“I could have excused devilry. It was ignorance. Sheer, crass, insolent provincial ignorance! I tell you, Gillett, if the Romans had dealt faithfully with the Celt, ab initio, this—this would never have happened.”
“Quite so. I should like to have heard your remarks.” “I’ve told ’em to tell me what they remember of them, with their own conclusions, in essay form next week.”
Since he had loosed the whirlwind, the fair-minded Beetle offered to do Turkey’s essay for him. On Turkey’s behalf, then, he dealt with Shakespeare’s lack of education, his butchering, poaching, drinking, horse-holding, and errand-running as Nathaniel had described them; lifted from the same source pleasant names, such as “rustic” and “sorry poetaster,” on which last special hopes were built; and expressed surprise that one so ignorant could have done “what he was attributed to.” His own essay contained no novelties. Indeed, he withheld one or two promising “subsequently transpireds” for fear of distracting King.
But, when the essays were read, Mr. King confined himself wholly to Turkey’s pitiful, puerile, jejune, exploded, unbaked, half-bottomed thesis. He touched, too, on the “lie in the soul,” which was, fundamentally, vulgarity—the negation of Reverence and the Decencies. He broke forth into an impassioned defence of “mere atheism,” which he said was often no more than mental flatulence—transitory and curable by knowledge of life—in no way comparable, for essential enormity, with the debasing pagan abominations to which Turkey had delivered himself. He ended with a shocking story about one Jowett, who seemed to have held some post of authority where King came from, and who had told an atheistical undergraduate that if he could not believe in a Personal God by five that afternoon he would be expelled—as, with tears of rage in his eyes, King regretted that he could not expel McTurk. And Turkey blew his nose in the middle of it.
But the aim of education being to develop individual judgment, King could not well kill him for his honest doubts about Shakespeare. And he himself had several times quoted, in respect to other poets: “There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.” So he treated Turkey in Form like a coiled puff-adder; and there was a tense peace among the Augustans. The only ripple was the day before the Army Examiner came, when Beetle inquired if he “need take this exam., sir, as I’m not goin’ up for anything.” Mr. King said there was great need—for many reasons, none of them flattering to vanity.
As far as the Army Class could judge, the Examiner was not worse than his breed, and the written “English” paper ran closely on the lines of King’s mid-term General Knowledge test. Howell played his “impassioned Diderot” to the Richardson lead; Stalky his parson in the wig; McTurk his contemptible Swift; Beetle, Steele’s affectionate notes out of the spunging-house to “Dearest Prue,” all in due order. There were, however, one or two leading questions about Shakespeare. A boy’s hand shot up from a back bench.
“In answering Number Seven—reasons for Shakespeare’s dramatic supremacy”—he said, “are we to take it Shakespeare did write the plays he is supposed to have written, sir?”
The Examiner hesitated an instant. “It is generally assumed that he did.” But there was no reproof in his words. Beetle began to sit down slowly.
Another hand and another voice: “Have we got to say we believe he did, sir? Even if we do not?”