Part Two
William Waters had dreamed that the Persians, in a fleet of Canadian canoes, had come up the Thames to attack the College barge, and that he himself had been sent on foot to demand reinforcements from the Oxford examiners at Sparta. And after the weary, breathless running, the hopeless search, in his dream, for the right Greek words, it was most delightful to open his eyes and find himself comfortably lying in his familiar bedroom, with the sunlight glowing on the blinds.
"Why am I so happy?" he asked himself, and then he remembered that it was all over now; for the future he would never have to trouble about Greek or examinations, or getting up in the morning, or any of their stupid rules and worries. For the future! As he lay there, lazily opening and shutting his eyes, vague, bright pictures of the life before him floated through his mind, and set his heart beating a little quicker.
William Waters was the son of a business man in a northern town, who, with some sacrifice, had sent him, the eldest son, to the University, in order that his education, and the connections he would form, might help him on in the world. Now that the young man, after a lucky scramble through the examinations, had just finished four pleasant years of Oxford life, it was his vague purpose to find some occupation in London, something pleasant and gentlemanly, which would enable him to live as he liked.
"Of course, sir, I know one can't expect anything very much at first," he said, half aloud, as he imagined himself talking modestly and sensibly to his tutor. For he was going to talk about it to Ames; old Ames wasn't such a fool about things of that kind. "There is no nonsense about that young Waters," Ames would say afterwards; "a modest, sensible chap, the kind of man who'll always do well." Waters was determined to do well of course; he would get on, he told himself, when people came to realize how hard he worked. And as the young man lay there in bed, he decided that in the future no one should ever accuse him of laziness and neglecting work. By simply making up his mind to it, he thought he would entirely change his character, and begin life anew, winning position and wealth by his own unremitting industry.
Buller and Antrobus would be in London, he told himself, and Philpotts, most likely, and they would belong to the same club, where they would go on Sunday mornings to smoke and read the sporting papers. He would work tremendously hard, of course, spending laborious nights over his books, but he would also go out a great deal into society. He would not be dissipated—he didn't care much for that—but still he would not be Puritanical either. He meant to be moral and steady, and at the same time he would enjoy the pleasures of a man of the world. But he would be always kind and popular; people in fashionable society would say that William Waters was such a good fellow, and in the Park ladies would smile at him from their carriages, and smart young men would walk with him arm in arm. And he would live well; but still he would save money, and would soon pay off his Oxford bills, and send money to his father. For he would always be very kind to his people, having his sisters to visit him, helping them to marry well (he himself meant to marry someone for love who was very rich), and sometimes he would give up parties at country houses in order to pay them visits at home. How his fur coat and knowledge of the great world would impress all the neighbours!
"But I must get up," Waters said to himself, remembering how he was to go and see his tutor and talk over plans. And after luncheon Buller was going to drive them out, three of them, with his tandem to Woodstock. And thinking vaguely of this drive, and of some new clothes that he meant to wear, Waters was just falling off to sleep again, when his bull-dog came rushing up the stairs, and began to whine and scratch at the door. Rousing himself, Waters jumped up, and went with a call of affection to the door to let Lo-Ben in.
After he had bathed and dressed himself in his new fresh-smelling clothes, the young man sauntered into the sitting-room of his lodgings, and rang the bell for breakfast. The day was bright; Waters felt wonderfully fresh and well; there were pleasant aches in his arms and legs as he moved, for the whole of the day before he had been rowing on the river.
After breakfast he was just sitting down to smoke his pipe comfortably, when, looking at his watch, he snatched up his cap and rusty gown, and started out towards College. By Jove! what a day it was! He walked along through the sunshine, smiling to himself, while Lo-Ben barked and bounced from side to side. It was a good world, Waters thought a good world, and now he was really going to enjoy it.
As Waters was tying up Lo-Ben in the College porch, he was seized on suddenly from behind.
"Come along, fat William," they cried, pulling and pushing him along, "we're going to have a little game—you must take a hand."
Twisting himself around, as he struggled, Waters recognized two of his friends, and appealed to reason breathlessly; he had to go and see old Ames, on his honour he had; he would look in afterwards, in about half-an-hour, and stay to luncheon if they liked. So he started across the quadrangle, looking back and smiling and shaking his head, as he dodged the bits of gravel with which they pelted him. It was a good place after all, the old College, Waters thought, when he was out of danger and could look about. He remembered the two years he had lived in rooms looking out on this quadrangle; the pleasant hours he had spent, sitting in the window with his pipe, or lying on the grass whole Sunday afternoons, lazily reading, or talking with his friends; he thought of the beautiful chapel, and the old hall that was so much admired, and how he had sat up a tree one evening and poured water on the Dean, and how at night the stealthy bonfires had blazed up red and sudden in the dark.
He was really sorry to leave the old place, he thought sentimentally, remembering the emotions he had read of as felt by young men in books when about to leave their school or college. But then, with healthy common-sense, he told himself that all they wrote in books about your college days, and life never being so happy afterwards, was damned nonsense. Waters knew how men lived in London!
"Sorry I'm late, sir," he said as he entered his tutor's room, addressing the spare shining head that was bent over a heap of papers.
Mr. Ames raised his worn, cynical, kind face, and looked at Waters with short-sighted eyes. "Oh, no matter, sit down won't you, Waters," and he gave a last hurried shuffle to his papers. Waters thought that Ames must spend his life looking for lost papers; and although occasionally surprised by flashes of almost supernatural knowledge in his tutor, for the most part he entertained—as a heathen might towards his helpless, yet vaguely awful, idol—a certain good-natured pity for the absent-minded, easily outwitted man.
"I thought I'd like to talk things over with you a little," Waters said, sitting down in a chair that groaned with his athletic weight. "I must decide what I shall choose, what to go in for."
"To go in for?" Ames repeated, looking at him vaguely.
"I mean, I must choose"; Waters found a pleasure in talking, not as an undergraduate, but as a serious young man. "One must do something of course."
"Of course it is better," Ames assented, though he still looked rather puzzled.
"I thought I'd talk to you about the Bar, or something of the kind."
Ames looked at him blankly. "Talk to me about the Bar?"
"Yes, I thought I'd better ask your advice."
"Do you mean for yourself?" Ames asked after a moment, "but I supposed—I always supposed you were going into your father's business; he has some business, hasn't he, or am I wrong?"
"Into my father's business!" Waters laughed comfortably. "No, I shouldn't ever think of that. No, I want to live in London."
"Oh, I see!"
"Yes, of course if anything very good was offered me somewhere else,—but no, I think I prefer London. What would you advise?"
"What I should advise!" Ames said, looking at him hopelessly. "I suppose you've thought of something for yourself; you have some preference?"
"Preference? Oh no, nothing special. I thought I'd ask you."
Again Ames looked at him with an odd expression. Then in his polite, weary, equable voice, he said, "Well, I must try and think. I suppose your father—what does he want you to do?"
"My father—!" Waters' voice showed what he thought of fathers. "Oh, he said that if I had a university education, there would be something."
"Ah, did he! Well, I suppose he ought to know," Ames said doubtfully.
"Oh, he doesn't know of anything definite," Waters explained; and then, speaking loudly, as if to a deaf man, he added, "It was only what he thought."
"Ah, that's quite different, isn't it?" Ames exclaimed, his face brightening.
"But surely there is a great deal to do in London," Waters continued.
Yes, there must be a good deal, Ames admitted doubtfully; at least everyone seemed very much occupied there.
"All I want is some work, that isn't too much grind, and decent pay."
"Ah, that is all that most people want," Ames observed, with half a sigh.
"Of course at first I shouldn't expect anything very much," Waters went on, hardly heeding his tutor's vague remarks; and he explained again that he only wanted some decent occupation, with pay enough to live on. Then he waited, gazing at his tutor's blank face as one might gaze at a revolving lighthouse, waiting for its flash of light. As nothing came, however, he said, "Surely there are lots of places where they want Oxford men?"
"Possibly there were"; Ames looked as if he, however, had never heard of them.
"But Grant and Vaughan had got good places, and Sturdy, they said, was doing well at the Bar."
"Ah, I see you mean those clever men, who do so well in the Schools and all. You're quite right; a man like Cornish for instance; I thought you meant more the average man."
No, it wasn't Cornish, Waters meant; it wasn't the average man either. "I mean more the man—what you call an all-round-man."
"What I call an all-round-man?" Ames looked bewildered.
"I mean," Waters continued, with desperate efforts to explain himself, "I mean the man who is rather good all round, rows, and that sort of thing. Perhaps he didn't get a First; didn't care much what he got, didn't approve of the system."
Ames seemed busy looking for his glasses.
"There are people who don't approve of the system," Waters went on. "I read an article once by someone, Professor something, not approving of examinations. I forget just who it was."
"Professor Freeman, perhaps?"
"Yes, that's it! Well now, a man like that, what is he going to do?" Waters asked, with renewed confidence.
"But Professor Freeman is dead, you know."
"But,—but,—I'm not speaking of Professor Freeman."
"How would you like to be a solicitor?" Ames asked, putting on his glasses.
"A solicitor! oh, I shouldn't care for that," Waters promptly replied. "You see it isn't the kind of work I like, and then the vacations are too short."
Ames said nothing. He was sitting unusually still, and his large glasses reflecting the light, resembled two enormous shining oval eyes in the smoothness of his face. What he was really looking at Waters could not tell, and he grew more and more uncomfortable. At last, with diminished confidence, "There are men who get on well at the Bar?" he said.
"There are."
"And if I were living in London I might do some writing? They do that, don't they?"
"They do." Then Ames sighed and shook his head. "I think you had better go home, Waters," he added; "I'm afraid there's nothing else. If you had spoken to me before, I should have told you this."
"Oh, good Lord, Mr. Ames, you don't mean there's nothing!" Waters sat up in his chair, with open mouth, staring at his tutor.
"Well, you know, I'm afraid there isn't."
"Oh but, Mr. Ames, there must be something!"
"Well you can try; but honestly, I think you had—if your father can have you—I think you had better go home."
Waters looked at him. "He knows I helped to paint his door red last week," the young man muttered to himself, "and now he's furious about it."
But the comfort of this ebbed away gradually, as Ames went on to describe the different professions, the struggle for success, the cruel competition. Ames indeed seemed to have focussed himself, and instead of the vague astonished way in which he was wont to speak of practical affairs, he now showed a precision, and clearness, and knowledge of life that was really appalling. "I am sorry it is so, Waters," he ended. "We live pleasantly here, and we almost forget what the world outside is like."
"I do think some one might have told me, Mr. Ames; I do indeed." Waters could have cried with disappointment.
"You would never have believed it, Waters; we none of us can believe that the world doesn't need us. It's hard, but whether we live or die, the world doesn't care, can get on perfectly well without us. We each have to find it out for ourselves." He sighed as if he too had once known youth and hope, and the indifference of the world.
"But, Mr. Ames, I can't go home, indeed I can't. My other brother was going into the business, and I always told people,—and everybody supposed,—and to think that all my time here is wasted."
"Oh, not exactly wasted," Ames answered kindly. "It will always help you, to be an Oxford man, and you will be sure to find it pleasanter at home than you expected." Then beginning again to look at his papers, he added, more in his old distant way, "I'll see you again, I hope, before you go down. They'll miss you in College," he added politely, as Waters moved towards the door. "I'm sure the 'Torpid'—"
"I might be a solicitor, Mr. Ames," Waters said in a meek voice, as he stood disconsolately, his hand on the door-knob.
"Well, talk it over with your father," Ames replied, without looking up. "It takes time and money you know. You think he wouldn't mind?"
"Oh no, he won't mind," Waters said, although he knew his father would mind very much indeed.
He walked away slowly through the familiar quadrangle. His father!—how would he ever dare tell his father? But no, it couldn't be true that there was nothing for him, that nobody wanted him. He was well known in College, had played in the football team, and rowed in the "Torpid," and people liked him. Besides it was such a thing, they always said, to be an English gentleman; and then Oxford culture—and you read of the successful careers of rowing men, how they became Cabinet Ministers, and Bishops, and things. No, it couldn't be true....
"Poor Lo-Ben," he said, patting his dog tenderly, as he unchained him in the porch. "Poor old Lo-Ben, you'll stick to your master, won't you?" The dog whined and licked the young man's hand, and they went out into the street together.
Well, they would live alone, he and Lo-Ben, and they would go out for lonely walks, after the long dreary days of work in his father's office. And the people there would see him, and wonder about him; but he would always be distant, only coldly polite when they met. Sometimes his old College friends would come to stay in the neighbourhood; but they would not look him up: all his friends would forget him, though he would always remember them. And that afternoon they would all drive off without him, probably they would be really glad not to have him. And they would be perfectly happy; but he would never be happy again.
For no, it was not true, what Ames had said, about his getting to like it at home. He would always hate it, he told himself desperately; and life and everything was hateful; there was a chill in the sunshine, the streets seemed full of noise and work and ugly working people. What was the good of it? he wondered. And Ames said it was all like that. What was the good of it, he asked again, when he flung himself down into one of the great easy chairs in his lodgings. If you had to live in a dirty provincial town, and sit on a stool all day, what was the good? Of course some of the men at home seemed happy enough; they had their cricket on Saturdays and things; but then they weren't university men. For himself, Waters decided, for the first time in his life considering in his concrete way the problem of existence, for himself it was all finished; there was nothing more in life which could give him pleasure.
The servant brought up luncheon. At first Waters thought he could eat nothing, and when he did begin in a melancholy way, he bitterly contrasted his lonely meal with the happy party in College. He felt an immense pity for himself; he would die young, he was sure; the life might even drive him to suicide—such things had happened.
After his luncheon and beer he lit his pipe. By this time Buller and Philpotts must have finished their luncheon too, and have started for the stables. They would wonder at first why he did not come, but they would not really care.
And now they must have started. He had done well not to go with them; he would not have enjoyed it, Waters assured himself, repeating the old phrases; he would never enjoy anything again. He looked at his watch furtively. What! they wouldn't start for three minutes yet. Then he had still just time enough to catch them. He seized his hat, and without waiting for a reason—he had no time to wait—he hurried out, Lo-Ben barking at his heels.
The Claim of the Past
They had all been to luncheon with Mr. Windus, and now, under his guidance, they started out to see the College, walking together across the quadrangle through the summer sunshine. Mr. Windus talked to Mrs. Ellwood of Dalmouth, the Devonshire town where she lived, and he had friends; the others were gossiping of the heat, the Oxford dances, while Ruth Ellwood and young Rutherford came last of all.
Rutherford too belonged to Dalmouth, was, indeed, a cousin of the Ellwoods—all the Dalmouth families were somehow related; but going away early to school, and afterwards to Oxford, he had come at last to seem more like a stranger to them than a friend or cousin. And this invitation to meet the Ellwoods he had accepted merely out of politeness; he was busy with his work, felt in no mood for the Oxford gaieties, and anyhow cared, or thought he cared, very little indeed for Dalmouth or the Dalmouth people.
But soon he had begun to listen with pleasure and interest to the home news, as his charming cousin told it.
"And so the town isn't much changed?" he asked; "and the different cousins, what has become of them all?"
With eager interest she went on telling him of all the old families, who lived in the different houses; how the young girls had grown up—there were so many pretty ones among the cousins!—and the young men had gone into the family offices. Some of them were married and settled down already.
"And Aunt Warner's house under the beeches, with its lawn, where we used to play, is it just the same?"
"Oh, yes, just the same, only the Bartons live there now—Uncle James's family; and on Thursdays we meet there—I mean the cousins' Tennis Club—and when it rains we dance in the old drawing room. But how shocked dear old Aunt Warner would have been to see us!" Then, as they went through the gateway into the College garden, she added, "I'm afraid all this gossip bores you; it's interesting for us who live at home, but for other people—"
"Oh, but I belong to Dalmouth!" he protested.
"Of course you do, only it's so long since you've been there," she said in half apology, "and we thought—I thought you didn't care."
It was indeed a long time, it was years since he had been there, he remembered with a certain regret for the preoccupation, the youthful intolerance, that had made him half despise his home. It was a charming place after all, the grey seaport town with its wharves, and shipping, and narrow streets, and the pleasant homes and gardens just outside where his cousins and uncles, the merchants, lived—where as a boy he had lived. How well he remembered watching, on summer afternoons, the white sails of the family ships, as they floated up with the tide past the green lawns and square old houses. A pleasant life it must be there, he thought, and quite untroubled in its tranquil interests by any great ambitions or ideas—the echoes of which, indeed, could hardly reach them in their quiet old corner of the world.
And, as they talked, the young man began to fancy idly what his own life would have been, had he never gone away from the old Devonshire town. It had been intended, of course, that he should stay there, and take his own part in the family concerns; even yet his uncles were keeping a place for him; and although they feared he was quite spoiled by Oxford, yet they would welcome him back, he knew, should he only give up those ambitions, that to them—and to himself sometimes!—seemed so impossible, so dreamy and unreal.
Ruth Ellwood stopped now and then to look at the garden flowers. "What lovely irises, and how quaint those roses are, trained so stiffly on the old walls."
"Are you fond of gardening?" he asked.
She was very fond of it, she said—not that she knew much about it! But she liked planting things and tying them up, and she always gathered the flowers for the house. Things grew so well at Dalmouth—roses and peonies, and great chrysanthemums in the autumn. Only it made her a little sad to see the chrysanthemums; their summers were so lovely!
Rutherford knew the house in which his cousin lived, and now he could almost see her there, moving over the sweet grass, hatless, in the morning light, to gather roses, filling old china bowls with their fragrant leaves; or walking home on rainy evenings past the great cedar, the wet lawn, and borders of dripping flowers.
"How beautiful she is!" he thought, looking furtively at her. The impression of this beauty, her pleasant voice, the friendly people she spoke of, and all the memories that made them seem so intimate together, affected him with a curious fresh sense of happiness, coming into his life, which had been of late somewhat discouraged and lonely, with a charm as real and actual as that of the warmth of the sun, the scent of roses.
They had reached the end of the garden, and as they turned back, still following the others, he said hesitatingly to his companion something about coming to Dalmouth soon for a visit.
"Oh, do come!" she cried, "I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and they will all be so glad to see you."
"I hope so—but I'm afraid they must think rather badly of me—will be prejudiced against me; you will have to introduce me."
"Oh, I will—only really, they won't be prejudiced against you." Then she added, "Oxford is so charming!" in a way that touched Rutherford a little. She at least, in spite of all she had heard at home, plainly could see nothing so dreadful or dangerous in Oxford, or her cousin, after all!
Yes, Oxford was charming, she said again, and not at all what she had expected—at first she had been really almost afraid to come! But it was all so pleasant; why had people such a prejudice against the University?—her two brothers wanted to come, but her father would not hear of it. But how could it unfit them for living at home? She had seen how the undergraduates lived. And her brothers would have enjoyed it so. She had been in several of the Colleges now, and had been on the river, and was going out to tea that afternoon, and afterwards, to a dance.
"Tell me," she asked, as they followed the others towards the chapel door, "are you going to any of the dances?"
He was afraid he wouldn't have the time, he said.
"Oh, what a pity, you ought to come," she cried; but her voice was hushed when, out of the glare and sunshine, they went into the blue obscurity, the cool old smell and quiet of the chapel.
The ladies looked at the windows, the religious carving; and their movement, as they went about, filled with a rustling sound the vacant silence of the place. Then they all gathered in a group while one of the Fellows told them something of the history of the chapel: how it had been built in the fourteenth century, and how ever since then the members of the College had worshipped there, and among them many whose names had afterwards grown famous.
"Tell me," Ruth Ellwood whispered, as they walked away, "is this where the undergraduates sit; where do you sit?" He showed her the Scholars' seats, and the old brass eagle from which they read the lessons, and then, when they went through the ante-chapel, she paused a moment, looking at the inscriptions and monuments.
"Were there any nice old epitaphs?" she asked. "Do show them to me, if there are."
The rest of the party had left the chapel, but could still be seen through the open door standing not far off in the sunshine, and the gossip of their voices came in faintly now and then.
The old brasses, dating from Gothic times, bore inscriptions in rhyming Latin, that Rutherford read and translated to his companion; there were monuments of a later time, adorned with urns, cherubs, and garlands—old trappings of death that made death itself seem almost quaint and charming. But in the seventeenth century the tranquil records of the scholars' lives were disturbed by echoes of old war and exile. "Reader, look to thy feet! Honest and Loyal men are sleeping under Thee," one inscription ran; and the name of more than one was recorded "who, when Loyalty and the Church fainted, lay down and Died."
Other monuments were put up to the memory of young men who had died at College. Well-born and modest, the old Latin described them, and dead, centuries ago, in the flower of their fruitless years. "Vivere dulce fuit!" one of them had complained, as four hundred years before, in florid Latin, he bade farewell to youth and hope.
Of another it was quaintly said, "Talis erat vita, qualis stylus, elegans et pura"; while another undergraduate's virtues were recorded in verses ending with the line,
"Expertus praedico, tutor eram."
Then there was an inscription in English verse, from some Cavalier poet, Rutherford thought,
"Him while fresh and fragrant Time
Cherisht in his golden prime;
Ere Hebe's hand had overlaid
His smooth cheeks with downy shade,
The rush of Death's unruly wave
Swept him off into his grave.
* * * * *
Eyes are vocall, teares have tongues,
And there be words not made with lungs;
Sententious showres: Oh let them fall!
Their cadence is rhetoricall."
Another of the same date recorded the deeds of the young scholar-soldiers "who, at the news of Battle, changed their Gownes for Armour, and Faithfully served King Charles I. from Edge Hill fight, to the End of those unhappie Wars." But one youth in that early conflict had been killed in the pursuit of victory "after Gloriously redeeming, with his own hands, the banner Royal of the King."
So they linger there for a few moments, passing from one to another of the epitaphs, with their records of knightly effort, of the ideal and romantic hopes of youth, completed afterwards, or quenched long ago by early death. And to the young man, as he spells them out, they seem at last to form a continuing tradition of lives dauntlessly lived and lost, and then recorded here, briefly, in this ancient corner of the College. His companion, too, was vaguely charmed and touched by the old inscriptions, and as they turned at last to go out she stopped in front of another tablet. Would he read it? It was too high for her to see.
Rutherford looked at it. "It's a modern one, I don't think it will interest you—"
"Oh yes, it will—do read it."
He looked at it in silence for a minute. Faint sounds of music floated into the dim chapel from the world outside—music, and distant voices calling. Then he read the name and date; a young man who had been drowned the year before. "His companions at School and College have erected this tablet, wishing to preserve the recollection of one who was much beloved, and whose influence for good was greatly felt in this place. He was of a courageous and enthusiastic nature; the example, had he lived, of his generous ambitions—" But in the middle, Rutherford's voice changed a little, and with a shiver his cousin turned and went away. Had she guessed that they had been friends, these two, or was it merely that she felt at last the chill of the place, and of all the old dead about her?
In a moment the young man turns to go out too. But as he looks through the dimness of the chapel on the summer and sunlight, and his cousin standing there outside the door, how far it all seems, how unreal! Only real to him is a sense of the briefness of life, and of the great, difficult things that may nevertheless be done or attempted before death comes. And as he walks away again with his cousin, he is quite certain, now at last, that this is no mere emotion or boyish enthusiasm, but an influence that for evil or good must rule his life—must come, at least, between him and any choice of ease and the common happiness.