Peter at Oxford
Peter Fleming sat by his study window, looking down into the quadrangle. It was early morning, so early that stars still glimmered round Saint Mary the Virgin's spire and over the Radcliffe Camera. Candles burnt dimly in the room at his back, and on the table, spotted with wine stains, lay the remains of supper. All the guests, but one, had gone, and he was only a voice, for the window curtains swallowed him up. To him Peter unburdened his soul; upon such an occasion, at such an hour as this, men are not afraid to speak of themselves.
Peter's college career was ended. Last night he had set the seal to it; this morning he was entering upon a new phase.
"You are not ambitious," said the voice—a mature voice, lacking the boyish note that rang so triumphantly off Peter's tongue, as though he were confident of conquering the world—"It's a pity; I always thought you were! With your honours it's monstrous, that you should turn school-master to your native vale, content with—how much?"
"'Passing rich on fourty pounds a year'—and a goosegate!"
"My dear fellow! it won't buy your books."
"I shall read the book of mother Earth."
"Sentimental rubbish! Is your mind quite made up?"
"Screwed to the sticking point."
The voice was silent for a moment, then continued:
"So you'll spend your days teaching the young to make pot-hooks! Are you going to succeed?"
"The truth is, I think a little reflection will be good for me."
"Reflection! What upon?"
"Life."
"Can't you reflect upon life without burying yourself first?"
"My friend, you have never been among the mountains."
"Conclusive! I haven't. I've only seen them from afar, and been chilled by them. But seriously, why didn't you accept that post in India? You were just the man for it—strong, honest, clever...."
"Don't catalogue my virtues, my good fellow."
"But why didn't you go?"
"I'm the only son of my mother."
"Hum ... a man's foes.... And if you return home now, what will you do eventually? I don't suppose village school-mastering will satisfy you long."
"Eventually! heaven knows. Perhaps I shall turn flute player up and down the countryside, go to all the fairs and markets and wakes and enjoy myself. Or I might become a potter, or a tinker, or make a modest income leading about a dancing bear. I've a predilection for the last."
"You're too versatile, Fleming. But I'm really troubled about you! That country of your's is a savage place—I make due apologies—nevertheless it's the truth. You'll get into a back-water of life; you'll be cut off from culture and learning—things you like, and long for, more than most,—I'm afraid that the lump will leaven you, not you the lump."
Peter put away his half-bantering tone, and became serious.
"I've had a good time here," he said. "If I weren't convinced that regret is a weed, which flourishes with the smallest encouragement, and chokes many and better things, I'd regret that it's over. Like Father Thames I've been mightily pleased to lap the stones of Oxford, and give no thought to the changes lower down, or the ultimate submergence in the salt sea."
"You're heir to a considerable patrimony, aren't you, Fleming?"
"I do not care about money," he replied without affectation.
"Lucky dog! that's a pinnacle of virtue to which I have never attained. Still money is an asset worth considering."
"My father has saved, I believe; how much, I don't know—he's given me all I ever asked for without stint. I can surely give him a year of my life in return and not grumble. Still, of course, India attracted me. But it would have broken his heart, his and my mother's, if I'd gone."
"Your folk wanted you to enter the Church, didn't they?—dedicated you, like Samuel, to the Lord, before you were born!"
"Yes."
Peter did not enlighten his friend further. He was not able to think without pain of his parents' grief, when he had told them that he could not fulfil their wishes. At first the miller had been very angry, had grudged the money he had spent on his son's education, had called it wasted, and said Peter was ungrateful, unfilial, and a fool. Then he had ended by imploring him, with tears, to think seriously before blighting his hopes. Peter's mother had kept silence, that was more distressing than his father's passion. When they found him obdurate, though greatly troubled because of their disappointment, they begged him to come home for a year, think it over, and see, if by reflection, he could not come to a happier decision. He had consented to their wishes, on condition that he should not be idle, but have the post of school-master, which the old pedagogue, who had held it for a lifetime, was now too old to fulfil any longer. This was easily arranged.
"You need not fear," he said breaking the silence, "I shall not drift and drift and at last get silted up in a stagnant pool of decaying promises. My time will come, and when it comes I shall be ready for it, and none the worse, I hope, for this interregnum."
"Heaven send it soon. I have no faith in your reflections. They may lead you anywhere. You're such a queer chap. Think of a man like you, looking forward, actually looking forward, to burying himself at the ends of the earth in the hey-day of his youth."
Peter laughed, a hopeful, manly laugh. He had no fears.
"You'll come and stay with me next summer, old fellow?" he said.
"Lord! do you expect to see me in that Hyperborean inaccessible, out-of-the-world vale of yours? Aren't the people savages, heathen, Goths? Didn't you once speak of a giantess, a sort of Polyphemus's mamma, that lived in a cave and herded sheep?"
"Oh, Barbara Lynn! Yes, I'll introduce you to Barbara Lynn. But let me tell you, you'll take off your hat to her as you would to a duchess."
"Look here, Fleming, don't make a fool of yourself."
"I assure you I have no intention of doing so."
"Well, you know what I mean. When you get up there among your mountains, and are locked in by ice and snow, you'll turn lonely. Nothing sucks the marrow out of a man's bones like loneliness. So take care. Don't marry a peasant lass."
"Most of my friends at home claim to be the sons and daughters of statesmen."
"Statesmen!"
"Yes, statesmen. It's the finest aristocracy in the world that lives in the little grey houses among the Westmorland fells. Most families can trace their pedigree back for more grandfathers than the greatest folk in the land. And they have coats of arms too, have them carved on their bread cupboards and meal kists—though you'll not find them at the College of Heralds."
The two men were quiet for a while; the dawn grew and the irregular buildings came out in blurred masses against the sky. There was not a spire or pinnacle, whose shape Peter could not clearly trace. They were drawn, as it were, upon his flesh, nay, engraved upon his bones so that the wasting tissues of age should not be able to fret their outlines. He had been marked indelibly by the finger-print of Oxford. To him had been given the gift of an historical imagination. He lived in hourly touch with the learning, the tragedies, the visions of the past. Hall and cloister, chapel and narrow stair, echoed with its voices.
On a summer's day his favourite haunt was the high gallery round Saint Mary the Virgin's spire, where he could look over the city from its centre, and delight his eyes and his mind with vision and picture. Town and gown would seem to swirl below him in the narrow streets; processions of monks and prelates would pass and repass; Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer would come and go, and face the flames yonder by Balliol College. Archbishop Laud might pause opposite to his great porch, which he had crowned with a statue of the Virgin and Child; the deformed figure of Alexander Pope might wander by from the tower of Stanton Harcourt, his mind stirring with the martial lines of Homer. Or Peter might see Matilda, when the snow lay thick on the ground, escaping from the castle, clad in white, while the armies of Stephen besieged it. Then he would look at the shady gardens, the great trees, the silver sheen of Cherwell or Isis, and remember that these had all been living in those far-off days, and were still living, and would continue to live, after he, and his generation had returned to dust.
From the wider view he would turn to the winged monkeys, the griffins, the pelicans of the roof below him, and he would hear again the chip, chip, of chisel and hammer in the thirteenth century, when the very stones he could lay his hands upon were first placed there.
Northward he would gaze with Saint Cuthbert, who stands in his niche, holding the head of King Oswald in his hand—and he would link his own wild Northern hills, where Barbara Lynn herded sheep, with this ancient city of civilization. Mayhap, as he thought of Barbara Lynn, his eyes would light upon Christ Church, and he would remember the saint whose shrine it guards, to whom Oxford owes her birth—Saint Frideswide, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, who might have worn a crown.
Thought is linked to thought, North to South, man to man, in endless succession. Since Adam there has not been one break in the chain; the whole of life is knitted up without a rent. Saint Frideswide and Barbara Lynn stretched their hands to each other through the dim years. Something of the same spirit lived in both, a spirit of self-mastery and aspiration though one refused a crown to keep herself unspotted from the world, the other, pure as any lily, should be crowned—so Timothy Hadwin had prophesied.
Peter did not despise the present because he lived so much in the past. He was no step-bairn of his glorious mother, but received a full inheritance from her hands. In the life about him he found inspiration and fellowship, without which he would have been shorn of his Samson locks. And he was a power among his fellow students. They might laugh at his childlike enthusiasms; but they found him a tower of strength when strength was needed; and under his outward sentimentality, they tapped a clear spring of common sense. He had a masculine love of independence; he could work with mind and muscle strained to their utmost; he could idle like an Oriental; but he rose at dawn, slept on a truckle bed, ate plain fare like an ascetic. Of his lowly birth he made no secret. Patronage ran off him like water off a duck's back. He was curiously insensible to differences of rank or breeding. In mental ability he stood second to few. That which was said of William Pitt might be said equally well of him—"He never seemed to learn, but simply to recollect."
Thus his academic years had passed; now he stood without the closed door. His friends were going forth to careers of interest or influence; he was drifting back to his Northern home to teach the village children how to make pot-hooks.
He had wrestled with himself for one bitter day, when the offer of a post, under the East India Company, had come from one, who had seen and understood his worth. A glorious prospect had opened out before him—golden hands had beckoned, the fair face of Fame had smiled. But he had turned away resolutely after one keen, longing glance, and forbade his eyes to stray after the vision again. Then his parents had begged him to come home, and though he could have found other spheres of work and influence congenial to him, he felt that the wishes of those who had given him birth, had struggled, denied themselves all, denied him nothing, had lived only for him, must be respected. Now he was not sorry, though at first he had been bitterly disappointed. He was fatalist enough to believe that no other course would bring him success, that the way would open out sooner or later; and wise enough to know that a period spent alone in reflection might be made of infinite benefit.
The sun was rising. Over the slender minarettes came a broad yellow beam that lighted up Saint Mary's spire, which soared into the blue air—a being of character and destiny, a maker and moulder of men, as well as a symbol of their deepest need.
Great buildings, like great minds, deepen and fix their personality with the passing years. The varied winds of life round their corners, refine their angles, and blend them into a harmonious whole. Great buildings, like great minds, endure a loneliness that is awful in its magnitude. It is the price which must be paid by those who would rise above the fretting trivialities of existence. And this is their compensation—they uplift, they inspire others: they are an eternal assurance of the wonder and sacredness of human life.
There is nothing great in the world that has not this spirit of loneliness. Mountains, piercing the clouds, stars glittering overhead, purple seas, pyramids, palaces, cathedrals—no man knows them with the familiarity that can breed contempt. They may rouse hatred and fear, fire and sword have been turned against them; but fingers have rarely been snapped in their faces, or shoulders shrugged under their shadow.
The church of Saint Mary the Virgin, at Oxford, with the sun on its spire moved Peter profoundly. It had influenced him all his college days, it was influencing him still. It was sending him back to his home with two strong guardians for his soul—Faith and Duty—to help him in the monotonous way. It was giving him over—as it were—to the mountains to be taught by them.
That which the mountains have to give, they give freely to those who seek it. David and Mahommed, simple herders of sheep, were not ashamed to learn at their knees. Buddha and John the Baptist sought them in manhood and returned to be teachers of men, and to change the current of thought through all the world.
Peter did not know what his future would be. He believed that he would learn about it among his native hills.
As the light grew, the man who was only a voice withdrew from the shadow of the window curtains, and went away. With an uncompromising sunbeam in the room to light up the supper dishes and soiled cloth, who could speak of those things, which for the most part, remain hidden in the heart?
But he thought of Peter as he climbed up the narrow winding stair to his own room. He believed that his friend would succeed, yet he regretted, nearly as deeply as Peter, that it had not been possible for him to accept the post in India. He would have been a great man, he thought; now he was likely to be simply a good man—a good man lacking distinction. Then he shrugged his shoulders with a laugh. The powers that be, no doubt, set the latter above the former in their book of human achievements.
Later in the day Peter left Oxford. As he turned his horse on the London road to look back upon the city, he looked with regret, it is true, regret because he was leaving the place where the happiest years of his life had been passed; but he was full of hope for the future. If fritillaries hung in the Christ Church meadows, blue geraniums grew in Boar Dale; if there were no spires and pinnacles at High Fold, there was the grey gable of the old mill-house, and the revolving wooden wheel. Though a great dome like the Radcliffe Camera did not rise out of Cringel Forest, Thundergay was more noble. He would not be lonely for there was Timothy Hadwin to sustain and inspire him.
He flicked his horse's reins and rode away. It was vain to stand and gaze. Deep in his heart was a thought to which he would not allow expression, but for some time he could not see distinctly or breathe with the ease of a man who is reviewing his past and looking forward to his future with an undivided mind.