Like Henry a few months earlier a revelation seemed to come to him that Life was the gate to Art, not Art to Life. He surely had been taught that lesson again and again and yet he had not learnt it.
He was pulled out into the centre of the room by a sudden silence and a realization that every one was listening to a heated argument between Monteith and Campbell. Grace Talbot was looking up from her chair at the two men with her accustomed glance of lazy superiority.
Westcott was surprised at Campbell, who was a comfortable man, eager to be liked by every one, afraid therefore to risk controversy lest some one should be displeased, practised in saying the thing that his neighbour wished to hear.
But something on this occasion had become too strong for him and dragged him for once into a public declaration of faith, regardless whether he offended or no.
"You're all wrong, Monteith," he burst out. "You're all wrong. And I'll tell you why. I'm ten years older than you are and ten years ago I might have thought as you do. Now I know better. You're wrong because you're arrogant, and you're arrogant because you're limited, and you're limited because you've surrounded yourself with smaller men who all think as you do. You've come to look on the world simply as one big field especially manured by God for the sowing of your own little particular seed. If other poor humans choose to beg for some of your seed you'll let them have it and give them permission to sow, but there's only one kind of seed, and you know what kind that is.
"Well, you're wrong. You've got a decent little plant that was stronger six years ago than it is now—but still not a bad little plant. You're fluent and clever and modern; you're better than some of them, Grace Talbot here, for instance, because you do believe in the past and believe that it has some kind of connection with the present, but you've deliberately narrowed your talent and your influence by your arrogance. Arrogance, Arrogance, Arrogance—that's the matter with all of you—and the matter with Literature and Art to-day, and politics too. You all think you've got the only recipe and that you've nothing to learn. You've everything to learn. Any ploughman in Devonshire to-day could teach you, only the trouble is that he's arrogant too now and thinks he knows everything because his Labour leaders tell him so."
Campbell paused and Monteith struck in. Monteith when he was studying at Cambridge the Arts of being a Public Man had learnt that Rule No. 1 was—Never lose your temper in public unless the crowd is with you.
He remained therefore perfectly calm, simply scratching his hair and rubbing his bristly chin.
"Very good, Campbell. But aren't you being a little bit arrogant yourself? And quite right, too. You ought to be arrogant and I ought to be. We both imagine that we know something about literature. Well, why shouldn't we say what we know? What's the good of the blind leading the blind? Why should I pretend that I know as little as Mr. Snookes and Mr. Jenks? I know more than they. Why should I pretend that every halfpenny novelist who happens to be the fashion of the moment is worth attention? Why shouldn't I select the good work and praise it and leave the rest alone?"
"Yes," said Campbell; "what's good work by your over-sophisticated, over-read, over-intellectual standard? Well and good if you'll say I've trained myself in such and such a way and my opinions are there. My training, my surroundings, my own talent, my friends have all persuaded me in this direction. There are other men, other works that may be good or bad. I don't know. About contemporary Art one can only be personal, never final. I have neither the universal temperament nor the universal training to be Judge. I can be Advocate, Special Pleader. I can show you something good that you haven't noticed before."