‘So it does everybody’s—except Herbert’s: he explains it all on biological grounds as the beautiful discriminative action of natural selection. Simple, but not consolatory. Still, look at the other side of the question. Suppose you and everybody else were to give up all superfluities, and confine all your energies to the unlimited production of bare necessaries. Suppose you occupy every acre of land with your corn-fields, or your piggeries; and sweep away all the parks, and woods, and heaths, and moorlands in England. Suppose you keep on letting your population multiply as fast as it chooses—and it WILL multiply, you know, in that ugly, reckless, anti-Malthusian fashion of its own—till every rood of ground maintains its man, and only just maintains him; and what will you have got then?’
‘A dead level of abject pauperism,’ put in Herbert blandly; ‘a reductio ad absurdum of all your visionary Schurzian philosophy, my dear Ernest. Look at it another way, now, and just consider. Which really and truly matters most to you and me, a great work of art or a highly respectable horny-handed son of toil, whose acquaintance we have never had the pleasure of personally making? Suppose you read in the Times that the respectable horny-handed one has fallen off a scaffolding and broken his neck; and that the Dresden Madonna has been burnt by an unexpected accident; which of the two items of intelligence affects you the most acutely? My dear fellow, you may push your humanitarian enthusiasm as far as ever you like; but in your heart of hearts you know as well as I do that you’ll deeply regret the loss of the Madonna, and you’ll never think again about the fate of the respectable horny-handed, his wife or children.’
Ernest’s answer, if he had any to make, was effectually nipped in the bud by the entrance of the scout, who came in to announce Mr. and Miss Oswald and Mrs. Martindale. Edie wore the grey dress, her brother’s present, and flitted into the room after her joyous fashion, full of her first fresh delight at the cloistered quad of Magdalen.
‘What a delicious college, Mr. Berkeley!’ she said, holding out her hand to him brightly. ‘Good-morning, Mr. Le Breton; this is your brother, I know by the likeness. I thought New College very beautiful, but nothing I’ve seen is quite as beautiful as Magdalen. What a privilege to live always in such a place! And what an exquisite view from your window here!’
‘Yes,’ said Berkeley, moving a few music-books from the seat in the window-sill; ‘come and sit by it, Miss Oswald. Mrs. Martindale, won’t you put your shawl down? How’s the Professor to-day? So sorry he couldn’t come.’
‘Ah, he had to go to sit on one of his Boards,’ said the old lady, seating herself. ‘But you know I’m quite accustomed to going out without him.’
Arthur Berkeley knew as much; indeed, being a person of minute strategical intellect, he had purposely looked out a day on which the Professor had to attend a meeting of the delegates of something or other, so as to secure Mrs. Martindale’s services without the supplementary drawback of that prodigious bore. Not that he was particularly anxious for Mrs. Martindale’s own society, which was of the most strictly negative character; but he didn’t wish Edie to be the one lady in a party of four men, and he invited the Professor’s wife as an excellent neutral figure-head, to keep her in countenance. Ladies were scarcer then in Oxford than they are nowadays. The married fellow was still a tentative problematical experiment in those years, and the invasion of the Parks by young couples had hardly yet begun in earnest. So female society was still at a considerable local premium, and Berkeley was glad enough to secure even colourless old Mrs. Martindale to square his party at any price.
‘And how do you like Oxford, Miss Oswald?’ asked Ernest, making his way towards the window.
‘My dear Le Breton, what a question to put to her!’ said Berkeley, smiling. ‘As if Oxford were a place to be appraised offhand, on three days’ acquaintance. You remind me of the American who went to look at Niagara, and made an approving note in his memorandum book to say that he found it really a very elegant cataract.’
‘Oh, but you MUST form some opinion of it at least, at first sight,’ cried Edie; ‘you can’t help having an impression of a place from the first moment, even if you haven’t a judgment on it, can you now? I think it really surpasses my expectations, Mr. Le Breton, which is always a pleasant surprise. Venice fell below them; Florence just came up to them; but Oxford, I think, really surpasses them.’