CASTLES AND BRICK-DUST
§1
It was on the day when those two pistol shots were fired at an Austrian Archduke in the streets of Serajevo that the Masters' match was played out at Kensingtowe. By the early evening the reverberation of the revolver reports had been felt like an earthquake-shock in all the capitals of Europe; and in a failing light the last wicket had fallen at Kensingtowe. So it happened that, while the Emperors of Central Europe were whispering that the Day had come and the slaughter of the youth of Christendom might begin, there was a gathering in Radley's room of those insignificant people whose little doings you have watched at Kensingtowe. They were assembled to drink tea and discuss the match. There were Radley as host; Pennybet, to represent the Old Boys; Doe and I, in fine fettle for the School; and Dr. Chappy, who, having sworn that he was a busy man and couldn't spare the time, sat spilling cigar-ash in the best armchair, and looked like remaining for the rest of the evening.
"Stop quarrelling about the match," said Radley, as he stood with his back to the mantelpiece, "and listen to me. It's a great day, this—a day of triumph. Ray has won the innings victory for the School, and Doe—"
Doe pricked up his ears.
"It's just out—Doe has won the Horace Prize."
At this news there were great congratulations of the poet, who went red with pleasure.
"When you've all finished," said Radley, "I'll read the Prize Poem."
So Radley began faithfully from a manuscript:
"Horace, Odes I, 9. Vides ut Alta Stet.
"White is the mountain, fleeced in snows,
And the pale trees depress their weighted boughs—"
"Oh, spare us!" interrupted Chappy.
"Not a bit," said Radley. "Hark to this:
"Bring out the mellow wine, the best,
The sweet convivial wine, and test
Its four-year-old maturity:
To Jove commit the rest,
Nor question his divine intents
For, when he stays the battling elements,
The wind shall brood o'er prostrate seas
And fail to move the ash's crest
Or stir the stilly cypress trees.
Be no forecaster of the dawn;
Deem it an asset, and be gay—
Come, merge to-morrow's misty morn
In the resplendence of to-day.
"Youth is the day the field to scour,
The time of conquests won,
The pause, wherein to hark at trysting hour
To the whispered word
That is gently heard
In the wake of the passing sun—"
"What's it all about?" grumbled Chappy. "And I'm sure 'morn' doesn't rhyme with 'dawn.'" at which Doe went white with pain, and numbered the doctor among the Philistines.
"It's a very distinguished attempt to catch the spirit of Horace's fine ode," answered Radley, and Doe turned red again with pleasure, forgiving Radley all the unkindness he had ever perpetrated, and enrolling him among the Elect.
Now Pennybet liked to be the centre of attraction at friendly little gatherings like this, and had little inclination to sit and listen to people praising those who recently had been nothing but his satellites. So he lit a cigarette and said:
"It's entirely the result of my training that these young people have turned out so well."
"Pennybet," explained Radley, "you're a purblind egotist and will come to a bad end."
"Oh, I don't think so, sir," said Penny, crossing his legs that he might the more comfortably discuss his end with Radley. "I've always managed to do what I've wanted and to come out of it all right."
"Oh, you have, have you?" sneered Chappy.
"Always," answered Penny, unabashed. "It's a favourite saying of my mother's that 'adverse conditions will never conquer her wilful son.'"
"Good God!" cried the doctor, rightly appalled.
"Yes," continued the speaker, delighted to tease the doctor, "for instance, I made up my mind all the time I was here to stick in a low form. It was an easier life, and fun to boss kids like Edgar Doe and Rupert Ray. And I pulled all the strings of the famous Bramhall Riot, as Ray knows. And I just did sufficient work to pass into Sandhurst. And I shall be just satisfactory enough to get my commission. Then I shall do all in my power to provoke a European War, so that there will be a good chance of promotion—"
"There's a type of man," interrupted Radley, "who'd start a prairie fire, if it were the only way to light his pipe."
"Exactly. And I am he."
"Good God!" repeated Chappy.
"And, after peace is declared, I shall settle down to a comfortable life at the club."
"It's a relief," smiled Radley, "that you won't lead a revolution and usurp the throne."
"Too much trouble. I may go into Parliament, which is a comfortable job. On the Tory side, of course, because there you don't have to think."
"You've about fifty years of life," suggested Radley. "And don't you want to do anything constructive in that time?"
"Not in these trousers! I know that, if I were sincere and constructive in my politics, I should be a Socialist. It stands to reason that it can't be right for all the wealth to be in the pockets of the few, and for there to be a distinct and cocky governing class. But, as I want to amass wealth and enjoy the position of the ruling class, I shall be careful not to think out my politics, lest I develop a pernicious Socialism."
"Oh, Lord!" groaned the doctor.
"I think I'm a Socialist," suddenly put in Doe, and Chappy turned to him, dumbfounded to witness the eruption of a second youth. "I've long thought that, when I find my feet in politics, I shall be in the Socialist camp. They may be visionary, but they are idealists. And I think it's up to us public-schoolboys to lead the great mass of uneducated people, who can't articulate their needs. I'd love to be their leader."
"What you're going to be," said Radley, "is an intellectual rebel. When you go up to Oxford in a year or so, you'll pose as most painfully intellectual. You'll be a Socialist in Politics, a Futurist in Art, and a Modernist or Ultramontane in Religion—anything that's a rebellion against the established order. At all costs let us be original and outrageous."
"Hear, hear," whispered Penny.
"Ray has been the strong, silent man so far," said Radley. "Let's hear his Castle in the Air."
"For God's sake—" began Chappy.
"Speech! Speech!" demanded Pennybet.
"Oh, I don't know," demurred I. "I've not many ideas. I generally think I'd like to be a country squire, very popular among the tenants, who'd have my photo on their dressers. And I'd send them all hares and pheasants at Christmas and be interested in their drains—"
I was elaborating this picture, when Penny, feeling that he had made his speech and was not particularly interested in anyone else's, glanced at a gold wrist-watch, and decided that it was time for him to go. He made a peculiarly effective exit, his hat tilted at what he called a "damn-your-eyes" angle. Never again did Doe or I see him, though we heard of his doings. God speed to him, our cocksure Pennybet. Let us always think the best of him.
No sooner had the door clicked than Chappy exploded.
"That high youth ought to have his trousers taken down and be birched. What are we coming to, when boys like him lecture their elders on how to run the world?"
"That question," Radley retorted, "Adam probably asked Eve, when Cain and Abel decided to be Socialists."
"I tell you, these self-opinionated boys want whipping, and so do you, Master Doe, with your damned Fabianism."
"Oh, come, come," objected Radley. "I like them to be gloriously self-confident. Young blood is heady stuff. And there'd be something wrong, if a body full of young blood didn't have a head full of glittering illusions."
"Rot!" proclaimed Chappy.
"I like them to be Socialists and Futurists and everything. If they don't want to put the world to rights, who will?"
"Damned rot!"
"It's nothing of the sort," rejoined Radley, getting annoyed. "They ought to break out at this time. You can't bind up a bud to prevent it bursting into flower."
"If I'd children who burst like that, I'd bind them for you!"
"No, you wouldn't," contradicted Radley, softening again. "You'd expect them to be intolerant of you as old fashioned. You'd withdraw behind your cigar-smoke and your old-fashioned ideas, and leave them to put the world to rights. After all, it's their world."
§2
Now, though you may think this a very uninteresting chapter—a mere dialogue over the tea-cups, I take leave to present it to you as quite the most dramatic and most central of our humble tale. The events that lend it this distinguished character were happening hundreds of miles from Radley's room, in places where more powerful people than Penny or Doe or I were building Castles in the Air. An Emperor was dreaming of a towering, feudal Castle, broad-based upon a conquered Europe and a servile East. Nay, more, he had finished with dreaming. All the materials of this master-mason were ready to the last stone. And, if the two pistol-shots meant anything, they meant that the Emperor had begun to build.
And, since building was the order of the day, there were wise men in the councils of the Free Nations who saw that they must destroy the Emperor's handiwork and build instead a Castle of their own, where Liberty, International Honour, and many other lovely things might find a home. So for all of us self-opinionated boys, it was a matter of hours this summer evening before we should be told to tumble our petty Castles down, and shape from their ruins a brick or two for the Castle of the Free Peoples. Well, we tumbled them down. And the rest of this story, I think, is the story of the bricks that were made from their dust.
§3
Doe and I left Radley and the doctor to their dispute, and retired to our study. It was then that Doe began to blush and say:
"Funny the subject of our ambitions cropped up. Only a few days ago I tried to write a poem about it."
I pleaded for permission to read it.
"You can, if you like," he said, getting very crimson. With trembling hands he extracted a notebook from his pocket and indicated the poem to me. From that moment I saw that he was waiting in an agony of suspense for my approval.
I took it to the window, and, by the half-light of evening, read:
If God were pleased to satisfy
My every whim,
I'd tell you just the little things
I'd ask of Him:
A little love—a little love, and that comes first of all,
And then a chance, and more than one, to raise up them that fall;
Enough, not overmuch, to spend;
And discourse that would charm me
With one familiar friend;
A little music, and, perhaps, a song or two to sing;
And I would ask of God above to grant one other thing:
Before old Death can grimly smile
And take me unawares,
A little time to rest awhile,
To think, and say my prayers.
"Gad!" I said. "You're a poet."
I liked the little trifle, not least because I suspected that the "one familiar friend" was myself. Everyone likes to be mentioned in a poem.
Doe beamed with pleasure that I had not spoken harshly of his off-spring.
"Glad you like it," he said.
"There's this," I suggested, "you talk about only wanting 'these little things' out of life. But it seems to me that you want quite a lot."
"A lot! By Jove, Ray," cried Doe excitedly, "it's only when I'm in my unworldly moods that I want so little as that. In my worse moments—that's nine-tenths of the day—I want yards more: Fame and Flattery and Power."
"Funny. Once, outside the baths, I had a sort of longing to—"
"Ray, I only tell you these things," interrupted Doe, now worked up, "but often I feel I've something in me that must come out—something strong—something forceful."
"I don't think I ever felt quite like that," said I, ruminating. "But I did once feel outside the baths—"
"The trouble is," Doe carried on, "that this something in me isn't pure. It's mixed up with the desire for glory. When I told Radley I'd like to be a leader of the people, I knew that one-third was a real desire for their good, and two-thirds a desire for my own glory."
"Yes, but I was going to tell you that once—"
"And I wish it were a pure force. I'd love to pursue an Ideal for its own sake, and without any thought for my own glory. I wonder if I shall ever do a really perfect thing."
"I was going to tell you," I persisted; and, though I knew he measured my temperament as far inferior to Edgar Doe's artistic soul, and would rather have continued his own revelations, yet must I interrupt by telling him of my one moment of aspiration and yearning. Perhaps, I, too, wanted to pour out my mind's little adventures. We're all the same, and like a heart-to-heart talk, so long as it is about ourselves.
I told him, accordingly, of that strange evening outside the baths, when I had felt so overpowering an aspiration towards a vague ideal—an ideal that could not be grasped or seen, but was somehow both great and good.
§4
The last evening of that summer term there was a noisy breaking-up banquet at Bramhall House. And in the morning I went to Radley's room to say a separate good-bye. I was exultant. Next term seemed worlds away: and, meanwhile, eight sunny weeks of holiday stretched before me. My mother and I were off for Switzerland, to whose white heights and blue Genevan lake she loved to take me, for it was my birthplace, and, in her fond way, she would call me her "mountain boy," and tell an old story of a Colonel who had gazed into his grandson's eyes, and said: "Il a dans les yeux un coin du lac." I was dreaming, then, of the Swiss mountain air, and of twin white sails on a lovely lake; and I was visualising, let me admit it, a new well-tailored suit, grey spats, socks of a mauve variety, and other holiday eruptions. So there was no space in my parochial mind for international issues and rumours of wars. Rather I was ridiculously flushed and shining, as I came upon Radley and wished him a happy holiday.
Radley seemed strained, as though he had something ominous to break, and said with a dull and meaning laugh: "I'm sure I hope you have one too."
Observing that he was in one of his harder moods, I at once became awkwardly dumb; and there was a difficult silence, till he asked:
"Have you heard about Herr Reinhardt?"
"Mr. Cæsar? No, sir."
"Well, he left to-day for Germany."
"What on earth for?"
"Why, to shoulder a rifle, of course, and fight in the German ranks. Don't you know Germany is mobilising and will be at war with France in about thirty hours?"
"Oh, I read something about it. But what fun!"
Radley looked irritated. In trying to break some strange news he had walked up a blind alley and been met by my blank wall of density. So he took another path.
"Pennybet is in luck, according to his ideas. All Europe plays into his hands. He's got the war he wanted to give him rapid promotion."
"Why, sir, how will Germany affect him?"
"Only in this way," Radley announced, desperately trying to get through my blank wall by exploding a surprise, "that England will be at war with Germany in about three days."
"Oh, what fun! We'll give 'em no end of a thrashing. I hate Germans. Excepting Herr Reinhardt. I hope he has a decent time."
"And White and Lancaster, and all who leave this term, and perhaps even—perhaps others will get commissions at once."
"Why, sir? They're not going to Sandhurst."
"No," sighed Radley, "but they give commissions to all old public-schoolboys, if there's a big war. White and Lancaster will be in the fight before many months."
"Lucky beggars!"
It was this fatuous remark which showed Radley that I had no idea of my own relation to the coming conflict. So he forbore to spring upon me the greatest surprise of all. He just said with a sadness and a strange emphasis:
"Well, good-bye, and the best of luck. Make the most of your holiday. There are great times in front of you."
All the while he said it, he held my hand in a demonstrative way, very unlike the normal Radley. Then he dropped it abruptly and turned away. And I went exuberantly out—so exuberantly that I left my hat upon his table, and was obliged to hasten back for it. When I entered the room again, he was staring out of the window over the empty cricket fields. Though he heard me come, he never once turned round, as I picked up my hat and went out through the door.
And because of that I dared to wonder whether his grey eyes, where the gentleness lay, were not inquiring of the deserted fields: "Have I allowed myself to grow too fond?" He seemed as if braced for suffering.
Farewell, Radley, farewell. After all, does it matter to a strong swimmer if the wave beats against him?
Now Thames is long and winds its changing way
Through wooded reach to dusky ports and gray,
Till, wearily, it strikes the Flats of Leigh,
An old life, tidal with Eternity.
But Fal is short, full, deep, and very wide,
Nor old, nor sleepy, when it meets the tide;
Through hills and groves where birds and branches sing
It runs its course of sunny wandering,
And passes, careless that it soon shall be
Lost in the old, gray mists that hide the sea.
Ah, they were good, those up-stream reaches when
Ourselves were young and dreamed of being men,
But Fal! the tide had touched us even then!
One tribal God, we bow to, thou and we,
And praise Him, Who ordained our lives should be
So early tidal with Eternity.