Watersprings by Arthur Christopher Benson (read more books txt) 📕

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