The two old gentlemen walked out of the Common Room, across the quadrangle to the porter's lodge: the Vicar of North Mims, who had been spending a few hours in Oxford and dining in College, wanted to catch the evening train back to North Mims, the College living he had held for the last ten years, and the Sub-Warden wanted to see the last of him.
"The point I make is this," the old Vicar said again, frowning with his bushy eyebrows in the moonlight; "the point I make is this: There would be no trouble at all, if it wasn't for the drinking. If they want meetings, let them have Temperance meetings; and I say that those Socialist fellows from London have absolutely no business meddling in the affairs of my parish. And as for the undergraduates who come out from Oxford to speak"—the Vicar's voice grew more solemnly irate—"as for those undergraduates, they should be punished. It is, I consider, a case in which both college and university authorities should intervene with prompt severity."
They walked on for a little in silence, and then the Sub-Warden said, as he looked at his companion, "Really, Philpotts, you know, you ought to tricycle."
The truth is, that, as they had sat in the Common Room over their port, the Rev. Mr. Philpotts had repeated himself a great many times; and, the Sub-Warden's mind at last beginning to wander, he had said to himself, as he looked at his glass and then at his old friend, "Really, Philpotts is getting very heavy! I used to be heavier, and probably should be now, if it wasn't for tricycling!" And, his mind being full of the thought, he had suddenly said, "Really, Philpotts, you know, you ought to tricycle!"
"What!" said the Vicar, in a voice of slow amazement. "What on earth has tricycling got to do with it?"
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" the Sub-Warden cried, who was the soul of good-nature, "I am so absent-minded. You were speaking of the Radicals; it is certainly shocking."
"Radicals! Pestilent Socialists I call them," and the Vicar's mind, after its jolt, got back into the old groove. "Why, you would hardly believe it, but they had the impertinence to advertise some young ninny as a member of this College, and they actually posted it on the vicarage gate. My wife had to soak it off with a sponge. Now, what I say is—"
But they had arrived in the porch, and the Sub-Warden, telling the Vicar it was late, hurried him out of College, and then turned and walked back to his rooms.
"He certainly is getting heavy," he said to himself. "He has changed very much. These country livings! And if I had only started to ride a little earlier this afternoon, he wouldn't have caught me. Another time when I miss my exercise I mustn't drink port! At my age one begins to feel it."
The Sub-Warden reached his staircase, and, resting one hand on the wall of the building, he turned and looked at the moon. Then he went upstairs, but, instead of sitting down at his table, he went to the window and opened the sash. There was a curious look about the trees and buildings, as if they had been turning round, and had just stopped. It was odd. Poor old Philpotts! What an undergraduate he had been—up to anything! What times they had had! And now he was on his way back to his wife at North Mims! The Sub-Warden sighed; then smiled, and, straightening himself, after a moment's hesitation, he went and put on an old coat, and stole with soft steps out of the College. Perhaps it was the moonlight; perhaps an old memory or two that had come back to him, or the thought of the exercise he had missed; or, again (but this is mere conjecture), the glass or two of College port may have done something to put his mind in a mood for adventure. Anyhow, he got on his tricycle, and started for a ride into the country. He only hoped the Bursar had not seen him; not that there was any reason why he shouldn't ride at night, but the Bursar made up such funny stories about the Sub-Warden and his tricycle rides.
And so he rode lightly along, over the vague roads, barred here and there by the blue shadows of the trees—rode lightly along through the ancient Oxfordshire country; and he laughed in his genial Tory heart as he thought of the Vicar's absurd political panic. No, a ripple of Radical excitement in the towns perhaps, but it would hardly touch the country. The labourers must know who were their real friends and leaders. And yet it was outrageous, he thought, as he began pushing his machine up a hill, it was outrageous that anyone should have such views. But that members of the University should go and speak at their dreadful meetings! The Sub-Warden shook his head and sighed, as he thought of the University—its sad change, its evil state. Could it, indeed, be still called a University? Ah, in the old days, before the Royal Commissions! But when he mounted his machine again at the top of the hill, he forgot these black thoughts, and rode quickly down—indeed, he almost felt himself on wings—into the village he saw below him, an old village, spread out asleep in the moonlight. He went on slow wheels through the blue-shadowed streets; he breathed in the night air, sweet-scented from the village gardens; he felt young in his soul, and would hardly recognize as his own the respectable, fat shadow that wheeled after him across each moon-lit space.
All at once, in the midst of the sleeping village, there appeared in front of him a square red building, with brightly lighted windows. Curious to know what was going on, he rode his machine up to one of the windows, and, looking through the glass, misty from the heat and perspiration within, he saw vague rows of dark figures, and an upright shape moving its arms at the end of the hall. What could it be? Around at the door, whither he wheeled himself, there was a big poster, partly torn, with the word "Temperance" on it, and something else pinned across it. "That's right, that's right!" the Sub-Warden exclaimed, "that's the way to cut the ground from under the Radicals! Philpotts was right; it's a question of drink, not of politics."
And so he got down from his tricycle and went in for a moment. Dazed by the heat and light, he stood still and stared about. The orator also stopped and stared at him. There were bright texts of Scripture and temperance mottoes on the walls; but the Sub-Warden kept gazing at these words, "The Lord is at Hand," hung in large letters over the orator's head. But this orator was Thomas Woolley, his own pupil! Soon it all seemed clear to him. Woolley was known as a Temperance speaker, and here he had come to hold a meeting in a little village. The Sub-Warden applauded, and Woolley began to speak again. But as he gasped a good deal, and stuttered, the Sub-Warden could only catch phrases here and there—cold remnants, they seemed to be, of what must have been written as a fiery peroration. "The down-trodden—I mean the inactive ... the great heart of humanity—and—and—things—.... Now is the time for hand to join in hand, and rush to the banner—I mean, it would be better if you would sign your names."
("That's the pledge-book," the Sub-Warden thought. "Yes, I dare say it's right; you could not preach moderate drinking to labourers.")
"Deliver yourself from the classes—that—that profit by your weakness...."
("That's the public-house keepers," the Sub-Warden reflected. "But why does he call them classes?")
Woolley stared hard at the notes which he gripped in his hand, and then he turned and pointed at a place at the back of the platform, which he called "the Future," and began to speak about a model dwelling, a cow, and a vine and fig-tree; then his voice sank, and he wavered and sat down.
"He expects a good deal from Temperance," the Sub-Warden thought; "what a thing it is to be young!" And he applauded with vigour, such vigour that several rustics in the audience turned and fixed him with their ruminating eyes. Then the Sub-Warden rose (he never spoke in public, but as he had interrupted this meeting!), rose with dignity and internal tremors, and made a few smiling remarks; nothing very definite, for, after all, he was not a total abstainer; just his sympathy with the speech of his young friend, his entire approval of the objects of the meeting, his regret that academic duties held him back from a more active participation in the work.... But if there was anything that he or the College authorities could do to forward the cause—he believed that their College owned land in the neighbourhood—they must not hesitate to call upon him. Then a mild joke, and he sat down and wiped his face.
Certainly his speech was a great success. Woolley stared wildly at him, but the audience applauded with vigour, and, as they were giving three cheers for "the old College gentleman," the Sub-Warden slipped modestly out. It was hot in there, and they might be handing pledge-books about.
The mood in which he rode home was a pleasant one. Really he had never heard applause that was quite so warm, so evidently sincere, so spontaneous. There had been nothing like it when the Warden of St. Mary's had spoken at the Corn Exchange. And Temperance was such a dull subject! It was a bore, of course, for a man who loved his quiet to find he had the power of moving an audience; but still, if the Radicals were working so hard, the other side must come forward.
The Sub-Warden went back into College, and, as he was walking across the quadrangle, he heard a tumult of cheers and cries burst out on the moon-lit stillness of the night. He started—the sounds fitted in so well with his dreams! But, of course, it was a Debating Society; and the window being open, the Sub-Warden went up and listened in his new quality of an amateur. A small young man, with a round face and deep voice, was thumping on a table. "What is the meaning, the outcome of this agitation? It is putting blood into the mouth of a tiger"—(applause)—"and when once the tiger has tasted blood, has tasted property that is not his own, it demands more, and it will have it! Yes, sir," he said, turning with a fierce look at the good-natured president of the society, "mark my words, when the poor have divided, like the tiger, everything there is to be divided; when there is nothing left to feed their rage, then, sir, they will turn and rend themselves—like the tiger!"
Great shouts of applause roared through the window, and the bald-headed old gentleman listening outside smiled an indulgent smile. But as the speaker went on, denouncing more definitely the Radical agitators, and even Woolley, by name, the smile faded from the Sub-Warden's face. It must have been a Temperance meeting; and yet—and yet—"Temperance" had been printed on the poster—but hadn't there been something pinned over that, something which he hadn't read? The Sub-Warden looked about. He could see one or two towers against the faint sky, and near each College tower was a Common Room, and in each Common Room the Fellows sat after dinner, telling stories. But suppose he had really spoken at a meeting which—which wasn't a Temperance meeting, and the Bursar should hear of it!
The Sub-Warden lurked about in the quadrangle, holding his hat in his hand, and spying out for Woolley. He came at last.
"Good evening, Woolley," he said, "you have come from the Temperance meeting?"
"Oh, sir, it wasn't a Temperance meeting, that was the night before!"
"Oh!" said the Sub-Warden, coldly.
"No, sir, it was a different meeting; in fact, the Radical League. I was so afraid—"
"What! Then it was very wrong of you, Woolley, to give me to understand it was a Temperance meeting."
"Oh, please, sir—"
"Don't try to explain it, it admits of no explanation," the Sub-Warden said severely. "I should be sorry to get you into trouble, Woolley, but if this should get to be known, I couldn't answer for the consequences. I shall take no steps personally to make it known, and I should advise you to mention it to no one—to no one at all, do you understand? It's—it's nothing to be proud of."
He walked indignantly away; and, indeed, for the moment his words had made him feel really indignant. But when, on turning a corner, he glanced back and saw the honest Woolley still standing there, he hesitated. Should he return and explain? He took a step back, then he thought of the Bursar, and, with a sudden, sinking fear he went quickly to his room.
"I wish they hadn't asked me," said Matthew Craik, the Logic tutor of St. Mary's, as he looked down at the party in the old secluded College garden. "I wonder," he added, glancing at the reflection of his red tie in the glass, his new tie, his black coat, his young and scholarly face, "I wonder—but no, it isn't too red; they wear them red," he continued, with attempted cheerfulness. "No—," but hearing the laughter of ladies below his window, he scuttled back hastily.
His rooms were high up in the garden tower, almost up amongst the topmost boughs of the College elms; and when, after a moment, he returned to his window and peered down, he could see, through the green of the trees, the white and pink of ladies' dresses, dappling the lawn, and moving and meeting on the College paths. Among the summer leaves the summer wind was breathing; now and then it blew in at the window, laden with scents from the garden, and the happy stir and hum of human voices; and Matthew Craik, or the Corn-Craik, as the undergraduates called him, felt his heart beating high with an unwonted emotion of youth and excitement.
The early philosophers of Asia Minor were very remarkable and suggestive men; but they had lived a long while ago, and now that he had finished and published his book about them, he meant to enjoy himself a little. And what shallow wisdom it was, moreover, to live in the almost solitary way he had been living all the winter. All the winter! All his life really; wasting his youth among books, and almost shut out from everything that is light and amiable in experience. Why, the greenest of his undergraduate pupils might easily know more of modern life than he did.
"Oh, don't harp so on modern life!" his friend Ranken, the junior Dean of St. Thomas', often said to him in his acrid way. "Do for pity's sake leave it alone and stick to your Asia Minor."
But then Ranken was absurdly cynical. Craik recalled with amusement some of the remarks he had made during the winter, when they walked out together for their Sunday walks; remembering how, as they returned in the dusk through the red fringe of villas between Oxford and the country, Ranken had sometimes paused opposite an uncurtained window, and made merry, with bitter merriment, over the domestic picture they saw in the golden light within,—a family at tea very likely, or an academic parent romping with his children. Craik had always listened in uncontradicting silence; only, standing in the chill gray of the twilight, he would draw his coat about him more tightly; and afterwards, alone in his rooms, these visions would sometimes haunt him, and not unpleasantly.
As he looked down now, it was agreeable to him to see so many ladies in the old garden; he had never quite believed that Ranken had very authentic grounds for his narrow prejudice. For Ranken would have liked to shut ladies out of Oxford altogether; and would have liked to keep it a tranquil home of learning and celibacy, as it used to be before the Royal Commission had granted the Fellows the liberty of marrying. For this unblest liberty, he maintained, had filled the University with frivolity and ladies, and so destroyed the old character of the place that now, as was notorious, the whole of the Summer Term, with a good part of the rest of the academic year, was given over to dances, and picnics, and parties, and other silly and deteriorating trifles. Craik had not been able to contradict his friend, for hitherto the sounds and echoes of this social dissipation had hardly reached his retired corner, save as he had heard them reverberating through the gloomy caverns of Ranken's imagination. But he could not quite believe—here Craik began to laugh, for his eye at that moment was caught by the gargoyle just above him, which was also leaning over and looking into the sunshiny garden. For hundreds of years it had sat there making faces, but now its visage seemed more than ever twisted with a look of Gothic cynicism. As Craik lingered, looking out, himself almost like a second gargoyle, he thought he could see in the garden below two ladies of his acquaintance, Mrs. Cotton and Mrs. Trotter. How ridiculous Ranken was in his views! almost as grotesque as the gargoyle. Craik took his hat and stick, and started downstairs. He would see for himself.
It was very worldly and very brilliant in the garden. Beside a crowd of ladies and young men, three Professors and two Heads of Houses had already arrived, and others were expected.
Mr. White, Mr. Long, and Mr. Maple Fetters, the young unmarried Fellows who were giving the party, kept glancing toward the gateway, over the shoulders of their arriving guests—all smiles, however, as they greeted their friends with apposite remarks. On tables under the trees white cloths were spread, looking almost blue in the vivid green, and on them were plates of red strawberries, ancient silver bowls of sugar, and dewy jugs of lemonade. Sounds of discreet gaiety, voices and laughter, and the tinkling of glasses, quickened the sleepy silence of the garden; while from beneath a high and fleecy cloud the rays of the westering sun brightened the tree-tops and walls, lingered on the ladies' dresses, and streaked with blue shadows the old green lawn. It put Craik in mind of old coloured French pictures he had seen, or the courtly fêtes he had read of; he thought, too, of the garden party in "Love's Cottage," a pretty novel he had looked at lately, the party where Miss Molyneux first meets Pastorel the poet.
He kept smiling as he moved about, but he really felt rather shy and alien; if he only knew more people, and could be seen laughing and talking and moving his hands, like the other young men!
He came across one of his pupils at last, and began to speak to him of the recent boat-races in an animated way. But the undergraduate moved off suddenly, with a hasty excuse, to join some ladies who had just arrived, and Craik heard himself observing to a bush that "Brazenose had rowed very well." The observation, he felt, was not brilliant, even for conversation with a freshman; but as a fragment of soliloquy! He looked round; no one could have overheard him? Soon he met his friend, Mrs. Cotton, the wife of Professor Cotton, and he begged to be allowed to get her an ice, or some other refreshment. The pink ice and biscuit were inadequate, it struck him, as he carried them with care toward the large presence of Mrs. Cotton; but was not this inadequacy, after all, of a piece with the delicious and conventional unreality of an affair like this? He noticed a brilliant purple feather conspicuously waving from the top of Mrs. Cotton's bonnet, and was glad that everything was so bright. How pleasant it was on a summer day, how pleasant and harmless to play brilliantly at life! And, he thought with a smile, did not old Aristotle himself place Magnificence high among the virtues?
But Maple Fetters still had his anxious eye-glass fixed on the garden entrance.
"Miss Lamb—has Miss Lamb come?" Craik heard voices murmuring about him.
"No, not yet, but she's coming. Just heard Maple Fetters telling some one."
"Long says he can't understand it. In her note she said—"
"So quiet, so different!"
"They say in London—"
"Oh, yes; and here everybody, Professors, Heads of Houses. It's too amusing—"
"Well, she says she wants to study all the types."
"Ah, look, there she comes!"
Craik turned with the others, and saw Miss Lamb coming in through the Gothic archway. Her face was shaded with a large white hat, and her white dress, falling in long plain lines to her feet, brightened with the sun as she walked over the grass, out of the shadow of the building.
Long and Maple Fetters started forward, and escorted Miss Lamb and her aunt across the lawn. They drew near to Craik and Mrs. Cotton.
"Oh, there is Mrs. Cotton," Miss Lamb exclaimed, and turned towards them. "Dear Mrs. Cotton," she said, "I was so hoping I should see you here!"
Craik looked at Miss Lamb. She rested her eyes on him for a second, then pressing Mrs. Cotton's hand, she stooped down with a graceful impulse and kissed the fat old thing. Craik overheard Mrs. Lyon, the wife of the president of All Saints, talking to the Warden of St. Simon's.
"Dear Miss Lamb!" she said in a deep and sentimental voice; "she is just as nice to women as she is to men."
"She is much nicer, surely," the ancient Warden replied with a cackling laugh; "she never kissed me!"
Miss Lamb had disappeared. And Mrs. Cotton was busy discussing with philanthropic friends the affairs of Oxford charities.
"These Oxford parties are so nice," she said to Craik, as she turned her benevolent spectacles away from him; "they save one writing such heaps of notes."
Again Craik walked about alone, smiling and conspicuous; and although he tried to think that he was enjoying himself, he really wished very much to be up in his tower again, up there in its pleasant green shade and solitude. That, after all, was his place, the only place he was fit for; and he had better stick to it, and stick to his books, and not cast again the gloom of his presence on the social enjoyment of other more fortunate people. For he could not talk agreeably, and laugh and be gay; and, even if he could, which of the ladies who swept so prettily past him on the grass would ever care to listen to him? Thus resignedly musing, he retreated into the near shade of a laburnum tree, and, ceasing to smile in his fixed and weary way, he watched through the flowering branches the shining colours and placid agitation of the garden party. All the men except himself were moving among the groups of ladies, weaving darker threads into the brilliant pattern. Young Cobbe he saw, the captain of the College boat club, walking with Miss Lamb, walking and talking pleasantly, and he sighed; for although he was Cobbe's tutor, and well versed in his stupidity, he could not help envying the easy manners of the undergraduate.
But the half-real picture ceased to be a mere picture to him, and the sequence of images grew almost too vivid, when he noticed that Miss Lamb and her companion were coming directly to his tree. Could he manage to slip away without being seen? She was coming probably to pick a spray of the yellow flower to put in her white dress, or carry away perhaps as a memory of the party. And if he were found standing there like a policeman, it would be so awkward.
Miss Lamb fortunately met Maple Fetters, and, stopping herself, seemed to be sending him on to the tree alone. When he reached it, he pushed aside the branches and said, with a smile, "I say, Craik, I want to introduce you to Miss Lamb."
"Me?"
"Yes, you. We saw you here; she wants to meet you."
"Wants to meetme?"
"Yes,you. Come along."
Craik came out from beneath the tree.
"Miss Lamb—does she live in Oxford?"
"You don't mean to tell me you've never heard of Miss Lamb?" Fetters paused in astonishment. "You must be the only man in Oxford then who has not. Miss Lamb is an American!"
"An American?" Craik had heard that American ladies were so brilliant.
"Miss Lamb, let me introduce Mr. Craik, our philosopher."
"Mr. Craik, I am glad to meet you."
Craik bowed; then he saw that Miss Lamb had put out her hand; he tried to take it, but was too late. The American young lady however smiled, and put out her hand again, and gave it to him frankly, almost as if it were a present.
"We ought to shake hands, oughtn't we? It's the English way, isn't it?"
Craik stifled a guffaw, and his awkward sensations began to go.
"Mr. Cobbe, would you mind getting me an ice?"
Cobbe's face wore an odd expression as he bowed and disappeared. Maple Fetters fluttered off to other occupations. Craik and Miss Lamb were left alone, and they began to walk with vague steps, and, on the lady's part, vague, unfinished scraps of conversation, through the sunshine along the garden path. Then stopping, and resting her hands on her parasol, she said, as if they were old friends already, "I wonder—would you take me into your old College cloisters? I have heard so much about them, and it wouldn't be wrong for us to run away from the party for just a few minutes? I should so love to! You won't mind?"
"Oh dear, no!" Craik exclaimed. "Certainly we can go. It's through the quadrangle. But Mr. Cobbe, will he find you?"
"Oh, he'll know where I am; and if he doesn't it's no matter. Come!"
They went under the garden tower, and through the little old quadrangle, into the entrance of the cloisters. Of the history and traditions of the place, and of the whole College, Craik spoke almost with eloquence, while Miss Lamb listened with murmurs and interruptions of enthusiastic interest. The cloisters, as he explained, were once the cloisters of a monastery; the tower was the monastery tower; and the bell that hung there, and twice a day rang the College into chapel, was the bell that once sounded for the matins and vespers of the monks.
"What! monks? Did monks really once live here? Oh, how I should have liked to have seen it then!"
"Ah, but you couldn't, you know. They never allowed ladies inside the gates."
"How silly!"
"Yes," Craik said, smiling, "wasn't it silly?"
They walked with slow steps around the shadowed cloisters, and Miss Lamb talked idly of the party. It was such a pretty party, so amusing. Did he often go to garden parties? No! How odd! She did—to ever so many, in America, in London, and now in Oxford. The Oxford parties were the best though. Then suddenly she cried in a changed voice, "But how frivolous I am, Mr. Craik! I can see that you are quite shocked."
"Shocked! oh no, not at all."
"Well, then, you ought to be! Imagine being so frivolous in a solemn place like this. Tell me, you study philosophy, don't you? It must be splendid; I do envy you so! When I am in a place like Oxford I feel so frivolous, somehow, and ignorant. Why, I feel afraid—" Then after a moment's charming hesitation, "Yes, quite afraid to talk to clever people. You mustn't mind what I say, will you?"
"But I'm not clever!" he exclaimed. "Why—"
"Oh, but Mr. Craik! Why, you've written a book!"
"But that's nothing. And it's only a sort of study, nothing really."
"I wish I could read it."
"Oh no! don't try; it's a stupid thing, only meant for students."
Miss Lamb paused, and, turning her eyes to Craik with a look full of reproach, she said: "Ah! you are like the others, you don't think I am serious; you think I would not understand it!"
"Oh no, not that!" Craik urged in quick distress. "You would understand it, of course, what there is to understand. I only meant," he stammered, "I only meant that it was not well written, not interesting—not really worth reading, I mean."
"Oh, I'm sure it is worth reading, and I hear it's so clever. It is about Asia Minor, isn't it. Asia Minor is so interesting; I wish you would tell me something about it, and about your work. Do you like it here? Of course you do. Have you been in Oxford long?"
For a third time they passed round the cloister square, loitering with slow footsteps, through the old arches and past the epitaphs of the ancient celibate Fellows, and Craik, talking with an unreserve that was intimate and sudden, and yet somehow seemed quite natural to him, told about his work, and the writing of his book. Then, in answer to a question of Miss Lamb's, he described his quiet bringing up in an obsolete old town where his parents were tradespeople; his early schooling, how he had come to Oxford on a scholarship, and how he had stayed there ever since, living in the same College, his parents having died, and the Logic tutorship being offered to him just when he had taken his degree. So he seemed to have lived a long while there, in that sleepy old College, within its high walls and buildings: as an undergraduate first, busy and almost solitary, save for a few friends similar to himself; then as a tutor, still more busy with his work, and still more solitary; and above all, during the last few years, when all his thought and leisure had been given to his book on Ionic philosophers. How many years was it altogether? Eight; no, ten. And then, as she seemed to be really interested, he gave a sketch, half humorous and half serious, of his life in College, his amusements, his walks with Ranken. A bare, monastic life it seemed to himself when he came to describe it. So little to tell of in so many years; and how long ago it seemed!
"But dear me!" Craik exclaimed at last, with a blush, "I don't think I have ever talked so much of myself before. It sounds rather dull, I'm afraid."
Miss Lamb stopped for a moment.
"Dull, Mr. Craik," she cried, "oh no, I think it is noble! To have achieved so much already. You don't know how I have been interested! Only it is so—I mean it makes me seem so—so—. I suppose you hate women."
"Oh no—no!"
"I mean look down on them, despise them."
"No! why I—"
"I'm afraid you really do, only you're too polite to say so. You don't think, do you, that they could understand philosophy?"
"Of course they could, quite as well as we do, if they would only try."
"Do you think it would be any use my trying? Really, do you really? I should so love to, if it would be of any use. You know, I have always wanted to understand about it, and there is hardly anyone in the world I admire so much as the philosophers. They are the real leaders of the world—Socrates, and Emerson, and Herbert Spencer. And a frivolous life like mine seems sometimes so—; But then people will never believe I am in earnest, and they all make fun of me and discourage me so. Perhaps they are right; but I have never had any one to help me."
"Oh, I am sure they are wrong!" Craik cried. "If you would only try. Do you think I could—could help you?"
"Oh, you are too kind! And perhaps, if you wouldn't mind coming to see me some afternoon to talk to me about it. And maybe you would bring your book; I should so love to see it! And then if you would let me look at one or two of your lectures, those you have for just the stupidest of your pupils. No! don't tell me I'm not stupid, for I am, I assure you. And I have no right to ask you to come; you are so busy."
"Oh, but I should be only too delighted! If I may; if you don't think I should be a—with ladies, you know, I am always so afraid of being a bore."
She smiled at him.
"Ah, you do yourself injustice, Mr. Craik. Indeed you do! But come," she added suddenly, "we must be going back to the garden. How I hate to leave this dear old cloister!"
"Must we really go?"
"Yes, we really must. Isn't it horrid, when you have had such an interesting talk, to have to go back and say stupid and silly things to stupid and silly people?"
They left the cloisters and, crossing the quadrangle, they stopped for a moment, and looked at the blue picture set in an archway of grey walls, the blue picture of the afternoon light and air in the depth and distance of the garden.
"How pretty! It's like,—what is it like?"
"Like standing in the past, and looking into the present?" Craik romantically suggested.
"Yes, it's like that. But I mean the people, the way they look so far off and blue, as if they were under water. There's something else it reminds me of."
"A tank at an aquarium, when you look through the plate glass?"
"Yes, itislike that, really!"
"With Professors and Heads of Houses swimming about like old fat carp."
"Oh, Mr. Craik, how can you? For shame!"
She paused again when she got through the archway.
"Tell me, Mr. Craik," she said, "is this the tower you live in? And the gargoyle you told me about? I should so like to see him. He must be charming. That face up there, peering over the roof? Oh yes, I see. How too delightful! My! isn't that quaint? Just think, he looks back on the past, and on the present, and on the town; and it symbolizes—symbolizes—Life, doesn't it?"
"Yes,—perhaps it does," Craik said rather dubiously.
"He hasn't exactly a kind expression," said Miss Lamb, looking up again.
"No," Craik answered, looking up himself and laughing. "That's his way. Then to-day he's shocked at seeing so many ladies here. He doesn't like ladies, you know."
"How horrid of him! Why, what harm can we do here?"
"Harm! Why, Miss Lamb," Craik said with quaint politeness, "your visits are our greatest blessings!"
Craik knew the old garden well, he thought, and he had certainly been in it in all weathers. But to-day it came over him that he had never seen the place before looking so oddly green and shining. Certainly, when he and Ranken had walked there—poor Ranken! Craik smiled a little.
"What are you smiling at?" Miss Lamb asked.
"Smiling?" Craik said in embarrassment. "Why, was I smiling?"
"Certainly you were. It is strange, really it is, how much you are like a friend of mine in America. The way you smile reminds me so much of him. Really it is quite funny, the resemblance. But perhaps you don't like to be told you look like other people?"
"Oh yes, I do." Then he added, after a pause, with desperate and awkward courage, "if they are friends of yours."
Miss Lamb did not seem to notice either his compliment or his blush.
"How odd you should know Mr. Ranken," she said musingly. "I've not seen him lately. Is he as sentimental as ever?"
"Ranken of St. Thomas'! Why, he's not sentimental. It must be someone else."
"He used to be then; I'm sure it is Mr. Ranken of St. Thomas'. I met him last summer at Dieppe. We went on picnics. But, Mr. Craik," she added, laughing, "really this garden is like Paradise! The undergraduates must fancy they have got back into the Garden of Eden."
"Indeed you would think so," said Craik, "from the way they avoid the tree of knowledge! They are so much cleverer than Adam."
They were in the midst of the party now, and Craik was proud, though somewhat embarrassed, with the attention they attracted, and Mrs. Cotton's smiles of obvious encouragement. Indeed he was almost glad when Cobbe joined them and, planting himself in front of Miss Lamb, exclaimed, "Well, Miss Lamb, well! Here I've been waiting half-an-hour with this ice, it's melted into soup."
"I'm so sorry," Miss Lamb cried. "Come, let's get another." Then she turned her eyes to Craik and said, giving him her hand in her friendly manner, "Good-bye, Mr. Craik, good-bye; you won't forget? To-morrow, isn't it?"
Craik took off his hat; wiped his forehead; tried to get rid of some of the dust on his boots, and then he rang the bell.
"Is Miss Lamb at home?"
"Yes, sir; Miss Lamb is in the garden."
Entering, Craik saw a number of hats and sticks in the hall. Miss Lamb, he thought, must have several brothers. He put down his stick, and the book with it, after a moment's hesitation; that was better, he would leave it there and would come and fetch it when the conversation turned that way. Then, buttoning up his black coat over the lecture notes that filled his pocket, he followed the servant through the house out into the little garden. It was full of strong sunlight, and there were several undergraduates there. One was up in a tree; Cobbe lay in a hammock smoking, and another of Craik's pupils lay on the grass at Miss Lamb's feet, rolling lemons. He stopped for a moment.
"Oh Mr. Corn—Mr. Craik, I mean," Miss Lamb called out in a friendly voice, "I am so glad to see you."
Craik advanced with an awkward smile, and Miss Lamb reached out her right hand most cordially. In her left hand she held a lemon-squeezer.
"How good of you to come! And isn't it hot? Exactly like America, I've been saying. We've just come out into the garden without our hats. Won't you sit down on that rug, if you don't mind? Oh, I nearly forgot; let me introduce you to my aunt, Mrs. Stacey. I guess you know everybody else."
Craik shook hands with a lady who was sitting and knitting in an arbour, nodded to the undergraduates, and then settled down on a rug in the sunshine. How he wished that he had not decided at the last moment to wear a tall hat and a long coat! The undergraduates were all in flannels.
Miss Lamb spoke of the garden party.
"Your lovely college! It istooideal; it is like a dream. And the cloisters too! You don't know how solemn it made me feel. Now, you needn't laugh, Mr. Cobbe, I really did feel solemn—more solemn, I guess, than you have ever been. Gracious, itishot!" she added, with a sudden change of subject. "Mr. Craik, let me give you some of this lemon squash; I made it myself."
"Thanks! I shall be most pleased to have some." Craik's voice seemed to himself to be formal, and his phrase pedantic.
"Oh, but what was I saying?" Miss Lamb went on, looking at the company generally.
"You were telling us how solemn you were," Cobbe suggested. "Wasn't it rather a new experience?"
"Now, Mr. Cobbe, what a horrid thing to say," she replied, with great good-nature. "You're his tutor, Mr. Craik, aren't you? Well, next time you have a chance, I hope you'll set him some real horrid work to do. I'm sure he needs it."
Miss Lamb said this casually, with a pleasant laugh, as she fanned herself. No one answered; Craik, and even Cobbe coloured, and the undergraduate in the tree suppressed a titter.
But Mrs. Stacey at this moment asked by happy chance some question of Craik, addressing him as "Professor Craik," in her high American voice, and he hastened to answer her with effusion.
"Oh, I say," one of the undergraduates exclaimed, "that was a splendid score of yours, Miss Lamb, off the Warden. Perhaps you've not heard it, Mr. Craik, the joke about the Garden of Eden?" he said, turning to Craik, who had come to an end of his conversation with Mrs. Stacey. "The Warden was showing Miss Lamb the garden, when she said to him, 'Why it is like the Garden of Eden here, Mr. Warden; only I suppose you are wiser than Adam, and don't disturb the Tree of Knowledge.'"
"My dear," Mrs. Stacey cried, "you didn't really speak so to the sweet old Warden?"
"But, I say," Cobbe exclaimed, "how's this, Miss Lamb? Long and Maple Fetters tell that story as having been got off them, and they seemed to think that they rather scored off you."
"They didn't a bit; they were only silly!"
"Then you did get it off on them?"
"No, I didn't."
"Oh, now, that explains," another undergraduate interposed, "that explains the story Mrs. Cotton was trying to tell. It seemed, as she told it, to have no point at all. 'Mr. Warden,' she made you say, 'Mr. Warden, you have a lovely garden here, but I am told you never pick the fruit.' 'The Warden, you know, is so particular about his figs,' Mrs. Cotton added, 'it is quite a joke with all the Fellows.'"
Miss Lamb was silent. After a little while, however, when a few other anecdotes of Mrs. Cotton had been told, and they came to the well-known story of that lady and the cow in St. Giles's, she began to smile, and before long was quite consumed with merriment, for a siphon of soda-water, fizzing off by mistake in the hands of one of the undergraduates, had sprinkled itself over Cobbe.
"You did that on purpose, Galpin, I know you did," he cried, jumping out of the hammock and shaking himself.
"Oh, no, he didn't!" Miss Lamb said, shaking with laughter. "Indeed, I'm sure he wouldn't for worlds!"
Her attention was then taken by the youth up in the tree, who had been throwing down leaves and bits of sticks on the heads of the party below. A piece of bark falling into the jug of lemon squash, Miss Lamb feigned great wrath and indignation.
"I wanted to give Mr. Craik some more; but oh, you haven't drunk what you have! Isn't it sweet enough for you?"
"It is just right, thank you," he said, and he took up the glass, tepid now from standing in the sun, and was just going to drink it, when the young lady cried: "Oh, wait a moment, please; there's a poor little insect tumbled into it. Dear little thing! Do take it out—oh, be careful! I can't bear to see anything suffer."
Craik fished the insect out of the lemonade with a blade of grass, and Miss Lamb, putting it down on the ground, poked it tenderly in aid of its moist attempts to crawl away. Ultimately Craik rose from his uncomfortable posture on the ground. It was a long while, it seemed to him, that he had been sitting there, smiling and solemn in the sunshine, and casting about in his mind for an excuse to go; while the others he envied so—the youth perched up in the tree, Miss Lamb fanning herself and squeezing lemons, Cobbe smoking and slowly swinging in the hammock, laughed and lazily talked, as if their life was one afternoon of endless Arcadian leisure. But Craik had a morbid sense that his shadow, which he glanced at now and then, had been growing, almost as if he were swelling, he and his top hat, and casting a larger shade on the little garden.
"Well, I must be going! We college tutors, you know," he said, feeling pretty stiff in body and mind, but attempting nevertheless a little jauntiness of air.
"Oh, but, Mr. Craik, you mustn't go now!" Miss Lamb cried, "really you mustn't. Why, we're all going up the river to have late tea at Godstow, and come home by moonlight; and I'm going to take my banjo. I hoped you would come with us!"
"I'm sorry, but I must be back."
"Well, I'm really sorry, too; I am, indeed. You must come again." She held his hand in hers for a second, and there was something appealing in her manner. "Now you will come again, won't you? It's—it's rather hot just to-day for philosophy, isn't it?" she added, her face brightening with a friendly and apologetic smile.
Craik found his hat and stick, but not his book, in the hall.
"I've left a book here," he said to the maid.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, I thought it was for Miss Lamb, so I put it on the shelf where she puts the other university gentlemen's books that they sends. I'll go and bring it, sir."
"Is this it?" she called from a neighbouring room—"'Elements of Pishcology?'"
"No," said Craik, hurriedly; "it's about Asia Minor. 'Life and Thought in—'"
"'In Hearly Asia Minor,' sir?"
"Yes, that's mine," Craik answered, in a voice that was not without a touch of melancholy.
As Vaughan was walking towards the underground station one of those bleak mornings last winter, he saw, coming the same way, a man who had been at College in his time—one Buller by name; and Buller, when he caught sight of Vaughan, began to smile, but when they met, he exclaimed, in a mock mournful voice, "I say, have you heard about poor Crabbe?"
"You mean his political speech, when his spectacles were smashed, and he had to take to the woods?" asked Vaughan, beating his hands and stamping, for the cold was bitter.
"Oh no, that's ancient. I mean"—and Buller's voice broke with laughter—"I mean his engagement!"
"Crabbe! oh, nonsense!"
"Gospel fact, I'll take my oath on it. Fancy Crabbe!" and again his laughter froze into white puffs of breath about his head. They went into the station together, and bought their tickets. Crabbe engaged! Vaughan tried to picture him as an accepted lover. Poor Crabbe! They had all hoped that his Fellowship and his work on the metres of Catullus would keep him out of mischief. But they might have known—those prize fellows, with so much time on their hands; and Crabbe above all, with his fixed idea that he was cut out for a man of action!
"But tell me about Crabbe," Vaughan said, as they waited on the platform; "have you seen him?"
"Oh yes. The other day I ran up to have a look at the 'Torpid.' It's all right now."
"The Torpid?"
"No; I mean about Crabbe."
"You think it's a good match, then?"
"Good match! No, I mean that I went and talked to him myself."
"And he was engaged?"
"Hewas," said Buller, laughing; "poor old beast!" The train drew in, and when they had taken their seats, Buller leaned over, and, with a low voice, went on telling his story in Vaughan's ear. "You see, I went up to Oxford, and down at the barge Blunt tells me about old Crabbe; and when I go into College the first person I meet is the Dean, looking as chirpy as ever. How those old parsons do keep it up!
"'Well, sir,' says I, 'and what do you think of Crabbe's engagement?'
"'Perfect rot,' says the Dean. 'The girl had no money; how were they going to live? Crabbe would have to chuck his Catullus—everything.'
"'How did it happen?' I asked. 'Crabbe never used to be sweet on the ladies.' 'No; but in reading Catullus, Crabbe had got some ideas,' the Dean said, with a kind of wink."
Here Vaughan could not help interrupting the story. "Come, Buller," he whispered, "it must have been Blunt who said that. The old Dean couldn't talk in that way."
But Buller felt sure it was the Dean. "You see, you don't know the old boy; he's quite another person with me. Anyhow, that's the way Crabbe got into it. And he went on, the Dean said, to read all sorts of other poetry, especially that man—what you may call him? They had a society—"
"Browning?"
"Yes, that's the man. Well, Crabbe thought it all very fine and exciting, the Dean said; he used to read them Browning in the Common Room, and there was one thing he seemed specially taken with—Browning's theory of love."
"What was that?" Vaughan asked, for it was a joy to hear Buller talking of literature.
"Well," Buller whispered, "you see this man Browning hates all your shilly-shallying about; he thinks that when you fall in love, you ought to go your whole pile, even if you come a cropper after. It's all rot, of course, the Dean said; but poor Crabbe thought it was real, and went and proposed to a young woman he had met once or twice. So there he was, engaged! And he seemed to think himself the hell of a duke, the Dean said; but everyone else in Oxford thought he was making a bl—"
"Oh, Buller," Vaughan interposed, "really, you mustn't put such words into the Dean's mouth!"
"Well, I don't quite remember the old boy's lingo, but, at any rate, the Dean thought Crabbe was making a fool of himself. 'I think I can settle it,' says I to the Dean. 'I wish you would,' said the Dean; so off I go to Crabbe's rooms. He came in just as I got there; I wish you could have seen him—a frock-coat, top-hat, flower in his button-hole, his hair plastered down. And only last year, it was, that he got up as a Socialist, with a red silk handkerchief in his hat! But now he shook hands with me up in the air; was most affable and condescending; assured me he was glad to see his old pals—especially friends from London. Oxford people were very well in their way, but narrow, and rather donnish. Didn't I notice it in coming from London?
"Well, this was almost too much from Crabbe, but I thought it would be more sport to draw him out a bit. So we got to talking; I didn't let on I knew he was engaged, but after a bit I began to talk about marriage and love and all that in a general sort of way. Old Crabbe swallows it all, talks a lot of literary stuff. 'Fall in love, Buller,' says he, 'fall in love, and live! Let me read you what thing-a-majig says,' and he gets down a book—who did you say he was? Browning, yes, that's the man—he gets down a book of Browning's and begins to read—you ought to have seen him, his face got pink; and at the end he says, with a proud smile, as if the poem was all about him, 'Isn't that ripping, Buller, isn't that brave, isn't that the way to take life!'
"'Do you mind if I smoke?' said I.
"'Smoke? Oh, do certainly,' and Crabbe sits down looking rather foolish. But after a moment, he says in an easy sort of way, 'Ah, I meant to ask you about all the chaps in London—getting on all right? any of them married?'
"'Married!' says I, 'O Lord, no;theydon't want to dish themselves.'
"'Dish themselves,' says Crabbe, 'why, what do you mean?'
"'I mean what I say; if you get married without any money, you're dished, that's all—I mean practical people, who want to get on.'
"Then Crabbe began to talk big; one shouldn't care only for success—it might be practical, perhaps, but he did not mean to sacrifice the greatest thing in life for money.
"'The greatest thing in life—what's that?'"
Buller laughed so loudly at this part of his story, that the other people in the carriage began to stare at him and Vaughan. So he went on in a lower whisper. "'What's that?' says I.
"'I mean,' says Crabbe, 'why, what I have been talking about.'
"'Well, what is it?'
"'What I was saying a little while ago.'
"'But you talked too fast—I couldn't catch it; give us the tip, out with it.'
"'I mean love, passion,' says he.
"'What? say it again.'
"'Well, I mean—and it's always said that love—the poets—'
"'The who?'
"'The poets.'" Again Buller laughed out loud.
"'Oh, poets!' says I, 'I thought you said porters. Poets! so you've been reading poets, have you? but you oughtn't to believe all that—why, they don't mean it themselves; they write it because they're expected to, but it's all faked up—I know how it's done.'
"Old Crabbe begins to talk in his big way. I let him go on for a while, but then I said, 'See here, Crabbe, it's all very well to read that literary stuff, and I suppose it's what you're paid for doing. But don't go and think it's all true, because it isn't, and the sooner you know it the better.' 'There was a man I knew once,' says I, 'who got fearfully let in by just this sort of thing; Oxford don too, Fellow of Queen's named Peake; took to reading poetry; he went to Brighton in the Long, with his head full of it all. Wild sea waves, the moon and all the rest of it; and back comes Peake married; had to turn out of his College rooms, went to live at the other end of nowhere, stuffy little house, full of babies, had to work like a nigger, beastly work too; coached me for Smalls, that's how I know him; no time for moon and sea waves now; and it all came from reading poetry.'
"Old Crabbe begins to sit up at this. 'But I don't see,' he says, 'I don't see why—didn't he have his Fellowship money?'
"'But you don't suppose that's going to support a wife and a lot of children.'
"'Oh, if he had children,' says Crabbe, and the old boy begins to blush and says, 'I don't see the need.'
"'Much you know about it, Crabbe,' says I, and I couldn't help laughing, he looked such an idiot.
"'Well, anyhow,' he says, 'your friend may have been unfortunate, but I respect him all the same; he was bold, he lived.'
"'What does all that mean?—he didn't die, of course!'
"'I mean he loved—he had that.'
"'Oh yes, he had, but I rather think he wished he hadn't. He said it didn't come to much—and even when he was engaged she used to bore him sometimes.'
"'Really!' says old Crabbe, 'that's odd now,' and then he goes on, as if he was talking to himself, 'I wonder if everyone feels like that?'
"'Of course they do! But after you're married, just think of it—never quiet, never alone; Peake said it nearly drove him wild. And to think he was tied up like that for the rest of his life!'
"'Yes, it is a long time.' Crabbe began to look rather green. 'Your friend—his name was Peake, I think you said—I suppose he couldn't have broken off the engagement?' and he smiled in a sort of sea-sick way.
"'Of course he could,' says I, as I got up to go. 'Perfect ass not to—but good-bye, Crabbe, you've got jolly rooms here.'
"'Yes, they are nice,' says Crabbe in a kind of sinking voice.
"So, a day or two after, I meet the Dean; the old boy seems very much pleased. 'Well Buller, I think you've done the biz,' says he; 'I don't believe old Crabbe will do it after all.'"
When he had finished his story, Buller leaned comfortably back. "I felt sure he would get out of it somehow," he said aloud, "I think that story finished him." "You know what I mean," he added, nodding significantly, "that story of Peake."
"I don't believe Peake ever existed!" Vaughan answered, as low as he could.
Buller leaned forward again, he was almost bursting with laughter. "Of course he didn't!" he hissed in Vaughan's ear. "But wasn't Crabbe in a blue funk though!"
"Oh, I don't believe Crabbe minded you a bit. I'm sure he won't break it off," Vaughan whispered indignantly. "And what right had you to talk that way? I never heard of such impertinent meddling!"
"Bet you three to one he does," Buller whispered back. "Come, man, make it a bet!" The train drew into the Temple station and Vaughan got up.
"I won't bet on anything of the kind," he said, as he stood at the door. "And what do you know about love anyhow, Buller? Then think of the poor girl, she probably believes that Crabbe is a hero, a god—"
"Well, she won't for long," Buller chuckled.
What was he doing there? why didn't he ride on? Mrs. Ross wondered, as she watched with some astonishment the tall young man who was staring in at the gate. But in a moment her husband left the hedge he was trimming, and waved his shears at the stranger, who thereupon came in, pushing his bicycle with him along the drive. When the two young men met, they seemed to greet each other like old acquaintances. Probably he was one of George's Oxford friends, she thought, beginning to feel a little shy, as they walked towards her across the grass. The bicyclist was thin and very tall; his shadow, in the late sunshine, seemed to stretch endlessly over the grass. His face was bathed in perspiration; he was grey with dust, and altogether he looked very shabby by the side of her good-looking husband.
"Mary, I want to introduce my friend, Mr. Allen, to you." Mrs. Ross was always a little afraid of her husband's friends; then Allen was a don at Oxford, and she knew he was considered extremely clever. However she greeted him in her friendly, charming way. He would have tea, of course?
Allen gripped her hand, smiling awkwardly. No, he wouldn't have tea, and he was afraid it was very late for calling; he must apologize; indeed, when he got to the gate, he had hesitated about coming in.
Oh, no! it wasn't late, she assured him; and her husband declared he must stay to dinner. He had never seen the Grange before and, of course, they must show him everything.
"Oh, I don't think I can stay to dinner," Allen murmured, looking through his spectacles at his dusty clothes. But at last he consented though doubtfully; he was staying at Sunbridge, he explained, and it was rather a long ride over.
Ross took him to the house; soon he reappeared, well brushed, his pale and thoughtful face pink with scrubbing. They walked with him about the gardens, then they went to their little farm, showing him the cows and horses, and the new-built hayrick.
George Ross was a young land agent who, not long after leaving Oxford, had had the luck to get a good appointment; and for more than a year he and his young wife had been living here in the most absurdly happy way. Now and then his Oxford friends would come to visit him, and it filled Ross with delight and pride to show them over his new domain.
As they came back from the farm through the garden, Ross stopped a moment. "Doesn't the house look well from here!" he said to Allen. The roofs, gables, and trees stood out dark against the golden west; the garden, with its old red walls, sweet peas, and roses, was filled with mellow light.
Allen gazed at the view through his spectacles, and expressed a proper admiration. But of himself he seemed to notice nothing, and Mrs. Ross was rather hurt by the way he went past her borders of flowers without ever looking at them.
"You see it's just the kind of life that suits me—suits both of us," Ross explained; "I don't see how I could have found anything better. Of course," he added modestly, "of course some men might not think much of work like this. But I consider myself tremendously fortunate—I didn't really deserve such luck."
"Quite so," Allen assented in a way that Mrs. Ross thought rather odd, till she decided that it was merely absent-mindedness. Every now and then she would look at Allen—the tall, thin, threadbare young man puzzled her a little; he seemed so extremely dull and embarrassed; and yet there was a thoughtful, kind look in his eyes that she liked. And anyhow he was George's friend; so, as they walked rather silently and awkwardly about, waiting for dinner, she tried to talk to him, making remarks in her eager way, and glancing sometimes at her husband for fear he might be laughing at her. Such subjects as bicycling, the roads, the weather, and life in Oxford, were started, and they both talked to their guest with the exaggerated politeness of newly married people, who would much rather be talking to each other. Yes, the road over was very pretty, Allen agreed. But was there a river? He remembered noticing how pretty the road was, but he had not noticed that it ran by any river. And all their questions he answered with a certain eagerness, but in a way that somehow made the subject drop.
"Well, I finished the hedge," Ross said at last, turning to his wife. "You said I wouldn't."
"Oh, but wait till I see it for myself!"
The young man looked at her gloomily. "You see how it is, Allen, she doesn't believe her husband's word!"
"Oh, hush, George," she said, and they both began to laugh like children. Then they turned to Allen again. Was he comfortable where he was staying? she asked.
Well no, honestly, it wasn't very comfortable, Allen replied. To tell the truth, he was rather disappointed in the place. He had gone there after hearing some undergraduates describe it, and tell how amusing they had found the people. But, somehow, he had not found the people different from people anywhere else. But then he had only made the acquaintance of one man—
"Well, didn't he turn out to be an old poacher, or a gipsy, or something romantic?" asked Mrs. Ross.
"No, not at all—he was a Methodist Calvinist deacon, who gave me a lift one wet afternoon, and lectured me all the way about Temperance. And, of course," Allen added, with rather a comic smile, "and, of course, I was already a total abstainer." They all laughed at this.
What was he working at over there? Ross asked him a few minutes afterwards. He was writing a paper, Allen replied; but what it was about Mrs. Ross did not understand. She hoped her husband would ask something more, but he merely said, "I see," without much interest, adding that he had not read any philosophy for years.
When they sat down to dinner, the lady's evening dress, the silver and flowers on the table, seemed to make Allen all the more awkward and conscious of his appearance. However, he plainly meant to do his best to talk, and, after a moment's silence, he remarked that he supposed the theory of farming was very interesting.
"Yes, it is," said Mrs. Ross, "and it's such fun ploughing in the autumn, and in the spring seeing the young green things come up."
"I suppose the climate is a great factor in the problem."
"Oh, of course, everything depends on that; suppose it comes on to rain just when you've cut your hay!"
Ross began to laugh. "I believe my wife thinks of nothing but hay now."
"You farm yourself, don't you?" Allen asked, looking at her rather timidly.
"Oh, a little; I always say I manage our little farm, and I'm going to learn to plough. And I keep chickens—this is one of mine—poor little thing!" she added.
"She pretends to be sorry now, but when she has a chance to sell her chickens I never saw anyone so bloodthirsty."
"Oh, George, how can you say such things? Don't believe him, Mr. Allen. And anyhow," she added (it seemed a platitude, but platitudes were better than absolute silence), "anyhow, I suppose it is what the chickens are meant for."
To her surprise this mild remark led to an animated argument. For Allen, in agreeing with her, said something about "the general scheme of things." Ross began to laugh at this, and asked Allen if he still held to that old system of his. Allen answered this question so earnestly, that the lady looked at him with wonder.
Yes! he held to it more firmly than ever; he was sure it could be maintained! Indeed, seriously he had come to feel more and more that you must accept something of the kind. Ross dissented in a joking way, but Allen would not be put off; he began talking rapidly and eagerly, almost forgetting his dinner as he argued. He drank a great deal of cold water, and his thin face grew quite flushed with excitement.
Mrs. Ross looked from one to the other with puzzled eyes; probably that was the way they had been used to talk at Oxford, but what it was about she could not understand. She only felt sorry for Allen, he evidently cared so much, was as anxious to prove his point as if his whole life depended on it, while her husband seemed to treat the whole thing rather as a joke.
Soon she gave up trying to listen, and though the sound of their voices was in her ears, her mind wandered out into the garden, to the farm and meadows. But Allen's voice, appealing to her, called her suddenly back. "I'm sure you agree with me, Mrs. Ross," he said, without the least shyness. He plainly looked on her now as nothing but a mind which might agree or disagree. "I'm sure you must regard it as existing for rational ends."
"But what do you mean by 'It,' Mr. Allen?" she asked, very much puzzled.
"Why, the universe, of course."
"Oh, I don't know," she said, shaking her head and laughing. "It makes me dizzy to think of it. As for George, I wouldn't mind what he says, Mr. Allen; he believes all sorts of dreadful things, and he's always making fun—look how he's laughing at me now. George, will you have your coffee in here, or in the drawing-room?"
"Oh, in the drawing-room—we'll come in a minute, when we've settled the universe." As she went out, she heard them still arguing.
And they had not ended it when they came into the drawing-room a little later.
"But I deny that pain is an evil. I appeal to you," Allen said, turning to Mrs. Ross; "don't you think that pain is necessary?"
"But necessary for what, Mr. Allen?"
"Why, if we want to be really happy, I mean," he went on, trying to make himself quite clear, "I mean, suppose we lived as they do in the Tropics, sitting under trees all day."
Ross also turned to her, "Well, Mary, tell us what you think?"
Mrs. Ross laughed. "I'm afraid I'm not a fair judge, Mr. Allen, I'm so fond of sitting under trees, and I must say I think it sounds rather nice. Do you have sugar in your coffee?"
"No sugar, thanks. But surely," he went on as if he had an argument now that would be certain to convince a lady. "Surely a certain amount of discomfort is an advantage! Now, take a child for instance, to educate it you have to make it suffer."
"Oh, indeed you don't, Mr. Allen," she said so promptly, and in such a voice, that Allen seemed a little disconcerted.
Ross begged for a little music. She sat down to the piano and began to play—with a little emotion at first, which soon died out of the quiet sounds. The window was open on the lawn; the faint light, the odours of the garden, mingled with the soft music.
They sat in silence for a moment. At last Allen rose; he must be going, he said, he had his paper to finish.
"But it is nice here," he added, with half a sigh, as if vaguely aware, for a moment, of the romantic happiness about him. Then his mind seemed to revert to the argument; if Ross would only read Hegel'sLogic—
"Well, we might read it aloud in the evenings perhaps," the young man answered, laughing. "Have you got a lamp on your machine?" "Yes, I think there is." They went out to the gate and, lighting his lamp, they sent him off into the twilight. Then they walked slowly back towards the house. A few stars were kindled above the dim trees; the air was fragrant with the scent of the hay, and through the stillness the faint noise of life came across the meadows—a woman singing, the voices of children, and sleepy sounds of cattle.
"How good it is!" the young man said, drawing his companion closer to him. "But people are always coming, aren't they? It's dreadful! we never do seem to see anything of each other."
"No, do we! But he's a nice man, Mr. Allen. I liked him."
"Oh, old Allen's a good sort."
"What does he do—how does he live in Oxford?"
"He teaches philosophy, and lives on bread and tea in little lodgings."
"It sounds awfully dreary—"
"Well, it is rather dreary for him, poor man. I wouldn't be there for a good deal."
"But, tell me, what was that he was arguing about?"
"Oh, that's his philosophy; he's always arguing about it. He believes in a kind of Hegelianism."
"What is that?"
"Oh, it's a view of things; he's what you call an Optimist."
"But I thought an Optimist was a person who was very happy?"
"No; it only means a man who believes that you ought to be happy, that you are meant to enjoy life—that the world is good."
"But you don't mean that he was trying toprovethat?"
"Why, yes, you heard him; he's always at it when you give him a chance. He thinks it must be so, that you can deduce it from the first principles of things."
But Mrs. Ross could not be made to understand it. To her it seemed that either you were happy or you weren't. "And, then, fancy trying to prove it to us!" she kept saying.
At last she took her husband's arm to go in; but still stood for a moment in silence thinking it over. "That poor Mr. Allen!" she exclaimed at last, "an Optimist, you said he was?"
Glasgow: Printed at the University Press by Robert MacLehose & Co.