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

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