Young Earnest: The Romance of a Bad Start in Life

by Gilbert Cannan

“Oh, wonderfully!”

On the Friday she wept and would not be consoled until he had consented to go to Hull with her. He had an engagement for the day, but telegraphed to cancel it and went with her. She clung to him on the boat, and caused him almost to be carried away from the pier. The gangway had to be put out for him, and he raced ashore and stood on the quay waving a pocket-handkerchief and swallowing his tears until the boat had dipped over the edge of the sea.

They wrote to each other, every day at first, then every other day. Her letters in their coolness often stabbed him, but he could not bring his into tone with hers. He poured out everything he thought and felt without calculation, and with no literary pleasure or excitement. She was only led into warm confession when some phrase lured her on. Her greatest enthusiasm was when, at the end of the Academic year, he sent her the examination lists with his name at the head, and also as having won the Robert Owen prize and a studentship of eighty pounds a year for three years.

Indeed his university career ended in a blaze of glory. Professor Smallman sent for him and assured him that on his papers he was an absolutely first-class man, and the university could not afford to lose him. Of course there was no vacancy as yet, and the teaching of economics was a miserably-paid profession, but in the meanwhile he could procure a supernumerary post on the staff of the Grammar School which would leave him free to take up any appointment that cropped up. He could also continue his reviewing, unless he thought of going on to Oxford or Cambridge, when, of course, the school and the university would help him. For a career, a degree at one of the major universities was almost essential.

“I don’t mind telling you,” said the Professor, “that it is pretty much my own career over again, though there are things you can do that I never could. You’ve more imagination. Cambridge economics are very much alive just now. If you would care to——”

“I must make an income,” said René. He was elated, but also disgruntled, suffering from a reaction. He had prepared his subject for the examination, and having succeeded, had lost interest in it. Vaguely he had so arranged his life that until this examination he would do as he was told to do, so that after it he might do things because he wanted to do them. On the whole, he rather resented the Professor’s continued interference in his affairs. However, he agreed with the first plan. Cambridge meant another three years preparing for another examination, and he was Thrigsbeian enough to feel that it was not a “man’s work.”

He saw the Headmaster on the morning of Speech day, and was warmly thanked for the honor he had brought to the school, and was engaged to appear on the first day of the following term. Desiring to see his old form-master, Mr. Beenham, he went to his room and was surprised to find his desk empty and the boys playing cricket with a German Grammar and a ball of paper tied with string. As he left the school he asked the porter after Mr. Beenham, and the porter told him that story. It upset him. Of all human beings he had regarded Old Mole as the least human, but now he was desiring to exercise his released intelligence, his power of penetration, his imagination upon the surrounding world. All his faculties had been concentrated upon economics as a means to an end, the life which lay beyond examinations. Professor Smallman and the Headmaster had made him feel that the life beyond was distressingly like the life before, and now this disaster to Old Mole came as some small assurance that there were adventures though they might be never so foolish. The Professor had mildly alarmed his pupil by pointing out the similarity of their careers. Admire Smallman as he might, it was not that to which René wished to come. It was not that he had any excitement in contemplating the future. On the contrary: the present was too absorbing. Everybody was charming to him, seemed to be proud of him; the rich Fourmys had asked him to their houses—and he had refused. He found himself being listened to, respected, given the right to have views and opinions. He had neither, and was too honest to evolve them for the occasion. And when the future insisted upon engaging his attention, he filled it with Linda and was happy.

He refused to go to Scotland, half despising his memories of it.

He was happy, simply engrossed in his own comfortable sensations. He had set out to do a thing and done it well, better even than he or anyone else had anticipated; he was in love and engaged to be married upon the condition of making three hundred a year. His success had made that easily possible; his studentship, one hundred and fifty from the school, more from the Post, possible examination papers, lectures; his hardly-won book knowledge had been shaped by his reputation into a marketable commodity.

But his real happiness lay apart from all these things, from success, from love, from the easy commerce of his abilities. Relieved from the strain and obsession of his examination, he had discovered the wonderful pleasure to be got from the mere act of living, from seeing the world freshly every morning, from passing through the day and feeling it slip away from him without his having to demand of it any definite profit in knowledge or money earned. It was a new delight with him just to watch people, a joy that had remained with him from his outburst by the tulips, to sit and gaze at flowers, trees, the sky, water. He had times of feeling wonderfully remote, when the habits on which he won through the day seemed ridiculous, though trivially pleasurable. In this mood he would sometimes realize with a start that it was now his father and he who were companions, his mother who was the stranger. And he would bring himself up on that and tell himself that his mother had his love and championship if any were needed. But he would rejoice in his father’s gusto in eating, drinking, smoking, painting, talking, all that the queer man did. Against that too he would react and tell himself that his father was futile. But was not his mother futile also? And was not futility with gusto the better of the two?