A great many people seem to miss their vocations because their bodies do not happen to fit their souls. This is one of the advantages of middle age: people have got used to their bodies and to their faults; they know how to use them, to spare them, and they do not expect too much. George was at war with himself, poor fellow: by turns ascetic and self-indulgent, morbid, and overconfident. It is difficult to docket such a character, made up of all sorts of little bits collected from one and another ancestor; of materials warring against each other, as we have read in Mr. Darwin.
George's rooms at Cambridge were very small, and looked out across the green quadrangle at All Saints'. Among other instincts, he had inherited that of weaving his nest with photographs and old china, and lining it comfortably from Church House. There were papers and music-books, tankards (most of them with inscriptions), and a divining crystal. The old windows were deep and ivy-grown: at night they would often be cheerfully lighted up. 'Far too often,' say George's counsellors.
'I should like to entertain well enough,' says Henley, with a wave of the hand, 'but I can't afford it prudently. Bills have a knack of running up, particularly when they are not paid,' the young man remarks, with great originality, 'and then one can't always meet them.'
George only answers by a scowl from his little ferret eyes. 'You can pay your own bills twice over if you like,' he grunts out impatiently; 'mine don't concern you.'
Robert said no more; he had done his part, and he felt he could now face Dolly and poor Lady Sarah of the bleeding purse with a clear conscience; but he could not help remembering with some satisfaction two neatly tied-up bundles of bills lying with a cheque-book in his despatch-box at home. He was just going when there came a knock at the door, and a pale man with a red beard walked in and shook hands with George, then somewhat hesitatingly with his companion, and finally sat down in George's three-sided chair.
Need I say that this was Raban, who had come to recommend a tutor to George? Was it to George or to Dorothea that Raban was so anxious to recommend a tutor?
George shrugged his shoulders, and did not seem in the least grateful.
Henley delayed a moment. 'I am glad you agree with me,' he said. 'I also have been speaking to my cousin on the subject.'
Raban bowed in the shy way peculiar to him. You never could tell if he was only shy or repelled by your advances.
'You and I have found the advantage of a good coach all our lives,' the other continued, with a subdued air of modest triumph. It seemed to say, 'You will be glad to know that I am one of the most rising men of the University;' and at the same time Robert looked down apologetically at poor scowling George, who was anything but rising, poor fellow, and well up to his knees in the slough of despond. Nor was it destined that Robert Henley was to be the man to pull him out. Although he had walked over from St. Thomas's to do so, he walked back again without having effected his purpose.