Now from the open windows, sounds of music floated again across the quadrangle. He could picture to himself the audience, all those rows of young men, sitting there in the hot air and gaslight. Indeed, he could almost see, he felt, into the rows of minds—if you could call them minds—behind all those heads: the ridiculous images of hope and cheap romance wakened by the music, the foolish dreams of the future, and false, poetic ideas of life.
Pity the poets and novelists could not invent something a little more true to life! Cornish thought. For after all they had but two receipts: either they enlarged the world into a glorious and unreal place, full of love, success, and eternal sunshine, or else they magnified poor human nature, and invented towering, Byronic heroes, who could find nothing in a shrunken universe worthy of their passionate souls.
The music finished in a noise of long and loud applause. How all of them enjoyed it; how all of them believed in it, he thought; finding something foolish and inane in these sounds of clapping hands and pounding feet. A little while afterwards the concert ended, and the audience, a vague press of people, began to murmur and move down the steps of the hall, and pass him in the darkness. But now the sound of their footsteps and cheerful retreating voices came back to him almost sadly. A whole generation of youth, they seemed to him, as he sat there almost like some remote spectator—a whole generation of youth, those young men, pouring out of that ancient hall and passing away into the silence.
They were all gone at last; one by one the bright windows in the hall grew dark. Cornish still sat there alone. These voices and footsteps and dim figures, moving past him thus in the darkness, had left his mind curiously vibrating. So life went by, he thought, a few careless steps together on the brief-trodden path, a few words, a few greetings, and then the darkness and silence of death. What a curious mystery it was, this life, so vivid and brief in each of those passers by; the life he was conscious of in himself, as he sat there alone—the sound of his breath, the blood beating at his temples, the "soul" within—what was the meaning of it all, and for what reason was it given?
Surely this was the question of philosophy—the very question they had discussed that evening! And now, for the first time, he realized that the theories and systems he had been studying so long were not mere exercises of thought, and abstract speculations, but almost passionate attempts to explain the meaning of existence—of his own existence!
But the great solutions of the philosophers—Aristotle's "Contemplation," Kant's "Moral Law," the "Calculated Pleasure" of the Hedonists, and all the rest—there seemed to be a mortal coldness in them all. Surely they could never give a motive, or make life desirable to anyone! Vaguely dismayed at this conclusion, he repeated over to himself all the words again. Still he could find in them no motive for existence; and in a dim way he began to feel half proud of this discernment. Yes, Waters had been right after all, (and somehow he pitied both Waters and himself), philosophy was but a barren waste. And the picture of a great desert filled his mind—a desert of endless sand.
When he was again conscious of himself, for a moment he wondered where he was, confused by the discomfort of his position, and the coolness of the air. Then through the darkness he saw, outlined against the starry sky, the trees and buildings of the College quadrangle, and remembered how he had sat down there to rest after their discussion. He must have fallen asleep, and now it was late—the night had grown completely silent, and only one or two windows shone yellow in the blackness of the walls. What had their argument been about? he began to ask himself; but, chancing to look up again, he forgot everything in his wonder at the brilliance of the stars. The whole patch of sky, shut in by the dark College roofs, quivered and glowed with shining stars; he thought he had never seen the vault of heaven so wonderful and luminous.
The long, faint sigh of a passing train on the distant railway brought back his thoughts at last, out of their vague wonder, to the earth and himself again. His imagination wandered after the train as it went through the night towards London. Soon he would be in London himself, he thought, smiling. It was not three weeks now. There were some dances he was going to, and a cricket match, and the theatre, of course....
But then a vague sense of misfortune weighed him down, and in a moment he remembered how, a little while before, he had decided that life was altogether inane and meaningless. How was it that he had grown so foolishly eager again? No secret had been revealed to him; he had found no meaning behind desire, no purpose in existence. Yet here he was, looking forward to dances, actually counting the days to a cricket match! It was absurd for a self-conscious spirit to desire such things as these, especially after surveying life and philosophy, and finding there was no reason why you should desire anything at all!