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Watersprings

by Arthur Christopher Benson · English · Gutenberg #4510 · 432,771 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Watersprings

Author: Arthur Christopher Benson


        
Release date: October 1, 2003 [eBook #4510]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4510

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo and Don Lainson. HTML version
        by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WATERSPRINGS ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo and Don Lainson. HTML version
by Al Haines.











WATERSPRINGS



BY

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON


  "For in the wilderness shall waters
  break out, and streams in the desert"


1913




CONTENTS

      I.  THE SCENE
     II.  RESTLESSNESS
    III.  WINDLOW
     IV.  THE POOL
      V.  ON THE DOWN
     VI.  THE HOME CIRCLE
    VII.  COUNTRY LIFE
   VIII.  THE INHERITANCE
     IX.  THE VICAR
      X.  WITH MAUD ALONE
     XI.  JACK
    XII.  DIPLOMACY
   XIII.  GIVING AWAY
    XIV.  BACK TO CAMBRIDGE
     XV.  JACK'S ESCAPADE
    XVI.  THE VISIT
   XVII.  SELF-SUPPRESSION
  XVIII.  THE PICNIC
    XIX.  DESPONDENCY
     XX.  HIGHMINDEDNESS
    XXI.  THE AWAKENING
   XXII.  LOVE AND CERTAINTY
  XXIII.  THE WEDDING
   XXIV.  DISCOVERIES
    XXV.  THE NEW KNOWLEDGE
   XXVI.  LOVE IS ENOUGH
  XXVII.  THE NEW LIFE
 XXVIII.  THE VICAR'S VIEW
   XXIX.  THE CHILD
    XXX.  CAMBRIDGE AGAIN
   XXXI.  MAKING THE BEST OF IT
  XXXII.  HOWARD'S PROFESSION
 XXXIII.  ANXIETY
  XXXIV.  THE DREAM-CHILD
   XXXV.  THE POWER OF LOVE
  XXXVI.  THE TRUTH




WATERSPRINGS


I

THE SCENE


The bright pale February sunlight lay on the little court of Beaufort
College, Cambridge, on the old dull-red smoke-stained brick, the stone
mullions and mouldings, the Hall oriel, the ivied buttresses and
battlements, the turrets, the tiled roofs, the quaint chimneys, and the
lead-topped cupola over all. Half the court was in shadow. It was
incredibly picturesque, but it had somehow the look of a fortress
rather than of a house. It did not exist only to be beautiful, but had
a well-worn beauty of age and use. There was no domestic adornment of
flower-bed or garden-border, merely four squares of grass, looking like
faded carpets laid on the rather uncompromising pebbles which floored
the pathways. The golden hands of the clock pointed to a quarter to
ten, and the chimes uttered their sharp, peremptory voices. Two or
three young men stood talking at the vaulted gateway, and one or two
figures in dilapidated gowns and caps, holding books, fled out of the
court.

A firm footstep came down one of the stairways; a man of about forty
passed out into the court--Howard Kennedy, Fellow and Classical
Lecturer of the College. His thick curly brown hair showed a trace of
grey, his short pointed beard was grizzled, his complexion sanguine,
his eyebrows thick. There were little vague lines on his forehead, and
his eyes were large and clear; an interesting, expressive face, not
technically handsome, but both clever and good-natured. He was
carelessly dressed in rather old but well-cut clothes, and had an air
of business-like decisiveness which became him well, and made him seem
comfortably at home in the place; he nodded and smiled to the
undergraduates at the gate, who smiled back and saluted. He met a young
man rushing down the court, and said to him, "That's right, hurry up!
You'll just be in time," a remark which was answered by a gesture of
despair from the young man. Then he went up the court towards the Hall,
entered the flagged passage, looked for a moment at the notices on the
screen, and went through into the back court, which was surrounded by a
tiny cloister.

Here he met an elderly man, clean-shaven, fresh-coloured,
acute-looking, who wore a little round bowler hat perched on a thick
shock of white hair. He was dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, with
a black tie, and wore rather light grey trousers. One would have taken
him for an old-fashioned country solicitor. He was, as a matter of
fact, the Vice-Master and Senior Fellow of the College--Mr. Redmayne,
who had spent his whole life there. He greeted the younger man with a
kindly, brisk, ironical manner, saying, "You look very virtuous,
Kennedy! What are you up to?"

"I am going for a turn in the garden," said Howard; "will you come with
me?"

"You are very good," said Mr. Redmayne; "it will be quite like a
dialogue of Plato!"

They went down the cloister to a low door in the corner, which Howard
unlocked, and turned into a small old-fashioned garden, surrounded on
three sides by high walls, and overlooking the river on the fourth
side; a gravel path ran all round; there were a few trees, bare and
leafless, and a big bed of shrubs in the centre of the little lawn,
just faintly pricked with points of green. A few aconites showed their
yellow heads above the soil.

"What are those wretched little flowers?" said Mr. Redmayne, pointing
at them contemptuously.

"Oh, don't say that," said Howard; "they are always the first to
struggle up, and they are the earliest signs of spring. Those are
aconites."

"Aconites? Deadly poison!" said Mr. Redmayne, in a tone of horror.
"Well, I don't object to them,--though I must say that I prefer the
works of man to the works of God at all times and in all places. I
don't like the spring--it's a languid and treacherous time; it always
makes me feel that I wish I were doing something else."

They paced for some minutes round the garden gossiping, Redmayne making
very trenchant criticisms, but evidently enjoying the younger man's
company. At something which he said, Howard uttered a low laugh, which
was pleasant to hear from the sense of contented familiarity which it
gave.

"Ah, you may laugh, my young friend," said Redmayne, "but when you have
reached my time of life and see everything going to pieces round you,
you have occasionally to protest against the general want of backbone,
and the sentimentality of the age."

"Yes, but you don't REALLY object," said Howard; "you know you enjoy
your grievances!"

"Well, I am a philosopher," said Mr. Redmayne, "but you are overdoing
your philanthropics. Luncheon in Hall for the boys, dinner at
seven-thirty for the boys, a new cricket-ground for the boys; you
pamper them! Now in my time, when the undergraduates complained about
the veal in Hall, old Grant sent for us third-year men, and said that
he understood there were complaints about the veal, of which he fully
recognised the justice, and so they would go back to mutton and beef
and stick to them, and then he bowed us out. Now the Bursar would send
for the cook, and they would mingle their tears together."

Howard laughed again, but made no comment, and presently said he must
go back to work. As they went in, Mr. Redmayne put his hand in Howard's
arm, and said, "Don't mind me, my young friend! I like to have my
growl, but I am proud of the old place, and you do a great deal for it."

Howard smiled, and tucked the old man's hand closer to his side with a
movement of his arm. "I shall come and fetch you out again some
morning," he said.

He got back to his rooms at ten o'clock, and a moment afterwards a
young man appeared in a gown. Howard sat down at his table, pulled a
chair up to his side, produced a corrected piece of Latin prose, made
some criticisms and suggestions, and ended up by saying, "That's a good
piece! You have improved a good deal lately, and that would get you a
solid mark." Then he sat for a minute or two talking about the books
his pupil was reading, and indicating the points he was to look out
for, till at half-past ten another youth appeared to go through the
same process. This went on until twelve o'clock. Howard's manner was
kindly and business-like, and the undergraduates were very much at
their ease. One of them objected to one of his criticisms. Howard
turned to a dictionary and showed him a paragraph. "You will see I am
right," he said, "but don't hesitate to object to anything I say--these
usages are tricky things!" The undergraduate smiled and nodded.

Just before twelve o'clock he was left alone for five minutes, and a
servant brought in a note. Howard opened it, and taking a sheet of
paper, began to write. At the hour a youth appeared, of very boyish
aspect, curly-haired, fresh-looking, ingenuous. Howard greeted him with
a smile. "Half a minute, Jack!" he said. "There's the paper--not the
Sportsman, I'm afraid, but you can console yourself while I just finish
this note." The boy sat down by the fire, but instead of taking the
paper, drew a solemn-looking cat, which was sitting regarding the
hearth, on to his knee, and began playing with it. Presently Howard
threw his pen down. "Come along," he said. The boy, still carrying the
cat, came and sat down beside him. The lesson proceeded as before, but
there was a slight difference in Howard's manner of speech, as of an
uncle with a favourite nephew. At the end, he pushed the paper into the
boy's hand, and said, "No, that isn't good enough, you know; it's all
too casual--it isn't a bit like Latin: you don't do me credit!" He
spoke incisively enough, but shook his head with a smile. The boy said
nothing, but got up, vaguely smiling, and holding the cat tucked under
his arm--a charming picture of healthy and indifferent youth. Then he
said in a rich infantile voice, "Oh, it's all right. I didn't do myself
justice this time. You shall see!"

At this moment the old servant came in and asked Howard if he would
take lunch.

"Yes; I won't go into Hall," said Howard. "Lunch for two--you can stay
and lunch with me, Jack; and I will give you a lecture about your sins."

The boy said, "Yes, thanks very much; I'd love to."

Jack Sandys was a pupil of Howard's in whom he had a special interest.
He was the son of Frank Sandys, the Vicar of the Somersetshire parish
where Mrs. Graves, Howard's aunt, lived at the Manor-house. Frank
Sandys was a cousin of Mrs. Graves' deceased husband. She had advised
the Vicar to send Jack to Beaufort, and had written specially
commending him to Howard's care. But the boy had needed little
commendation. From the first moment that Jack Sandys had appeared,
smiling and unembarrassed, in Howard's room, a relation that was almost
filial and paternal had sprung up between them. He had treated Howard
from the outset with an innocent familiarity, and asked him the most
direct questions. He was not a particularly intellectual youth, though
he had some vague literary interests; but he was entirely healthy,
good, and quite irresistibly charming in his naivete and simplicity.
Howard had a dislike of all sentimentality, but the suppressed paternal
instinct which was strong in him had been awakened; and though he made
no emotional advances, he found himself strangely drawn to the boy,
with a feeling for which he could not wholly account. He did not care
for Jack's athletic interests; his tastes and mental processes were
obscure to him. Howard's own nature was at once intellectual and
imaginative, but he felt an extreme delight in the fearless and direct
confidence which the boy showed in him. He criticised his work
unsparingly, he rallied him on his tastes, he snubbed him, but all with
a sense of real and instinctive sympathy which made everything easy.
The boy never resented anything that he said, asked his advice, looked
to him to get him out of any small difficulties that arose. They were
not very much together, and mostly met only on official occasions.
Howard was a busy man, and had little time, or indeed taste, for vague
conversation. Jack was a boy of natural tact, and he treated all the
authorities with the same unembarrassed directness. Undergraduates are
quick to remark on any sort of favouritism, but only if they think that
the favoured person gets any unfair advantage by his intimacy. But
Howard came down on Jack just as decisively as he came down on anyone
else whose work was unsatisfactory. It was known that they were a sort
of cousins; and, moreover, Jack Sandys was generally popular, though
only in his first year, because he was free from any touch of
uppishness, and of an imperturbable good-humour.

But his own feeling for the boy surprised Howard. He did not think him
very interesting, nor had they much in common except a perfect
goodwill. It was to Howard as if Jack represented something beyond and
further than himself, for which Howard cared--as one might love a house
for the sake of someone that had inhabited it, or because of events
that had happened there. He tried vaguely to interest Jack in some of
the things he cared about, but wholly in vain. That cheerful youth went
quietly on his own way--modest, handsome, decided, knowing exactly what
he liked, with very material tastes and ambitions, not in the least
emotional or imaginative, and yet with a charm of which all were
conscious. He was bored by any violent attempts at friendship, and
quite content in almost anyone's company, naturally self-contained and
temperate, making no claims and giving no pledges; and yet Howard was
deeply haunted by the sense that Jack stood for something almost
bewilderingly fine which he himself could not comprehend or interpret,
and of which the boy himself was wholly and radiantly unconscious. It
gave him, indeed, a sudden warmth about the heart to see Jack in the
court, or even to think of him as living within the same walls; but
there was nothing jealous or exclusive about his interest, and when
they met, there was often nothing particular to say.

Presently lunch was announced, and Howard led the way to a little
panelled parlour which looked out on the river. They both ate with
healthy appetites; and presently Jack, looking about him, said, "This
room is rather nice! I don't know how you make your rooms so nice?"

"Mostly by having very little in them except what I want," said Howard.
"These panelled rooms don't want any ornaments; people spoil rooms by
stuffing them, just as you spoil my cat,"--Jack was feeding the cat
with morsels from his plate.

"It's a nice cat," said Jack; "at least I like it in your rooms. I
wouldn't have one in my rooms, not if I were paid for it--it would be
what the Master calls a serious responsibility." Presently, after a
moment's silence, Jack said, "It's rather convenient to be related to a
don, I think. By the way, what sort of screw do they give you--I mean
your income--I suppose I oughtn't to ask?"

"It isn't usually done," said Howard, "but I don't mind your asking,
and I don't mind your knowing. I have about six hundred a year here."

"Oh, then I was right," said Jack. "Symonds said that all the dons had
about fifteen hundred a year out of the fees; he said that it wouldn't
be worth their while to do it for less. But I said it was much less. My
father only gets about two hundred a year out of his living, and it all
goes to keep me at Cambridge. He says that when he is vexed about
things; but he must have plenty of his own. I wish he would really tell
me. Don't you think people ought to tell their sons about their
incomes?"

"I am afraid you are a very mercenary person," said Howard.

"No, I'm not," said Jack; "only I think one ought to know, and then one
could arrange. Father's awfully good about it, really; but if ever I
spend too much, he shakes his head and talks about the workhouse. I
used to be frightened, but I don't believe in the workhouse now."

When luncheon was over, they went back to the other room. It was true
that, as Jack had said, Howard managed to make something pleasant out
of his rooms. The study was a big place looking into the court; it was
mostly lined with books, the bookcases going round the room in a band
about three feet from the floor and about seven feet high. It was a
theory of Howard's that you ought to be able to see all your books
without either stooping or climbing. There was a big knee-hole table
and half a dozen chairs. There was an old portrait in oils over the
mantelpiece, several arm-chairs, one with a book-rest. Half a dozen
photographs stood on the mantelpiece, and there was practically nothing
else in the room but carpets and curtains. Jack lit a cigarette, sank
into a chair, and presently said, "You must get awfully sick of the
undergraduates, I should think, day after day?"

"No, I don't," said Howard; "in fact I must confess that I like work
and feel dull without it--but that shows that I am an elderly man."

"Yes, I don't care about my work," said Jack, "and I think I shall get
rather tired of being up here before I have done with it. It's rather
pointless, I think. Of course it's quite amusing; but I want to do
something real, make some real money, and talk about business. I shall
go into the city, I think."

"I don't believe you care about anything but money," said Howard; "you
are a barbarian!"

"No, I don't care about money," said Jack; "only one must have
enough--what I like are REAL things. I couldn't go on just learning
things up till I was twenty-three, and then teaching them till I was
sixty-three. Of course I think it is awfully good of you to do it, but
I can't think why or how you do it."

"I suppose I don't care about real things," said Howard.

"No, I can't quite make you out," said Jack with a smiling air,
"because of course you are quite different from the other dons--nobody
would suppose you were a don--everyone says that."

"It's very kind of you to say so," said Howard, "but I am not sure that
it is a compliment--a tradesman ought to be a tradesman, and not to be
ashamed of it. I'm a sophist, of course."

"What's a sophist?" said Jack. "Oh, I know. You lectured about the
sophists last term. I don't remember what they were exactly, but I
thought the lecture awfully good--quite amusing! They were a sort of
parsons, weren't they?"

"You are a wonderful person, Jack!" said Howard, laughing. "I declare I
have never had such extraordinary things said to me as you have said in
the last half-hour."

"Well, I want to know about people," said Jack, "and I think it pays to
ask them. You don't mind, do you? That's the best thing about you, that
I can say what I think to you without putting my foot in it. But you
said you were going to lecture me about my sins--come on!"

"No," said Howard, "I won't. You are not serious enough to-day, and I
am not vexed enough. You know quite well what I think. There isn't any
harm in you; but you are idle, and you are inquisitive. I don't want
you to be very different, on the whole, if only you would work a little
more and take more interest in things."

"Well," said Jack, "I do take interest--that's the mischief; there
isn't time to work--that's the truth! I shall scrape through the Trip,
and then I shall have done with all this nonsense about the classics;
it really is humbug, isn't it? Such a fuss about nothing. The books I
like are those in which people say what they might say, not those in
which they say what they have had days to invent. I don't see the good
of that. Why should I work, when I don't feel interested?"

"Because whatever you do, you will have to do things in which you are
not interested," said Howard.

"Well, I think I will wait and see," said Jack. "And now I must be off.
I really have said some awful things to you to-day, and I must
apologise; but I can't help it when I am with you; I feel I must say
just what comes into my head; I must fly; thank you for lunch; and I
truly will do better, but mind only for YOU, and not because I think
it's any good." He put down the cat with a kiss. "Good-bye, Mimi," he
said; "remember me, I beseech you!" and he hurried away.

Howard sat still for a minute or two, looking at the fire; then he gave
a laugh, got up, stretched himself, and went out for a walk.

Even so quiet a thing as a walk was not unattended by a certain amount
of ceremonial. Howard passed some six or seven men of his acquaintance,
some of whom presented a stick or raised a stiff hand without a smile
or indeed any sign of recognition; one went so far as to say, "Hullo,
Kennedy!" and one eager conversationalist went so far as to say, "Out
for a walk?" Howard pushed on, walking lightly and rapidly, and found
himself at last at Barton, one of those entirely delightful pastoral
villages that push up so close to Cambridge on every side; a vague
collection of quaint irregular cottages, whitewashed and thatched, with
bits of green common interspersed, an old manorial farm with its byres
and ricks, surrounded by a moat fringed with little pollarded elms. The
plain ancient tower of the church looked gravely out over all. In the
distance, over pastoral country, rose low wolds, pleasantly shaped,
skirted with little hamlets, surrounded by orchards; the old untroubled
necessary work of the world flows on in these fields and villages,
peopled with lives hardly conscious of themselves, with no aims or
theories, just toiling, multiplying, dying, existing, it would seem,
merely to feed and clothe the more active part of the world. Howard
loved such little interludes of silence, out in the fresh country, when
the calm life of tree and herb, the delicate whisper of dry,
evenly-blowing breezes, tranquillised and hushed his restless thoughts.
He lost himself in a formless reverie, exercising no control over his
trivial thoughts.

By four o'clock he was back, made himself some tea, put on a cap and
gown, and walked out to a meeting. In a high bare room in the
University offices the Committee sat. The Vice-Chancellor, a big,
grave, solid man, Master of St. Benedict's, sat in courteous state.
Half a dozen dons sat round the great tables, ranged in a square. The
business was mostly formal. The Vice-Chancellor read the points from a
paper in his resonant voice, comments and suggestions were made, and
the Secretary noted down conclusions. Howard was struck, as he often
had been before, to see how the larger questions of principle passed
almost unnoticed, while the smaller points, such as the wording of a
notice, were eagerly and humorously debated by men of acute minds and
easy speech. It was over in half an hour. Howard strolled off with one
of the members, and then, returning to his rooms, wrote some letters,
and looked up a lecture for the next day, till the bell rang for Hall.

Beaufort was a hospitable and sociable College, and guests often
appeared at dinner. On this night Mr. Redmayne was in the chair, at the
end of a long table; eight or ten dons were present. A gong was struck;
an undergraduate came up and scrambled through a Latin Grace from a
board which he held in his hand. The tables filled rapidly with lively
young men full of talk and appetite. Howard found himself sitting next
one of his colleagues, on the other side of him being an ancient crony
of Mr. Redmayne's, the Dean of a neighbouring College. The talk was
mainly local and personal, diverging at times into politics. It was
brisk, sensible, good-natured conversation, by no means unamusing. Mr.
Redmayne was an unashamed Tory, and growled denunciations at a
democratic Government, whom he credited with every political vice under
the sun, depicting the Cabinet as men fishing in troubled seas with
philanthropic baits to catch votes. One of the younger dons, an ardent
Liberal, made a mild protest. "Ah," said Mr. Redmayne, "you are still
the prey of idealistic illusions. Politics are all based, not on
principles or programmes, but on the instinctive hatred of opponents."
There was a laugh at this. "You may laugh," said Mr. Redmayne, "but you
will find it to be true. Peace and goodwill are pretty words to play
with, but it is combativeness which helps the world along; not the
desire to be at peace, but the wish to maul your adversary!"

It was the talk of busy men who met together, not to discuss, but to
eat, and conversed only to pass the time. But it was all good-humoured
enough, and even the verbal sharpness which was employed was evidence
of much mutual confidence and esteem.

Howard thought, looking down the Hall, when the meal was in full fling,
what a picturesque, cheerful, lively affair it all was. The Hall was
lighted only by candles in heavy silver candlesticks, which flared away
all down the tables. In the dark gallery a couple of sconces burned
still and clear. The dusty rafters, the dim portraits above the
panelling, the gleam of gilded cornices were a pleasant contrast to the
lively talk, the brisk coming and going, the clink and clatter below.
It was noisy indeed, but noisy as a healthy and friendly family party
is noisy, with no turbulence. Once or twice a great shout of laughter
rang out from the tables and died away. There was no sign of
discipline, and yet the whole was orderly enough. The carvers carved,
the waiters hurried to and fro, the swing-doors creaked as the men
hurried out. It was a very business-like, very English scene, without
any ceremony or parade, and yet undeniably stately and vivid.

The undergraduates finished their dinners with inconceivable rapidity,
and the Hall was soon empty, save for the more ceremonious and
deliberate party at the high table. Presently these adjourned in
procession to the Parlour, a big room, comfortably panelled, opening
off the Hall, where the same party sat round the fire at little tables,
sipped a glass of port, and went on to coffee and cigarettes, while the
talk became more general. Howard felt, as he had often felt before, how
little attention even able and intellectual Englishmen paid to the form
of their talk. There was hardly a grammatical sentence uttered, never
an elaborate one; the object was, it seemed, to get the thought uttered
as quickly and unconcernedly as possible, and even the anecdotes were
pared to the bone. A clock struck nine, and Mr. Redmayne rose. The
party broke up, and Howard went off to his rooms.

He settled down to look over a set of compositions. But he was in a
somewhat restless frame of mind to-night, and a not unpleasant mood of
reflection and retrospect came over him. What an easy, full, lively
existence his was! He seemed to himself to be perfectly contented. He
remembered how he, the only son of rather elderly parents, had gone
through Winchester with mild credit. He had never had any difficulties
to contend with, he thought. He had been popular, not distinguished at
anything--a fair athlete, a fair scholar, arousing no jealousies or
enmities. He had been naturally temperate and self-restrained. He had
drifted on to Beaufort as a Scholar, and it had been the same thing
over again--no ambitions, no failures, friends in abundance. Then his
father had died, and it had been so natural for him, on being elected
to a Fellowship, just to carry on the same life; he had to settle to
work at once, as his mother was not well off and much invalided. She
had not long survived his father. He had taught, taken pupils, made a
fair income. He had had no break of travel, no touch with the world; a
few foreign tours in the company of an old friend had given him nothing
but an emotional tincture of recollections and associations--a touch of
varnish, so to speak. Suddenly the remembrance of some of the things
which Jack Sandys had said that morning came back to him; "real things"
the boy had said, so lightly and yet so decisively. He wondered; had he
himself ever had any touch with realities at all? He had been touched
by no adversity or tragedy, he had been devastated by no disappointed
ambitions, shattered by no emotions. His whole life had been perfectly
under his control, and he had grown into a sort of contempt for all
unbalanced people, who were run away with by their instincts or
passions. It had been a very comfortable, sheltered, happy life; he was
sure of that; he had enjoyed his work, his relations with others, his
friendships; but had he ever come near to any fulness of living at all?
Was it not, when all was said and done, a very empty affair--void of
experience, guarded from suffering? "Suffering?" he hardly knew the
meaning of the word. Had he ever felt or suffered or rebelled? Yes,
there was one little thing. He had had a small ambition once; he had
studied comparative religion very carefully at one time to illustrate
some lectures, and a great idea had flashed across him. It was a big, a
fruitful thought; he had surveyed that strange province of human
emotion, the deepest strain of which seemed to be a disgust for
mingling with life, a loathing of bodily processes and instincts, which
drove its votaries to a deliberate sexlessness, and set them at
variance with the whole solid force of Nature, the treacherous and
alluring devices by which she drove men to reproduction with an
insatiable appetite; that mystical strain, which appeared at all times
and in all places, a spiritual rebellion against material bondage, was
not that the desperate cry of the fettered spirit? The conception of
sin, by which Nature traversed her own activities and made them
void--there was a great secret hidden here. He had determined to follow
this up, and to disguise with characteristic caution and courtesy a
daring speculation under the cloak of orthodox research.

He had begun his work in a great glow of enthusiasm; but it had been
suspended time after time. He had sketched his theory out; but it lay
there in one of his table-drawers, a skeleton not clothed with words.
Why had he let this all drop? Why had he contented himself with the
easy, sociable life? Effective though he was as a teacher, he had no
real confidence in the things which he taught. They only seemed to him
a device of reason for expending its energies, just as men deprived by
complex life of manual labour sought to make up for the loss by the
elaborate pursuit of games. He did not touch the springs of being at
all. He had collapsed, he felt, into placid acquiescence; Nature had
been too strong for him. He had fitted so easily into the pleasant
scheme of things, and he was doing nothing in the world but helping to
prolong the delusion, just as men set painted glass in a window to shut
out the raincloud and the wind. He was a conformist, he felt, in
everything--in religion, intellect, life--but a sceptic underneath. Was
he not perhaps missing the whole object and aim of life and experience,
in a fenced fortress of quiet? The thought stung him suddenly with a
kind of remorse. He was doing no part of the world's work, not sharing
its emotions or passions or pains or difficulties; he was placidly at
ease in Zion, in the comfortable city whose pleasures were based on the
toil of those outside. That was a hateful thought! Had not the boy been
right after all? Must one not somehow link one's arm with life and
share its pilgrimage, even in weariness and tears?

There came a tap at the door, and one of his shyest pupils entered--a
solitary youth, poor and unfriended, who was doing all he could to get
a degree good enough to launch him in the world. He came to ask some
advice about work. Howard entered into his case as well as he could,
told him it was important that he should get certain points clear, gave
him an informal lecture, distinctly and emphatically, and made a few
friendly remarks. The man beamed with unexpressed gratitude.

"What solemn nonsense I have been talking!" thought Howard to himself
as the young man slipped away. "Of course he must learn all this--but
what for? To get a mastership, and to retail it all over again! It's a
vicious circle, this education which is in touch with nothing but the
high culture of a nation which lived in ideas; while with us culture is
just a plastering of rough walls--no part of the structure! Why cannot
we put education in touch with life, try to show what human beings are
driving at, what arrangements they are making that they may live? It is
all arrangements with us--the frame for the picture, the sheath for the
sword--and we leave the picture and the sword to look after themselves.
What a wretched dilettante business it all is, keeping these boys
practising postures in the anteroom of life! Cannot we get at the real
thing, teach people to do things, fill their minds with ideas, break
down the silly tradition of needless wealth and absurd success? And I
must keep up all this farce, simply because I am fit for nothing
else--I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed. Oh, hold your tongue, you
ass!" said Howard, apostrophising his rebellious mind. "Don't you see
where you are going? You can't do anything--it is all too big and
strong for you. You must just let it alone."




II

RESTLESSNESS


A few days later the term drew to an end, and both dons and
undergraduates, whose tempers had been wearing a little thin, got
suddenly more genial, like guests when a visit draws to a close, and
disposed to think rather better of each other.

Howard had made no plans; he did not wish to stay on at Cambridge, but
he did not want to go away: he had no relations to whose houses he
naturally drifted; he did not like the thought of a visit; as a rule he
went off with an undergraduate or two to some lonely inn, where they
fished or walked and did a little work. But just now he had a vague
feeling that he wanted to be alone; that he had something to face, some
reckoning to cast up, and yet he did not know what it was.

One afternoon--the spring was certainly advancing, and there was a
touch of languor in the air, that heavenly languor which is so sweet a
thing when one is young and hopeful, so depressing a thing when one is
living on the edge of one's nervous force--he paid a call, which was
not a thing he often did, on a middle-aged woman who passed for a sort
of relation; she was a niece of his aunt's deceased husband, Monica
Graves by name. She was a woman of independent means, who had done some
educational work for a time, but had now retired, lived in her own
little house, and occupied herself with social schemes of various
sorts. She was a year or two older than Howard. They did not very often
meet, but there was a pleasant camaraderie between them, an almost
brotherly and sisterly relation. She was a small, quiet, able woman,
whose tranquil manner concealed great clear-headedness and
decisiveness. Howard always said that it was a comfort to talk to her,
because she always knew what her own opinion was, and did what she
intended to do. He found her alone and at tea. She welcomed him drily
but warmly. Presently he said, "I want your advice, Monnie; I want you
to make up my mind for me. I have a feeling that I need a change. I
don't mean a little change, but a big one. I am suddenly aware that I
am a little stale, and I wish to be freshened up."

Monica looked at him and said, "Yes, I expect you are right! You know I
think we ought all to have one big change in our lives, about your age,
I mean. Why don't you put in for a head-mastership? I have often
thought you have rather a gift that way."

"I might do that," said Howard vaguely, "but I don't want a change of
work so much as a change of mind. I have got suddenly bored, and I am a
little vexed with myself. I have always rather held with William Morris
that people ought to live in the same place and do the same things; and
I had no intention of being bored--I have always thought that very
feeble! But I have fallen suddenly into the frame of mind of knowing
exactly what all my friends here are going to say and think, and that
rather takes the edge off conversation; and I have learned the
undergraduate mind too. It's an inconsequent thing, but there's a law
in inconsequence, and I seem to have acquired a knowledge of their
tangents."

"I must consider," said Monica with a smile, "but one can't do these
things offhand--that is worse than doing nothing. I'll tell you what to
do NOW. Why not go and stay with Aunt Anne? She would like to see you,
I know, and I have always thought it rather lazy of you not to go
there--she is rather a remarkable woman, and it's a pretty country.
Have you ever been there?"

"No," said Howard, "not to Windlow; I stayed with them once when I was
a boy, when Uncle John was alive--but that was at Bristol. What sort of
a place is Windlow? I suppose Aunt Anne is pretty well off?"

"I'm not very good at seeing the points of a place," said Monica; "but
it's a beautiful old house, though it is rather too low down for my
taste; and she lives very comfortably, so I think she must be rich; I
don't know about that; but she is an interesting woman--one of the few
really religious people I know. I am not very religious myself, but she
makes it seem rather interesting to me--she has experiences--I don't
quite know what they are; but she is a sort of artist in religion, I
think. That's a bad description, because it sounds self-conscious; and
she isn't that--she has a sense of humour, and she doesn't rub things
in. You know how if one meets a real artist in anything--a writer, a
painter, a musician--and finds them at work, it seems almost the only
thing worth doing. Well, Aunt Anne gives me the same sort of sense
about religion when I am with her; and yet when I come away, and see
how badly other people handle it, it seems a very dull business."

"That's interesting," said Howard musingly; "but I am really ashamed to
suggest going there. She has asked me so often, and I have sent such
idiotic excuses."

"Oh, you needn't mind that," said Monica; "she isn't a huffy person. I
know she would like to see you--she said to me once that the idea of
coming didn't seem to amuse you, but she seemed disposed to sympathise
with you for that. Just write and say you would like to go."

"I think I will," said Howard, "and I have another reason why I should
like to go. You know Jack Sandys, your cousin, now my pupil. He is
rather a fascinating youth. His father is parson there, isn't he?"

"Yes," said Monica; "there are two hamlets, Windlow and Windlow Malzoy,
both in the same parish. The church and vicarage are at Malzoy; but
Frank is rather a terror--my word, how that man talks! But I like Jack,
though I have only seen him half a dozen times--that reminds me that I
must have him to dinner or something--and I like his sister even
better. But I am afraid that Jack may turn out a bore too--he is rather
charming at present, because he says whatever comes into his head; and
it's all quite fresh; but that is what poor Cousin Frank does--only
it's not at all fresh! However, there's nothing like living with a bore
to teach one the merits of holding one's tongue. Poor old Frank! I
thought he would be the death of us all one evening at Windlow. He
simply couldn't stop, and he had a pathetic look in his eye, as if he
was saying, 'Can't anyone assist me to hold my tongue?'"

Howard laughed and got up. "Well," he said, "I'll take your advice. I
don't know anyone like you, Monnie, for making up one's mind. You
crystallise things. I shall like to see Aunt Anne, and I shall like to
see Jack at home; and meanwhile will you think the matter over, and
give me a lead? I don't want to leave Cambridge at all, but I would
rather do that than go sour, as some people do!"

"Yes," said Monica, "when you get beneath the surface, Cambridge is
rather a sad place. There are a good many disappointed men here--people
who wake up suddenly in middle life, and realise that if they had gone
out into the world they would have done better; but I like Cambridge;
you can do as you like here--and then the rainfall is low."

Howard went back to his rooms and wrote a short note to Mrs. Graves to
suggest a visit; he added that he felt ashamed of himself for never
coming, "but Monica says that you would like to see me, and Monica is
generally right."

That evening Jack came in to say good-bye. He did not look forwards to
the vacation at all, he said; "Windlow is simply the limit! I believe
it's the dullest place in the kingdom!"

"What would you feel if I told you that we shall probably meet?" said
Howard. "I am going to stay with Mrs. Graves--that is, if she will have
me. I don't mind saying that the fact that you are close by is a
considerable reason why I think of going."

"That's simply splendid!" said Jack; "we will have no end of a time. Do
you DO anything in particular--fish, I mean, or shoot? There's some
wretched fishing in the river, and there is some rabbit-shooting on the
downs. Mrs. Graves has a keeper, a shabby old man who shoots, as they
say, for the house. I believe she objects to shooting; but you might
persuade her, and we could go out together."

"Yes," said Howard, "I do shoot and fish in a feeble way. We will see
what can be done."

"There are things to see, I believe," said Jack, "churches and houses,
if you like that sort of thing--I don't; but we might get up some
expeditions--they are rather fun. I think you won't mind my sister. She
isn't bad for a woman. But women don't understand men. They are always
sympathising with you or praising you. They think that is what men
like, but it only means that it is what they would like. Men like to be
left alone--but I daresay she thinks I don't understand her. Then
there's my father! He is quite a good sort, really; but by George, how
he does talk! I often think I'd like to turn him loose in the
Combination Room. No one would have a chance. Redmayne simply wouldn't
be in it with my father. I've invented rather a good game when he gets
off. I try to see how many I can count before I am expected to make a
remark. I have never quite got up to a thousand, but once I nearly let
the cat out by saying nine hundred and fifty, nine hundred and
fifty-one, when my father stopped for breath. He gave me a look, I can
tell you, but I don't think he saw what I was after. Maud was seized
with hysterics. But he isn't a bad sort of parent, as they go; he
fusses, but he lets one do as one wants. I suppose I oughtn't to give
my people away; but I never can see why one shouldn't talk about one's
people just as if they were anybody else. I don't think I hold things
sacred, as the Dean says: 'Reticence, reticence, the true
characteristic of the English gentleman and the sincere Christian!'"
and Jack delivered himself of some paragraphs of the Dean's famous
annual sermon to freshmen.

"It's abominable, the way you talk," said Howard; "you will corrupt my
ingenuous mind. How shall I meet your father if you talk like this
about him?"

"You'll have to join in my game," said Jack. "By George, what sport; we
shall sit there counting away alternately, and we will have some money
on the run. You have got to say all the figures quite distinctly to
yourself, you know!"

Presently Jack said, "Why shouldn't we go down together? No, I suppose
you would want to go first? I can't run to that. But you must come as
soon as you can, and stay as long as you can. I had half promised to go
and stay a week with Travers. But now I won't. By George, there isn't
another don I would pay that compliment to! It would simply freeze my
blood if the Master turned up there. I shouldn't dare to show my face
outside the house; that man does make me sweat! The very smell of his
silk gown makes me feel faint."

"I'll tell you what I will do," said Howard, "I'll give you some
coaching in the mornings. If anyone ever wanted coaching, it is you!"

Jack looked rather blue at this, but he said, "It will have to be
gratis, though! I haven't a cent. Besides, I am going to do better. I
have a growing sense of duty!"

"It's not growing very FAST!" said Howard, "and it's a feeble motive at
best, you will find; you will have to get a better reason than that--it
won't carry you far. Why not do it to please me?"

"All right," said Jack; "will you scribble me a list of books to take
down? I had meant to have a rest; but I would do a good deal of work to
get a reasonable person down at Windlow. I simply daren't ask my
friends there; my father would talk their hindlegs off but he isn't a
bad old bird."




III

WINDLOW


Mrs. Graves wrote back by return of post that she was delighted to
think that Howard was coming. "I am getting an old woman," she said,
"and fond of memories: and what I hear of you from your enthusiastic
pupil Jack makes me wish to see my nephew, and proud of him too. This
is a quiet house, but I think you would enjoy it; and it's a real
kindness to me to come. I am sure I shall like you, and I am not
without hopes that you may like me. You need not tie yourself down to
any dates; just come when you can, and go when you must."

Howard liked the simplicity of the letter, and determined to go down at
once. He started two days later. It was a fine spring day, and it was
pleasant to glide through the open country all quickening into green.
He arrived in the afternoon at the little wayside station. It was in
the south-east corner of Somersetshire, and Howard liked the look of
the landscape, the steep green downs, with their wooded dingles
breaking down into rich undulating plains, dappled with hedgerow trees
and traversed by gliding streams. He was met at the station by an
old-fashioned waggonette, with an elderly coachman, who said that Mrs.
Graves had hoped to come herself, but was not very well, and thought
that Mr. Kennedy would prefer an open carriage.

Howard was astonished at the charm of the whole countryside. They
passed through several hamlets, with beautiful old houses, built of a
soft orange stone, weathering to a silvery grey, with evidences of
careful and pretty design in their mullioned windows and arched
doorways. The churches, with their great richly carved towers, pierced
stone shutters, and clustered pinnacles, pleased him extremely, and he
liked the simple and courteous greetings of the people who passed them.
He had a sense, long unfamiliar to him, as though he were somehow
coming home. The road entered a green valley among the downs. To the
left, an outstanding bluff was crowned with the steep turfed bastions
of an ancient fort, and as they went in among the hills, the slopes
grew steeper, rich with hanging woods and copses, and the edges of the
high thickets were white with bleached flints. At last they passed into
a hamlet with a church, and a big vicarage among shrubberies; this was
Windlow Malzoy, the coachman said, and that was Mr. Sandys' house.
Howard saw a girl wandering about on the lawn--Jack's sister, he
supposed, but it was too far off for him to see her distinctly; five
minutes later they drove into Windlow. It lay at the very bottom of the
valley; a clear stream ran beneath the bridge. There were but half a
dozen cottages, and just ahead of them, abutting on the road, appeared
the front of a beautiful simple house of some considerable size, with a
large embowered garden behind it bordering on the river; Howard was
astonished to see what a large and ancient building it was. The part on
the road was blank of windows, with the exception of a dignified
projecting oriel; close to which was a high Tudor archway, with big oak
doors standing open. There were some plants growing on the
coping--snapdragon and valerian--which gave it a look of age and
settled use. The carriage drove in under the arch, and a small
courtyard appeared. There was a stable on the right, with a leaded
cupola; the house itself was very plain and stately, with two great
traceried windows which seemed to belong to a hall, and a finely carved
outstanding porch. The whole was built out of the same orange stone of
which the churches were built, stone-tiled, all entirely homelike and
solid.

He got down at the door, which stood open. An old man-servant appeared,
and he found himself in a flagged passage, with a plain wooden screen
on his left, opening into the hall. It had a collegiate air which he
liked. Then he was led out at the opposite end of the vestibule, the
servant saying, "Mrs. Graves is in the garden, sir." He stepped out on
to a lawn bordered with trees; opposite him was a stone-built Jacobean
garden-house, with stone balls on the balustraded coping. Two ladies
were walking on the gravel path; the older of the two, who walked with
a stick, came up to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and gave him a
kiss in a simple and motherly way, saying, "So here you actually are,
my dear boy, and very much welcome." She then presented the other lady,
a small, snub-nosed, middle-aged woman, saying, "This is Miss Merry,
who lives with me, and keeps me more or less in order; she is quite
excited at meeting a don; she has a respect for learning and talent,
which is unhappily rare nowadays." Miss Merry shook hands as a spaniel
might give its paw, and looked reverentially at Howard. His aunt put
her hand through his arm, and said, "Let us walk about a little. I live
by rule, you must know--that is, by Miss Merry's rule; and we shall
have tea in a few minutes."

She pointed out one or two of the features of the house, and said, in
answer to Howard's loudly expressed admiration, "Yes, it is a nice old
house. Your uncle had a great taste for such things in days when people
did not care much about them. He bought this very cheap, I believe, and
was much attached to it; but he did not live long to enjoy it, you
know. He died nearly thirty years ago. I meant to sell it, but somehow
I did not, and now I hope to end my days here. It is not nearly as big
as it looks, and a good deal of it consists of unused granaries and
farm buildings. I sometimes think it is selfish of me to go on
occupying it--it's a house that wants CHILDREN; but one isn't very
consistent; and somehow the house is used to me, and I to it; and,
after all, it is only waiting, which isn't the worst thing in the
world!"

When Howard found an opportunity of scrutinising his aunt, which he did
as she poured out tea, he saw a very charming old lady, who was not
exactly handsome, but was fresh-coloured and silvery-haired, and had a
look of the most entire tranquillity and self-possession. She looked as
if she had met and faced trouble at some bygone time; there were traces
of sorrow about the brow and eyes, but it was a face which seemed as if
self had somehow passed out of it, and was yet strong with a peculiar
kind of fearless strength. She had a lazy and contented sort of laugh,
and yet gave an impression of energy, and of a very real and vivid
life. Her eyes had a great softness and brilliancy, and Howard liked to
feel them dwelling upon him. As they sat at tea she suddenly put her
hand on his and said, "My dear boy, how you remind me of your mother! I
suppose you hardly even remember her as a young woman; but though you
are half hidden in that beard of yours, you are somehow just like her,
and I feel as if I were in the schoolroom again at Hunsdon in the old
days. No, I am not sentimental. I don't want it back again, and I don't
hate the death that parts us. One can't go back, one must go
forward--and, after all, hearts were made to love with, and not to
break!"

They spent a quiet evening in the still house. Mrs. Graves said to
Howard, "I know that men always want to go and do something mysterious
after tea; but to-night you must just sit here and get used to me. You
needn't be afraid of having to see too much of me. I don't appear
before luncheon, and Jane looks after me; and you must get some
exercise in the afternoons. I don't go further than the village. I
expect you have lectures to write; and you must do exactly what you
like." They sat there, in the low panelled room, and talked easily
about old recollections. They dined in simple state in the big hall
with its little gallery, at a round table in the centre, lighted by
candles. The food was simple, the wine was good.

"Marengo chicken," said Mrs. Graves as a dish was handed round. "That's
one of Jane's historical allusions. If you don't know why it is called
Marengo, Jane will rejoice to enlighten you." After the meal she begged
him to smoke. "I like it," said Mrs. Graves; "I have even smoked myself
in seclusion, but now I dare not--it would be all over the parish
to-morrow."

After dinner they went back to the drawing-room, and Miss Merry turned
out to be quite a good pianist, playing some soft old music at the end
of the gently lighted room. Mrs. Graves went off early. "You had better
stop and smoke here," she said to Howard. "There's a library where you
can work and smoke to-morrow; and now good night, and let me say how I
delight to have you here--I really can't say how much!"

Howard sat alone in the drawing-room. He had an almost painful faculty
of minute observation, and the storage of new impressions was a real
strain to him. To-day it seemed that they had poured in upon him in a
cataract, and he felt dangerously wakeful; why had he been such a fool
as to have missed this beautiful house, and this home atmosphere of
affection? He could not say. A stupid persistence in his own plans, he
supposed. Yet this had been waiting for him, a home such as he had
never owned. He thought with an almost terrified disgust of his rooms
at Beaufort, as the logs burned whisperingly in the grate, and the
smoke of his cigarette rose on the air. Was it not this that he had
been needing all along? At last he rose, put out the candles, and made
his way to the big panelled bedroom which had been given him. He lay
long awake, wondering, in a luxurious repose, listening to the whisper
of the breeze in the shrubberies, and the faint murmur of the water in
the full-fed stream.




IV

THE POOL


Very early in the morning Howard woke to hear the faint twittering of
the birds begin in bush and ivy. It was at first just a fitful, drowsy
chirp, a call "are you there? are you there?" until, when all the
sparrows were in full cry, a thrush struck boldly in, like a solo
marching out above a humming accompaniment of strings. That was a
delicious hour, when the mind, still unsated of sleep, played softly
with happy, homelike thoughts. He slept again, but the sweet mood
lasted; his breakfast was served to him in solitude in a little
panelled parlour off the Hall; and in the fresh April morning, with the
sunlight lying on the lawn and lighting up the old worn detail of the
carved cornices, he recovered for a time the boyish sense of ecstasy of
the first morning at home after the return from school. While he was
breakfasting, a scribbled note from Jack was brought in.


"Just heard you arrived last night; it's an awful bore, but I have to
go away to-day--an old engagement made, I need hardly say, FOR me and
not BY me; I shall turn up to-morrow about this time. No WORK, I think.
A day of calm resolution and looking forward manfully to the future! My
father and sister are going to dine at the Manor to-night. I shall be
awfully interested to hear what you think of them. He has been looking
up some things to talk about, and I can tell you, you'll have a dose.
Maud is frightened to death.--Yours

"Jack.

"P.S.--I advise you to begin COUNTING at once."


A little later, Miss Merry turned up, to ask Howard if he would care to
look round the house. "Mrs. Graves would like," she said, "to show it
you herself, but she is easily tired, and can't stand about much." They
went round together, and Howard was surprised to find that it was not
nearly as large a house as it looked. Much space was agreeably wasted
in corridors and passages, and there were huge attics with great
timbered supports, needed to sustain the heavy stone tiling, which had
never been converted into living rooms. There was the hall, which took
up a considerable part of one side; out of this, towards the road,
opened the little parlour where he had breakfasted, and above it was a
library full of books, with its oriel overhanging the road, and two
windows looking into the garden. Then there was the big drawing-room.
Upstairs there were but a half a dozen bedrooms. The offices and the
servants' bedrooms were in the wing on the road. There was but little
furniture in the house. Mr. Graves had had a preference for large bare
rooms; and such furniture as there was, was all for use and not for
ornament, so that there was a refreshing lack of any aesthetic pose
about it. There were but few pictures, but most of the rooms were
panelled and needed no other ornament. There was a refreshing sense of
space everywhere, and Howard thought that he had never seen a house he
liked so well. Miss Merry chirped away, retailing little bits of
history. Howard now for the first time learned that Mr. Graves had
retired early from business with a considerable fortune, and being fond
of books and leisure, and rather delicate in health, had established
himself in the house, which had taken his fancy. There were some
fifteen hundred acres of land attached, divided up into several small
farms.

Miss Merry was filled with a reverential sort of adoration of Mrs.
Graves; "the most wonderful person, I assure you! I always feel she is
rather thrown away in this remote place."

"But she likes it?" said Howard.

"Yes, she likes everything," said Miss Merry. "She makes everyone feel
happy: she says very little, but you feel somehow that all is right if
she is there. It's a great privilege, Mr. Kennedy, to be with her; I
feel that more and more every day."

This artless praise pleased Howard. When he was left alone he got out
his papers; but he found himself restless in a pleasant way; he
strolled through the garden. It was a singular place, of great extent;
the lawn was carefully kept, but behind the screen of shrubs the garden
extended far up the valley beside the river in a sort of wilderness;
and he could see by the clumps of trees and the grassy mounds that it
must have once been a great formal pleasaunce, which had been allowed
to follow its own devices; at the far end of it, beside the stream,
there was a long flagged terrace, with a stone balustrade looking down
upon the stream, and beyond that the woods closed in. He left the
garden and followed the stream up the valley; the downs here drew in
and became steeper, till he came at last to one of the most lovely
places he thought he had ever set eyes upon. The stream ended suddenly
in a great clear pool, among a clump of old sycamores; the water rose
brimming out of the earth, and he could see the sand fountains rising
and falling at the bottom of the basin; by the side of it was a broad
stone seat, with carved back and ends. There was not a house in sight;
beyond there was only the green valley-end running up into the down,
which was here densely covered with thickets. It was perfectly still;
and the only sound was the liquid springing of the water in the pool,
and the birds singing in the bushes. Howard had a sudden sense that the
place held a significance for him. Had he been there before, in some
dream or vision? He could not tell; but it was strangely familiar to
him. Even so the trees had leaned together, and the clear ripples
pulsed upon the bank. Something strange and beautiful had befallen him
there. What was it? The mind could not unravel the secret.

He sat there long in the sun, his eyes fixed upon the pool, in a
blissful content that was beyond thought. Then he slowly retraced his
steps, full of an intense inner happiness.

He found his aunt in the garden, sitting out in the sun. He bent down
to kiss her, and she detained his hand for a moment. "So you are at
home?" she said, "and happy?--that is what I had wished and hoped. You
have been to the pool--yes, that is a lovely spot. It was that, I
think, which made your uncle buy the place; he had a great love of
water--and in my unhappy days here, when I had lost him, I used often
to go there and wish things were otherwise. But that is all over now!"

After luncheon, Miss Merry excused herself and said she was going to
the village to see a farm-labourer's wife, who had lost a child and was
in great distress. "Poor soul!" said Mrs. Graves. "Give her my love,
and ask her to come and see me as soon as she can." Presently as they
sat together, Howard smoking, she asked him something about his work.
"Will you tell me what you are doing?" she said. "I daresay I should
not understand, but I like to know what people are thinking
about--don't use technical terms, but just explain your idea!"

Howard was just in the frame of mind, trying to revive an old train of
thought, in which it is a great help to make a statement of the range
of a subject; he said so, and began to explain very simply what was in
his mind, the essential unity of all religion, and his attempt to
disentangle the central motive from outlying schemes and dogmas. Mrs.
Graves heard him attentively, every now and then asking a question,
which showed that she was following the drift of his thought.

"Ah, that's very interesting and beautiful," she said at last. "May I
say that it is the one thing that attracts me, though I have never
followed it philosophically. Now," she went on, "I am going to reduce
it all to practical terms, and I don't want to beat about the
bush--there's no need for that! I want to ask you a plain question.
Have you any religion or faith of your own?"

"Ah," said Howard, "who can say? I am a conformist, certainly, because
I recognise in religion a fine sobering, civilising force at work, and
if one must choose one's side, I want to be on that side and not on the
other. But religion seems to me in its essence a very artistic thing, a
perception of effects which are hidden from many hearts and minds. When
a man speaks of definite religious experience, I feel that I am in the
presence of a perception of something real--as real as music and
painting. But I doubt if it is a sense given to all, or indeed to many;
and I don't know what it really is. And then, too, one comes across
people who hold it in an ugly, or a dreary, or a combative, or a formal
way; and then sometimes it seems to me almost an evil thing."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "I understand that. May I give you an
instance, and you will see if I perceive your thought. The good Vicar
here, my cousin Frank, Jack's father--you will meet him to-night--is a
man who holds a rigid belief, or thinks he holds it. He preaches what
he calls the sinew and bone of doctrine, and he is very stern in the
pulpit. He likes lecturing people in rows! But in reality he is one of
the kindest and vaguest of men. He preached a stiff sermon about
conversion the other day--I am pretty sure he did not understand it
himself--and he disquieted one of my good maids so much that she went
to him and asked what she could do to get assurance. He seems to have
hummed and hawed, and then to have said that she need not trouble her
head about it--that she was a good girl, and had better be content with
doing her duty. He is the friendliest of men, and that is his real
religion; he hasn't an idea how to apply his system, which he learned
at a theological college, but he feels it his duty to preach it."

"Yes," said Howard, "that is just what I mean; but there must be some
explanation for this curious outburst of forms and doctrines, so
contradictory in the different sects. Something surely causes both the
form of religion and the force of it?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "just as in an engine something causes both
the steam and the piston-rod; it's an intelligence somewhere that fits
the one to the other. But then, as you say, what is the cause of all
this extravagance and violence of expression?"

"That is the human element," said Howard--"the cautious, conservative,
business-like side that can't bear to let anything go. All religion
begins, it seems to me, by an outburst of moral force, an attempt to
simplify, to get a principle; and then the people who don't understand
it begin to make it technical and defined; uncritical minds begin to
attribute all sorts of vague wonders to it--things unattested, natural
exaggerations, excited statements, impossible claims; and then these
take traditional shape and the poor steed gets hung with all sorts of
incongruous burdens."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "but the force is there all the time; the old
hard words, like regeneration and atonement, do not mean DEFINITE
things--that is the mischief; they are the receipts made up by stupid,
hard-headed people who do not understand; but they stand for large and
wonderful experiences and are like the language of children telling
their dreams. The moral genius who sees through it all and gives the
first impulse is trying to deal with life directly and frankly; and the
difficulty arises from people who see the attendant circumstances and
mistake them for the causes. But I do not see it from that side, of
course! I understand what you are aiming at. You are trying to
disentangle all the phenomena, are you not, and referring them to their
real causes, instead of lumping them all together as the phenomena of
religion?"

"Yes," said Howard, "that is what I am doing. I suppose I am naturally
sceptical; but I want to put aside all that stands on insecure
evidence, and all the sham terminology that comes from a muddled
delight in the supernatural. I want to give up and clear away all that
is not certain--material things must be brought to the test of material
laws--and to see what is left."

"Well," said Mrs. Graves, "now I will tell you my own very simple
experience. I began, I think, with a very formal religion, and I tried
in my youth to attach what was really instinctive to religious motives.
It got me into a sad mess, because I did not dare to go direct to life.
I used to fret because your uncle seemed so indifferent to these
things. He was a wise and good man, and lived by a sort of inner beauty
of character that made all mean cruel spiteful petty things impossible
to him. Then when he died, I had a terrible time to go through. I felt
utterly adrift. My old system did not give me the smallest help. I was
trying to find an intellectual solution. It was then that I met Miss
Gordon, the great evangelist. She saw I was unhappy, and she said to me
one day: 'You have no business to be unhappy like this. What you want
is STRENGTH, and it is there all the time waiting for you! You are
arguing your case with God, complaining of the injustice you have
received, trying to excuse yourself, trying to find cause to blame Him.
Your life has been broken to pieces, and you are trying to shelter
yourself among the fragments. You must cast them all away, and thank
God for having pierced through the fortress in which you were
imprisoned. You must just go straight to Him, and open your heart, as
if you were opening a window to the sun and air.' She did not explain,
or try to give me formulas or phrases, she simply showed me the light
breaking round me.

"It came to me quite suddenly one morning in my room upstairs. I was
very miserable indeed, missing my dear husband at every turn, quite
unable to face life, shuddering and shrinking through the days. I threw
it all aside, and spoke to God Himself. I said, 'You made me, You put
me here, You sent me love, You sent me prosperity. I have cared for the
wrong things, I have loved in the wrong way. Now I throw everything
else aside, and claim strength and light. I will sorrow no more and
desire no more; I will take every day just what You send me, I will say
and do what You bid me. I will make no pretences and no complaints. Do
with me what You will.'

"I cannot tell you what happened to me, but a great tide of strength
and even joy flowed into my whole being; it was the water of life,
clear as crystal; and yet it was myself all the time! I was not
different, but I was one with something pure and wise and loving and
eternal.

"That has never left me. You will ask why I have not done more,
bestirred myself more; because that is just what one cannot do. All
that matters nothing. The activities which one makes for oneself, they
are the delusions which hide God from us. One must not strive or rebuke
or arrange; one must simply love and be. Let me tell you one thing. I
was haunted all my early life with a fear of death. I liked life so
well, every moment of it, every incident, that I could not bear to
think it should ever cease; now, though I shrink from pain as much as
ever, I have no shrinking whatever from death. It is the perfectly
natural and simple change, and one is with God there as here. The soul
and God--those are the two imperishable things; one has not either to
know or to act--one has only to feel."

She ceased speaking, and sat for a moment upright in her chair. Then
she went on. "Now the moment I saw you, my dear boy, I loved
you--indeed I have always loved you, I think, and I have always felt
that some day in His good time God would bring us together. But I see
too that you have not found the strength of God. You are not at peace.
Your life is full and active and kind; you are faithful and pure; but
your self is still unbroken, like a crystal wall all round you. I think
you will have to suffer; but you will believe, will you not, that you
have not seen a half of the wonder of life? You are full of happy
experience, but you have begun to feel the larger need. And I knew that
when you began to feel that need, you would be brought to me, not to be
given it, but to be shown it. That is all I can say to you now, but you
will know the fulness of life. It is not experience, action, curiosity,
ambition, desire, as many think, that is fulness of life; those are
delusions, things through which the soul has to pass, just that it may
learn not to rest in them. The fulness of life is the stillest,
quietest, inner joy, which nothing can trouble or shadow; love is a
part of it, but not quite all--for there is a shadow even in love; and
this is the larger peace."

Howard sat amazed at the fire and glow of the words that came to him.
He did not fully understand all that was said, but he had a sense of
being brought into touch with a very tremendous and overwhelming force
indeed. But he could not for the moment revise his impressions; he only
perceived that he had come unexpectedly upon a calm and radiating
centre of energy, and it seemed in his mind that the pool which he had
seen that morning was an allegory of what he had now heard. The living
water, breaking up so clearly from underground in the grassy valley,
and passing downwards to gladden the earth! It would be used, be
tainted, be troubled, but he saw that no soil or stain, no scattering
or disruption, could ever really intrude itself into that elemental
purity. The stream would reunite itself, the impregnable atom would let
the staining substance fall unheeded. He would have to consider all
that, scrutinise his life in a new light. He felt that he had been
living on the surface of things, relying on impression, living in
impression, missing the strong central current all the time. He rose,
and taking his aunt's hand, kissed her cheek.

"Those are my thanks!" he said smiling. "I can't express my gratitude,
but you have given me so much to think about and to ponder over that I
can say no more now. I do indeed feel that I have missed what is
perhaps the greatest thing in the world. But I ask myself, Can I attain
to this, is it for me? Am I not condemned by temperament to live in the
surface-values?"

"No, dear child," said Mrs. Graves, looking at him, so that for an
instant he felt like a child indeed at a mother's knee; "we all come
home thus, sooner or later; and the time has come for you. I knew it
the moment I opened your letter. He is at the gate, I said, and I may
have the joy of being beside him when the door is opened."




V

ON THE DOWN


Howard was very singularly impressed by this talk. It seemed to him,
not certainly indeed, but possibly, that he had stumbled, almost as it
were by accident, upon a great current of force and emotion running
vehemently through the world, under the calm surface of things. How
many apparently unaccountable events it might explain! one saw frail
people doing fine things, sensitive people bearing burdens of
ill-health or disappointment, placidly and even contentedly, men making
gallant, unexpected choices, big expansive natures doing dull work and
living cheerfully under cramped conditions. He had never troubled to
explain such phenomena, beyond thinking that for some reason such a
course of action pleased and satisfied people. Of course everyone did
not hide the struggle; there were men he knew who had a grievance
against the world, for ever parading a valuation of themselves with
which no one concurred. But there were many people who had the material
for far worse grievances, who never seemed to nourish them. Had they
fought in secret and prevailed? Had they been floated into some moving
current of strength by a rising tide? Were they, like the man in the
Gospel, conscious of a treasure hidden in a field which made all other
prizes tame by comparison? Was the Gospel in fact perhaps aiming at
that--the pearl of price? To be born again--was that what had happened?
The thought cast a light upon his own serene life, and showed him that
it was essentially a pagan sort of life, temperate perhaps and refined,
but still unlit by any secret fire. It was not that his life was wrong,
or that an abjuration was needed; it was still to be lived, and lived
more intently, but no longer merely self-propelled. . . .

He needed to be alone, to consider, to focus his thought; he went off
for a walk by himself among the hills, past the spring, up the valley,
till he came to a place where the down ran out into the plain, the
bluff crowned with a great earthwork. An enormous view lay spread out
before him. To left and right the smooth elbows of the uplands ran down
into the plain, their skirts clothed with climbing woods and orchards,
hamlets half-hidden, with the smoke going up from their chimneys;
further out the cultivated plain rose and fell, field beyond field,
wood beyond wood, merging at last in a belt of deep rich colour, and
beyond that, blue hills of hope and desire, and a pale gleam of sea
beyond all. The westering sun filled the air with a golden haze, and
enriched the land with soft rich shadows. There was life spread out
before him, just so and not otherwise, life organised and constructed
into toil and a certain order, out of what dim concourse and strife!
For whatever reason, it was there to be lived; one could not change the
conditions of it, the sun and the rain, the winter and the spring; but
behind all that definite set of forces, was there perhaps a stronger
and larger force still, a brimming tide of energy, that clasped life
close and loved it, and yet regarded something through it and beyond it
that was not yet? His heart seemed full of a great longing, not to
avoid life, but to return and live it in a larger way, at once more
engaged in it, and more detached from it, each quality ministering to
the other. It seemed to him that afternoon that there was something
awaiting him greater than anything which had yet befallen him--an open
door, through which he might pass to see strange things.




VI

THE HOME CIRCLE


He returned somewhat late, to find tea over and Mrs. Graves gone to her
room; but there was tea waiting for him in the library; he went there,
and for a while turned over his book, which seemed to him now to be
illumined with a new light. It was this that he had been looking for,
this gift of power; it was that which lay behind his speculations; he
had suspected it, inferred it, but not perceived it; he saw now whither
his thought had been conducting him, and why he had flagged in the
pursuit.

He went up to dress for dinner, and came down as soon as the bell rang.
He found that Jack's father and sister had arrived. He went into the
dimly lighted room. Mr. Sandys, a fine-looking robust man,
clean-shaven, curly-haired, carefully and clerically dressed, was
standing by Mrs. Graves; he came forward and shook hands. "I am
delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Kennedy," he said, "though
indeed I seem to know a great deal about you from Jack. You are quite a
hero of his, you know, and I want to thank you for all your kindness to
him. I am looking forward to having a good talk with you about his
future. By the way, here is my daughter, Maud, who is quite as anxious
to see you as I am." A figure sitting in a corner, talking to Miss
Merry, rose up, came forward into the light, and held out her hand with
rather a shy smile.

Howard was amazed at what he saw. Maud had an extraordinary likeness to
her brother, but with what a difference! Howard saw in an instant what
it was that had haunted him in the aspect of Jack. This was what he
seemed to have discerned all the time, and what had been baffling him.
He knew that she was nineteen, but she looked younger. She was not, he
thought, exactly beautiful--but how much more than beautiful; she was
very finely and delicately made, and moved with an extraordinary grace;
pale and fair, but with a look of perfect health; her features were
very small, and softly rather than finely moulded; she had the air of
some flower--a lily he thought--which was emphasised by her simple
white dress. The under-lip was a little drawn in, which gave the least
touch of melancholy to the face; but she had clear blue trustful eyes,
the expression of which moved him in a very singular manner, because
they seemed to offer a sweet and frank confidence. Her self-possession
gave the least little sense of effort. He took the small firm and
delicate hand in his, and was conscious of something strong and
resolute in the grasp of the tiny fingers. She murmured something about
Jack being so sorry to be away; and Howard to recover himself said:
"Yes, he wrote to me to explain--we are going to do some work together,
I believe."

"Yes, it's most kind of you," said Mr. Sandys, putting his arm within
his daughter's with a pleasant air of fatherliness. "I am afraid
industry isn't Jack's strong point? Of course I am anxious about his
future--you must be used to that sort of thing! but we will defer all
this until after dinner, when Mrs. Graves will allow us to have a good
talk."

"We will see," said Mrs. Graves, rising; "Howard is here for a holiday,
you know. Howard, will you lead the way; you don't know how my
ceremonial soul enjoys having a real host to preside!"

Maud took Howard's arm, and the touch gave him a quite unreasonable
thrill of pleasure; but he felt too quite insupportably elderly. What
could he find to talk to this enchanting child about? He wished he had
learned more about her tastes and ideas. Was this the creature of whom
Jack had talked so patronisingly? He felt almost angry with his absent
pupil for not having prepared him for what he would meet.

As soon as they were seated Mr. Sandys launched into the talk, like an
eagle dallying with the wind. He struck Howard as an extremely
good-natured, sensible, buoyant man, with a perpetual flow of healthy
interests. Nothing that he said had the slightest distinction, and his
power of expression was quite unequal to the evident vividness of his
impressions. He had a taste for antithesis, but no grasp of synonyms.
Every idea in Mr. Sandys' mind fell into halves, but the second clause
was produced, not to express any new thought, but rather to echo the
previous clause. He began at once on University topics. He had himself
been a Pembroke man, and it had cost him an effort, he said, to send
Jack elsewhere. "I don't take quite the orthodox view of education," he
said, "in fact I am decidedly heterodox about its aims and the object
that it has. It ought not to fall behind its object, and all this
specialisation seems to me to be dangerous, and in fact decidedly
perilous. My own education was on the old classical lines--an excellent
gymnastic, I think, and distinctly fortifying. The old masterpieces,
you know, Thucydides and so forth--they should be the basis--the
foundation so to speak. But we must not forget the superstructure, the
house of thought, if I may use the expression. You must forgive my
ventilating these crude ideas, Mr. Kennedy. I went in myself, after
taking my degree, for a course of general reading. Goethe and Schiller,
you know. Yes, how fine that all is, though I sometimes feel it is a
little Teutonic? One needs to correct the Teutonic bias, and it is just
there that the gymnastic of the classics comes in; it gives one a
standard--a criterion in fact. One must have a criterion, mustn't one,
or it is all loose, and indeed, so to speak, illusive? I am all for
formative education; and it is there that women--I speak frankly in the
presence of three intelligent women--it is there that they suffer.
Their education is not formative enough--not formal enough, in fact!
Now, I have tried with dear Maud to communicate just that touch of
formality. You would be surprised, Mr. Kennedy, to know what Maud has
read under my guidance. Not learned, you know--I don't care for
that--but with a standard, or if I may revert to my former expression,
a criterion."

He paused for a moment, saw that he was belated, and finished his soup
hastily.

"Yes," said Howard, "of course that is the real problem of
education--to give a standard, and not to extinguish the taste for
intellectual things, which is too often what we contrive to do."

"Now we must not be too serious all at once," said Mrs. Graves. "If we
exhaust ourselves about education, we shall have nothing to fall back
upon--we shall be afraid to condescend. I am deplorably ill-educated
myself. I have no standard whatever. I have to consult dear Jane, have
I not? Jane is my intellectual touchstone, and saves me from entire
collapse."

"Well, well," said Mr. Sandys good-humouredly, "Mr. Kennedy and I will
fight it out together sometime. He will forgive an old Pembroke man for
wanting to know what is going forward; for scenting the battle afar
off, in fact."

Mr. Sandys found no lack of subjects to descant upon; but voluble, and
indeed absurd as he was, Howard could not help liking him; he was a
good fellow, he could see, and managed to diffuse a geniality over the
scene. "I am interested in most things," he said, at the end of a
breathless harangue, "and there is something in the presence of a real
live student, from the forefront of the intellectual battle, which
rouses all my old activities--stimulates them, in fact. This will be a
memorable evening for me, Mr. Kennedy, and I have abundance of things
to ask you." He did indeed ask a good many things, but he was content
to answer them himself. Once indeed, in the course of an immense
tirade, in which Mr. Sandys' intellectual curiosity took a series of
ever-widening sweeps, Howard caught his neighbour regarding him with a
half-amused look, and became aware that she was wondering if he were
playing Jack's game. Their eyes met, and he knew that she knew that he
knew. He smiled and shook his head. She gave him a delighted little
smile, and Howard had that touch of absurd ecstasy, which visits men no
longer young, when they find themselves still in the friendly camp of
the young, and not in the hostile camp of the middle-aged.

Presently he said to her something about Jack, and how much he enjoyed
seeing him at Cambridge. "He is really rather a wonderful person," he
added. "There isn't anyone at Beaufort who has such a perfectly defined
relation to everyone in the college, from the master down to the
kitchen-boys. He talks to everyone without any embarrassment, and yet
no one really knows what he is thinking! He is very deep, really, and I
think he has a fine future before him."

Maud lighted up at this, and said: "Do you really think so?" and added,
"You know how much he admires you?"

"I am glad to be assured of it," said Howard; "you would hardly guess
it from some of the things he says to me. It's awful, but he can't be
checked--and yet he never oversteps the line, somehow."

"He's a queer boy," said Maud. "The way he talked to the Archdeacon the
other day was simply fearful; but the Archdeacon only laughed, and said
to papa afterwards that he envied him his son. The Archdeacon was
giggling half the afternoon; he felt quite youthful, he said."

"It's the greatest gift to be able to do that," said Howard; "it's a
sort of fairy wand--the pumpkin becomes a coach and four."

"Jack's right ear must be burning, I think," said Maud, "and yet he
never seems to want to know what anyone thinks about him."

That was all the talk that Howard had with her at dinner. After the
ladies had gone, Mr. Sandys became very confidential about Jack's
prospects.

"I look upon you as a sort of relation, you see," he said, "in fact I
shall make bold to drop the Mr. and I hope you will do the same? May we
indeed take a bold step into intimacy and be 'Howard' and 'Frank'
henceforth? I can't, of course, leave Jack a fortune, but when I die
the two dear children will be pretty well off--I may say that. What do
you think he had better go in for? I should like him to take holy
orders, but I don't press it. It brings one into touch with human
beings, and I like that. I find human beings very interesting--I am not
afraid of responsibility."

Howard said that he did not think Jack inclined to orders.

"Then I put that aside," cried the good-natured Mr. Sandys. "No
compulsion for me--the children may do as they like, live as they like,
marry whom they like. I don't believe in checking human nature. Of
course if Jack could get a Fellowship, I should like him to settle down
at Cambridge. There's a life for you! In the forefront of the
intellectual battle! It is what I should have liked myself, of all
things. To hear what is going on in the intellectual line, to ventilate
ideas, to write, to teach--that's a fine life--to be able to hold one's
own in talk and discussion--that's where we country people fail. I have
plenty of ideas, you know, myself, but I can't put them into shape,
into form, so to speak."

"I think Jack would rather like a commercial career," said Howard.
"It's the only thing he has ever mentioned; and I am sure he might do
well if he could get an opening; he likes real things, he says."

"He does!" said Mr. Sandys enthusiastically--"that's what he always
says. Do you know, if you won't think me very vain, Howard, I believe
he gets that from me. Maud is different--she takes after her dear
mother--whose loss was so irreparable a calamity--my dear wife was full
of imagination; it was a beautiful mind. I will show you some of her
sketches when you come to see us--I am looking forward to that--not
much technique, perhaps, but a real instinct for beauty; to be just, a
little lacking in form, but full of feeling. Well, Jack, as I was
saying, likes reality. So do I! A firm hold on reality--that's the best
thing; I was not intellectual enough for the life of thought, and I
fell back on humanity--vastly engrossing! I assure you, though you
would hardly think it, that even these simple people down here are most
interesting: no two of them alike. My old friends say to me sometimes
that I must find country people very dull, but I always say, 'No two of
them alike!' Of course I try to keep my intellectual tastes alive--they
are only tastes, of course, not faculties, like yours--but we read and
talk and ventilate our ideas, Maud and I; and when we are tired of
books, why I fall back on the great book of humanity. We don't
stagnate--at least I hope not--I have a horror of stagnation. I said so
to the Archdeacon the other day, and he said that there was nothing
stagnant about Windlow."

"No, I am quite sure there is not," said Howard politely.

"It's very good of you to say so, Howard," said Mr. Sandys delightedly.
"Really quite a compliment! And I assure you, you don't know what a
pleasure it is to have a talk like this with a man like yourself, so
well-read, so full of ideas. I envy Jack his privileges. I do indeed.
Now dear old Pembroke was not like that in my days. There was no one I
could talk to, as Jack tells me he talks to you. A man like yourself is
a vast improvement on the old type of don, if I may say so. I'm very
free, you see! And so you think Jack might do well in commerce? Well, I
quite approve. All I want is that he should not be out of touch with
human beings. I'm not a metaphysician, but it seems to me that that is
what we are here for--touch with humanity--of course on Church of
England lines. I'm tolerant, I hope, and can see the good side of other
creeds; but give me something comprehensive, and that is the glory of
our English Church. Well, you have given me a lot to think of, Howard;
I must just take it all away and think it over. It's well to do that, I
think? Not to be in a hurry, try to see all round a question? That is
my line always!"

They walked into the drawing-room together; and Howard felt curiously
drawn to the warm-hearted and voluble man. Perhaps it was for the sake
of his children, he thought. There must be something fine about a man
who had brought up two such children--but that was not all; the Vicar
was enthusiastic; he revelled in life, he adored life; and Howard felt
that there was a real fund of sense and even judgment somewhere, behind
the spray of the cataract. He was a man whom one could trust, he
believed, and whom it was impossible not to like.

When they reached the drawing-room, Mrs. Graves called the Vicar into a
corner, and began to talk to him about someone in the village; Howard
heard his talk plunge steadily into the silence. Miss Merry flitted
about, played a few pieces of music; and Howard found himself left to
Maud. He went and sate down beside her. In the dim light the girl sate
forward in a big arm-chair; there was nothing languorous or listless
about her. She seemed all alert in a quiet way. She greeted him with a
smile, and sate turned towards him, her chin on her hand, her eyes upon
him. Her shining hair fell over the curves of her young and pure neck.
She was holding a flower, which Mrs. Graves had given her, in her other
hand, and its fragrance exhaled all about her. Once or twice she
checked him with a little gesture of her hand, when Miss Merry began to
play, and he could see that she was much affected by the music.

"It seems to me so wrong to talk during music," she said; "perhaps it
wasn't polite of me to stop you, but I can't bear to interrupt
music--it's like treading on flowers--it can't come again just like
that!"

"Yes," said Howard, "I know exactly what you mean; but I expect it is a
mistake to think of a beautiful thing being wasted, if we don't happen
to hear or see it. It isn't only meant for us. It is the light or the
sound or the flower, I think, being beautiful because it is glad."

"Yes," said the girl, "perhaps it is that. That is what Mrs. Graves
thinks. Do you know, it seems to me strange that you have never been
here before, though you are almost her only relation. She is the most
wonderful person I have ever seen. The only person I know who seems
always right, and yet never wants anyone else to know she is right."

"Yes," said Howard, "I feel that I have been very foolish--but it has
been going on all the time, like the music and the light. It hasn't
been wasted. I have had a wonderful talk with her to-day--the most
wonderful talk, I think, I have ever had. I can't understand it all
yet--but she has given me the sense of some fine purpose--as if I had
been kept away for a purpose, because I was not ready; and as if I had
come here for a purpose now."

The girl sate looking at him with open eyes, and with some strange
sense of surprise. "Yes," she said, "it is just like that; but that you
could have seen it so soon amazes me. I have known her all my life, and
could never have put that into words. Do you know how things seem to
come and go and shift about without any meaning? It is never so with
her; she sees what it all means. I cannot explain it."

They sate in silence for a moment, and then Howard said: "It is very
curious to be here; you know, or probably you don't know, how much
interested I am in Jack; and somehow in talking to him I felt that
there was something behind--something more to know. All this"--he waved
his hand at the room--"my aunt, your father, yourself--it does not seem
to me new and unfamiliar, but something which I have always known. I
can't tell you in what a dream I have seemed to be moving ever since I
came here. I have been here for twenty-four hours, and yet it seems all
old and dear to me."

"I know that feeling," said the girl, "one dips into something that has
been going on for ever and ever--I feel like that to-night. It seems
odd to talk like this, but you must remember that Jack tells me most
things, and I seem to know you quite well. I knew it would be all easy
somehow."

"Well, we are a sort of cousins," said Howard lightly. "That's such a
comfort; it needn't entail anything, but it can save one all sorts of
fencing and ceremony. I want to talk to you about Jack. He is a little
mysterious to me still."

"Yes," she said, "he is mysterious, but he really is a dear: he was the
most aggravating boy that ever lived, and I sometimes used really to
hate him. I am afraid we used to fight a great deal; at least I did,
but I suppose he was only pretending, for he never hurt me, and I know
I used to hurt him--but then he deserved it!"

"What a picture!" said Howard, smiling; "no wonder that boys go to
their private schools expecting to have to fight for their lives. I
never had a sister; and that accounts perhaps for my peaceful
disposition." He had a sudden sense as he spoke that he was talking as
if to an undergraduate in friendly irony. To his surprise and pleasure
he saw that his thought had translated itself.

"I suppose that is how you talk to your pupils," said the girl,
smiling; "I recognise that--and that's what makes it easy to talk to
you as Jack does--it's like an easy serve at lawn-tennis."

"I am glad it is easy," said Howard, "you don't know how many of my
serves go into the net!"

"Lawn-tennis!" said Mr. Sandys from the other side of the room.
"There's a good game, Howard! I am not much of a hand at it myself, but
I enjoy playing. I don't mind making a spectacle of myself. One misses
many good things by being afraid of looking a fool. What does it
matter, I say to myself, as long as one doesn't FEEL a fool? You will
come and play at the vicarage, I hope. Indeed, I want you to go and
come just as you like. We are relations, you know, in a sort of way--at
least connections. I don't know if you go in for genealogy--it's rather
a hobby of mine; it fills up little bits of time, you know. I could
reel you off quite a list of names, but Mrs. Graves doesn't care for
genealogy, I know."

"Oh, not that!" said Mrs. Graves. "I think it is very interesting. But
I rather agree with the minister who advised his flock to pray for good
ancestors."

"Ha! ha!" said Mr. Sandys, "excellent, that; but it is really very
curious you know, that the further one goes back the more one's
ancestors increase. Talk of over-population; why if one goes back
thirty or forty generations, the world would be over-populated with the
ancestors of any one of us. I remember posing a very clever
mathematician with that once; but, as a fact, it's quite the reverse,
one finds. Are you interested in neolithic men, Howard? There are
graves of them all over the down--it is not certain if they were
neolithic, but they had very curious burial customs. Knees up to the
chin, you know. Well, well, it's all very fascinating, and I should
like to drive you over to Dorchester to look at the museum there--there
are some questions I should like to ask you. But we must be off. A
delightful evening, cousin Anne; a delightful evening, Howard. I feel
quite rejuvenated--such a lot to ponder over."

Howard went to the door to see them off, and was rewarded by a parting
smile from Maud, which made him feel curiously elated. He went back to
the drawing-room with that faint feeling of flatness which comes of
parting with lively guests; and yet it somehow gave him a pleasant
sense of being at home.

"Well," said Mrs. Graves, "so now you have seen the Sandys interior.
Dear Frank, how he does chatter, to be sure! but he is all alive too in
his own way, and that is what matters. What did you think of Maud? I
want you to like her--she is a great friend of mine, and really a fine
creature. Not very happy just now, perhaps. But while dear old Frank
never sees past the outside of things--what a lot of things he does
see!--she sees inside, I think. But I am tired to death. I always feel
after talking to Frank as if I had been driving in a dog-cart over a
ploughed field!"




VII

COUNTRY LIFE


Howard woke early, after sweet and wild dreams of great landscapes and
rich adventures; as his thoughts took shape, he began to feel as if he
had passed some boundary yesterday; escaped, as a child escapes from a
familiar garden into great vague woodlands. There was his talk with
Mrs. Graves first--that had opened up for him a new region, indeed, of
the mind and soul, and had revealed to him an old force, perhaps long
within his grasp, but which he had never tried to use or wield. And the
vision too of Maud crossed his mind--a perfectly beautiful thing, which
had risen like a star. He did not think of it as love at all--that did
not cross his mind--it was just the thought of something enchantingly
and exquisitely beautiful, which disturbed him, awed him, threw his
mind off its habitual track. How extraordinarily lovely, simple, sweet,
the girl had seemed to him in the dim room, in the faint light; and how
fearless and frank she had been! He was conscious only of something
adorable, which raised, as beautiful things did, a sense of something
unapproachable, some yearning which could not be satisfied. How far
away, how faded and dusty his ordinary contented Cambridge life now
seemed to him!

He breakfasted alone, read a few letters which had been forwarded to
him, and went to the library. A few minutes later Miss Merry tapped at
the door, and came in.

"Mrs. Graves asked me to say--she was sorry she forgot to mention
it--that if you care for shooting or fishing, the keeper will come in
and take your orders. She thinks you might like to ask Jack to luncheon
and go out with him; she sends you her love, and wants you to do what
you like."

"Thank you very much!" said Howard, "I rather expect Jack will be round
here and I will ask him. I know he would like it, and I should too--if
you are sure Mrs. Graves approves."

"Oh, yes," said Miss Merry, smiling, "she always approves of people
doing what they like."

Miss Merry still hesitated at the door. "May I ask you another
question, Mr. Kennedy--I hope I am not troublesome--I wonder if you
could suggest some books for us to read? I read a good deal to Mrs.
Graves, and I am afraid we get rather into a groove. We ought to read
some of the new books; we want to know what people are saying and
thinking--we don't want to get behind."

"Why, of course," said Howard, "I shall be delighted--but I am afraid I
am not likely to be of much use; I don't read as much as I ought; but
if you will tell me the sort of things you care about, and what you
have been reading, we will try to make out a list. Won't you sit down
and see what we can do?"

"Oh, I don't like to interrupt you," said Miss Merry. "But if you would
be so kind."

She sat down at the far end of the table, and Howard was dimly and
amusedly conscious that this tete-a-tete was of the nature of a
romantic adventure to the little lady. He was surprised, when they came
to talk, to find how much they appeared to have read of a solid kind.
He asked if they had any plan.

"No, indeed," said Miss Merry, "we just wander on; one thing suggests
another. Mrs. Graves likes LONG books; she says she likes to get at a
subject quietly--that there ought not to be too many good things in
books; she likes them slow and spacious."

"I am afraid one has to go back a good way for that!" said Howard.
"People can't afford now to know more than a manual of a couple of
hundred pages can tell them about a subject. I can tell you some good
historical books, and some books of literary criticism and biography. I
can't do much about poetry or novels; and philosophy, science, and
theology I am no use at all for. But I could get you some advice if you
like. That's the best of Cambridge, there are so many people about who
are able to tell what to read."

While they were making out a list, Jack arrived breathlessly, and Miss
Merry shamefacedly withdrew. Howard said: "Perhaps that will do to go
on with--we will have another talk to-morrow. I begin to see the sort
of thing you want."

Jack was in a state of high excitement.

"What on earth were you doing," he said, as the door closed, "with that
sedate spinster?"

"We were making out a list of books!"

"Ah," said Jack with a profound air, "books are dangerous
things--that's the intellectual way of making love! You must be a great
excitement here, with all your ideas!--but now," he went on, "here I
am--I hurried back the moment breakfast was over. I have been horribly
bored--a lawn-tennis party yesterday, the females much to the
fore--it's no good that, it's not the game; at least it's not
lawn-tennis; it's a game all right, but I much suspect it has to do
with love-making rather than exercise."

"You seem very suspicious this morning," said Howard; "you accuse me of
flirting to begin with, and now you suspect lawn-tennis."

Jack shook his head. "I do hate love-making!" he said, "it spoils
everything--it gets in the way, and makes fools of people; the longer I
live, the more I see that most of the things that people do are excuses
for doing something else! But never mind that! I said I had got to get
back to be coached; I said that one of our dons was staying in the
village and had his eye on me. What I want to know is whether you have
made any arrangements about shooting or fishing? You said you would if
you could."

"The keeper is coming in," said Howard, "and we will have a talk to
him; but mind, on one condition--work in the morning, exercise in the
afternoon; and you are to stop to lunch."

"Cousin Anne is bursting into hospitality," said Jack, "because Maud is
coming in for the afternoon. I haven't had time to pump Maud yet about
you, but, by George, I'm going to pump you about her and father. Did
you have a very thick time last night? I could see father was rather
licking his lips."

"Now, no more chatter," said Howard; "you go and get some books, and we
will set to work at once." Jack nodded and fled.

When he came back the keeper was waiting, a friendly old man, who
seemed delighted at the idea of some sport. Jack said, "Look here, I
have arranged it all. Shooting to-day, and you can have father's gun;
he hardly ever uses it, and I have my own. Fishing to-morrow, and so on
alternately. There are heaps of rabbits up the valley--the place crawls
with them."

Howard taught Jack for an hour, as clearly and briskly as he could,
making him take notes. He found him quick and apt, and at the end, Jack
said, "Now if I could only do this every day at Cambridge, I should
soon get on. My word, you do do it well! It makes me shudder to think
of all the practice you must have had."

Howard set Jack down to prepare some further work by himself, and
attacked his own papers; and very soon it was time for lunch.

Mrs. Graves greeted Jack with much affectionateness, and asked what
they had arranged for the afternoon. Howard told her, and added that he
hoped she did not object to shooting.

"No, not at all," said Mrs. Graves, "if YOU can do it
conscientiously--I couldn't! As usual I am hopelessly inconsistent. I
couldn't kill things myself, but as long as I eat meat, I can't object.
It's no good arguing about these things. If one begins to argue about
destroying life, there are such excellent reasons for not eating
anything, or wearing anything, or even crossing the lawn! I have long
believed that plants are conscious, but we have got to exist somehow at
each other's expense. Instinct is the only guide for women; if they
begin to reason, they get run away with by reason; that is what makes
fanatics. I won't go so far as to wish you good sport, but you may as
well get all the rabbits you can; I'll send them round the village, and
try to salve my conscience so."

They talked a little about the books Howard had been recommending, but
Mrs. Graves was bent on making much of Jack.

"I don't get you here often by yourself," she said. "I daren't ask a
modern young man to come and see two old frumps--one old frump, I mean!
But I gather that you have views of your own, Jack, and some day I
shall try to get at them. I suppose that in a small place like this we
all know a great deal more about each other than we suspect each other
of knowing. What a comfort that we have tongues that we can hold! It
wouldn't be possible to live, if we knew that all the absurdities we
pride ourselves on concealing were all perfectly well known and
canvassed by all our friends. However, as long as we only enjoy each
other's faults, and don't go in for correcting them, we can get on. I
hope you don't DISAPPROVE of people, Jack! That's the hopeless
attitude."

"Well, I hate some people," said Jack, "but I hate them so much that it
is quite a pleasure to meet them and to think how infernal they are;
and when it's like that, I should be sorry if they improved."

"I won't go as far as that," said Howard. "The most I do is to be
thankful that their lack of improvement can still entertain me. One can
never be thankful enough for really grotesque people. But I confess I
don't enjoy seeing people spiteful and mean and vicious. I want to
obliterate all that."

"I want it to be obliterated," said Mrs. Graves; "but I don't feel
equal to doing it. Oh, well, we mustn't get solemn over it; that's the
mischief! But I mustn't keep you gentlemen from more serious
pursuits--'real things,' I believe, Jack?"

"Mr. Kennedy has been sneaking on me," said Jack. "I don't like to see
people mean and spiteful. It gives me pain. I want all that
obliterated."

"This is what happens to my pupils," said Howard. "Come on, Jack, you
shall not expose my methods like this."

They went off with the old keeper, who carried a bag of writhing
ferrets, and was accompanied by a boy with a spade and a line and a bag
of cartridges. As they went on, Jack catechised Howard closely.

"Did my family behave themselves?" he said. "Did you want them
obliterated? I expect you had a good pull at the Governor, but don't
forget he is a good chap. He is so dreadfully interested, but you come
to plenty of sense last of all. I admit it is last, but it's there.
It's no joke facing him if there's a row! he doesn't say much then, and
that makes it awful. He has a way of looking out of the window, if I
cheek him, for about five minutes, which turns me sick. Up on the top
he is a bit frothy--but there's no harm in that, and he keeps things
going."

"Yes," said Howard, "I felt that, and I may tell you plainly I liked
him very much, and thought him a thoroughly good sort."

"Well, what about Maud?" said Jack.

Howard felt a tremor. He did not want to talk about Maud, and he did
not want Jack to talk about her. It seemed like laying hands on
something sacred and secluded. So he said, "Really, I don't know as
yet--I only had one talk with her. I can't tell. I thought her
delightful; like you with your impudence left out."

"The little cat!" said Jack; "she is as impudent as they make them.
I'll be bound she has taken the length of your foot. What did she talk
about? stars and flowers? That's one of her dodges."

"I decline to answer," said Howard; "and I won't have you spoiling my
impressions. Just leave me alone to make up my mind, will you?"

Jack looked at him,--he had spoken sharply--nodded, and said, "All
right! I won't give her away. I see you are lost; but I'll get it all
out of you some time."

They were by this time some way up the valley. There were rabbit
burrows everywhere among the thickets. The ferrets were put in. Howard
and Jack were posted below, and the shooting began. The rabbits bolted
well, and Howard experienced a lively satisfaction, quite out of
proportion, he felt, to the circumstances, at finding that he could
shoot a great deal better than his pupil. The old knack came back to
him, and he toppled over his rabbits cleanly and in a masterly way.

"You are rather good at this!" said Jack. "Won't I blazon it abroad up
at Beaufort. You shall have all the credit and more. I can't see how
you always manage to get them in the head."

"It's a trick," said Howard; "you have got to get a particular swing,
and when you have got it, it's difficult to miss--it's only practice;
and I shot a good deal at one time."

Howard was unreasonably happy that afternoon. It was a still, sunny
day, and the steep down stretched away above them, an ancient English
woodland, with all its thorn-thickets and elder-clumps. It had been
like this, he thought, from the beginning of history, never touched by
the hand of man. The expectant waiting, the quick aim, the sudden shot,
took off the restlessness of his brain; and as they stood there, often
waiting for a long time in silence, a peculiar quality of peace and
contentment enveloped his spirit. It was all so old, so settled, so
quiet, that all sense of retrospect and prospect passed from his mind.
He was just glad to be alive and alert, glad of his friendly companion,
robust and strong. A few pictures passed before his mind, but he was
glad just to let his eyes wander over the scene, the steep turf
ramparts, the close-set dingles, the spring sunshine falling softly
over all, as the sun passed over and the shadows lengthened. At last a
ferret got hung up, and had to be dug out. Howard looked at his watch,
and said they must go back to tea. Jack protested in vain that there
was plenty of light left. Howard said they were expected back. They
left the keeper to recover the ferret, and went back quickly down the
valley. Jack was in supreme delight.

"Well, that's an honest way of spending time!" he said. "My word, how I
dangle about here; it isn't good for my health. But, by George, I wish
I could shoot like you, Mr. Kennedy, Sir."

"Why this sudden obsequiousness?" said Howard.

"Oh, because I never know what to call you," said Jack. "I can't call
you by your Christian name, and Mr. Kennedy seems absurd. What do you
like?"

"Whatever comes naturally," said Howard.

"Well, I'll call you Howard when we are together," said Jack. "But
mind, not at Beaufort! If I call you anything, it will have to be Mr.
Kennedy. I hate men fraternising with the Dons. The Dons rather
encourage it, because it makes them feel youthful and bucks them up.
The men are just as bad about Christian names. Gratters on getting your
Christian name, you know! It's like a girls' school. I wonder why
Cambridge is more like a girls' school than a public school is? I
suppose they are more sentimental. I do loathe that."

When they got back they found Maud at tea; she had been there all the
afternoon; she greeted Howard very pleasantly, but there was a touch of
embarrassment created by the presence of Jack, who regarded her
severely and called her "Miss."

"He's got some grudge against me," said Maud to Howard. "He always has
when he calls me Miss."

"What else should I call you?" said Jack; "Mr. Kennedy has been telling
me that one should call people by whatever name seems natural. You are
a Miss to-day, and no mistake. You are at some game or other!"

"Now, Jack, be quiet!" said Mrs. Graves; "that is how the British
paterfamilias gets made. You must not begin to make your womankind
uncomfortable in public. You must not think aloud. You must keep up the
mysteries of chivalry!"

"I don't care for mysteries," said Jack, "but I'll behave. My father
says one mustn't seethe the kid in its mother's milk. I will leave Miss
to her conscience."

"Did you enjoy yourself?" said Mrs. Graves to Howard.

"Yes, I'm afraid I did," said Howard, "very much indeed."

"Some book I read the other day," said Mrs. Graves, "stated that men
ought to do primeval things, eat under-done beef, sleep in their
clothes, drink too much, kill things. It sounds disgusting; but I
suppose you felt primeval?"

"I don't know what it was," said Howard. "I felt very well content."

"My word, he can shoot!" said Jack to Mrs. Graves; "I'm a perfect
duffer beside him; he shot four-fifths of the bag, and there's a
perfect mountain of rabbits to come in."

"Horrible, horrible!" said Mrs. Graves, "but are there enough to go
round the village?"

"Two apiece," said Jack, "to every man a damsel or two! Now, Maud, come
on--ten o'clock, to-morrow, Sir--and perhaps a little fishing later?"

"You had better stay to lunch, whenever you come and work in the
morning, Jack," said Mrs. Graves; "and I'll turn you inside out before
very long."

Howard went off to his work with a pleasant sense of the open air. They
dined together quietly; after dinner he went and sate down by Mrs.
Graves.

"Jack's a nice boy," she said, "very nice--don't make him pert!"

"I am afraid I shan't MAKE him anything," said Howard. "He will go his
own way, sure enough; but he isn't pert--he comes to heel, and he
remembers. He is like the true gentleman--he is never unintentionally
offensive."

Mrs. Graves laughed, and said, "Yes, that is so."

Howard went on, "I have been thinking a great deal about our talk
yesterday, and it's a new light to me. I do not think I fully
understand, but I feel that there is something very big behind it all,
which I want to understand. This great force you speak of--is it an
AIM?"

"That's a good question," said Mrs. Graves. "No, it's not an aim at
all. It's too big for that; an aim is quite on a lower level. There's
no aim in the big things. A man doesn't fall ill with an aim--he
doesn't fall in love with an aim. It just comes upon him."

"But then," said Howard, "is it more than a sort of artistic gift which
some have and many have not? I have known a few real artists, and they
just did not care for anything else in the world. All the rest of life
was just a passing of time, a framework to their work. There was an
artist I knew, who was dying. The doctor asked him if he wanted
anything. 'Just a full day's work,' he said."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "it is like that in a way; it is the one thing
worth doing and being. But it isn't a conscious using of minutes and
opportunities--it isn't a plan; it is just a fulness of life, rejoicing
to live, to see, to interpret, to understand. It doesn't matter what
life you live--it is how you live it. Life is only the cup for the
liquor which must else be spilled. I can only use an old phrase--it is
being 'in the spirit': when you ask whether it is a special gift, of
course some people have it more strongly and consciously than others.
But it is the thing to which we are all tending sooner or later; and
the mysterious thing about it is that so many people do not seem to
know they have it. Yet it is always just the becoming aware of what is
there."

"How do you account for that?" said Howard.

"Why," said Mrs. Graves, "to a great extent because religion is in such
an odd state. It is as if the people who knew or suspected the secret,
did all they could to conceal it--just as parents try to keep their
children ignorant of the ideas of sex. Religion has got so horribly
mixed up with other things, with respectability, social order,
conventions, doctrines, metaphysics, ceremony, music--it has become so
specialised in the hands of priests who have a great institution to
support, that dust is thrown in people's eyes--and just as they begin
to think they perceive the secret, they are surrounded by tiresome
dogmatists saying, 'It is this and that--it is this doctrine, that
tradition.' Well, that sort of religion IS a very special
accomplishment--ecclesiastical religion. I don't deny that it has
artistic qualities, but it is a poor narrow product; and then the
technically religious make such a fuss if they see the shoal of fish
escaping the net, and beat the water so vehemently that the fish think
it safer to stay where they are, and so you get sardines in tins!" said
Mrs. Graves with a smile--"by which I mean the churches."

"Yes," said Howard, "that is perfectly true! Christianity was at first
the most new, radical, original, anarchical force in the world--it was
the purest individualism; it was meant to over-ride all human
combinations by simply disregarding them; it was not a social reform,
and still less a political reform; it was a new spirit, and it was
meant to create a new kind of fellowship, the mere existence of which
would do away with the need for organisation; it broke meekly, like
water, through all human partitions, and I suppose it has been tamed."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "it is not now the world against religion. It
is organised religion against real religion, because religion is above
and apart from all institutions. Christ said, 'When they persecute you
in one city, flee into another'; and the result of that is the Monroe
doctrine!"

"But are you not a Christian?" said Howard.

"I believe myself to be one," said Mrs. Graves; "and no doubt you will
say, 'Why do you live in wealth and comfort?' That's a difficulty,
because Christ meant us to be poor. But if one hands over one's money
to Christian institutions now, one is subsidising the forces of the
world--at least so I think. It's very difficult. Christ said that we
should bestow our goods upon the poor; but if I were to divide my goods
to-morrow among my neighbours, they would be only injured by it--it
would not be Christian of them to take them--they have enough. If they
have not, I give it them. It does less harm to me than to them. But
this I know is very irrational; and the point is not to be affected by
that. I could live in a cottage tomorrow, if there was need."

"Yes, I believe you could," said Howard.

"As long as one is not dependent upon money," said Mrs. Graves, "it
doesn't very much matter. The real point is to take the world as it
comes, and to be sure that one is on the side of what is true and
simple and sincere; but I do not pretend to have solved everything, and
I am hoping to learn more. I do learn more every day. One can't
interfere with the lives of people; poverty is not the worst evil. It
is nice to be clean, but I sometimes think that the only good I get
from money is cleanliness--and that is only a question of habit! The
real point is to be in life, to watch life, to love it, to live it; to
be in direct relations with everyone, not to be superior, not to be
KIND--that implies superiority. I just plod along, believing, fearing,
hoping, loving, glad to live while I may, not afraid to die when I
must. The only detachment worth having is the detachment from the idea
of making things one's own. I can't appropriate the sunset and the
spring, the loves and cares of others; it is all divided up, more
fairly than we think. I have had many sorrows and sufferings; but I am
more interested than ever in life, glad to help and be helped, ready to
change, desiring to change. It isn't a great way of living; but one
must not want that--and believe me, dear Howard, it is the only way."




VIII

THE INHERITANCE


The first day or two of Howard's stay at Windlow seemed like a week,
the succeeding week seemed like a day, as soon as he had settled down
to a certain routine of life. He became aware of a continued
sympathetic and quite unobtrusive scrutiny of him, his ways, his
tastes, his thoughts, on the part of his aunt--her questions were
subtle, penetrating, provocative enough for him to wish to express an
opinion. He did not dislike it, and used no diplomacy himself; he found
his aunt's mind shrewd, fresh, unaffected, and at the same time
inspiring. She habitually spoke with a touch of irony--not bitter
irony, but the irony that is at once a compliment and a sign of
affection, such as Socrates used to the handsome boys that came about
him. She was not in the smallest degree cynical, but she was very
decidedly humorous. Howard thought that she did people even more than
justice, while she was frankly delighted if they also provided her with
amusement. She held nothing inconveniently sacred, and Howard admired
the fine balance of interest and detachment which she showed, her
delight in life, her high faith in something large, eternal, and
advancing. Her health was evidently very frail, but she made light of
it--it was almost the only thing she did not seem to find interesting.
How could this clever, vivacious woman, Howard asked himself, retain
this wonderful freshness and sweetness of mind in such solitude and
dulness of life? He could imagine her the centre of a salon--she had
all the gifts of a saloniste, the power of keeping a talk in hand, of
giving her entire thought to her neighbour, and yet holding the whole
group in view. Solitary, frail, secluded as she was, she was like an
unrusted sword, and lavished her wit and her affection on all alike,
callers, villagers, servants; and yet he never saw her tired or
depressed. She took life as she found it, and was delighted with its
simplest combinations. He found her company entirely absorbing and
inspiring. He told her, in answer to her frank interest--she seemed to
be interested on her own account, and not to please him--more about his
own life than he had ever told a human being. She always wanted facts,
impressions, details: "Enlarge that--describe that--tell me some more
particulars," were phrases often on her lips. And he was delighted,
too, by the belief that her explorations into his mind and life pleased
and satisfied her. It dawned on him gradually that she was a woman of
rich experience, and that her tranquillity was an aftergrowth, a
development--"That was in my discontented days," she said once. "It is
impossible to think of you as discontented," he had said. "Ah," she
said lightly, "I had my dreams, like everyone else; but I saw at last
that one must TAKE life--one can't MAKE it--and accept its limitations
with enjoyment."

One morning, when he was called, the butler gave him a letter--he had
been there about a fortnight--from his aunt. He opened it, expecting
that it was to say that she was ill. He found that it ran as follows:


"MY DEAR BOY,--I always think that business is best done by letter and
not by conversation. I am getting an old woman and my life is
uncertain. I want to make a statement of intentions. I may tell you
that I am a comparatively wealthy woman; my dear husband left me
everything he had; including what he spent on this place, it came to
about sixty thousand pounds. Now I intend to leave that back to his
family; there are several sisters of his alive, and they are not
wealthy people; but I have saved money too; and it is my wish to leave
you this house and the residue of my fortune, after arranging for some
small legacies. The estate is not worth very much--a great deal of it
is wild downland. But you would have the place, when I died, and about
twelve hundred a year. It would be understood that you should live here
a certain amount--I don't believe in non-resident landlords. But I do
not mean to tie you down to live here altogether. It is only my wish
that you should do something for your tenants and neighbours. If you
stayed on at Cambridge you could come here in vacations. But my hope
would be that you might marry. It is a house for a family. If you do
not care to live here, I would rather it were sold. While I live, I
hope you will be content to spend some time here, and make acquaintance
with our neighbours, by which I mean the village people. I shall tell
Cousin Frank my intentions, and that will probably suffice to make it
known. I have a very great love for the place, and as far as I can see,
you will be likely to have the same.

"You need not feel overburdened with gratitude. You are my only near
relation; and indeed I may say that if I were to die before I have
signed my will, you would inherit all my fortune as next-of-kin. So you
will see that instead of enriching you, I am to a great extent
disinheriting you! Just tell me simply if you acquiesce. I want no
pledges, nor do I want to bind you in any way. I will not say more,
except that it has been a very deep delight to me to find a son in my
old age. I had always hoped it would turn out so; and in my experience,
God is very careful to give us our desires, just or unjust, great or
small.--Your loving Aunt,

"ANNE GRAVES."


Howard was stupefied for a moment by this communication, but he was
more affected by the love and confidence it showed than by the prospect
of wealth--wealth was not a thing he had ever expected, or indeed
thought much about; but it was a home that he had found. The great lack
of his life had been a local attachment, a place where he had reason to
live. Cambridge with all its joys had never been quite that. A curious
sense of emotion at the thought that the sweet place, the beautiful old
house, was to be his own, came over him; and another far-off dream
darted into his mind as well, which he did not dare to shape. He got up
and wrote a short note.


"MY DEAR AUNT,--Your letter fills me with astonishment. I can only say
that I accept in love and gratitude what you offer me. The feeling that
I have found a home and a mother, so suddenly and so unexpectedly,
fills me with joy and happiness. I think with sadness of all the good
years I have missed, by a sort of stupid perversity; but I won't regard
that now. I will only thank you once more with all my heart for the
proof of affection which your letter gives me.--Your grateful and
affectionate nephew,

"HOWARD KENNEDY."


The old house had a welcoming air as he passed through it that morning;
it seemed to hold him in its patient embrace, to ask for love. He spent
the morning with Jack, but in a curiously distracted mood.

"What has happened to you?" said Jack at the end of the morning. "You
have not been thinking about what you are doing. You seem like a man
who has been stroking a winning crew. Has the Master been made a Dean,
and have you been elected Master? They say you have a chance."

Howard laughed and said, "You are very sharp, Jack! I have NOT been
attending. Something very unexpected has happened. I mustn't tell you
now, but you will soon know. I have drawn a prize. Now don't pump me!"

"Here's another prize!" said Jack. "You are to lunch with us to-morrow,
and to discuss my future career. There's glory for you! I am not to be
present, and father is scheming to get me invited to luncheon here. If
he fails, I am to take out some sandwiches and to eat them in the
kitchen garden. Maud is to be present, and 'CONFER,' he says, 'though
without a vote'!"

Howard met Mrs. Graves in the drawing-room; she kissed him, and holding
his hand for a moment said, "Thank you for your note, my dear boy.
That's all settled, then! Well, it's a great joy to me, and I get more
than I give by the bargain. It's a shameless bribe, to secure the
company of a charming nephew for a sociable old woman. Some time I
shall want to tell you more about the people here--but I won't bore
you; and let us just get quietly used to it all. One must not be
pompous about money; it is doing it too much honour; and the best of it
is that I have found a son." Howard smiled, kissed the hand which held
his, and said no more.

The Vicar turned up in the afternoon, and apologised to Mrs. Graves for
asking Howard to luncheon on the following day. "The fact is," he said,
"that I am anxious to have the benefit of his advice about Jack's
future. I think we ought to look at things from all sorts of angles,
and Howard will be able, with his professional knowledge of young men,
to correct the tendency to parental bias which is so hard to eliminate.
I am a fond father--fond, but I hope not foolish--and I trust we shall
be able to arrive at some conclusion."

"Then Jack and Maud can come and lunch with me," said Mrs. Graves; "you
won't want them, I am sure."

"You are a sorceress," said Mr. Sandys, "in the literary sense of
course--you divine my thought!"--but it was evident that he had much
looked forward to using a little diplomacy, and was somewhat
disappointed. He went on, "It will be very kind of you to have Jack,
but I think I shall want Maud's assistance. I have a great belief in
the penetration--in the observation of the feminine mind; more than I
have, if you will excuse my frankness, in their power of dealing with a
practical situation. Woman to interpret events, men to foresee
contingencies. Woman to indicate, man to predicate--perhaps I mean
predict! No matter; the thought, I think, is clear. Well, then, that is
settled! I claim Howard for luncheon--a very simple affair--and for a
walk; and by five o'clock we shall have settled this important matter,
I don't doubt."

"Very well," said Mrs. Graves; "but before you go, I must claim YOU for
a short stroll. I have something to tell you; and as Howard and Jack
are dying to get away to deprive some innocent creatures of the
privilege of life, they had better go and leave us."

That evening Howard had a long, quiet talk to his aunt. She said, "I am
not going to talk business. Our lawyer is coming over on Saturday, and
you had better get all the details from him. You must just go round the
place with him, and see if there is anything you would like to see
altered. It will be an immense comfort to put all that in your hands.
Mind, dear boy," she said, "I want you to begin at once. I shall be
ready to do whatever is necessary." Then she went on in a different
strain. "But there is one other thing I want to say now, and that is
that I should above all things like to see you married--don't, by the
way, fall in love with dear Jane, who worships the ground you tread on!
I have been observing you, and I feel little doubt that marriage is
what you most need. I don't expect it has been in your mind at all!
Perhaps you have not had enough to marry on, but I am not sorry for
that, for a special reason; and I think, too, that men who have the
care of boys and young men have their paternal instinct to a large
extent satisfied; but that is only a small part of marriage! It isn't
only that I want this house to be a home--that's merely a sentimental
feeling--but you need to love and be loved, and to have the anxious
care of someone close to you. There is nothing like marriage. It
probably is not quite as transcendental an affair as you think. That's
the mistake which intellectual people so often make--it's a very
natural and obvious thing--and of course it means far more to a woman
than to a man. But life is not complete without it. It is the biggest
fact which happens to us. I only want you just to keep it in your mind
as a possibility. Don't be afraid of it! My husband was your age when
he married me, and though I was very unreasonable in those days, I am
sure it was a happy thing for him, though he thought he was too old.
There, I don't want to press you, in this or in anything. I do not
think you will be happy living here without a wife, even if you go on
with Cambridge. But one can't mould things to one's wishes. My fault is
to want to organise everything for everybody, and I have made all my
worst blunders so. I hope I have given up all that. But if I live to
see it, the day when you come and tell me that you have won a wife will
be the next happiest day to the day when I found a son of my heart.
There, dear boy, I won't sentimentalise; but that's the truth; I shall
wake up to-morrow and for many days, feeling that some good fortune has
befallen me; but we should have found each other some time, even if I
had been a poor and miserable old woman. You have given me all that I
desired; give me a daughter too, if you can!"

"Well," said Howard, smiling, "I have no theory on the subject. I never
regarded marriage as either impossible or possible. It seemed to me
that one was either caught away in a fiery chariot, or else was left
under one's juniper tree; and I have been very comfortable there. I
thought I had all I wanted; and I feel a little dizzy now at the way in
which my cup of life has suddenly been seized and filled with wine to
the brim. One doesn't find a home and a mother and a wife in a
fortnight!"

"I don't know!" said Mrs. Graves, smiling at him. "Some of the best
marriages I know have been made in haste. I remember talking to a girl
the other day who was engaged to a man within ten days of the time they
had met. I said, 'Well, you have not wasted time.' 'Oh,' she said,
apparently rather hurt, 'I kept Henry waiting a long time. I had to
think it all over. I wasn't by any means sure I wanted to marry him.' I
quoted a saying of an old friend of mine who when he was asked why he
had proposed to a girl he had only known three days, said, 'I don't
know! I liked her, and thought I should like to see more of her!'"

"I think I must make out a list of possible candidates," said Howard,
smiling. "I dare say your Jane would help me. I could mark them for
various qualities; we believe in marks at Cambridge. But I must have
time to get used to all my new gifts."

"Oh, one doesn't take long to get used to happiness," said Mrs. Graves.
"It always seems the most natural thing in the world. Tennyson was all
wrong about sorrow. Sorrow is always the casual mistress, and not the
wife. One recovers from everything but happiness; that is one's native
air."




IX

THE VICAR


The Vicarage was a pleasant house, with an air of comfort and moderate
wealth about it. It was part of Frank Sandys' sense, thought Howard,
that he was content to live so simple and retired a life. He did not
often absent himself, even for a holiday. Howard was shown into the
study which Mr. Sandys had improved and enlarged. It was a big room,
with an immense, perfectly plain deal table in the middle, stained a
dark brown; and the Vicar showed Howard with high glee how each of the
four sides of the table was consecrated to a different avocation. "My
accounts end!" he said, "my sermon side! my correspondence end! my
genealogical side!" There were a number of small dodges, desks for
holding books, flaps which could be let up and down, slits in the table
through which papers could be dropped into drawers, a cord by which the
bell could be rung without rising from his place, a cord by which the
door could be bolted. "Not very satisfactory, that last," said the
Vicar, "but I am on the track of an improvement. The worst of it is,"
said the good man, "that I have so little time. I make extracts from
the books I read for my sermons, I cut out telling anecdotes from the
papers. I like to raise questions every now and then in the Guardian,
and that lets me in for a lot of correspondence. I even, I must
confess, sometimes address questions to important people about their
public utterances, and I have an interesting volume of replies, mostly
from secretaries. Then I am always at work on my Somersetshire
genealogies, and that means a mass of letters. The veriest trifles, of
course, they will seem to a man like yourself; but I fail in mental
grasp--I keep hammering away at details; that is my line; and after all
it keeps one alert and alive. You know my favourite thesis--it is touch
with human nature that I value, and I am brought into contact with many
minds. I don't exaggerate the importance of my work, but I enjoy it;
and after all, that is the point! I daresay it would be more dignified
if I pretended to be a disappointed man," said the Vicar, with a smile
which won Howard's heart, "but I am not--I am a very happy man, as busy
as the fabled bee! I shouldn't relish a change. There was some
question, I may tell you, at one time, of my becoming Archdeacon, but
it was a relief to me when it was settled and when Bedington was
appointed. I woke up in the morning, I remember, the day after his
appointment was announced, and I said to myself--'Why, it's a relief
after all!' I don't mean that I shouldn't have enjoyed it, but it would
have meant giving up some part of my work. I really have the life I
like, and if my dear wife had been spared to me, I should be the
happiest of men; but that was not to be--and by the way, I must
recollect to show you some of her drawings. But I must not inflict all
this upon you--and by the way," said the Vicar, "Mrs. Graves did me the
honour of telling me yesterday her intentions with regard to yourself,
and I told her I was heartily glad to hear it. It is an immense thing
for the place to have some one who will look into things a little, and
bring a masculine mind to bear on our simple problems. For myself, it
will be an untold gain to be brought in touch with a more intellectual
atmosphere. I foresee a long perspective of stimulating discussions. I
will venture to say that you will be warmly welcomed here, and indeed
you seem quite one of us already. But now we must go and get our
luncheon--we have much to discuss; and you will not mind Maud being
present, I know; the children are devoted to each other, and though I
have studied their tastes and temperaments very closely, yet 'crabbed
age and youth' you know, and all that--she will be able, I think, to
cast some light on our little problem."

They went together into the drawing-room, a pleasant old-fashioned
room--"a temple of domestic peace," said the Vicar, "a pretty phrase of
Carlyle's that! Maud has her own little sitting-room--the old
schoolroom in fact--which she will like to show you. I think it very
necessary that each member of a family should if possible have a
sanctum, a private uninvaded domain--but in this room the separate
strains unite."

Maud was sitting near the window when the two came in. She got up and
came quickly forward, with a smile, and shook hands with Howard. She
had just the same look of virginal freshness and sweetness in the
morning light--a little less mysterious, perhaps; but there came upon
Howard a strange feeling, partly of intense admiration, partly a sort
of half-jealousy that he should know so little of the girl's past, and
a half-terror of all other influences and relations in the unknown
background of her life. He wanted to know whom and what she cared
about, what her hopes were, what her thoughts rested upon and concerned
themselves with. He had never felt any such emotion before, and it was
not wholly agreeable to him. He felt thrown off his balance, interfered
with, diverted from his normal course. He wanted to do and say
something which could claim her attention and confidence; and the frank
and almost sisterly regard she gave him was not wholly to his mind.
This was mingled, too, with a certain fear of he knew not what; he
feared her criticism, her disapproval; he felt his own dulness and
inelasticity. He seemed to himself empty, heavy, awkward, disconcerted
by her quiet and expectant gaze. This came and went like a flash, and
gave him an almost physical uneasiness.

"Well, here we are," said the Vicar. "I must say this is very
comfortable--a sort of family council, with matters of importance to
discuss." Maud led the way to the dining-room. "I said we would have
everything put on the table," said the Vicar, "and wait on ourselves;
that will leave us quite free to talk. It's not a lack of any respect,
Howard--quite the contrary; but these honest people down here pick up
all sorts of gossip--in a quiet life, you know, a little gossip goes a
long way; and even my good maids are human--I should be so in their
place! Howard, a bit of this chicken--our own chickens, our own
vegetables, our country cider--everything home-grown; and now to
business, and we will settle Master Jack in a turn. My own belief is,
in choosing a profession, to think of all possibilities and eliminate
them one by one."

"Yes," said Howard, "but we are met by this initial difficulty; that
one might settle a dozen professions for Jack, and there is not the
smallest guarantee that he would choose any of them. I think he will
take his own line. I never knew anyone who knew so definitely what he
intended to do, and what he did not intend to do!"

"You have hit it," said the Vicar, "and I do not think you could have
said anything which could please me more. He is independent; it is my
own temperament over again! You will forgive a touch of vanity, Howard,
but that is me all over. And that simplifies our plan of action very
considerably, you know!"

"Yes," said Howard, "it undoubtedly does. I have no doubt from what
Jack told me that he intends to make money. It isn't, in him, just the
vague desire to have the command of money, which most young men have. I
have to talk over their careers with a good many young men, and it
generally ends in their saying they would like a secretaryship, which
would give them interesting work and long holidays and the command of
much of their time, and lead on to something better, with a prospect of
early retirement on a pension."

The Vicar laughed loudly at this. "Excellent!" he said, "a very human
view; that's a real bit of human nature."

"But Jack," said Howard, "isn't like that. He enjoys his life and gets
what fun out of it he can; but he thinks Cambridge a waste of time. I
don't know any young man who is so perfectly clear that he wants real
work. He is not idle as many young men are idle, prolonging the easy
days as long as they can. He is an extraordinary mixture; he enjoys
himself like a schoolboy, and yet he wants to get to work."

"Well, I think that a very encouraging picture!" said the Vicar; "there
is something very sensible about that. I confess I have mostly seen the
schoolboy side of Jack, and it delights one to know that there is a
serious side! Let us hear what Maud thinks; this kind of talk is really
very enjoyable."

"Yes," said Maud, looking up. "I am sure that Mr. Kennedy is quite
right. I believe that Jack would like to go into an office to-morrow."

"There," said the Vicar, "you see she agrees with you. It is really a
pleasure to find oneself mistaken. I confess I had not discerned this
quality in Jack; he had seemed to me much set on amusement."

"Oh yes," said Howard, "he likes his fun, and he is active enough; but
it is all passing the time."

"Well, this is really most satisfactory," said the Vicar. "So you
really think he is cut out for business; something commercial? Well, I
confess I had rather hankered after something more definitely academic
and scholastic--something more intellectual! But I bow to your superior
knowledge, Howard, and we must think of possible openings. Well, I
shall enjoy that. My own money, what there is of it, was made by my
grandfather in trade--the manufacture of cloth, I believe. Would cloth
now, the manufacture of cloth, appear to provide the requisite opening?
I have some cousins still in the firm."

"I think it would do as well as anything else," said Howard, "and if
you have any interest in a particular business, it would be worth while
to make inquiries."

"Before I go to bed to-night," said the Vicar, "I will send a statement
of the case to my cousin; that will set the ball rolling."

"Won't you have a talk with Jack first?" said Howard. "You may depend
upon it he will have some views."

"The very thing," said the Vicar. "I will put aside all my other work,
and talk to Jack after tea; if any difficulty should arise, I may look
to you for further counsel. This is really most satisfactory. This
matter has been in my mind in a nebulous way for a long time; and you
enter the scene with your intellectual grip, and your psychological
penetration--if that is not too intricate a word--and the situation is
clear at once. Well, I am most grateful to you."

The talk then became general, or rather passed into the Vicar's hands.
"I have ventured," he said, "to indicate to Maud what Cousin Anne was
good enough to tell me last night--she laid no embargo on the news--and
a few particulars about your inheritance will not be lacking in
interest--and on our walk this afternoon, to which I am greatly looking
forward, we will explore your domains."

This simple compliment produced a curious effect on Howard. He realised
as he had not done before the singular change in his position that his
aunt's announcement had produced: a country squire, a proprietor--he
could not think of himself in that light--it was like a curious dream.

After luncheon, Mr. Sandys excused himself for a few minutes; he had to
step over and speak to the sexton. Maud would take Howard round the
garden, show him her room, "just our simple background--we want you to
realise that!"

As soon as they were alone together, Howard said to Maud, "We seem to
have settled Jack's affairs very summarily. I hope you do agree with
me?"

"Yes," said Maud, "I do indeed. It is wonderful to me that you should
know so much about him, with all your other pupils to know. He isn't a
boy who talks much about himself, though he seems to; and I don't think
my father understood what he was feeling. Jack doesn't like being
interfered with, and he was getting to resent programmes being drawn
up. Papa is so tremendously keen about anything he takes up that he
carries one away; and then you come and smooth out all the
difficulties. It isn't always easy--" she broke off suddenly, and
added, "That is what Jack wants, what he calls something REAL. He is
bored with the life here, and yet he is always good about it."

"Do you like the life here?" said Howard. "I can't tell you what an
effect it all produces on me; it all seems so simple and beautiful. But
I know that one mustn't trust first impressions. People in picturesque
surroundings don't always feel picturesque. It is very pleasant to make
a drama out of one's life and to feel romantic--but one can't keep it
up--at least I can't. That must come of itself."

Howard felt that the girl was watching him with a look of almost
startled interest. She said in a moment, "Yes, that's quite true, and
it IS a difficulty. I should like to be able to talk to you about those
things--I hear so much about you, you know, from Jack, that you are not
like a stranger at all. Now papa has got the gift of romance; every bit
of his life is interesting and exciting to him--it's perfectly
splendid--but Jack has not got that at all. I seem to understand them
both, and yet I can't explain them to each other. I don't mean they
don't get on, but neither can quite see what the other is aiming at.
And I have felt that I ought to be able to do something. I can't
understand how you have cleared it up; but I am very glad and grateful
about it: it has been a trouble to me. Cousin Anne is wonderful about
it, but she seems able to let things alone in a way I can't dare to."

"Oh, one learns that as one gets older," said Howard. "One can't argue
things straight. One can only go on hoping and wishing, and if possible
understanding. I used to make a great mess of it with my pupils at one
time, by thinking one could talk them round; but one can't persuade
people of things, one can only just suggest, and let it be; and after
all no one ever resents finding himself interesting to some one else;
only it has got to be interest, and not a sense of duty."

"That is what Cousin Anne says," said Maud, "and when I am with her, I
think so too; and then something tiresome happens and I meddle, I
meddle! Jack says I like ruling lines, but that it is no good, because
people won't write on them."




X

WITH MAUD ALONE


They were suddenly interrupted by the inrush of the Vicar. "Maud," he
said with immense zest, "I find old Mrs. Darby very ill--she had a kind
of faint while I was there. I have sent off Bob post haste for Dr.
Grierson." The Vicar was evidently in the highest spirits, like a
general on the eve of a great battle. "There isn't a moment to be
lost," he continued, his eye blazing with energy. "Howard, my dear
fellow, I fear our walk must be put off. I must go back at once. There
she lies, flat on her back, just where I laid her! I believe," said the
Vicar, "it's a touch of syncope. She is blue, decidedly blue! I charged
them to do nothing, but if I don't get back, there's no knowing what
they won't pour down her throat--decoction of pennyroyal, I dare say;
and if the woman coughs, she is lost. This is the sort of thing I
enjoy--of course it is very sad--but it is a tussle with death. I know
a good deal about medicine, and Grierson has more than once
complimented me on my diagnosis--he said it was masterly--forgive a
touch of vanity! But you mustn't lose your walk. Maud, dear, you take
Howard out--I am sure he won't mind for once. You could walk round the
village, or you could go and find Jack. Now then, back to my post! You
must forgive me, Howard, but my flock are paramount."

"But won't you want me, papa?" said Maud. "Couldn't I be of use?"

"Certainly not," said the Vicar; "there's nothing whatever to be done
till Grierson arrives--just to ward off the ministrations of the
relatives. There she must lie--I feel no doubt it is syncope; every
symptom points to syncope--poor soul! A very interesting case."

He fled from the room like a whirlwind, and they heard him run down the
garden. The two looked at each other and smiled. "Poor Mrs. Darby!"
said Maud, "she is such a nice old woman; but papa will do everything
that can be done for her; he really knows all about it, and he is
splendid in illness--he never loses his head, and he is very gentle; he
has saved several lives in the village by knowing what to do. Would you
really like to go out with me? I'll be ready in a minute."

"Let us go up on the downs," said Howard, "I should like that very
much. I daresay we shall hear Jack shooting somewhere."

Maud was back in a moment; in a rough cloak and cap she looked
enchanting to Howard's eyes. She walked lightly and quickly beside him.
"You must take your own pace," said Howard, "I'll try to keep up--one
gets very lazy at Cambridge about exercise--won't you go on with what
you were saying? I know your father has told you about my aunt's plan.
I can't realise it yet; but I want to feel at home here now--indeed I
do feel that already--and I like to know how things stand. We are all
relations together, and I must try to make up for lost time. I seem to
know my aunt so well already. She has a great gift for letting one see
into her mind and heart--and I know your father too, and Jack, and I
want to know you; we must be a family party, and talk quite simply and
freely about all our concerns."

"Oh, yes, indeed I will," said Maud--"and I find myself wondering how
easy it is to talk to you. You do seem like a relation; as if you had
always been here, indeed; but I must not talk too much about myself--I
do chatter very freely to Cousin Anne; but I don't think it is good for
one to talk about oneself, do you? It makes one feel so important!"

"It depends who one talks to," said Howard, "but I don't believe in
holding one's tongue too much, if one trusts people. It seems to me the
simplest thing to do; I only found it out a few years ago--how much one
gained by talking freely and directly. It seems to me an uncivilised,
almost a savage thing to be afraid of giving oneself away. I don't mind
who knows about my own concerns, if he is sufficiently interested. I
will tell you anything you like about myself, because I should like you
to realise how I live. In fact, I shall want you all to come and see me
at Cambridge; and then you will be able to understand how we live
there, while I shall know what is going on here. And I am really a very
safe person to talk to. One gets to know a lot of young men, year by
year--and I'm a mine of small secrets. Don't you know the title so
common in the old Methodist tracts--'The life and death and Christian
sufferings of the Rev. Mr. Pennefather.' That's what I want to know
about people--Christian sufferings and all."

Maud smiled at him and said, "I am afraid there are not many Christian
sufferings in my life; but I shall be glad to talk about many things
here. You know my mother died more than ten years ago--when I was quite
a little girl--and I don't remember her very well; I have always said
just what I thought to Jack, and he to me--till quite lately; and that
is what troubles me a little. Jack seems to be rather drifting away
from me. He gets to know so many new people, and he doesn't like
explaining; and then his mind seems full of new ideas. I suppose it is
bound to happen; and of course I have very little to do here; papa
likes doing everything, and doing it in his own way. He can't bear to
let anything out of his hands; so I just go about and talk to the
people. But I am not a very contented person. I want something, I
think, and I don't know what it is. It is difficult to take up anything
serious, when one is all alone. I should like to go to Newnham, but I
can't leave father by himself; books don't seem much use, though I read
a great deal. I want something real to do, like Jack! Papa is so
energetic; he manages the house and pays all the bills; and there
doesn't seem any use for me--though if I were of use, I should find
plenty of things to do, I believe."

"Yes," said Howard, "I quite understand, and I am glad you have told
me. You know I am a sort of doctor in these matters, and I have often
heard undergraduates say the same sort of thing. They are restless,
they want to go out into life, they want to work; and when they begin
to work all that disquiet disappears. It's a great mercy to have things
to do, whether one likes it or not. Work is an odd thing! There is
hardly a morning at Cambridge when, if someone came to me and offered
me the choice of doing my ordinary work or doing nothing for a day, I
shouldn't choose to do nothing. And yet I enjoy my work, and wouldn't
give it up for anything. It is odd that it takes one so long to learn
to like work, and longer still to learn that one doesn't like idleness.
And yet it is to win the power of being idle that makes most people
work. Idleness seems so much grander and more dignified."

"It IS curious," said Maud, "but I seem to have inherited papa's taste
for occupation, without his energy. I wish you would advise me what to
do. Can't one find something?"

"What does my aunt say?" said Howard.

"Oh, she smiles in that mysterious way she has," said Maud, "and says
we have to learn to take things as they come. She knows somehow how to
do without things, how to wait; but I can't do that without getting
dreary."

"Do you ever try to write?" said Howard.

"Yes," said Maud, laughing, "I have tried to write a story--how did you
guess that? I showed it to Cousin Anne, and she said it was very nice;
and when I showed it to Jack, and told him what she had said, he read a
little, and said that that was exactly what it was."

"Yes," said Howard, smiling, "I admit that it was not very encouraging!
But I wish you would try something more simple. You say you know the
people here and talk to them. Can't you write down the sort of things
they say, the talks you have with them, the way they look at things? I
read a book once like that, called Country Conversations, and I
wondered that so few people ever tried it. Why should one try to write
improbable stories, even NICE stories, when the thing itself is so
interesting? One doesn't understand these country people. They have an
idea of life as definite as a dog or a cat, and it is not in the least
like ours. Why not take a family here; describe their house and
possessions, what they look like, what they do, what their history has
been, and then describe some talks with them? I can't imagine anything
more interesting. Perhaps you could not publish them at present; but
they wouldn't be quite wasted, because you might show them to me, and I
want to know all about the people here. You mustn't pass over things
because they seem homely and familiar--those are just the interesting
things--what they eat and drink and wear, and all that. How does that
strike you?"

"I like the idea very much indeed," said Maud. "I will try--I will
begin at once. And even if nothing comes of it, it will be nice to
think it may be of use to you, to know about the people."

"Very well," said Howard, "that is a bargain. It is exactly what I
want. Do begin at once, and let me have the first instalment of the
Chronicles of Windlow."

They had arrived by this time at a point high on the downs. The rough
white road, full of flints, had taken them up by deep-hedged cuttings,
through coverts where the spring flowers were just beginning to show in
the undergrowth, and out on to the smooth turf of the downs. They were
near the top now, and they could see right down into Windlow Malzoy,
lying like a map beneath them; the top of the Church tower, its leaden
roof, the roofs of the Vicarage, the little straggling street among its
orchards and gardens; farther off, up the valley, they could see the
Manor in its gardens; beyond the opposite ridge, a far-off view of
great richness spread itself in a belt of dark-blue colour. It was a
still day; on the left hand there was a great smooth valley-head, with
a wood of beeches, and ploughed fields in the bottom. They directed
their steps to an old turfed barrow, with a few gnarled thorn trees,
wind-swept and stunted round it.

"I love this place," said Maud; "it has a nice name, the 'Isle of
Thorns.' I suppose it is a burial-place--some old chief, papa says--and
he is always threatening to have him dug up; but I don't want to
disturb him! He must have had a reason for being buried here, and I
suppose there were people who missed him, and were sorry to lay him
here, and wondered where he had gone. I am sure there is a sad old
story about it; and yet it makes one happy in a curious way to think
about it all."

"Yes," said Howard, "'the old, unhappy, far-off things,' that turn
themselves into songs and stories! That is another puzzle; one's own
sorrows and tragedies, would one like to think of them as being made
into songs for other people to enjoy? I suppose we ought to be glad of
it; but there does not seem anything poetical about them at the time;
and yet they end by being sweeter than the old happy things. The 'Isle
of Thorns'! Yes, that IS a beautiful name."

Suddenly there came a faint musical sound on the air, as sweet as
honey. Howard held up his hand. "What on earth or in heaven is that?"
he said.

"Those are the chimes of Sherborne!" said Maud. "One hears them like
that when the wind is in this quarter. I like to hear them--they have
always been to me a sort of omen of something pleasant about to happen.
Perhaps it is in your honour to-day, to welcome you!"

"Well," said Howard, "they are beautiful enough by themselves; and if
they will bring me greater happiness than I have, I shall not object to
that!"

They smiled at each other, and stood in silence for a little, and then
Maud pointed out some neighbouring villages. "All this," she said, "is
Cousin Anne's--and yours. I think the Isle of Thorns is yours."

"Then the old chief shall not be disturbed," said Howard.

"How curious it is," said Maud, "to see a place of which one knows
every inch laid out like a map beneath one. It seems quite a different
place! As if something beautiful and strange must be happening there,
if only one could see it!"

"Yes," said Howard, "it is odd how we lose the feeling that a place is
romantic when we come to know it. When I first went up to Cambridge,
there were many places there that seemed to me to be so interesting:
walls which seemed to hide gardens full of thickets, strange doorways
by which no one ever passed out or in, barred windows giving upon dark
courts, out of which no one ever seemed to look. But now that I know
them all from the inside, they seem commonplace enough. The hidden
garden is a place where Dons smoke and play bowls; the barred window is
an undergraduate's gyp-room; there's no mystery left about them now.
This place as I see it to-day--well, it seems the most romantic place
in the world, full of unutterable secrets of life and death; but I
suppose it may all come to wear a perfectly natural air to me some day."

"That is what I like so much about Cousin Anne," said Maud; "nothing
seems to be commonplace to her, and she puts back the mystery and
wonder into it all. One must learn to do that for oneself somehow."

"Yes, she's a great woman!" said Howard; "but what shall we do now?"

"Oh, I am sorry," said Maud, "I have been keeping you all this
time--wouldn't you like to go and look for Jack? I think I heard a shot
just now up the valley."

"No," said Howard, looking at her and smiling, "we won't go and look
for Jack to-day; he has quite enough of my company. I want your company
to-day, and only yours. I want to get used to my new-found cousin."

"And to get rid of the sense of romance about her?" said Maud with a
smile; "you will soon come to the end of me."

"I will take my chance of that," said Howard. "At present I feel on the
other side of the wall."

"But I don't," said Maud, laughing; "I can't think how you slip in and
fit in as you do, and disentangle all our little puzzles as you have
done. I thought I should be terrified of you--and now I feel as if I
had known you ever so long. You are like Cousin Anne, you know."

"Perhaps I am, a little," said Howard, "but you are not very much like
Jack! Show me Mrs. Darby's house, by the way. I wonder how things are
going."

"There it is," said Maud, pointing to a house not far from the
Vicarage, "and there is Dr. Grierson's dogcart. I am afraid I had not
been thinking about her; but I do hope it's all right. I think she will
get over this. Don't you always have an idea, when people are ill,
whether they will get well or not?"

"Yes," said Howard, "I do; but it doesn't always come right!"

They lingered long on the hill, and at last Maud said that she must
return for tea. "Papa will be sure to bring Dr. Grierson in."

They went down the hill, talking lightly and easily; and to Howard it
was more delightful than anything he had known to have a peep into the
girl's frank and ingenuous mind. She was full of talk--spontaneous,
inconsequent talk--like Jack; and yet with a vast difference. Hers was
not a wholly happy temperament, Howard thought; she seemed oppressed by
a sense of duty, and he could not help feeling that she needed some
sort of outlet. Neither the Vicar nor Jack were people who stood in
need of sympathy or affection. He felt that they did not quite
understand the drift of the girl's mind, which seemed clear enough to
him. And yet there fell on him, for all his happiness, a certain
dissatisfaction. He would have liked to feel less elderly, less
paternal; and the girl's frank confidence in him, treating him as she
might have treated an uncle or an elder brother, was at once delightful
and disconcerting. The day began to decline as they walked, and the
light faded to a sombre bleakness. Howard went back to the Vicarage
with her, and, at her urgent request, went in to tea. They found the
Vicar and Dr. Grierson already established. Mrs. Darby was quite
comfortable, and no danger was apprehended. The Vicar's diagnosis had
been right, and his precautions perfect. "I could not have done better
myself!" said Dr. Grierson, a kindly, bluff Scotchman. Howard became
aware that the Vicar must have told the Doctor the news about his
inheritance, and was subtly flattered at being treated by him with the
empressement reserved for squires. Jack came in--he had been shooting
all afternoon--and told Howard he was improving. "I shall catch you
up," he said. He seemed frankly amused at the idea of Howard having
spent the afternoon with Maud. "You have got the whole family on your
back, it seems," he said. Maud was silent, but in her heightened colour
and sparkling eye Howard discerned a touch of happiness, and he enjoyed
the quiet attention she gave to his needs. The Vicar seemed sorry that
they had not made a closer inspection of the village. "But you were
right to begin with a general coup d'oeil," he said; "the whole before
the parts! First the conspectus, then the details," he added
delightedly. "So you have been to the Isle of Thorns?" he went on. "I
want to rake out the old fellow up there some day--but Cousin Anne
won't allow it--you must persuade her; and we will have a splendid
field-day there, unearthing all the old boy's arrangements; I am sure
he has never been disturbed."

"I am afraid I agree with my aunt," said Howard, shaking his head.

"Ah, Maud has been getting at you, I perceive," said the Vicar. "A very
feminine view! Now in the interests of ethnology we ought to go
forward--dear me, how full the world is of interesting things!"

They parted in great good-humour. The whole party were to dine at the
Manor next day; and Howard, as he said good-bye to Maud, contrived to
add, "Now you must tell me to-morrow that you have made a beginning."
She gave him a little nod, and a clasp of the hand that made him feel
that he had a new friend.

That evening he talked to his aunt about Maud. He told her all about
their walk and talk. "I am very glad you gave her something to do," she
said--"that is so like a man! That is just where I fail. She is a very
interesting and delightful girl, Howard; and she is not quite happy at
home. Living with Cousin Frank is like living under a waterfall; and
Jack is beginning to have his own plans, and doesn't want anyone to
share them. Well, you amaze me! I suppose you get a good deal of
practice in these things, and become a kind of amateur
father-confessor. I think of you at Cambridge as setting the lives of
young men spinning like little tops--small human teetotums. It's very
useful, but it is a little dangerous! I don't think you have suffered
as yet. That's what I like in you, Howard, the mixture of practical and
unpractical. You seem to me to be very busy, and yet to know where to
stop. Of course we can't make other people a present of experience;
they have to spin their own webs; but I think one can do a certain
amount in seeing that they have experience. It would not suit me; my
strength is to sit still, as the Bible says. But in a place like this
with Frank whipping his tops--he whips them, while you just twirl
them--someone is wanted who will listen to people, and see that they
are left alone. To leave people alone at the right minute is a very
great necessity. Don't you know those gardens that look as if they were
always being fussed and slashed and cut about? There's no sense of life
in them. One has to slash sometimes, and then leave it. I believe in
growth even more than in organisation. Still, I don't doubt that you
have helped Maud, and I am very glad of it. I wanted you to make
friends with her. I think the lack in your life is that you have known
so few women; men and women can never understand each other, of course;
but they have got to live together and work together; and one ought to
live with people whom one does not understand. You and your
undergraduates don't yield any mysteries. You, no doubt, know exactly
what they are thinking, and they know what you are thinking. It's all
very pleasant and wholesome, but one can't get on very far that way.
You mustn't think Maud is a sort of undergraduate. Probably you think
you know a great deal about her already--but she isn't the least what
you imagine, any more than I am. Nor are you what I imagine; but I am
quite content with my mistaken idea of you."




XI

JACK


The next day's dinner was a disappointment. The Vicar expatiated, Jack
counted, and became so intent on his counting that he hardly said a
word; indeed Howard was not sure that he was wholly pleased with the
turn affairs had taken; he was rather touched by this than otherwise,
because it seemed to him that Jack was really, if unconsciously, a
little jealous. His whole visit had been rather too much of a success:
Jack had expected to act as showman of his menagerie, and to play the
principal part; and Howard felt that Jack suspected him of having taken
the situation too much into his own hands. He felt that Jack was not
pleased with his puppets; his father had needed no apologies or
explanations, Maud had been forward, he himself had been donnish.

The result was that Howard hardly got a word with Maud; she did indeed
say to him that she had made a beginning, and he was aware of a
pleasant sense of trustfulness about her; but the party had been
involved in vague and general talk, with a disturbing element
somewhere. Howard found himself talking aimlessly and flatly, and the
net result was a feeling of dissatisfaction.

When they were gone, Mrs. Graves said to Howard, "Jack is rather a
masterful young man, I think. He has no sense of respect in his
composition. Were you aware of the fact that he had us all under his
thumb this evening?"

"Yes," said Howard, "it was just what I was thinking!"

"He wants work," said Mrs. Graves; "he ought not to dangle about at
home and at Cambridge; he wants tougher material to deal with; it's no
use snubbing him, because he is on the right tack; but he must not be
allowed to interfere too much. He wants a touch of misfortune to bring
him to himself; he has a real influence over people--the influence that
all definite, good-humoured, outspoken people have; it is easier for
others to do what he likes than to resist him; he is not irritable, and
he is pertinacious. He is the sort of man who may get very much spoilt
if he doesn't marry the right woman, because he is the sort of person
women will tell lies to rather than risk displeasing him. If he does
not take care he will be a man of the world, because he will not see
the world as it is; it will behave to him as he wishes it to behave."

"I think," said Howard, "that he has got good stuff in him; he would
never do anything mean or spiteful; but he would do anything that he
thought consistent with honour to get his way."

"Well, we shall see," said Mrs. Graves; "but he is rather a bad
influence for Maud just now. Maud doesn't suspect his strength, and I
can't have her broken in. Mind, Howard, I look to you to help Maud
along. You have a gift for keeping things reasonable; and you must use
it."

"I thought you believed in letting people alone!" said Howard.

"In theory, yes," said Mrs. Graves, smiling; "I certainly don't believe
in influencing people; but I believe very much in loving them: it's
what I call imaginative sympathy that we want. Some people have
imagination enough to see what other people are feeling, but it ends
there: and some people have unintelligent sympathy, and that is only
spoiling. But one must see what people are capable of, and what their
line is, and help them to find out what suits them, not try to conform
them to what suits oneself; and that isn't as easy as it sounds."




XII

DIPLOMACY


A few days later Howard was summoned back to Cambridge. One of his
colleagues was ill, and arrangements had to be made to provide for his
work. It astonished him to find how reluctant he was to return; he
seemed to have found the sort of life he needed in this quiet place. He
had walked with the Vicar, and had been deluged with interesting
particulars about the parish. Much of it was very trivial, but Howard
saw that the Vicar had a real insight into the people and their ways.
He had not seen Maud again to speak to, and it vexed him to find how
difficult it was to create occasions for meeting. His mind and
imagination had been taken captive by the girl; he thought of her
constantly, and recalled her in a hundred charming vignettes; the hope
of meeting her was constantly in his mind; he had taught Jack a good
deal, but he became more and more aware that for some reason or other
his pupil was not pleased with him.

He and Jack were returning one day from fishing, and they had come
nearer than Howard had liked to having a squabble. Howard had said
something about an undergraduate, a friend of Jack's. Jack had seemed
to resent the criticism, and said, "I am not quite sure whether you
know so much about him as you think. Do you always analyse people like
that? I sometimes feel with you as if I were in a room full of
specimens which you were showing off, and that you knew more about them
dead than alive."

"That's rather severe!" said Howard; "I simply try to understand
people--I suppose we all do that."

"No, I don't," said Jack; "I think it's rather stuffy, if you want to
know. I have a feeling that you have been turning everyone inside out
here. I think one ought to let people alone."

"Well," said Howard, "it all depends upon what one wants to do with
people. I think that, as a matter of fact, you are really more inclined
to deal with people, to use them for your own purposes, than I am. You
know what you want, and other people have got to follow. Of course, up
at Beaufort, it's my business to try to do that to a certain extent;
but that is professional, and a matter of business."

"But the worst of doing it professionally," said Jack, "is that you
can't get out of the way of doing it unprofessionally. You seem to me
to have rather purchased this place. I know you are to be squire, and
all that; but you want to make yourself felt. I am not sure that you
aren't rather a Jesuit."

"Come," said Howard, "that's going too far--we can't afford to quarrel.
I don't mind your saying what you think; but if you have the right to
take your own line, you must allow the same right to others."

"That depends!" said Jack, and was silent for a moment. Then he turned
to Howard and said, "Yes, you are quite right! I am sorry I said all
that. You have done no end for me, and I am an ungrateful little beast.
It is rather fine of you not to remind me of all the trouble you have
taken; there isn't anyone who would have done so much; and you have
really laid yourself out to do what I liked here. I am sorry, I am
truly sorry. I suppose I felt myself rather cock of the walk here, and
am vexed that you have got the whole thing into your hands!"

"All right," said Howard, "I entirely understand; and look here, I am
glad you said what you did. You are not wholly wrong. I have interfered
perhaps more than I ought; but you must believe me when I say
this--that it isn't with a managing motive. I like people to like me; I
don't want to direct them; only one can overdo trying to make people
like one, and I feel I have overdone it. I ought to have gone to work
in a different way."

"Well, I have put my foot in it again," said Jack; "it's awful to think
that I have been lecturing one of the Dons about his duty. I shall be
trying to brighten up their lives next. The mischief is that I don't
think I do want people to like me. I am not affectionate. I only want
things to go smoothly."

They drew near to the Manor, and Jack said, "I promised Cousin Anne I
would go in to tea. She has designs on me, that woman! She doesn't
approve of me; she says the sharpest things in her quiet way; one
hardly knows she has done it, and then when one thinks of it
afterwards, one finds she has drawn blood. I am cross, I think! There
seems to be rather a set at me just now; she makes me feel as if I were
in bed, being nursed and slapped."

"Well," said Howard, "I shall leave you to her mercies. I shall go on
to the Vicarage, and say good-bye. I shan't see them again this time.
You don't mind, I hope? I will try not to use my influence."

"You can't help it!" said Jack with a grimace. "No, do go. You will
touch them up a bit. I am not appreciated there just now."

Howard walked on up to the Vicarage. He was rather disturbed by Jack's
remarks; it put him, he thought, in an odious light. Was he really so
priggish and Jesuitical? That was the one danger of the life of the Don
which he hoped he had successfully avoided. He was all for liberty, he
imagined. Was he really, after all, a mild schemer with an ethical
outlook? Was he bent on managing and uplifting people? The idea
sickened him, and he felt humiliated.

When he arrived at the Vicarage, he found the Vicar out. Maud was
alone. This was, he confessed to himself with a strange delight,
exactly what he most desired. He would not be paternal or formative. He
would just make friends with his pretty cousin as he might with a
sensible undergraduate. With this stern resolve he entered the room.

Maud got up hastily from her chair--she was writing in a little
note-book on her knee. "I thought I would just come in and say
good-bye," he said. "I have to go back to Cambridge earlier than I
thought, and I hoped I might just catch you and your father."

"He will be so sorry," said Maud; "he does enjoy meeting you. He says
it gives him so much to think about."

"Oh, well," said Howard, "I hope to be here again next vacation--in
June, that is. I have got to learn my duties here as soon as I can. I
see you are hard at work. Is that the book? How do you get on? You have
promised to send it me, you know, as soon as you have enough in hand."

"Yes," said Maud, "I will send it you. It has done me good already,
doing this. It is very good of you to have suggested it--and I like to
think it may be of some use."

"I have been with Jack all the afternoon," said Howard, "and I am
afraid he is rather vexed with me. I can't have that. He drew a rather
unpleasant picture of me; he seemed to think I have taken this place
rather in hand from the Don's point of view. He thinks I should die if
I were unable to improve the occasion."

Maud looked up at him with a troubled and rather indignant air. "Jack
is perfectly horrid just now," she said; "I can't think what has come
over him; and considering that you have been coaching him every day,
and getting him shooting and fishing, it seems to me quite detestable!
I oughtn't to say that; but you mustn't be angry with him, Mr. Kennedy.
I think he is feeling very independent just now, and he said to me that
it made him feel that he was back at school to have to go up with his
books to the Manor every morning. But he is all right really. I am sure
he is grateful; it would be too shameful if he were not. Please don't
be vexed with him."

Howard laughed. "Oh, I am not vexed! Indeed, I am rather glad he spoke
out--at my age one doesn't often get the chance of being sincerely
scolded by a perfectly frank young man. One does get donnish and
superior, no doubt, and it is useful to find it out, though it isn't
pleasant at the time. We have made it up, and he was quite repentant; I
think it is altogether natural. It often happens with young men to get
irritated with one, no doubt, but as a rule they don't speak out; and
this time he has got me between the joints of my armour."

"Oh, dear me!" said Maud, "I think the world is rather a difficult
place! It seems ridiculous for me to say that in a place like this,
when I think what might be happening if I were poor and had to earn my
living. It is silly to mind things so; but Jack accuses me of the same
sort of thing. He says that women can't let people alone; he says that
women don't really want to DO anything, but only to SEEM to have their
way."

"Well, then, it appears we are both in the same box," said Howard, "and
we must console each other and grieve over being so much misunderstood."

He felt that he had spoken rather cynically, and that he had somehow
hurt and checked the girl. He did not like the thought; but he felt
that he had spoken sensibly in not allowing the situation to become
sentimental. There was a little silence; and then Maud said, rather
timidly: "Do you like going back?"

"No," said Howard, "I don't. I have become curiously interested in this
place, and I am lazy. Just now the life of the Don seems to me rather
intolerable. I don't want to teach Greek prose, I don't want to go to
meetings; I don't want to gossip about appointments, and little
intrigues, and bonfires, and College rows. I want to live here, and
walk on the Downs and write my book. I don't want to be stuffy, as Jack
said. But it will be all right, when I have taken the plunge; and after
I have been back a week, this will all fade into a sort of impossibly
pleasant dream."

He was again conscious that he had somehow hurt the girl. She looked at
him with a troubled face, and then said, "Yes, that is the advantage
which men have. I sometimes wonder if it would not be better for me to
have some work away from here. But there is nothing I could do; and I
can't leave papa."

"Oh, it will all come right!" said Howard feebly; "there are fifty
things that might happen. And now I must be off! Mind, you must let me
have the book some time; that will serve to remind me of Windlow in the
intervals of Greek prose."

He got up and shook hands. He felt he was behaving stupidly and
unkindly. He had meant to tell Maud how much he liked the feeling of
having made friends, and to have talked to her frankly and simply about
everything. He had an intense desire to say that and more; to make her
understand that she was and would be in his thoughts; to ascertain how
she felt towards him; to assure himself of their friendship. But he
would be wise and prudent; he would not be sentimental or priggish or
Jesuitical. He would just leave the impression that he was mildly
interested in Windlow, but that his heart was in his work. He felt
sustained by his delicate consideration, and by his judicious
chilliness. And so he turned and left her, though an unreasonable
impulse seized him to take the child in his arms, and tell her how
sweet and delicious she was. She had held the little book in her hand
as they sate, as if she had hoped he would ask to look at it; and as he
closed the door, he saw her put it down on the table with a half-sigh.




XIII

GIVING AWAY


He was to go off the next day; that night he had his last talk to his
aunt. She said that she would say good-bye to him then, and that she
hoped he would be back in June. She did not seem quite as serene as
usual, but she spoke very affectionately and gently of the delight his
visit had been. Then she said, "But I somehow feel--I can't give my
reasons--as if we had got into a mess here. You are rather a disturbing
clement, dear Howard! I may speak plainly to you now, mayn't I? I think
you have more effect on people than you know. You have upset us! I am
not criticising you, because you have exceeded all my hopes. But you
are too diffident, and you don't realise your power of sympathy. You
are very observant, very quick to catch the drift of people's moods,
and you are not at all formidable. You are so much interested in people
that you lead them to reveal themselves and to betray themselves; and
they don't find quite what they expect. You are afraid, I think, of
caring for people; you want to be in close relation with everyone, and
yet to preserve your own tranquillity. You are afraid of emotion; but
one can't care for people like that! It doesn't cost you enough! You
are like a rich man who can afford to pay for things, and I think you
rather pauperise people. Here you have been for three weeks; and nobody
here will be able to forget you; and yet I think you may forget us. One
can't care without suffering, and I think that you don't suffer. It is
all a pleasure and delight to you. You win hearts, and don't give your
own. Don't think I am ungrateful. You have made a great difference
already to my life; but you have made me suffer too. I know that like
Telemachus in Tennyson's poem you will be 'decent not to fail in
offices of tenderness'--I know I can depend on you to do everything
that is kind and considerate and just. You won't disappoint me. You
will do out of a natural kindliness and courtesy what many people can
only do by loving. You don't claim things, you don't lay hands on
things; and it looks so like unselfishness that it seems detestable of
me to say anything. But you will have to give yourself away, and I
don't think you have ever done that. I can say all this, my dear,
because I love you, as a mother might; you are my son indeed; but there
is something in you that will have to be broken; we have all of us to
be broken. It isn't that you have anything to repent of. You would take
endless trouble to help anyone who wanted help, you would be endlessly
patient and tender and strong; but you do not really know what love
means, because it does not hurt or wound you. You are like Achilles,
was it not, who had been dipped in the river of death, and you are
invulnerable. You won't, I know, resent my saying this? I know you
won't--and the fact that you will not makes it harder for me to say
it--but I almost wish it WOULD wound you, instead of making you think
how you can amend it. You can't amend it, but God and love can; only
you must dare to let yourself go. You must not be wise and forbearing.
There, dear, I won't say more!"

Howard took her hand and kissed it. "Thank you," he said, "thank you a
hundred times for speaking so. It is perfectly true, every word of it.
It is curious that to-day I have seen myself three times mirrored in
other minds. I don't like what I see--I am not complacent--I am not
flattered. But I don't know what to do! I feel like a patient with a
hopeless disease, who has been listening to a perfectly kind and wise
physician. But what can I do? It is just the vital impulse which is
lacking. I will be frank too; it is quite true that I live in the
surface of things. I am so much interested in books, ideas, thoughts, I
am fascinated by the study of human temperament; people delight me,
excite me, amuse me; but nothing ever comes inside. I don't excuse
myself, but I say: 'It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.' I
am just so, as you have described, and I feel what a hollow-hearted
sort of person I am. Yet I go on amusing myself with friendships and
interests. I have never suffered, and I have never loved. Well, I would
like to change all that, but can I?"

"Ah, dear Howard," said his aunt, "that is the everlasting question. It
is like you to take this all so sweetly and to speak so openly. But
further than this no one can help you. You are like the young man whom
Jesus loved who had great possessions. You do not know how much! I will
not tell you to follow Him; and your possessions are not those which
can be given away. But you must follow love. I had a hope, I have a
hope--oh, it is more than that, because we all find our way sooner or
later--and now that you know the truth, as I see you know it, the light
will not be long in coming. God bless you, dearest child; there is pain
ahead of you; but I don't fear that--pain is not the worst thing or the
last thing!"




XIV

BACK TO CAMBRIDGE


"I HAD a hope . . . I have a hope," these words of his aunt's echoed
often through Howard's brain, in the wakeful night which followed.
Nothing was plain to himself except the fact that things were tangled;
the anxious exaltation which came to him from his talk with his aunt
cleared off like the dying away of the flush of some beaded liquor. "I
must see into this--I must understand what is happening--I must
disentangle it," he said again and again to himself. He was painfully
conscious, as he thought and thought, of his own deep lack both of
moral courage and affection. He liked nothing that was not easy--easy
triumph, easy relations. Somehow the threads of life had knotted
themselves up; he had slipped so lightly into his place here, he had
taken up responsibilities as he might have taken up a flower; he had
meant to be what he called frank and affectionate all round, and now he
felt that he was going to disappoint everyone. Not till the daylight
began to outline the curtain-rifts did he fall asleep; and he woke with
that excited fatigue which comes of sleeplessness.

He came down, he breakfasted alone in the early morning freshness. The
house was all illumined by the sun, but it spread its beauties in vain
before him. The trap came to the door, and when he came out he found to
his surprise that Jack was standing on the steps talking to the
coachman. "I thought I would like to come to the station with you,"
said Jack. Howard was pleased at this. They got in together, and one by
one the scenes so strangely familiar fled past them. Howard looked long
at the Vicarage as he passed, wondering whether Maud was perhaps
looking out. That had been a clumsy, stupid business--his talk with
her! Presently Jack said, "Look here, I am going to say again that I
was perfectly hateful yesterday. I don't know what came over me--I was
thinking aloud."

"Oh, it doesn't matter a bit!" said Howard; "it was my fault really. I
have mismanaged things, I think; and it is good for me to find that
out."

"No, but you haven't," said Jack. "I see it all now. You came down
here, and you made friends with everyone. That was all right; the fact
simply is that I have been jealous and mean. I expected to have you all
to myself--to run you, in fact; and I was vexed at finding you take an
interest in all the others. There, it's better out. I am entirely in
the wrong. You have been awfully good all round, and we shall be
precious dull now that you are going. The truth is that we have been
squabbling over you."

"Well, Jack," said Howard, smiling, "it's very good of you to say this.
I can't quite accept it, but I am very grateful. There WAS some truth
in what you said--but it wasn't quite the whole truth; and anyhow you
and I won't squabble--I shouldn't like that!"

Jack nodded and smiled, and they went on to talk of other things; but
Howard was pleased to see that the boy hung about him, determined to
make up for his temper, looked after his luggage, saw him into the
train, and waved him a very ingenuous farewell, with a pretence of
tears.

The journey passed in a listless dream for Howard, but everything faded
before the thought of Maud. What could he do to make up for his
brutality? He could not see his way clear. He had a sense that it was
unfair to claim her affection, to sentimentalise; and he thought that
he had been doubly wrong--wrong in engaging her interest so quickly,
wrong in playing on her unhappiness just for his own enjoyment, and
doubly wrong in trying to disengage their relation so roughly. It was a
mean business; and yet though he did not want to hold her, he could not
bear to let her go.

As he came near Cambridge and in sight of the familiar landscape, the
wide fields, the low lines of far-off wolds, he was surprised to find
that instead of being depressed, a sense of comfort stole over him, and
a feeling of repose. He had crammed too many impressions and emotions
into his visit; and now he was going back to well-known and peaceful
activities. The sight of his rooms pleased him, and the foregathering
with the three or four of his colleagues was a great relief. Mr.
Redmayne was incisive and dogmatic, but evidently pleased to see him
back. He had not been away, and professed that holidays and change of
scene were distracting and exhausting. "It takes me six weeks to
recover from a holiday," he said. He had had an old friend to stay with
him, a country parson, and he had apparently spent his time in
elaborate manoeuvres to see as little of his guest as possible. "A
worthy man, but tedious," he said, "wonderfully well preserved--in
body, that is; his mind has entirely gone to pieces; he has got some
dismal notions in his head about the condition of the agricultural
poor; he thinks they want uplifting! Now I am all for the due
subordination of classes. The poor are there, if I may speak plainly,
to breed--that is their first duty; and their only other duty that I
can discover, is to provide for the needs of men of virtue and
intelligence!"

Later on, Howard was left alone with him, and thought that it would
please the old man to tell him of the change in his own position.

"I am delighted to hear it," said Mr. Redmayne: "a landed proprietor,
that's a very comfortable thing! Now how will that affect your position
here? Ah yes, I see--only the heir-apparent at present. Well, you will
probably find that the estate has all been run on very sentimental
lines by your worthy aunt. You take my advice, and put it all on a
business-like footing. Let it be clear from the first that you won't
stand any nonsense. Ideas!" said Mr. Redmayne in high disdain, "that's
the curse of the country. Ideas everywhere, about the empire, about
civic rights and duties, about religion, about art"--he made a long
face as though he had swallowed medicine. "Let us all keep our distance
and do our work. Let us have no nonsense about the brotherhood of man.
I hope with all my heart, Howard, that you won't permit anything of
that kind. I don't feel as sure of you as I should like; but this will
be a very good thing for you, if it shows you that all this stuff will
not do in practice. I'm an honest Whig. Let everyone have a vote, and
let them give their votes for the right people, and then we shall get
on very well."




XV

JACK'S ESCAPADE


The college slowly filled; the term began; Howard went back to his
work, and the perplexities of Windlow rather faded into the background.
He would behave very differently when he went there next. It should all
be cool, friendly, unemotional. But in spite of everything, his aunt's
words came sometimes into his mind, troubling it with a sudden thrill.
"Power, spirit, the development of life,"--were these real things, had
one somehow to put oneself into touch with them? Was the life of serene
and tranquil work but marking time, wasting opportunity? Had one
somehow to be stirred into action and reality? Was there something in
the background, which did not insist or drive or interfere with one's
inclinations, because it knew that it would be obeyed and yielded to
some time? Was it just biding its time, waiting, impelling but not
forcing one to change? It gave him an impulse to look closer at his own
views and aims, to consider what his motives really were, how far he
could choose, how much he could prevail, to what extent he could really
do as he hoped and desired. He was often haunted by a sense of living
in a mechanical unreality, of moving simply on lines of easy habit.
That was a tame, a flat business, perhaps; but it was what seemed to
happen.

And yet all the time he was more and more haunted by the thought of
Maud. He could not get her out of his head. Over and over again he
lived through the scenes of their meetings. Against the background of
the dusk, that slender figure outlined itself, the lines of her form,
her looks, her smiles; he went again and again through his talks with
her--the walk on the down, the sight of her in the dimly-lighted room;
he could hear the very tones of her low voice, and see the childlike
appeal of her eyes. Worst of all the scene at the Vicarage, the book
held in her slender fingers, her look of bewilderment and
distress--what a pompous ass he had been, how stupid and coarse! He
thought of writing to her; he did write--but the dignified patronage of
his elder-brotherly style sickened him, and he tore up his unfinished
letter. Why could he not simply say that he cared for her, and was
miserable at having hurt her? That was just, he thought, what he must
not do; and yet the idea that she might be making other friends and
acquaintances was a jealous horror to him. He thought of writing to his
aunt about it--he did write regularly to her, but he could not explain
what he had done. Strangest of all, he hardly recognised it as love. He
did not face the idea of a possible life with Maud. It was to be an
amiable and brotherly relation, with a frank confidence and an
outspoken affection. He lost his old tranquil spirits in these
reveries. It was painful to him to find how difficult it was becoming
to talk to the undergraduates; his mild and jocose ironies seemed to
have deserted him. He saw little of Jack; they were elaborately
unaffected with each other, but each felt that there had been a sort of
exposure, and it seemed impossible to regain the old relation.

One morning he had an unpleasant surprise. The Dean of the College, Mr.
Gretton, a tall, rather grimly handsome man, who was immensely
conscientious and laborious, and did his work as well as a virtuous man
could, who was not interested in education, and frankly bored by the
irresponsibility of undergraduates, walked into his rooms one morning
and said, "I hope I don't interrupt you? I want to have a word with you
about Sandys, as he is your cousin. There was a dinner in College last
night--a club, I think--Guthrie and that lot--and Sandys got undeniably
drunk. They were making a horrible row about two o'clock, and I went
down and dispersed them. There were some outside men there whose names
I took; but Sandys was quite out of control, and spoke very
impertinently to me. He must come and apologise, or I shall ask that he
may be sent down. He is a respectable man on the whole, so I shall not
push it to extremes. But he will be gated, of course, and I shall write
to his father. I thought you had better see him, and try if you can do
anything. It is a great nuisance, and the less said about it the
better; but of course we can't stand this kind of thing, and it had
better be stopped at once."

"Yes, I will see him at once," said Howard. "I am very sorry. I did not
think he would play the fool like that."

"One never knows!" said the Dean; "to speak plainly, I don't think he
is doing much good here. Rather too much a man of the world for my
taste. But there is nothing particular against him, and I don't want to
be hard on him."

Howard sent for Jack at once. He came in, in an obviously rebellious
frame of mind.

"I know," he said. "Yes, of course I was a fool; but it isn't worth
making a row about. I don't go in for soaking, like some of the men who
don't get caught, and I have no intention of going to the bad, if that
is what you mean."

"You are an ass!" said Howard, "a real ass! Now don't say a word yet,
till I have told you what I think. You may have your say afterwards. I
don't care twopence about your getting drunk once in a way. It's a
stupid thing to do, to my mind, and I don't see the point of it. I
don't consider you a reprobate, nor am I going to take a high line
about drunkenness; I know perfectly well that you are no more likely to
take to drink than the Master is. But it isn't good enough. You put
yourself on the wrong side, you give people a wrong idea of yourself.
You get disapproved of by all the stupid and ordinary people who don't
know you. Your father will be in an awful state of mind. It's an
experiment, I suppose? I imagine you thought you would like to see how
it felt to be drunk? Well, living at close quarters like this, that
sort of thing can't be done. And then you were rude to Gretton. What's
the point of that? He is a very good fellow, minds his own business,
doesn't interfere, and keeps things very straight here. That part of it
seems to me simply ungentlemanly. And in any case, you have no business
to hurt the people who care for you, even if you think they ought not
to be distressed. I don't say it is immoral, but I say it is a low
business from beginning to end."

Jack, who bore signs of his overnight experience, gave Howard a smile.
"That's all right!" he said. "I don't object to that! You have rather
taken the wind out of my sails. If you had said I was a sensual brute,
I should have just laughed. It is such NONSENSE the way these men go
on! Why I was lunching with Gretton the other day, and Corry told a
story about Wordsworth as an undergraduate getting drunk in Milton's
rooms at Christ's, and how proud the old man was of it to the end of
his life. Gretton laughed, and thought it a joke; and then when one
gets roaring drunk, they turn up their eyes and say it is unmanly and
so on. Why 

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