Shelton continued to travel with his college friend, and on Wednesday night, four days after joining company, they reached the village of Dowdenhame. All day long the road had lain through pastureland, with thick green hedges and heavily feathered elms. Once or twice they had broken the monotony by a stretch along the towing-path of a canal, which, choked with water-lily plants and shining weeds, brooded sluggishly beside the fields. Nature, in one of her ironic moods, had cast a grey and iron-hard cloak over all the country's bland luxuriance. From dawn till darkness fell there had been no movement in the steely distant sky; a cold wind ruffed in the hedge-tops, and sent shivers through the branches of the elms. The cattle, dappled, pied, or bay, or white, continued grazing with an air of grumbling at their birthright. In a meadow close to the canal Shelton saw five magpies, and about five o'clock the rain began, a steady, coldly-sneering rain, which Crocker, looking at the sky, declared was going to be over in a minute. But it was not over in a minute; they were soon drenched. Shelton was tired, and it annoyed him very much that his companion, who was also tired, should grow more cheerful. His thoughts kept harping upon Ferrand: “This must be something like what he described to me, tramping on and on when you're dead-beat, until you can cadge up supper and a bed.” And sulkily he kept on ploughing through the mud with glances at the exasperating Crocker, who had skinned one heel and was limping horribly. It suddenly came home to him that life for three quarters of the world meant physical exhaustion every day, without a possibility of alternative, and that as soon as, for some cause beyond control, they failed thus to exhaust themselves, they were reduced to beg or starve. “And then we, who don't know the meaning of the word exhaustion, call them 'idle scamps,'.rdquo; he said aloud.
It was past nine and dark when they reached Dowdenhame. The street yielded no accommodation, and while debating where to go they passed the church, with a square tower, and next to it a house which was certainly the parsonage.
“Suppose,” said Crocker, leaning on his arms upon the gate, “we ask him where to go”; and, without waiting for Shelton's answer, he rang the bell.
The door was opened by the parson, a bloodless and clean-shaven man, whose hollow cheeks and bony hands suggested a perpetual struggle. Ascetically benevolent were his grey eyes; a pale and ghostly smile played on the curves of his thin lips.
“What can I do for you?” he asked. “Inn? yes, there's the Blue Chequers, but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut. They 're early people, I 'm glad to say”; and his eyes seemed to muse over the proper fold for these damp sheep. “Are you Oxford men, by any chance?” he asked, as if that might throw some light upon the matter. “Of Mary's? Really! I'm of Paul's myself. Ladyman—Billington Ladyman; you might remember my youngest brother. I could give you a room here if you could manage without sheets. My housekeeper has two days' holiday; she's foolishly taken the keys.”
Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation in the parson's voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to patronise.
“You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp. I'm very much afraid there 's—er—nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water; hot lemonade is better than nothing.”
Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on to boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes, returned with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers, and some blankets. Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the travellers followed to the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he seemed, from books upon the table, to have been working at his sermon.
“We 're giving you a lot of trouble,” said Shelton, “it's really very good of you.”
“Not at all,” the parson answered; “I'm only grieved the house is empty.”
It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had been passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless lips, although complacent, was pathetic. It was peculiar, that voice of his, seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what was fat and fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money, while all the time his eyes—those watery, ascetic eyes—as plain as speech they said, “Oh, to know what it must be like to have a pound or two to spare just once a year, or so!”
Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries were there, and necessaries not enough. It was bleak and bare; the ceiling cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books—prim, shining books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them—glared in the surrounding barrenness.
“My predecessor,” said the parson, “played rather havoc with the house. The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told. You can, unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have come down so terribly in value! He was a married man—large family!”
Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round his throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers. But there was something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy. It was pure nervousness which made him say:
“Ah! why do they have such families?”
A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who feels bound to show that he is not asleep.
“It's very unfortunate,” murmured the parson, “certainly, in many cases.”
Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the unhappy Crocker snored. Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.
“It seems to me,” said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's eyebrows rising at the sound, “almost what you might call wrong.”
“Dear me, but how can it be wrong?”
Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.
“I don't know,” he said, “only one hears of such a lot of cases—clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who—”
A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had tightened, and his chin receded slightly. “Why, he 's like a mule!” thought Shelton. His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more parroty. Shelton no longer liked his face.
“Perhaps you and I,” the parson said, “would not understand each other on such matters.”
And Shelton felt ashamed.
“I should like to ask you a question in turn, however,” the parson said, as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: “How do you justify marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?”
“I can only tell you what I personally feel.”
“My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her motherhood.”
“I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much repetition. Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen.”
“I 'm afraid,” replied the parson, with impatience, though still keeping on his guest's low ground, “your theories are not calculated to populate the world.”
“Have you ever lived in London?” Shelton asked. “It always makes me feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all.”
“Surely,” said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, “you are leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!”
“There are two ways of looking at that. It depends on what you want your country to become.”
“I did n't know,” said the parson—fanaticism now had crept into his smile—“there could be any doubt on such a subject.”
The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more controversial he naturally became—apart from the merits of this subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.
“I dare say I'm wrong,” he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in which his legs were wrapped; “but it seems to me at least an open question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated as to be quite incapable of supporting itself.”
“Surely,” said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, “you're not a Little Englander?”
On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect. Resisting an impulse to discover what he really was, he answered hastily:
“Of course I'm not!”
The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:
“Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality. It is, if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked.”
But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied with heat:
“Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'. Any opinion which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I believe.”
“Well,” returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton to his will, “I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and unhealthy. The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage.”
Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.
“We live in very dangerous times,” he said, “and it grieves me when a man of your standing panders to these notions.”
“Those,” said Shelton, “whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule of morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch.”
“The rule was never made,” said the parson; “it was given us.”
“Oh!” said Shelton, “I beg your pardon.” He was in danger of forgetting the delicate position he was in. “He wants to ram his notions down my throat,” he thought; and it seemed to him that the parson's face had grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior, his eyes more dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance whatsoever. That which, however, was important was the fact that in nothing could they ever have agreed.
But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that a peculiar whistling arose instead. Both Shelton and the parson looked at him, and the sight sobered them.
“Your friend seems very tired,” said the parson.
Shelton forgot all his annoyance, for his host seemed suddenly pathetic, with those baggy garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly reddened nose that comes from not imbibing quite enough. A kind fellow, after all!
The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed himself before the blackening fire. Whole centuries of authority stood behind him. It was an accident that the mantelpiece was chipped and rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed about the cuffs.
“I don't wish to dictate,” said he, “but where it seems to me that you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays.”
Thoughts of Antonia with her candid eyes, the touch of freckling on her pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in Shelton, and that word—“lax” seemed ridiculous. And the women he was wont to see dragging about the streets of London with two or three small children, Women bent beneath the weight of babies that they could not leave, women going to work with babies still unborn, anaemic-looking women, impecunious mothers in his own class, with twelve or fourteen children, all the victims of the sanctity of marriage, and again the word “lax” seemed to be ridiculous.
“We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,”—muttered Shelton.
“Our wanton wills,” the parson said severely.
“That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the country is more crowded now. I can't see why we should n't decide it for ourselves.”
“Such a view of morality,” said the parson, looking down at Crocker with a ghostly smile, “to me is unintelligible.”
Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.
“What I hate,” said Shelton, “is the way we men decide what women are to bear, and then call them immoral, decadent, or what you will, if they don't fall in with our views.”
“Mr. Shelton,” said the parson, “I think we may safely leave it in the hands of God.”
Shelton was silent.
“The questions of morality,” said the parson promptly, “have always lain through God in the hands of men, not women. We are the reasonable sex.”
Shelton stubbornly replied
“We 're certainly the greater humbugs, if that 's the same.”
“This is too bad,” exclaimed the parson with some heat.
“I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the same views as our grandmothers? We men, by our commercial enterprise, have brought about a different state of things; yet, for the sake of our own comfort, we try to keep women where they were. It's always those men who are most keen about their comfort”—and in his heat the sarcasm of using the word “comfort” in that room was lost on him—“who are so ready to accuse women of deserting the old morality.”
The parson quivered with impatient irony.
“Old morality! new morality!” he said. “These are strange words.”
“Forgive me,” explained Shelton; “we 're talking of working morality, I imagine. There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true morality.”
The eyes of his host contracted.
“I think,” he said—and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in the endeavour to impress his listener—“that any well-educated man who honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly—I say humbly—to claim morality.”
Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked himself. “Here am I,” thought he, “trying to get the last word, like an old woman.”
At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went towards the door.
“Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the wet.” He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms. “They will get out,” he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face, suffused by stooping. And absently he stroked the dripping cat, while a drop of wet ran off his nose. “Poor pussy, poor pussy!” The sound of that “Poor pussy!” like nothing human in its cracked superiority, the softness of that smile, like the smile of gentleness itself, haunted Shelton till he fell asleep.
The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers entered that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men. The spirit hovering above the spires was as different from its concretions in their caps and gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was from church dogmas.
“Shall we go into Grinnings'.” asked Shelton, as they passed the club.
But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel suits were coming out.
“You go,” said Crocker, with a smirk.
Shelton shook his head. Never before had he felt such love for this old city. It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it seemed so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble. Clothed in the calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition, radiant with the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox—secluded, mysteriously calm—a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college porter—large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed—stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude. An image of routine, he looked like one engaged to give a decorous air to multitudes of pecadilloes. His blue eyes rested on the travellers. “I don't know you, sirs, but if you want to speak I shall be glad to hear the observations you may have to make,” they seemed to say.
Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its handle. A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain was fastened stayed immovable. Through this narrow mouth, human metal had been poured for centuries—poured, moulded, given back.
“Come along,” said Shelton.
They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass, thrown by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there, serving Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter. When they had finished, Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty from the table; the old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked in some other arm; the old eagerness to dare and do something heroic—and unlawful; the old sense that he was of the forest set, in the forest college, of the forest country in the finest world. The streets, all grave and mellow in the sunset, seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of his old college—spaciously majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of his universe, the focus of what had gone before it in his life, casting the shadow of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought him a sense of rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety. The garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty water-bottles, failed to rouse him. Nor when they passed the staircase where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate disturbing tutor, did he feel remorse. High on that staircase were the rooms in which he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by which the scholar simmers on the fire of cramming, boils over at the moment of examination, and is extinct for ever after. His coach's face recurred to him, a man with thrusting eyes, who reeled off knowledge all the week, and disappeared to town on Sundays.
They passed their tutor's staircase.
“I wonder if little Turl would remember us?” said Crocker; “I should like to see him. Shall we go and look him up?”
“Little Turl?” said Shelton dreamily.
Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.
“Come in,” said the voice of Sleep itself.
A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat pink chair, as if he had been grown there.
“What do you want?” he asked of them, blinking.
“Don't you know me, sir?”
“God bless me! Crocker, isn't it? I didn't recognise you with a beard.”
Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels, chuckled feebly.
“You remember Shelton, sir?” he said.
“Shelton? Oh yes! How do you do, Shelton? Sit down; take a cigar”; and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them up and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, “Now, after, all you know, why come and wake me up like this?”
Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking, “Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?” And Shelton, who could not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar. The panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains; the soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet; the backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps; the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his little host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge meerschaum pipe, had such a queer resemblance to a moon. The door was opened, and a tall creature, whose eyes were large and brown, whose face was rosy and ironical, entered with a manly stride.
“Oh!” he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air, “am I intruding, Turl?”
The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,
“Not at all, Berryman—take a pew!”
The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with his fine eyes.
Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the newcomer sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.
“Trimmer and Washer are coming round,” he said, and as he spoke the door opened to admit these gentlemen. Of the same height, but different appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly supercilious, as if they tolerated everything. The one whose name was Trimmer had patches of red on his large cheek-bones, and on his cheeks a bluish tint. His lips were rather full, so that he had a likeness to a spider. Washer, who was thin and pale, wore an intellectual smile.
The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.
“Crocker, Shelton,” he said.
An awkward silence followed. Shelton tried to rouse the cultured portion of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated seriously paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the glowing tip of his cigar. It seemed to him unfair to have intruded on these gentlemen without its having been made quite clear to them beforehand who and what he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer had begun to speak.
“Madame Bovary!” he said quizzically, reading the title of the book on the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, “Madame Bovary!”
“Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?” said Berryman.
As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had galvanised him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down a book, opened it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way about the room.
“Ha! Berryman,” said a conciliatory voice behind—it came from Trimmer, who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with either hand a fistful of his gown—“the book's a classic!”
“Classic!” exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes; “the fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such putridity!”
A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at his little host, who, however, merely blinked.
“Berryman only means,” explains Washer, a certain malice in his smile, “that the author is n't one of his particular pets.”
“For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!” growled the little fat man suddenly.
Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down. There was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-mindedness.
“Imagine a man writing that stuff,” he said, “if he'd ever been at Eton! What do we want to know about that sort of thing? A writer should be a sportsman and a gentleman”; and again he looked down over his chin at Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the sentiment.
“Don't you—” began the latter.
But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.
“I really don't care,” said he, “to know what a woman feels when she is going to the dogs; it does n't interest me.”
The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:
“Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more.”
He had stretched his legs like compasses,—and the way he grasped his gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales. His lowering smile embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions. “After all,” he seemed to say, “we are men of the world; we know there 's not very much in anything. This is the modern spirit; why not give it a look in?”
“Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy book?” asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little fat man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, “Nothing pleasanter, don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather.”
Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to dip into his volume and walk up and down.
“I've nothing to say,” he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and looking down, as if at last aware of him, “to those who talk of being justified through Art. I call a spade a spade.”
Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman was addressing him or society at large. And Berryman went on:
“Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a taste for vice? Tell me the point of it. No man who was in the habit of taking baths would choose such a subject.”
“You come to the question of-ah-subjects,” the voice of Trimmer genially buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back—“my dear fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects.”
“For Art,” squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and taking down a third, “you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian; for garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen.”
There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn. With the exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically, they wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider any subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were so profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem impertinent. It may have been some glimmer in this glance of Shelton's that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his compromising air.
“The French,” said he, “have quite a different standard from ourselves in literature, just as they have a different standard in regard to honour. All this is purely artificial.”
What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.
“Honour,” said Washer, “'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful wives—”
He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little fat man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it within two inches of his chin, murmured:
“You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour.”
He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.
Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down a fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as dumb-bells.
“Quite so,” said Trimmer; “the change from duelling to law courts is profoundly—”
Whether he were going to say “significant” or “insignificant,” in Shelton's estimate he did not know himself. Fortunately Berryman broke in:
“Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall punch his head!”
“Come, come!” said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.
Shelton had a gleam of inspiration. “If your wife deceived you,” he thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, “you 'd keep it quiet, and hold it over her.”
Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never wavered; he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an epigram.
The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level with his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of view. His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical. Almost painful was this combination of the “strong” man and the student who was bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.
“As for forgiving faithless wives,” he said, “and all that sort of thing, I don't believe in sentiment.”
The words were high-pitched and sarcastic. Shelton looked hastily around. All their faces were complacent. He grew red, and suddenly remarked, in a soft; clear voice:
“I see!”
He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this sort, and that he never would again. The cold hostility flashing out all round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite, satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men. Crocker rose nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton, following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.
“Who are your unshaven friends?” he heard as the door was closed behind them.
“Eleven o'clock,” said Crocker, as they went out of college. “I don't feel sleepy; shall we stroll along the 'High' a bit?”
Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the dons to heed the soreness of his feet. This, too, was the last day of his travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting at Oxford till July.
“We call this place the heart of knowledge,” he said, passing a great building that presided, white and silent, over darkness; “it seems to me as little that, as Society is the heart of true gentility.”
Crocker's answer was a grunt; he was looking at the stars, calculating possibly in how long he could walk to heaven.
“No,” proceeded Shelton; “we've too much common-sense up here to strain our minds. We know when it's time to stop. We pile up news of Papias and all the verbs in 'ui' but as for news of life or of oneself! Real seekers after knowledge are a different sort. They fight in the dark—no quarter given. We don't grow that sort up here.”
“How jolly the limes smell!” said Crocker.
He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of Shelton by a button of his coat. His eyes, like a dog's, stared wistfully. It seemed as though he wished to speak, but feared to give offence.
“They tell you,” pursued Shelton, “that we learn to be gentlemen up here. We learn that better through one incident that stirs our hearts than we learn it here in all the time we're up.”
“Hum!” muttered Crocker, twisting at the button; “those fellows who seemed the best sorts up here have turned out the best sorts afterwards.”
“I hope not,” said Shelton gloomily; “I was a snob when I was up here. I believed all I was told, anything that made things pleasant; my 'set' were nothing but—”
Crocker smiled in the darkness; he had been too “cranky” to belong to Shelton's “set.”
“You never were much like your 'set,' old chap,” he said.
Shelton turned away, sniffing the perfume of the limes. Images were thronging through his mind. The faces of his old friends strangely mixed with those of people he had lately met—the girl in the train, Ferrand, the lady with the short, round, powdered face, the little barber; others, too, and floating, mysterious,—connected with them all, Antonia's face. The scent of the lime-trees drifted at him with its magic sweetness. From the street behind, the footsteps of the passers-by sounded muffled, yet exact, and on the breeze was borne the strain: “For he's a jolly good fellow!”
“For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fe-ellow! And so say all of us!”
“Ah!” he said, “they were good chaps.”
“I used to think,” said Crocker dreamily, “that some of them had too much side.”
And Shelton laughed.
“The thing sickens me,” said he, “the whole snobbish, selfish business. The place sickens me, lined with cotton-wool-made so beastly comfortable.”
Crocker shook his head.
“It's a splendid old place,” he said, his eyes fastening at last on Shelton's boots. “You know, old chap,” he stammered, “I think you—you ought to take care!”
“Take care? What of?”
Crocker pressed his arm convulsively.
“Don't be waxy, old boy,” he said; “I mean that you seem somehow—to be—to be losing yourself.”
“Losing myself! Finding myself, you mean!”
Crocker did not answer; his face was disappointed. Of what exactly was he thinking? In Shelton's heart there was a bitter pleasure in knowing that his friend was uncomfortable on his account, a sort of contempt, a sort of aching. Crocker broke the silence.
“I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night,” he said; “I feel very fit. Don't you really mean to come any further with me, Bird?”
And there was anxiety in his voice, as though Shelton were in danger of missing something good. The latter's feet had instantly begun to ache and burn.
“No!”? he said; “you know what I'm staying here for.”
Crocker nodded.
“She lives near here. Well, then, I'll say good-bye. I should like to do another ten miles to-night.”
“My dear fellow, you're tired and lame.”
Crocker chuckled.
“No,” he said; “I want to get on. See you in London. Good-bye!” and, gripping Shelton's hand, he turned and limped away.
Shelton called after him: “Don't be an idiot: You 'll only knock yourself up.”
But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's face screwed round towards him in the darkness, and the waving of his stick.
Shelton strolled slowly on; leaning over the bridge, he watched the oily gleam of lamps, on the dark water underneath the trees. He felt relieved, yet sorry. His thoughts were random, curious, half mutinous, half sweet. That afternoon five years ago, when he had walked back from the river with Antonia across the Christchurch meadows, was vivid to his mind; the scent of that afternoon had never died away from him-the aroma of his love. Soon she would be his wife—his wife! The faces of the dons sprang up before him. They had wives, perhaps. Fat, lean, satirical, and compromising—what was it that through diversity they had in common? Cultured intolerance! . . . Honour! . . . A queer subject to discuss. Honour! The honour that made a fuss, and claimed its rights! And Shelton smiled. “As if man's honour suffered when he's injured!” And slowly he walked along the echoing, empty street to his room at the Bishop's Head. Next morning he received the following wire:
Thirty miles left eighteen hours heel bad but goingstrong CROCKER
He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for the end of his probation, and the end seemed long in coming. To be so near Antonia, and as far as if he lived upon another planet, was worse than ever. Each day he took a sculling skiff, and pulled down to near Holm Oaks, on the chance of her being on the river; but the house was two miles off, and the chance but slender. She never came. After spending the afternoons like this he would return, pulling hard against the stream, with a queer feeling of relief, dine heartily, and fall a-dreaming over his cigar. Each morning he awoke in an excited mood, devoured his letter if he had one, and sat down to write to her. These letters of his were the most amazing portion of that fortnight. They were remarkable for failing to express any single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of sentiments which were not what he was truly feeling; and when he set himself to analyse, he had such moments of delirium that he was scared, and shocked, and quite unable to write anything. He made the discovery that no two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel, except, perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect Antonia's ice-blue eyes and brilliant smile. All the world was too engaged in planning decency.
Absorbed by longings, he but vaguely realised the turmoil of Commemoration, which had gathered its hundreds for their annual cure of salmon mayonnaise and cheap champagne. In preparation for his visit to Holm Oaks he shaved his beard and had some clothes sent down from London. With them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which ran as follows:
IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL, FOLKESTONE,
June 20.
MY DEAR SIR,
Forgive me for not having written to you before, but I have been so bothered that I have felt no taste for writing; when I have the time, I have some curious stories to tell you. Once again I have encountered that demon of misfortune which dogs my footsteps. Being occupied all day and nearly all night upon business which brings me a heap of worries and next to no profit, I have no chance to look after my things. Thieves have entered my room, stolen everything, and left me an empty box. I am once again almost without clothes, and know not where to turn to make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of my duties. You see, I am not lucky. Since coming to your country, the sole piece of fortune I have had was to tumble on a man like you. Excuse me for not writing more at this moment. Hoping that you are in good health, and in affectionately pressing your hand,
I am,
Always your devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.
Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a sense of being exploited, of which he was ashamed; he sat down immediately and wrote the following reply:
BISHOPS HEAD HOTEL, OXFORD,
June 25.
MY DEAR FERRAND,
I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes. I was much hoping that you had made a better start. I enclose you Post Office Orders for four pounds. Always glad to hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
RICHARD SHELTON.
He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels who nobly shakes off his responsibilities.
Three days before July he met with one of those disturbing incidents which befall no persons who attend quietly to their property and reputation.
The night was unbearably hot, and he had wandered out with his cigar; a woman came sidling up and spoke to him. He perceived her to be one of those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel sympathy with whom was sentimental. Her face was flushed, her whisper hoarse; she had no attractions but the curves of a tawdry figure. Shelton was repelled by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy face, and by the scent of patchouli. Her touch on his arm startled him, sending a shiver through his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and walked the faster. But her breathing as she followed sounded laboured; it suddenly seemed pitiful that a woman should be panting after him like that.
“The least I can do,” he thought, “is to speak to her.” He stopped, and, with a mixture of hardness and compassion, said, “It 's impossible.”
In spite of her smile, he saw by her disappointed eyes that she accepted the impossibility.
“I 'm sorry,” he said.
She muttered something. Shelton shook his head.
“I 'm sorry,” he said once more. “Good.-night.”
The woman bit her lower lip.
“Good-night,” she answered dully.
At the corner of the street he turned his head. The woman was hurrying uneasily; a policeman coming from behind had caught her by the arm.
His heart began to beat. “Heavens!” he thought, “what shall I do now?” His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it—to act, indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to be concerned in such affairs.
He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from their figures.
“Ask the gentleman! He spoke to me,” she was saying in her brassy voice, through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.
“That's all right,” returned the policeman, “we know all about that.”
“You—police!” cried the woman tearfully; “I 've got to get my living, have n't I, the same as you?”
Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened face, stepped forward. The policeman turned, and at the sight of his pale, heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded. The cold certainty of law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack, seemed to be facing him. And the odd thing was, this man was only carrying out his duty. Shelton moistened his lips.
“You're not going to charge her?”
“Aren't I?” returned the policeman.
“Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake.”
The policeman took out his note-book.
“Oh, I 'm making a mistake? I 'll take your name and address, please; we have to report these things.”
“By all means,” said Shelton, angrily giving it. “I spoke to her first.”
“Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat that,” replied the policeman, with incivility.
Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.
“You had better be careful, constable,” he said; but in the act of uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.
“We 're not to be trifled with,” returned the policeman in a threatening voice.
Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:
“You had better be careful, constable.”
“You're a gentleman,” replied the policeman. “I'm only a policeman. You've got the riches, I've got the power.”
Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.
Shelton turned, and walked away.
He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa. His feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with the policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.
“What ought I to have done?” he thought, “the beggar was within his rights.”
He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged up in him.
“One or other of us,” he reflected, “we make these women what they are. And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't want to; but we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to prowl about the streets, and then we run them in. Ha! that's good—that's excellent! We run them in! And here we sit and carp. But what do we do? Nothing! Our system is the most highly moral known. We get the benefit without soiling even the hem of our phylacteries—the women are the only ones that suffer. And why should n't they—inferior things?”
He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.
“I'll go to the Court,” he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him that the case would get into the local papers. The press would never miss so nice a little bit of scandal—“Gentleman v. Policeman!” And he had a vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and conscientious magistrate, solemnly reading this. Someone, at all events, was bound to see his name and make a point of mentioning it too good to be missed! And suddenly he saw with horror that to help the woman he would have to assert again that he had spoken to her first. “I must go to the Court!” he kept thinking, as if to assure himself that he was not a coward.
He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.
“But I did n't speak to her first,” he told himself; “I shall only be telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!”
He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles, but at the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to telling such a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it appeared to him, indeed, but obvious humanity.
“But why should I suffer?” he thought; “I've done nothing. It's neither reasonable nor just.”
He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of uncertainty. Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's face, with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a nightmare, and forced him to an opposite conviction. He fell asleep at last with the full determination to go and see what happened.
He woke with a sense of odd disturbance. “I can do no good by going,” he thought, remembering, aid lying very still; “they 're certain to believe the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for nothing;” and the combat began again within him, but with far less fury. It was not what other people thought, not even the risk of perjury that mattered (all this he made quite clear)—it was Antonia. It was not fair to her to put himself in such a false position; in fact, not decent.
He breakfasted. In the room were some Americans, and the face of one young girl reminded him a little of Antonia. Fainter and fainter grew the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.
Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-time. He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a daily paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the power which a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of the police—how, since they are the sworn abettors of right and justice, their word is almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one and all they hang together, from mingled interest and esprit de corps. Was it not, he said, reasonable to suppose that amongst thousands of human beings invested with such opportunities there would be found bullies who would take advantage of them, and rise to distinction in the service upon the helplessness of the unfortunate and the cowardice of people with anything to lose? Those who had in their hands the sacred duties of selecting a practically irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom and humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and thoroughness . . . .
However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself at heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest bit of perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.
He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of an unpalatable truth.
In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow. The strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers. There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of his chivalry.