. Herbert, as usual, had been shocked.
"I can't help it," she cried, springing up. "I'm not like other
girls." She began to pace about Rickie's room, for she hated to
keep quiet. There was nothing much to see in it. The pictures
were not attractive, nor did they attract her--school groups,
Watts' "Sir Percival," a dog running after a rabbit, a man
running after a maid, a cheap brown Madonna in a cheap green
frame--in short, a collection where one mediocrity was generally
cancelled by another. Over the door there hung a long photograph
of a city with waterways, which Agnes, who had never been to
Venice, took to be Venice, but which people who had been to
Stockholm knew to be Stockholm. Rickie's mother, looking rather
sweet, was standing on the mantelpiece. Some more pictures had
just arrived from the framers and were leaning with their faces
to the wall, but she did not bother to turn them round. On the
table were dirty teacups, a flat chocolate cake, and Omar
Khayyam, with an Oswego biscuit between his pages. Also a vase
filled with the crimson leaves of autumn. This made her smile.
Then she saw her host's shoes: he had left them lying on the
sofa. Rickie was slightly deformed, and so the shoes were not the
same size, and one of them had a thick heel to help him towards
an even walk. "Ugh!" she exclaimed, and removed them gingerly to
the bedroom. There she saw other shoes and boots and pumps, a
whole row of them, all deformed. "Ugh! Poor boy! It is too bad.
Why shouldn't he be like other people? This hereditary business
is too awful." She shut the door with a sigh. Then she recalled
the perfect form of Gerald, his athletic walk, the poise of his
shoulders, his arms stretched forward to receive her. Gradually
she was comforted.
"I beg your pardon, miss, but might I ask how many to lay?" It
was the bedmaker, Mrs. Aberdeen.
"Three, I think," said Agnes, smiling pleasantly. "Mr. Elliot'll
be back in a minute. He has gone to order dinner.
"Thank you, miss."
"Plenty of teacups to wash up!"
"But teacups is easy washing, particularly Mr. Elliot's."
"Why are his so easy?"
"Because no nasty corners in them to hold the dirt. Mr.
Anderson--he's below-has crinkly noctagons, and one wouldn't
believe the difference. It was I bought these for Mr. Elliot. His
one thought is to save one trouble. I never seed such a
thoughtful gentleman. The world, I say, will be the better for
him." She took the teacups into the gyp room, and then returned
with the tablecloth, and added, "if he's spared."
"I'm afraid he isn't strong," said Agnes.
"Oh, miss, his nose! I don't know what he'd say if he knew I
mentioned his nose, but really I must speak to someone, and he
has neither father nor mother. His nose! It poured twice with
blood in the Long."
"Yes?"
"It's a thing that ought to be known. I assure you, that little
room!... And in any case, Mr. Elliot's a gentleman that can ill
afford to lose it. Luckily his friends were up; and I always say
they're more like brothers than anything else."
"Nice for him. He has no real brothers."
"Oh, Mr. Hornblower, he is a merry gentleman, and Mr. Tilliard
too! And Mr. Elliot himself likes his romp at times. Why, it's
the merriest staircase in the buildings! Last night the bedmaker
from W said to me,'What are you doing to my gentlemen? Here's Mr.
Ansell come back 'ot with his collar flopping.' I said, 'And a
good thing.' Some bedders keep their gentlemen just so; but
surely, miss, the world being what it is, the longer one is able
to laugh in it the better."
Bedmakers have to be comic and dishonest. It is expected of them.
In a picture of university life it is their only function. So
when we meet one who has the face of a lady, and feelings of
which a lady might be proud, we pass her by.
"Yes?" said Miss Pembroke, and then their talk was stopped by the
arrival of her brother.
"It is too bad!" he exclaimed. "It is really too bad."
"Now, Bertie boy, Bertie boy! I'll have no peevishness."
"I am not peevish, Agnes, but I have a full right to be. Pray,
why did he not meet us? Why did he not provide rooms? And pray,
why did you leave me to do all the settling? All the lodgings I
knew are full, and our bedrooms look into a mews. I cannot help
it. And then--look here! It really is too bad." He held up his
foot like a wounded dog. It was dripping with water.
"Oho! This explains the peevishness. Off with it at once. It'll
be another of your colds."
"I really think I had better." He sat down by the fire and
daintily unlaced his boot. "I notice a great change in university
tone. I can never remember swaggering three abreast along the
pavement and charging inoffensive visitors into a gutter when I
was an undergraduate. One of the men, too, wore an Eton tie. But
the others, I should say, came from very queer schools, if they
came from any schools at all."
Mr. Pembroke was nearly twenty years older than his sister, and
had never been as handsome. But he was not at all the person to
knock into a gutter, for though not in orders, he had the air of
being on the verge of them, and his features, as well as his
clothes, had the clerical cut. In his presence conversation
became pure and colourless and full of understatements, and--just
as if he was a real clergyman--neither men nor boys ever forgot
that he was there. He had observed this, and it pleased him very
much. His conscience permitted him to enter the Church whenever
his profession, which was the scholastic, should demand it.
"No gutter in the world's as wet as this," said Agnes, who had
peeled off her brother's sock, and was now toasting it at the
embers on a pair of tongs.
"Surely you know the running water by the edge of the Trumpington
road? It's turned on occasionally to clear away the refuse--a
most primitive idea. When I was up we had a joke about it, and
called it the 'Pem.'"
"How complimentary!"
"You foolish girl,--not after me, of course. We called it the
'Pem' because it is close to Pembroke College. I remember--" He
smiled a little, and twiddled his toes. Then he remembered the
bedmaker, and said, "My sock is now dry. My sock, please."
"Your sock is sopping. No, you don't!" She twitched the tongs
away from him. Mrs. Aberdeen, without speaking, fetched a pair of
Rickie's socks and a pair of Rickie's shoes.
"Thank you; ah, thank you. I am sure Mr. Elliot would allow it."
Then he said in French to his sister, "Has there been the
slightest sign of Frederick?"
"Now, do call him Rickie, and talk English. I found him here. He
had forgotten about us, and was very sorry. Now he's gone to get
some dinner, and I can't think why he isn't back."
Mrs. Aberdeen left them.
"He wants pulling up sharply. There is nothing original in
absent-mindedness. True originality lies elsewhere. Really, the
lower classes have no nous. However can I wear such
deformities?" For he had been madly trying to cram a right-hand
foot into a left-hand shoe.
"Don't!" said Agnes hastily. "Don't touch the poor fellow's
things." The sight of the smart, stubby patent leather made her
almost feel faint. She had known Rickie for many years, but it
seemed so dreadful and so different now that he was a man. It was
her first great contact with the abnormal, and unknown fibres of
her being rose in revolt against it. She frowned when she heard
his uneven tread upon the stairs.
"Agnes--before he arrives--you ought never to have left me and
gone to his rooms alone. A most elementary transgression. Imagine
the unpleasantness if you had found him with friends. If Gerald--"
Rickie by now had got into a fluster. At the kitchens he had lost
his head, and when his turn came--he had had to wait--he had
yielded his place to those behind, saying that he didn't matter.
And he had wasted more precious time buying bananas, though he
knew that the Pembrokes were not partial to fruit. Amid much
tardy and chaotic hospitality the meal got under way. All the
spoons and forks were anyhow, for Mrs. Aberdeen's virtues were
not practical. The fish seemed never to have been alive, the meat
had no kick, and the cork of the college claret slid forth silently,
as if ashamed of the contents. Agnes was particularly pleasant. But
her brother could not recover himself. He still remembered their
desolate arrival, and he could feel the waters of the Pem eating
into his instep.
"Rickie," cried the lady, "are you aware that you haven't
congratulated me on my engagement?"
Rickie laughed nervously, and said, "Why no! No more I have."
"Say something pretty, then."
"I hope you'll be very happy," he mumbled. "But I don't know
anything about marriage."
"Oh, you awful boy! Herbert, isn't he just the same? But you do
know something about Gerald, so don't be so chilly and cautious.
I've just realized, looking at those groups, that you must have
been at school together. Did you come much across him?"
"Very little," he answered, and sounded shy. He got up hastily,
and began to muddle with the coffee.
"But he was in the same house. Surely that's a house group?"
"He was a prefect." He made his coffee on the simple system. One
had a brown pot, into which the boiling stuff was poured. Just
before serving one put in a drop of cold water, and the idea was
that the grounds fell to the bottom.
"Wasn't he a kind of athletic marvel? Couldn't he knock any boy
or master down?"
"Yes."
"If he had wanted to," said Mr. Pembroke, who had not spoken for
some time.
"If he had wanted to," echoed Rickie. "I do hope, Agnes, you'll
be most awfully happy. I don't know anything about the army, but
I should think it must be most awfully interesting."
Mr. Pembroke laughed faintly.
"Yes, Rickie. The army is a most interesting profession,--the
profession of Wellington and Marlborough and Lord Roberts; a most
interesting profession, as you observe. A profession that may
mean death--death, rather than dishonour."
"That's nice," said Rickie, speaking to himself. "Any profession
may mean dishonour, but one isn't allowed to die instead. The
army's different. If a soldier makes a mess, it's thought rather
decent of him, isn't it, if he blows out his brains? In the other
professions it somehow seems cowardly."
"I am not competent to pronounce," said Mr. Pembroke, who was not
accustomed to have his schoolroom satire commented on. "I merely
know that the army is the finest profession in the world. Which
reminds me, Rickie--have you been thinking about yours?"
"No."
"Not at all?"
"No."
"Now, Herbert, don't bother him. Have another meringue."
"But, Rickie, my dear boy, you're twenty. It's time you thought.
The Tripos is the beginning of life, not the end. In less than
two years you will have got your B.A. What are you going to do
with it?"
"I don't know."
"You're M.A., aren't you?" asked Agnes; but her brother
proceeded--
"I have seen so many promising, brilliant lives wrecked simply on
account of this--not settling soon enough. My dear boy, you must
think. Consult your tastes if possible--but think. You have not a
moment to lose. The Bar, like your father?"
"Oh, I wouldn't like that at all."
"I don't mention the Church."
"Oh, Rickie, do be a clergyman!" said Miss Pembroke. "You'd be
simply killing in a wide-awake."
He looked at his guests hopelessly. Their kindness and competence
overwhelmed him. "I wish I could talk to them as I talk to
myself," he thought. "I'm not such an ass when I talk to myself.
I don't believe, for instance, that quite all I thought about the
cow was rot." Aloud he said, "I've sometimes wondered about
writing."
"Writing?" said Mr. Pembroke, with the tone of one who gives
everything its trial. "Well, what about writing? What kind of
writing?"
"I rather like,"--he suppressed something in his throat,--"I
rather like trying to write little stories."
"Why, I made sure it was poetry!" said Agnes. "You're just the
boy for poetry."
"I had no idea you wrote. Would you let me see something? Then I
could judge."
The author shook his head. "I don't show it to any one. It isn't
anything. I just try because it amuses me."
"What is it about?"
"Silly nonsense."
"Are you ever going to show it to any one?"
"I don't think so."
Mr. Pembroke did not reply, firstly, because the meringue he was
eating was, after all, Rickie's; secondly, because it was gluey
and stuck his jaws together. Agnes observed that the writing was
really a very good idea: there was Rickie's aunt,--she could push
him.
"Aunt Emily never pushes any one; she says they always rebound
and crush her."
"I only had the pleasure of seeing your aunt once. I should have
thought her a quite uncrushable person. But she would be sure to
help you."
"I couldn't show her anything. She'd think them even sillier than
they are."
"Always running yourself down! There speaks the artist!"
"I'm not modest," he said anxiously. "I just know they're bad."
Mr. Pembroke's teeth were clear of meringue, and he could refrain
no longer. "My dear Rickie, your father and mother are dead, and
you often say your aunt takes no interest in you. Therefore your
life depends on yourself. Think it over carefully, but settle,
and having once settled, stick. If you think that this writing is
practicable, and that you could make your living by it--that you
could, if needs be, support a wife--then by all means write. But
you must work. Work and drudge. Begin at the bottom of the ladder
and work upwards."
Rickie's head drooped. Any metaphor silenced him. He never
thought of replying that art is not a ladder--with a curate, as
it were, on the first rung, a rector on the second, and a bishop,
still nearer heaven, at the top. He never retorted that the
artist is not a bricklayer at all, but a horseman, whose business
it is to catch Pegasus at once, not to practise for him by
mounting tamer colts. This is hard, hot, and generally ungraceful
work, but it is not drudgery. For drudgery is not art, and cannot
lead to it.
"Of course I don't really think about writing," he said, as he
poured the cold water into the coffee. "Even if my things ever
were decent, I don't think the magazines would take them, and the
magazines are one's only chance. I read somewhere, too, that
Marie Corelli's about the only person who makes a thing out of
literature. I'm certain it wouldn't pay me."
"I never mentioned the word 'pay,'" said Mr. Pembroke uneasily.
"You must not consider money. There are ideals too."
"I have no ideals."
Rickie!" she exclaimed. "Horrible boy!"
"No, Agnes, I have no ideals." Then he got very red, for it was a
phrase he had caught from Ansell, and he could not remember what
came next.
"The person who has no ideals," she exclaimed, "is to be pitied."
"I think so too," said Mr. Pembroke, sipping his coffee. "Life
without an ideal would be like the sky without the sun."
Rickie looked towards the night, wherein there now twinkled
innumerable stars--gods and heroes, virgins and brides, to whom
the Greeks have given their names.
"Life without an ideal--" repeated Mr. Pembroke, and then
stopped, for his mouth was full of coffee grounds. The same
affliction had overtaken Agnes. After a little jocose laughter
they departed to their lodgings, and Rickie, having seen them as
far as the porter's lodge, hurried, singing as he went, to
Ansell's room, burst open the door, and said, "Look here!
Whatever do you mean by it?"
"By what?" Ansell was sitting alone with a piece of paper in
front of him. On it was a diagram--a circle inside a square,
inside which was again a square.
"By being so rude. You're no gentleman, and I told her so." He
slammed him on the head with a sofa cushion. "I'm certain one
ought to be polite, even to people who aren't saved." ("Not
saved" was a phrase they applied just then to those whom they did
not like or intimately know.) "And I believe she is saved. I
never knew any one so always good-tempered and kind. She's been
kind to me ever since I knew her. I wish you'd heard her trying
to stop her brother: you'd have certainly come round. Not but
what he was only being nice as well. But she is really nice. And
I thought she came into the room so beautifully. Do you know--oh,
of course, you despise music--but Anderson was playing Wagner,
and he'd just got to the part where they sing
'Rheingold!
'Rheingold!
and the sun strikes into the waters, and the music, which up to
then has so often been in E flat--"
"Goes into D sharp. I have not understood a single word, partly
because you talk as if your mouth was full of plums, partly
because I don't know whom you're talking about."
"Miss Pembroke--whom you saw."
"I saw no one."
"Who came in?"
"No one came in."
"You're an ass!" shrieked Rickie. "She came in. You saw her come
in. She and her brother have been to dinner."
"You only think so. They were not really there."
"But they stop till Monday."
"You only think that they are stopping."
"But--oh, look here, shut up! The girl like an empress--"
"I saw no empress, nor any girl, nor have you seen them."
"Ansell, don't rag."
"Elliot, I never rag, and you know it. She was not really there."
There was a moment's silence. Then Rickie exclaimed, "I've got
you. You say--or was it Tilliard?--no, YOU say that the cow's
there. Well--there these people are, then. Got you. Yah!"
"Did it never strike you that phenomena may be of two kinds: ONE,
those which have a real existence, such as the cow; TWO, those
which are the subjective product of a diseased imagination, and
which, to our destruction, we invest with the semblance of
reality? If this never struck you, let it strike you now."
Rickie spoke again, but received no answer. He paced a little up
and down the sombre roam. Then he sat on the edge of the table
and watched his clever friend draw within the square a circle,
and within the circle a square, and inside that another circle,
and inside that another square.
"Whv will you do that?"
No answer.
"Are they real?"
"The inside one is--the one in the middle of everything, that
there's never room enough to draw."
II
A little this side of Madingley, to the left of the road, there
is a secluded dell, paved with grass and planted with fir-trees.
It could not have been worth a visit twenty years ago, for then
it was only a scar of chalk, and it is not worth a visit at the
present day, for the trees have grown too thick and choked it.
But when Rickie was up, it chanced to be the brief season of its
romance, a season as brief for a chalk-pit as a man--its divine
interval between the bareness of boyhood and the stuffiness of
age. Rickie had discovered it in his second term, when the
January snows had melted and left fiords and lagoons of clearest
water between the inequalities of the floor. The place looked as
big as Switzerland or Norway--as indeed for the moment it was--
and he came upon it at a time when his life too was beginning to
expand. Accordingly the dell became for him a kind of church--a
church where indeed you could do anything you liked, but where
anything you did would be transfigured. Like the ancient Greeks,
he could even laugh at his holy place and leave it no less holy.
He chatted gaily about it, and about the pleasant thoughts with
which it inspired him; he took his friends there; he even took
people whom he did not like. "Procul este, profani!" exclaimed
a delighted aesthete on being introduced to it. But this was
never to be the attitude of Rickie. He did not love the vulgar
herd, but he knew that his own vulgarity would be greater if he
forbade it ingress, and that it was not by preciosity that he
would attain to the intimate spirit of the dell. Indeed, if he
had agreed with the aesthete, he would possibly not have
introduced him. If the dell was to bear any inscription, he would
have liked it to be "This way to Heaven," painted on a sign-post
by the high-road, and he did not realize till later years that
the number of visitors would not thereby have sensibly increased.
On the blessed Monday that the Pembrokes left, he walked out here
with three friends. It was a day when the sky seemed enormous.
One cloud, as large as a continent, was voyaging near the sun,
whilst other clouds seemed anchored to the horizon, too lazy or
too happy to move. The sky itself was of the palest blue, paling
to white where it approached the earth; and the earth, brown,
wet, and odorous, was engaged beneath it on its yearly duty of
decay. Rickie was open to the complexities of autumn; he felt
extremely tiny--extremely tiny and extremely important; and
perhaps the combination is as fair as any that exists. He hoped
that all his life he would never be peevish or unkind.
"Elliot is in a dangerous state," said Ansell. They had reached
the dell, and had stood for some time in silence, each leaning
against a tree. It was too wet to sit down.
"How's that?" asked Rickie, who had not known he was in any state
at all. He shut up Keats, whom he thought he had been reading,
and slipped him back into his coat-pocket. Scarcely ever was he
without a book.
"He's trying to like people."
"Then he's done for," said Widdrington. "He's dead."
"He's trying to like Hornblower."
The others gave shrill agonized cries.
"He wants to bind the college together. He wants to link us to
the beefy set."
"I do like Hornblower," he protested. "I don't try."
"And Hornblower tries to like you."
"That part doesn't matter."
"But he does try to like you. He tries not to despise you. It is
altogether a most public-spirited affair."
"Tilliard started them," said Widdrington. "Tilliard thinks it
such a pity the college should be split into sets."
"Oh, Tilliard!" said Ansell, with much irritation. "But what can
you expect from a person who's eternally beautiful? The other
night we had been discussing a long time, and suddenly the light
was turned on. Every one else looked a sight, as they ought. But
there was Tilliard, sitting neatly on a little chair, like an
undersized god, with not a curl crooked. I should say he will get
into the Foreign Office."
"Why are most of us so ugly?" laughed Rickie.
"It's merely a sign of our salvation--merely another sign that
the college is split."
"The college isn't split," cried Rickie, who got excited on this
subject with unfailing regularity. "The college is, and has been,
and always will be, one. What you call the beefy set aren't a set
at all. They're just the rowing people, and naturally they
chiefly see each other; but they're always nice to me or to any
one. Of course, they think us rather asses, but it's quite in a
pleasant way."
"That's my whole objection," said Ansell. "What right have they
to think us asses in a pleasant way? Why don't they hate us? What
right has Hornblower to smack me on the back when I've been rude
to him?"
"Well, what right have you to be rude to him?"
"Because I hate him. You think it is so splendid to hate no one.
I tell you it is a crime. You want to love every one equally, and
that's worse than impossible it's wrong. When you denounce sets,
you're really trying to destroy friendship."
"I maintain," said Rickie--it was a verb he clung to, in the hope
that it would lend stability to what followed--"I maintain that
one can like many more people than one supposes."
"And I maintain that you hate many more people than you pretend."
"I hate no one," he exclaimed with extraordinary vehemence, and
the dell re-echoed that it hated no one.
"We are obliged to believe you," said Widdrington, smiling a
little "but we are sorry about it."
"Not even your father?" asked Ansell.
Rickie was silent.
"Not even your father?"
The cloud above extended a great promontory across the sun. It
only lay there for a moment, yet that was enough to summon the
lurking coldness from the earth.
"Does he hate his father?" said Widdrington, who had not known.
"Oh, good!"
"But his father's dead. He will say it doesn't count."
"Still, it's something. Do you hate yours?"
Ansell did not reply. Rickie said: "I say, I wonder whether one
ought to talk like this?"
"About hating dead people?"
"Yes--"
"Did you hate your mother?" asked Widdrington.
Rickie turned crimson.
"I don't see Hornblower's such a rotter," remarked the other man,
whose name was James.
"James, you are diplomatic," said Ansell. "You are trying to tide
over an awkward moment. You can go."
Widdrington was crimson too. In his wish to be sprightly he had
used words without thinking of their meanings. Suddenly he
realized that "father" and "mother" really meant father and
mother--people whom he had himself at home. He was very
uncomfortable, and thought Rickie had been rather queer. He too
tried to revert to Hornblower, but Ansell would not let him. The
sun came out, and struck on the white ramparts of the dell.
Rickie looked straight at it. Then he said abruptly--
"I think I want to talk."
"I think you do," replied Ansell.
"Shouldn't I be rather a fool if I went through Cambridge without
talking? It's said never to come so easy again. All the people
are dead too. I can't see why I shouldn't tell you most things
about my birth and parentage and education."
"Talk away. If you bore us, we have books."
With this invitation Rickie began to relate his history. The
reader who has no book will be obliged to listen to it.
Some people spend their lives in a suburb, and not for any urgent
reason. This had been the fate of Rickie. He had opened his eyes
to filmy heavens, and taken his first walk on asphalt. He had
seen civilization as a row of semi-detached villas, and society
as a state in which men do not know the men who live next door.
He had himself become part of the grey monotony that surrounds
all cities. There was no necessity for this--it was only rather
convenient to his father.
Mr. Elliot was a barrister. In appearance he resembled his son,
being weakly and lame, with hollow little cheeks, a broad white
band of forehead, and stiff impoverished hair. His voice, which
he did not transmit, was very suave, with a fine command of
cynical intonation. By altering it ever so little he could make
people wince, especially if they were simple or poor. Nor did he
transmit his eyes. Their peculiar flatness, as if the soul looked
through dirty window-panes, the unkindness of them, the
cowardice, the fear in them, were to trouble the world no longer.
He married a girl whose voice was beautiful. There was no caress
in it yet all who heard it were soothed, as though the world held
some unexpected blessing. She called to her dogs one night over
invisible waters, and he, a tourist up on the bridge, thought
"that is extraordinarily adequate." In time he discovered that
her figure, face, and thoughts were adequate also, and as she was
not impossible socially, he married her. "I have taken a plunge,"
he told his family. The family, hostile at first, had not a word
to say when the woman was introduced to them; and his sister
declared that the plunge had been taken from the opposite bank.
Things only went right for a little time. Though beautiful
without and within, Mrs. Elliot had not the gift of making her
home beautiful; and one day, when she bought a carpet for the
dining-room that clashed, he laughed gently, said he "really
couldn't," and departed. Departure is perhaps too strong a word.
In Mrs. Elliot's mouth it became, "My husband has to sleep more
in town." He often came down to see them, nearly always
unexpectedly, and occasionally they went to see him. "Father's
house," as Rickie called it, only had three rooms, but these were
full of books and pictures and flowers; and the flowers, instead
of being squashed down into the vases as they were in mummy's
house, rose gracefully from frames of lead which lay coiled at
the bottom, as doubtless the sea serpent has to lie, coiled at
the bottom of the sea. Once he was let to lift a frame out--only
once, for he dropped some water on a creton. "I think he's
going to have taste," said Mr. Elliot languidly. "It is quite
possible," his wife replied. She had not taken off her hat and
gloves, nor even pulled up her veil. Mr. Elliot laughed, and soon
afterwards another lady came in, and they--went away.
"Why does father always laugh?" asked Rickie in the evening when
he and his mother were sitting in the nursery.
"It is a way of your father's."
"Why does he always laugh at me? Am I so funny?" Then after a
pause, "You have no sense of humour, have you, mummy?"
Mrs. Elliot, who was raising a thread of cotton to her lips, held
it suspended in amazement.
"You told him so this afternoon. But I have seen you laugh." He
nodded wisely. "I have seen you laugh ever so often. One day you
were laughing alone all down in the sweet peas."
"Was I?"
"Yes. Were you laughing at me?"
"I was not thinking about you. Cotton, please--a reel of No. 50
white from my chest of drawers. Left hand drawer. Now which is
your left hand?"
"The side my pocket is."
"And if you had no pocket?"
"The side my bad foot is."
"I meant you to say, 'the side my heart is,' " said Mrs. Elliot,
holding up the duster between them. "Most of us--I mean all of
us--can feel on one side a little watch, that never stops
ticking. So even if you had no bad foot you would still know
which is the left. No. 50 white, please. No; I'll get it myself."
For she had remembered that the dark passage frightened him.
These were the outlines. Rickie filled them in with the slowness
and the accuracy of a child. He was never told anything, but he
discovered for himself that his father and mother did not love
each other, and that his mother was lovable. He discovered that
Mr. Elliot had dubbed him Rickie because he was rickety, that he
took pleasure in alluding to his son's deformity, and was sorry
that it was not more serious than his own. Mr. Elliot had not one
scrap of genius. He gathered the pictures and the books and the
flower-supports mechanically, not in any impulse of love. He
passed for a cultured man because he knew how to select, and he
passed for an unconventional man because he did not select quite
like other people. In reality he never did or said or thought one
single thing that had the slightest beauty or value. And in time
Rickie discovered this as well.
The boy grew up in great loneliness. He worshipped his mother,
and she was fond of him. But she was dignified and reticent, and
pathos, like tattle, was disgusting to her. She was afraid of
intimacy, in case it led to confidences and tears, and so all her
life she held her son at a little distance. Her kindness and
unselfishness knew no limits, but if he tried to be dramatic and
thank her, she told him not to be a little goose. And so the only
person he came to know at all was himself. He would play
Halma against himself. He would conduct solitary conversations,
in which one part of him asked and another part answered. It was
an exciting game, and concluded with the formula: "Good-bye.
Thank you. I am glad to have met you. I hope before long we shall
enjoy another chat." And then perhaps he would sob for
loneliness, for he would see real people--real brothers, real
friends--doing in warm life the things he had pretended. "Shall I
ever have a friend?" he demanded at the age of twelve. "I don't
see how. They walk too fast. And a brother I shall never have."
("No loss," interrupted Widdrington.
"But I shall never have one, and so I quite want one, even now.")
When he was thirteen Mr. Elliot entered on his illness. The
pretty rooms in town would not do for an invalid, and so he came
back to his home. One of the first consequences was that Rickie
was sent to a public school. Mrs. Elliot did what she could, but
she had no hold whatever over her husband.
"He worries me," he declared. "He's a joke of which I have got
tired."
"Would it be possible to send him to a private tutor's?"
"No," said Mr. Elliot, who had all the money. "Coddling."
"I agree that boys ought to rough it; but when a boy is lame and
very delicate, he roughs it sufficiently if he leaves home.
Rickie can't play games. He doesn't make friends. He isn't
brilliant. Thinking it over, I feel that as it's like this, we
can't ever hope to give him the ordinary education. Perhaps you
could think it over too." No.
"I am sure that things are best for him as they are. The
day-school knocks quite as many corners off him as he can stand.
He hates it, but it is good for him. A public school will not be
good for him. It is too rough. Instead of getting manly and hard,
he will--"
"My head, please."
Rickie departed in a state of bewildered misery, which was
scarcely ever to grow clearer.
Each holiday he found his father more irritable, and a little
weaker. Mrs. Elliot was quickly growing old. She had to manage
the servants, to hush the neighbouring children, to answer the
correspondence, to paper and re-paper the rooms--and all for the
sake of a man whom she did not like, and who did not conceal his
dislike for her. One day she found Rickie tearful, and said
rather crossly, "Well, what is it this time?"
He replied, "Oh, mummy, I've seen your wrinkles your grey hair--
I'm unhappy."
Sudden tenderness overcame her, and she cried, "My darling, what
does it matter? Whatever does it matter now?"
He had never known her so emotional. Yet even better did he
remember another incident. Hearing high voices from his father's
room, he went upstairs in the hope that the sound of his tread
might stop them. Mrs. Elliot burst open the door, and seeing him,
exclaimed, "My dear! If you please, he's hit me." She tried to
laugh it off, but a few hours later he saw the bruise which the
stick of the invalid had raised upon his mother's hand.
God alone knows how far we are in the grip of our bodies. He
alone can judge how far the cruelty of Mr. Elliot was the outcome
of extenuating circumstances. But Mrs. Elliot could accurately
judge of its extent.
At last he died. Rickie was now fifteen, and got off a whole
week's school for the funeral. His mother was rather strange. She
was much happier, she looked younger, and her mourning was as
unobtrusive as convention permitted. All this he had expected.
But she seemed to be watching him, and to be extremely anxious
for his opinion on any, subject--more especially on his father.
Why? At last he saw that she was trying to establish confidence
between them. But confidence cannot be established in a moment.
They were both shy. The habit of years was upon them, and they
alluded to the death of Mr. Elliot as an irreparable loss.
"Now that your father has gone, things will be very different."
"Shall we be poorer, mother?" No.
"Oh!"
"But naturally things will be very different."
"Yes, naturally."
"For instance, your poor father liked being near London, but I
almost think we might move. Would you like that?"
"Of course, mummy." He looked down at the ground. He was not
accustomed to being consulted, and it bewildered him.
"Perhaps you might like quite a different life better?"
He giggled.
"It's a little difficult for me," said Mrs. Elliot, pacing
vigorously up and down the room, and more and more did her black
dress seem a mockery. "In some ways you ought to be consulted:
nearly all the money is left to you, as you must hear some time
or other. But in other ways you're only a boy. What am I to do?"
"I don't know," he replied, appearing more helpless and unhelpful
than he really was.
"For instance, would you like me to arrange things exactly as I
like?"
"Oh do!" he exclaimed, thinking this a most brilliant suggestion.
"The very nicest thing of all." And he added, in his
half-pedantic, half-pleasing way, "I shall be as wax in your
hands, mamma."
She smiled. "Very well, darling. You shall be." And she pressed
him lovingly, as though she would mould him into something
beautiful.
For the next few days great preparations were in the air. She
went to see his father's sister, the gifted and vivacious Aunt
Emily. They were to live in the country--somewhere right in the
country, with grass and trees up to the door, and birds singing
everywhere, and a tutor. For he was not to go back to school.
Unbelievable! He was never to go back to school, and the head-
master had written saying that he regretted the step, but that
possibly it was a wise one.
It was raw weather, and Mrs. Elliot watched over him with
ceaseless tenderness. It seemed as if she could not do too much
to shield him and to draw him nearer to her.
"Put on your greatcoat, dearest," she said to him.
"I don't think I want it," answered Rickie, remembering that he
was now fifteen.
"The wind is bitter. You ought to put it on."
"But it's so heavy."
"Do put it on, dear."
He was not very often irritable or rude, but he answered, "Oh, I
shan't catch cold. I do wish you wouldn't keep on bothering."
He did not catch cold, but while he was out his mother died. She
only survived her husband eleven days, a coincidence which was
recorded on their tombstone.
Such, in substance, was the story which Rickie told his friends
as they stood together in the shelter of the dell. The green bank
at the entrance hid the road and the world, and now, as in
spring, they could see nothing but snow-white ramparts and the
evergreen foliage of the firs. Only from time to time would a
beech leaf flutter in from the woods above, to comment on the
waning year, and the warmth and radiance of the sun would vanish
behind a passing cloud.
About the greatcoat he did not tell them, for he could not have
spoken of it without tears.
III
Mr. Ansell, a provincial draper of moderate prosperity, ought by
rights to have been classed not with the cow, but with those
phenomena that are not really there. But his son, with pardonable
illogicality, excepted him. He never suspected that his father
might be the subjective product of a diseased imagination. From
his earliest years he had taken him for granted, as a most
undeniable and lovable fact. To be born one thing and grow up
another--Ansell had accomplished this without weakening one of
the ties that bound him to his home. The rooms above the shop
still seemed as comfortable, the garden behind it as gracious, as
they had seemed fifteen years before, when he would sit behind
Miss Appleblossom's central throne, and she, like some
allegorical figure, would send the change and receipted bills
spinning away from her in little boxwood balls. At first the
young man had attributed these happy relations to his own tact.
But in time he perceived that the tact was all on the side of his
father. Mr. Ansell was not merely a man of some education; he had
what no education can bring--the power of detecting what is
important. Like many fathers, he had spared no expense over his
boy,--he had borrowed money to start him at a rapacious and
fashionable private school; he had sent him to tutors; he had
sent him to Cambridge. But he knew that all this was not the
important thing. The important thing was freedom. The boy must
use his education as he chose, and if he paid his father back it
would certainly not be in his own coin. So when Stewart said, "At
Cambridge, can I read for the Moral Science Tripos?" Mr. Ansell
had only replied, "This philosophy--do you say that it lies
behind everything?"
"Yes, I think so. It tries to discover what is good and true."
"Then, my boy, you had better read as much of it as you can."
And a year later: "I'd like to take up this philosophy seriously,
but I don't feel justified."
"Why not?"
"Because it brings in no return. I think I'm a great philosopher,
but then all philosophers think that, though they don't dare to
say so. But, however great I am. I shan't earn money. Perhaps I
shan't ever be able to keep myself. I shan't even get a good
social position. You've only to say one word, and I'll work for
the Civil Service. I'm good enough to get in high."
Mr. Ansell liked money and social position. But he knew that
there is a more important thing, and replied, "You must take up
this philosophy seriously, I think."
"Another thing--there are the girls."
"There is enough money now to get Mary and Maud as good husbands
as they deserve." And Mary and Maud took the same view.
It was in this plebeian household that Rickie spent part of the
Christmas vacation. His own home, such as it was, was with the
Silts, needy cousins of his father's, and combined to a peculiar
degree the restrictions of hospitality with the discomforts of a
boarding-house. Such pleasure as he had outside Cambridge was in
the homes of his friends, and it was a particular joy and honour
to visit Ansell, who, though as free from social snobbishness as
most of us will ever manage to be, was rather careful when he
drove up to the facade of his shop.
"I like our new lettering," he said thoughtfully. The words
"Stewart Ansell" were repeated again and again along the High
Street--curly gold letters that seemed to float in tanks of
glazed chocolate.
"Rather!" said Rickie. But he wondered whether one of the bonds
that kept the Ansell family united might not be their complete
absence of taste--a surer bond by far than the identity of it.
And he wondered this again when he sat at tea opposite a long row
of crayons--Stewart as a baby, Stewart as a small boy with large
feet, Stewart as a larger boy with smaller feet, Mary reading a
book whose leaves were as thick as eiderdowns. And yet again did
he wonder it when he woke with a gasp in the night to find a harp
in luminous paint throbbing and glowering at him from the
adjacent wall. "Watch and pray" was written on the harp, and
until Rickie hung a towel over it the exhortation was partially
successful.
It was a very happy visit. Miss Appleblosssom--who now acted as
housekeeper--had met him before, during her never-forgotten
expedition to Cambridge, and her admiration of University life
was as shrill and as genuine now as it had been then. The girls
at first were a little aggressive, for on his arrival he had been
tired, and Maud had taken it for haughtiness, and said he was
looking down on them. But this passed. They did not fall in love
with him, nor he with them, but a morning was spent very
pleasantly in snow-balling in the back garden. Ansell was rather
different to what he was in Cambridge, but to Rickie not less
attractive. And there was a curious charm in the hum of the shop,
which swelled into a roar if one opened the partition door on a
market-day.
"Listen to your money!" said Rickie. "I wish I could hear mine. I
wish my money was alive."
"I don't understand."
"Mine's dead money. It's come to me through about six dead
people--silently."
"Getting a little smaller and a little more respectable each
time, on account of the death-duties."
"It needed to get respectable."
"Why? Did your people, too, once keep a shop?"
"Oh, not as bad as that! They only swindled. About a hundred
years ago an Elliot did something shady and founded the fortunes
of our house."
"I never knew any one so relentless to his ancestors. You make up
for your soapiness towards the living."
"You'd be relentless if you'd heard the Silts, as I have, talk
about 'a fortune, small perhaps, but unsoiled by trade!' Of
course Aunt Emily is rather different. Oh, goodness me! I've
forgotten my aunt. She lives not so far. I shall have to call on
her."
Accordingly he wrote to Mrs. Failing, and said he should like to
pay his respects. He told her about the Ansells, and so worded
the letter that she might reasonably have sent an invitation to
his friend.
She replied that she was looking forward to their tete-a-tete.
"You mustn't go round by the trains," said Mr. Ansell. "It means
changing at Salisbury. By the road it's no great way. Stewart
shall drive you over Salisbury Plain, and fetch you too."
"There's too much snow," said Ansell.
"Then the girls shall take you in their sledge."
"That I will," said Maud, who was not unwilling to see the inside
of Cadover. But Rickie went round by the trains.
"We have all missed you," said Ansell, when he returned. "There
is a general feeling that you are no nuisance, and had better
stop till the end of the vac."
This he could not do. He was bound for Christmas to the Silts--
"as a REAL guest," Mrs. Silt had written, underlining the word
"real" twice. And after Christmas he must go to the Pembrokes.
"These are no reasons. The only real reason for doing a thing is
because you want to do it. I think the talk about 'engagements'
is cant."
"I think perhaps it is," said Rickie. But he went. Never had the
turkey been so athletic, or the plum-pudding tied into its cloth
so tightly. Yet he knew that both these symbols of hilarity had
cost money, and it went to his heart when Mr. Silt said in a
hungry voice, "Have you thought at all of what you want to be?
No? Well, why should you? You have no need to be anything." And
at dessert: "I wonder who Cadover goes to? I expect money will
follow money. It always does." It was with a guilty feeling of
relief that he left for the Pembrokes'.
The Pembrokes lived in an adjacent suburb, or rather
"sububurb,"--the tract called Sawston, celebrated for its
public school. Their style of life, however, was not particularly
suburban. Their house was small and its name was Shelthorpe, but
it had an air about it which suggested a certain amount of money
and a certain amount of taste. There were decent water-colours in
the drawing-room. Madonnas of acknowledged merit hung upon the
stairs. A replica of the Hermes of Praxiteles--of course only the
bust--stood in the hall with a real palm behind it. Agnes, in her
slap-dash way, was a good housekeeper, and kept the pretty things
well dusted. It was she who insisted on the strip of brown
holland that led diagonally from the front door to the door of
Herbert's study: boys' grubby feet should not go treading on her
Indian square. It was she who always cleaned the picture-frames
and washed the bust and the leaves of the palm. In short, if a
house could speak--and sometimes it does speak more clearly than
the people who live in it--the house of the Pembrokes would have
said, "I am not quite like other houses, yet I am perfectly
comfortable. I contain works of art and a microscope and books.
But I do not live for any of these things or suffer them to
disarrange me. I live for myself and for the greater houses that
shall come after me. Yet in me neither the cry of money nor the
cry for money shall ever be heard."
Mr. Pembroke was at the station. He did better as a host than as
a guest, and welcomed the young man with real friendliness.
"We were all coming, but Gerald has strained his ankle slightly,
and wants to keep quiet, as he is playing next week in a match.
And, needless to say, that explains the absence of my sister."
"Gerald Dawes?"
"Yes; he's with us. I'm so glad you'll meet again."
"So am I," said Rickie with extreme awkwardness. "Does he
remember me?"
"Vividly."
Vivid also was Rickie's remembrance of him.
"A splendid fellow," asserted Mr. Pembroke.
"I hope that Agnes is well."
"Thank you, yes; she is well. And I think you're looking more
like other people yourself."
"I've been having a very good time with a friend."
"Indeed. That's right. Who was that?"
Rickie had a young man's reticence. He generally spoke of "a
friend," "a person I know," "a place I was at." When the book of
life is opening, our readings are secret, and we are unwilling to
give chapter and verse. Mr. Pembroke, who was half way through
the volume, and had skipped or forgotten the earlier pages, could
not understand Rickie's hesitation, nor why with such awkwardness
he should pronounce the harmless dissyllable "Ansell."
"Ansell? Wasn't that the pleasant fellow who asked us to lunch?"
"No. That was Anderson, who keeps below. You didn't see Ansell.
The ones who came to breakfast were Tilliard and Hornblower."
"Of course. And since then you have been with the Silts. How are
they?"
"Very well, thank you. They want to be remembered to you."
The Pembrokes had formerly lived near the Elliots, and had shown
great kindness to Rickie when his parents died. They were thus
rather in the position of family friends.
"Please remember us when you write." He added, almost roguishly,
"The Silts are kindness itself. All the same, it must be just a
little--dull, we thought, and we thought that you might like a
change. And of course we are delighted to have you besides. That
goes without saying."
"It's very good of you," said Rickie, who had accepted the
invitation because he felt he ought to.
"Not a bit. And you mustn't expect us to be otherwise than quiet
on the holidays. There is a library of a sort, as you know, and
you will find Gerald a splendid fellow."
"Will they be married soon?"
"Oh no!" whispered Mr. Pembroke, shutting his eyes, as if Rickie
had made some terrible faux pas. "It will be a very long
engagement. He must make his way first. I have seen such endless
misery result from people marrying before they have made their
way."
"Yes. That is so," said Rickie despondently, thinking of the
Silts.
"It's a sad unpalatable truth," said Mr. Pembroke, thinking that
the despondency might be personal, "but one must accept it. My
sister and Gerald, I am thankful to say, have accepted it, though
naturally it has been a little pill."
Their cab lurched round the corner as he spoke, and the two
patients came in sight. Agnes was leaning over the creosoted
garden-gate, and behind her there stood a young man who had the
figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one. He was
fair and cleanshaven, and his colourless hair was cut rather
short. The sun was in his eyes, and they, like his mouth, seemed
scarcely more than slits in his healthy skin. Just where he began
to be beautiful the clothes started. Round his neck went an
up-and-down collar and a mauve-and-gold tie, and the rest of his
limbs were hidden by a grey lounge suit, carefully creased in the
right places.
"Lovely! Lovely!" cried Agnes, banging on the gate, "Your train
must have been to the minute."
"Hullo!" said the athlete, and vomited with the greeting a cloud
of tobacco-smoke. It must have been imprisoned in his mouth some
time, for no pipe was visible.
"Hullo!" returned Rickie, laughing violently. They shook hands.
"Where are you going, Rickie?" asked Agnes. "You aren't grubby.
Why don't you stop? Gerald, get the large wicker-chair. Herbert
has letters, but we can sit here till lunch. It's like spring."
The garden of Shelthorpe was nearly all in front an unusual and
pleasant arrangement. The front gate and the servants' entrance
were both at the side, and in the remaining space the gardener
had contrived a little lawn where one could sit concealed from
the road by a fence, from the neighbour by a fence, from the
house by a tree, and from the path by a bush.
"This is the lovers' bower," observed Agnes, sitting down on the
bench. Rickie stood by her till the chair arrived.
"Are you smoking before lunch?" asked Mr. Dawes.
"No, thank you. I hardly ever smoke."
"No vices. Aren't you at Cambridge now?"
"Yes."
"What's your college?"
Rickie told him.
"Do you know Carruthers?"
"Rather!"
"I mean A. P. Carruthers, who got his socker blue."
"Rather! He's secretary to the college musical society."
"A. P. Carruthers?"
"Yes."
Mr. Dawes seemed offended. He tapped on his teeth, and remarked
that the weather bad no business to be so warm in winter.
"But it was fiendish before Christmas," said Agnes.
He frowned, and asked, "Do you know a man called Gerrish?"
"No."
"Ah."
"Do you know James?"
"Never heard of him."
"He's my year too. He got a blue for hockey his second term."
"I know nothing about the 'Varsity."
Rickie winced at the abbreviation "'Varsity." It was at that time
the proper thing to speak of "the University."
"I haven't the time," pursued Mr. Dawes.
"No, no," said Rickie politely.
"I had the chance of being an Undergrad, myself, and, by Jove,
I'm thankful I didn't!"
"Why?" asked Agnes, for there was a pause.
"Puts you back in your profession. Men who go there first, before
the Army, start hopelessly behind. The same with the Stock
Exchange or Painting. I know men in both, and they've never
caught up the time they lost in the 'Varsity--unless, of course,
you turn parson."
"I love Cambridge," said she. "All those glorious buildings, and
every one so happy and running in and out of each other's rooms
all day long."
"That might make an Undergrad happy, but I beg leave to state it
wouldn't me. I haven't four years to throw away for the sake of
being called a 'Varsity man and hobnobbing with Lords."
Rickie was prepared to find his old schoolfellow ungrammatical
and bumptious, but he was not prepared to find him peevish.
Athletes, he believed, were simple, straightforward people, cruel
and brutal if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down
and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing. For this,
Rickie thought, there is something to be said: he had escaped the
sin of despising the physically strong--a sin against which the
physically weak must guard. But here was Dawes returning again
and again to the subject of the University, full of transparent
jealousy and petty spite, nagging, nagging, nagging, like a
maiden lady who has not been invited to a tea-party. Rickie
wondered whether, after all, Ansell and the extremists might not
be right, and bodily beauty and strength be signs of the soul's
damnation.
He glanced at Agnes. She was writing down some orderings for the
tradespeople on a piece of paper. Her handsome face was intent on
the work. The bench on which she and Gerald were sitting had no
back, but she sat as straight as a dart. He, though strong enough
to sit straight, did not take the trouble.
"Why don't they talk to each other?" thought Rickie.
"Gerald, give this paper to the cook."
"I can give it to the other slavey, can't I?"
"She'd be dressing."
"Well, there's Herbert."
"He's busy. Oh, you know where the kitchen is. Take it to the
cook."
He disappeared slowly behind the tree.
"What do you think of him?" she immediately asked. He murmured
civilly.
"Has he changed since he was a schoolboy?"
"In a way."
"Do tell me all about him. Why won't you?"
She might have seen a flash of horror pass over Rickie's face.
The horror disappeared, for, thank God, he was now a man, whom
civilization protects. But he and Gerald had met, as it were,
behind the scenes, before our decorous drama opens, and there the
elder boy had done things to him--absurd things, not worth
chronicling separately. An apple-pie bed is nothing; pinches,
kicks, boxed ears, twisted arms, pulled hair, ghosts at night,
inky books, befouled photographs, amount to very little by
themselves. But let them be united and continuous, and you have a
hell that no grown-up devil can devise. Between Rickie and Gerald
there lay a shadow that darkens life more often than we suppose.
The bully and his victim never quite forget their first
relations. They meet in clubs and country houses, and clap one
another on the back; but in both the memory is green of a more
strenuous day, when they were boys together.
He tried to say, "He was the right kind of boy, and I was the
wrong kind." But Cambridge would not let him smooth the situation
over by self-belittlement. If he had been the wrong kind of boy,
Gerald had been a worse kind. He murmured, "We are different,
very," and Miss Pembroke, perhaps suspecting something, asked no
more. But she kept to the subject of Mr. Dawes, humorously
depreciating her lover and discussing him without reverence.
Rickie laughed, but felt uncomfortable. When people were engaged,
he felt that they should be outside criticism. Yet here he was
criticizing. He could not help it. He was dragged in.
"I hope his ankle is better."
"Never was bad. He's always fussing over something."
"He plays next week in a match, I think Herbert says."
"I dare say he does."
"Shall we be going?"
"Pray go if you like. I shall stop at home. I've had enough of
cold feet."
It was all very colourless and odd.
Gerald returned, saying, "I can't stand your cook. What's she
want to ask me questions for? I can't stand talking to servants.
I say, 'If I speak to you, well and good'--and it's another thing
besides if she were pretty."
"Well, I hope our ugly cook will have lunch ready in a minute,"
said Agnes. "We're frightfully unpunctual this morning, and I
daren't say anything, because it was the same yesterday, and if I
complain again they might leave. Poor Rickie must be starved."
"Why, the Silts gave me all these sandwiches and I've never eaten
them. They always stuff one."
"And you thought you'd better, eh?" said Mr. Dawes, "in case you
weren't stuffed here."
Miss Pembroke, who house-kept somewhat economically, looked
annoyed.
The voice of Mr. Pembroke was now heard calling from the house,
"Frederick! Frederick! My dear boy, pardon me. It was an
important letter about the Church Defence, otherwise--. Come in
and see your room."
He was glad to quit the little lawn. He had learnt too much
there. It was dreadful: they did not love each other.
More dreadful even than the case of his father and mother, for
they, until they married, had got on pretty well. But this man
was already rude and brutal and cold: he was still the school
bully who twisted up the arms of little boys, and ran pins into
them at chapel, and struck them in the stomach when they were
swinging on the horizontal bar. Poor Agnes; why ever had she done
it? Ought not somebody to interfere?
He had forgotten his sandwiches, and went back to get them.
Gerald and Agnes were locked in each other's arms.
He only looked for a moment, but the sight burnt into his brain.
The man's grip was the stronger. He had drawn the woman on to his
knee, was pressing her, with all his strength, against him.
Already her hands slipped off him, and she whispered, "Don't you
hurt--" Her face had no expression. It stared at the intruder
and never saw him. Then her lover kissed it, and immediately it
shone with mysterious beauty, like some star.
Rickie limped away without the sandwiches, crimson and afraid. He
thought, "Do such things actually happen?" and he seemed to be
looking down coloured valleys. Brighter they glowed, till gods of
pure flame were born in them, and then he was looking at
pinnacles of virgin snow. While Mr. Pembroke talked, the riot of
fair images increased.
They invaded his being and lit lamps at unsuspected shrines.
Their orchestra commenced in that suburban house, where he had to
stand aside for the maid to carry in the luncheon. Music flowed
past him like a river. He stood at the springs of creation and
heard the primeval monotony. Then an obscure instrument gave out
a little phrase.
The river continued unheeding. The phrase was repeated and a
listener might know it was a fragment of the Tune of tunes.
Nobler instruments accepted it, the clarionet protected, the
brass encouraged, and it rose to the surface to the whisper of
violins. In full unison was Love born, flame of the flame,
flushing the dark river beneath him and the virgin snows above.
His wings were infinite, his youth eternal; the sun was a jewel
on his finger as he passed it in benediction over the world.
Creation, no longer monotonous, acclaimed him, in widening
melody, in brighter radiances. Was Love a column of fire? Was he
a torrent of song? Was he greater than either--the touch of a man
on a woman?
It was the merest accident that Rickie had not been disgusted.
But this he could not know.
Mr. Pembroke, when he called the two dawdlers into lunch, was
aware of a hand on his arm and a voice that murmured, "Don't--
they may be happy."
He stared, and struck the gong. To its music they approached,
priest and high priestess.
"Rickie, can I give these sandwiches to the boot boy?" said the
one. "He would love them."
"The gong! Be quick! The gong!"
"Are you smoking before lunch?" said the other.
But they had got into heaven, and nothing could get them out of
it. Others might think them surly or prosaic. He knew. He could
remember every word they spoke. He would treasure every motion,
every glance of either, and so in time to come, when the gates of
heaven had shut, some faint radiance, some echo of wisdom might
remain with him outside.
As a matter of fact, he saw them very little during his visit. He
checked himself because he was unworthy. What right had he to
pry, even in the spirit, upon their bliss? It was no crime to
have seen them on the lawn. It would be a crime to go to it
again. He tried to keep himself and his thoughts away, not
because he was ascetic, but because they would not like it if
they knew. This behaviour of his suited them admirably. And when
any gracious little thing occurred to them--any little thing that
his sympathy had contrived and allowed--they put it down to
chance or to each other.
So the lovers fall into the background. They are part of the
distant sunrise, and only the mountains speak to them. Rickie
talks to Mr. Pembroke, amidst the unlit valleys of our
over-habitable world.
IV
Sawston School had been founded by a tradesman in the seventeenth
century. It was then a tiny grammar-school in a tiny town, and
the City Company who governed it had to drive half a day through
the woods and heath on the occasion of their annual visit. In the
twentieth century they still drove, but only from the railway
station; and found themselves not in a tiny town, nor yet in a
large one, but amongst innumerable residences, detached and
semi-detached, which had gathered round the school. For the
intentions of the founder had been altered, or at all events
amplified, instead of educating the "poore of my home," he now
educated the upper classes of England. The change had taken place
not so very far back. Till the nineteenth century the
grammar-school was still composed of day scholars from the
neighbourhood. Then two things happened. Firstly, the school's
property rose in value, and it became rich. Secondly, for no
obvious reason, it suddenly emitted a quantity of bishops. The
bishops, like the stars from a Roman candle, were all colours,
and flew in all directions, some high, some low, some to distant
colonies, one into the Church of Rome. But many a father traced
their course in the papers; many a mother wondered whether her
son, if properly ignited, might not burn as bright; many a family
moved to the place where living and education were so cheap,
where day-boys were not looked down upon, and where the orthodox
and the up-to-date were said to be combined. The school doubled
its numbers. It built new class-rooms, laboratories and a
gymnasium. It dropped the prefix "Grammar." It coaxed the sons of
the local tradesmen into a new foundation, the "Commercial
School," built a couple of miles away. And it started
boarding-houses. It had not the gracious antiquity of Eton or
Winchester, nor, on the other hand, had it a conscious policy
like Lancing, Wellington, and other purely modern foundations.
Where tradition served, it clung to them. Where new departures
seemed desirable, they were made. It aimed at producing the
average Englishman, and, to a very great extent, it succeeded.
Here Mr. Pembroke passed his happy and industrious life. His
technical position was that of master to a form low down on the
Modern Side. But his work lay elsewhere. He organized. If no
organization existed, he would create one. If one did exist, he
would modify it. "An organization," he would say, "is after all
not an end in itself. It must contribute to a movement." When one
good custom seemed likely to corrupt the school, he was ready
with another; he believed that without innumerable customs there
was no safety, either for boys or men.
Perhaps he is right, and always will be right. Perhaps each of us
would go to ruin if for one short hour we acted as we thought
fit, and attempted the service of perfect freedom. The school
caps, with their elaborate symbolism, were his; his the
many-tinted bathing-drawers, that showed how far a boy could
swim;
his the hierarchy of jerseys and blazers. It was he who
instituted Bounds, and call, and the two sorts of exercise-paper,
and the three sorts of caning, and "The Sawtonian," a bi-terminal
magazine. His plump finger was in every pie. The dome of his
skull, mild but impressive, shone at every master's meeting. He
was generally acknowledged to be the coming man.
His last achievement had been the organization of the day-boys.
They had been left too much to themselves, and were weak in
esprit de corps; they were apt to regard home, not school, as the
most important thing in their lives. Moreover, they got out of
their parents' hands; they did their preparation any time and
some times anyhow. They shirked games, they were out at all
hours, they ate what they should not, they smoked, they bicycled
on the asphalt. Now all was over. Like boarders, they were to be
in at 7:15 P.M., and were not allowed out after unless with a
written order from their parent or guardian; they, too, must work
at fixed hours in the evening, and before breakfast next morning
from 7 to 8. Games were compulsory. They must not go to parties
in term time. They must keep to bounds. Of course the reform was
not complete. It was impossible to control the dieting, though,
on a printed circular, day-parents were implored to provide
simple food. And it is also believed that some mothers disobeyed
the rule about preparation, and allowed their sons to do all the
work over-night and have a longer sleep in the morning. But the
gulf between day-boys and boarders was considerably lessened, and
grew still narrower when the day-boys too were organized into a
House with house-master and colours of their own. "Through the
House," said Mr. Pembroke, "one learns patriotism for the school,
just as through the school one learns patriotism for the country.
Our only course, therefore, is to organize the day-boys into a
House." The headmaster agreed, as he often did, and the new
community was formed. Mr. Pembroke, to avoid the tongues of
malice, had refused the post of house-master for himself, saying
to Mr. Jackson, who taught the sixth, "You keep too much in the
background. Here is a chance for you." But this was a failure.
Mr. Jackson, a scholar and a student, neither felt nor conveyed
any enthusiasm, and when confronted with his House, would say,
"Well, I don't know what we're all here for. Now I should think
you'd better go home to your mothers." He returned to his
background, and next term Mr. Pembroke was to take his place.
Such were the themes on which Mr. Pembroke discoursed to Rickie's
civil ear. He showed him the school, and the library, and the
subterranean hall where the day-boys might leave their coats and
caps, and where, on festal occasions, they supped. He showed him
Mr. Jackson's pretty house, and whispered, "Were it not for his
brilliant intellect, it would be a case of Ouickmarch!" He showed
him the racquet-court, happily completed, and the chapel,
unhappily still in need of funds. Rickie was impressed, but then
he was impressed by everything. Of course a House of day-boys
seemed a little shadowy after Agnes and Gerald, but he imparted
some reality even to that.
"The racquet-court," said Mr. Pembroke, "is most gratifying. We
never expected to manage it this year. But before the Easter
holidays every boy received a subscription card, and was given to
understand that he must collect thirty shillings. You will
scarcely believe me, but they nearly all responded. Next term
there was a dinner in the great school, and all who had
collected, not thirty shillings, but as much as a pound, were
invited to it--for naturally one was not precise for a few
shillings, the response being the really valuable thing.
Practically the whole school had to come."
"They must enjoy the court tremendously."
"Ah, it isn't used very much. Racquets, as I daresay you know, is
rather an expensive game. Only the wealthier boys play--and I'm
sorry to say that it is not of our wealthier boys that we are
always the proudest. But the point is that no public school can
be called first-class until it has one. They are building them
right and left."
"And now you must finish the chapel?"
"Now we must complete the chapel." He paused reverently, and
said, "And here is a fragment of the original building."
Rickie at once had a rush of sympathy. He, too, looked with
reverence at the morsel of Jacobean brickwork, ruddy and
beautiful amidst the machine-squared stones of the modern apse.
The two men, who had so little in common, were thrilled with
patriotism. They rejoiced that their country was great, noble,
and old.
"Thank God I'm English," said Rickie suddenly.
"Thank Him indeed," said Mr. Pembroke, laying a hand on his back.
"We've been nearly as great as the Greeks, I do believe. Greater,
I'm sure, than the Italians, though they did get closer to
beauty. Greater than the French, though we do take all their
ideas. I can't help thinking that England is immense. English
literature certainly."
Mr. Pembroke removed his hand. He found such patriotism somewhat
craven. Genuine patriotism comes only from the heart. It knows no
parleying with reason. English ladies will declare abroad that
there are no fogs in London, and Mr. Pembroke, though he would
not go to this, was only restrained by the certainty of being
found out. On this occasion he remarked that the Greeks lacked
spiritual insight, and had a low conception of woman.
"As to women--oh! there they were dreadful," said Rickie, leaning
his hand on the chapel. "I realize that more and more. But as to
spiritual insight, I don't quite like to say; and I find Plato
too difficult, but I know men who don't, and I fancy they
mightn't agree with you."
"Far be it from me to disparage Plato. And for philosophy as a
whole I have the greatest respect. But it is the crown of a man's
education, not the foundation. Myself, I read it with the utmost
profit, but I have known endless trouble result from boys who
attempt it too soon, before they were set."
"But if those boys had died first," cried Rickie with sudden
vehemence, "without knowing what there is to know--"
"Or isn't to know!" said Mr. Pembroke sarcastically.
"Or what there isn't to know. Exactly. That's it."
"My dear Rickie, what do you mean? If an old friend may be frank,
you are talking great rubbish." And, with a few well-worn
formulae, he propped up the young man's orthodoxy. The props were
unnecessary. Rickie had his own equilibrium. Neither the
Revivalism that assails a boy at about the age of fifteen, nor
the scepticism that meets him five years later, could sway him
from his allegiance to the church into which he had been born.
But his equilibrium was personal, and the secret of it useless to
others. He desired that each man should find his own.
"What does philosophy do?" the propper continued. "Does it make
a man happier in life? Does it make him die more peacefully? I
fancy that in the long-run Herbert Spencer will get no further
than the rest of us. Ah, Rickie! I wish you could move among the
school boys, and see their healthy contempt for all they cannot
touch!" Here he was going too far, and had to add, "Their
spiritual capacities, of course, are another matter." Then he
remembered the Greeks, and said, "Which proves my original
statement."
Submissive signs, as of one propped, appeared in Rickie's face.
Mr. Pembroke then questioned him about the men who found Plato
not difficult. But here he kept silence, patting the school
chapel gently, and presently the conversation turned to topics
with which they were both more competent to deal.
"Does Agnes take much interest in the school?"
"Not as much as she did. It is the result of her engagement. If
our naughty soldier had not carried her off, she might have made
an ideal schoolmaster's wife. I often chaff him about it, for he
a little despises the intellectual professions. Natural,
perfectly natural. How can a man who faces death feel as we do
towards mensa or tupto?"
"Perfectly true. Absolutely true."
Mr. Pembroke remarked to himself that Frederick was improving.
"If a man shoots straight and hits straight and speaks straight,
if his heart is in the right place, if he has the instincts of a
Christian and a gentleman--then I, at all events, ask no better
husband for my sister."
"How could you get a better?" he cried. "Do you remember the
thing in 'The Clouds'?" And he quoted, as well as he could, from
the invitation of the Dikaios Logos, the description of the
young Athenian, perfect in body, placid in mind, who neglects his
work at the Bar and trains all day among the woods and meadows,
with a garland on his head and a friend to set the pace; the
scent of new leaves is upon them; they rejoice in the freshness
of spring; over their heads the plane-tree whispers to the elm,
perhaps the most glorious invitation to the brainless life that
has ever been given.
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Pembroke, who did not want a brother-in-law
out of Aristophanes. Nor had he got one, for Mr. Dawes would not
have bothered over the garland or noticed the spring, and would
have complained that the friend ran too slowly or too fast.
"And as for her--!" But he could think of no classical parallel
for Agnes. She slipped between examples. A kindly Medea, a
Cleopatra with a sense of duty--these suggested her a little. She
was not born in Greece, but came overseas to it--a dark,
intelligent princess. With all her splendour, there were hints of
splendour still hidden--hints of an older, richer, and more
mysterious land. He smiled at the idea of her being "not there."
Ansell, clever as he was, had made a bad blunder. She had more
reality than any other woman in the world.
Mr. Pembroke looked pleased at this boyish enthusiasm. He was
fond of his sister, though he knew her to be full of faults.
"Yes, I envy her," he said. "She has found a worthy helpmeet for
life's journey, I do believe. And though they chafe at the long
engagement, it is a blessing in disguise. They learn to know each
other thoroughly before contracting more intimate ties."
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