CHAPTER VIII
JUDGMENTS
I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth.... The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream;—he awoke and found it truth.—KEATS: Letters, November 22, 1817.
(1)
"Well," queried Tressor, "and what's the next move?"
He was seated at his desk in his study, pen in hand, a pile of correspondence before him, and Paul, who had not been able to remain still for five minutes since he had heard the news, was leaning at the moment against the open window opposite. June had come in full-throated. The trees in the Fellows' Garden were thick with green, and the roses in the parterres flamed in the sun. Everything flamed in such a sunlight as had never been before, nor, in its own way, would be again. Miracles of that sort are not so uncommon in life as might be thought, but each one stands by itself. So to-day Paul was inwardly if only half-consciously marvelling at the world, seeing that it was transfigured before him.
The don, watching him thoughtfully, was well aware of it. His own experiences of a quarter of a century before, rose like a kindly ghost before him. He knew in what a turmoil of suspense the boy must have wakened, but yet how a kind of dear regret had lingered with him at breakfast, the last breakfast of the true undergraduate stage, the stage in which the future is all possibility, the die still unread even if cast. He guessed how he and his friends had talked about everything and thought only about one thing; how they had strolled round to the Senate House; how a glamour had been there upon the ugly unimposing dull building that he, the don, knew so well; how anxiety had spurred the spirits of the men in the gallery; how the first names had been greeted with relieved cheers. And he knew how Paul had heard his own in the First Class Honours List of the History Tripos with a sense, first, of utter unreality, and then of triumph that had given him for a fleeting hour the carriage of a god.
Paul had come into King's Parade with his friends a new man. A light had fallen on his ways, and at first, as always, he had been blissfully ignorant of the bitter that lurks in all earth's sweets. He had been ignorant for about as long as it took him to walk to the post office. There, when Donaldson had said that there was no good his sending a telegram, he had seen real envy in the eyes of a friend, and when the clerk had read the flimsy paper without the flicker of an eyebrow, had realised that the world is mighty big and cares nothing. Ah well, Paul had thought as he hastened back to college, that made no difference to the fact that he, Paul Kestern, had got a First, which nothing could ever destroy and which would remain a title to respect among all sorts and conditions of men. Differ with him as men might and would, he had entered set and recognised lists and ridden a triumphant course.
And Tressor was genuinely pleased that the boy had come bursting in to him, scarcely waiting to knock, greeting him with the eyes of a grateful friend. "I've got it," he had cried, "I've got it, Tressor! A First after all! Thanks to you more than to anyone. I can hardly believe it's true."
Paul had walked about the study to tell his news. "Donaldson got a third, Strether a second. I wish Gussie had got a first. I say, my father will be pleased. How many? Oh there were only five given, out of a hundred and thirty, I think. You know I never could have written a decent line if it hadn't been for you. As it was I thought that Special Period would dish me. I say—does it sound beastly?—I'm most glad of all for one thing. Whatever I become, no one will ever be able to say that if I'd known a little history I'd have been different!"