ACADEMIC
The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers entered
that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men. The spirit hovering
above the spires was as different from its concretions in their caps and
gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was from church dogmas.
“Shall we go into Grinnings'.” asked Shelton, as they passed the club.
But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel
suits were coming out.
“You go,” said Crocker, with a smirk.
Shelton shook his head. Never before had he felt such love for this old
city. It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it seemed
so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble. Clothed in the
calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition, radiant with
the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's
dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey
patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox--secluded,
mysteriously calm--a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and
trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing
at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college
porter--large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed--stood at his lodge
door in a frank and deferential attitude. An image of routine, he looked
like one engaged to give a decorous air to multitudes of pecadilloes.
His blue eyes rested on the travellers. “I don't know you, sirs, but if
you want to speak I shall be glad to hear the observations you may have
to make,” they seemed to say.
Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its
handle. A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was
snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain was
fastened stayed immovable. Through this narrow mouth, human metal had
been poured for centuries--poured, moulded, given back.
“Come along,” said Shelton.
They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room
where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred
youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass, thrown
by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there, serving
Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter. When they had finished,
Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty from the table; the
old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked in some other arm;
the old eagerness to dare and do something heroic--and unlawful; the
old sense that he was of the forest set, in the forest college, of the
forest country in the finest world. The streets, all grave and mellow
in the sunset, seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll; the entrance
quad of his old college--spaciously majestic, monastically modern, for
years the heart of his universe, the focus of what had gone before it
in his life, casting the shadow of its grey walls over all that had come
after-brought him a sense of rest from conflict, and trust in his own
important safety. The garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often
crowned with empty water-bottles, failed to rouse him. Nor when they
passed the staircase where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate
disturbing tutor, did he feel remorse. High on that staircase were the
rooms in which he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by which
the scholar simmers on the fire of cramming, boils over at the moment of
examination, and is extinct for ever after. His coach's face recurred to
him, a man with thrusting eyes, who reeled off knowledge all the week,
and disappeared to town on Sundays.
They passed their tutor's staircase.
“I wonder if little Turl would remember us?” said Crocker; “I should
like to see him. Shall we go and look him up?”
“Little Turl?” said Shelton dreamily.
Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.
“Come in,” said the voice of Sleep itself.
A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat
pink chair, as if he had been grown there.
“What do you want?” he asked of them, blinking.
“Don't you know me, sir?”
“God bless me! Crocker, isn't it? I didn't recognise you with a beard.”
Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels, chuckled
feebly.
“You remember Shelton, sir?” he said.
“Shelton? Oh yes! How do you do, Shelton? Sit down; take a cigar”; and,
crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them up and
down with drowsy interest, as who should say, “Now, after, all you know,
why come and wake me up like this?”
Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking,
“Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?” And Shelton, who could
not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar. The
panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains; the
soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet; the
backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps;
the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely
comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his little
host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge meerschaum pipe,
had such a queer resemblance to a moon. The door was opened, and a
tall creature, whose eyes were large and brown, whose face was rosy and
ironical, entered with a manly stride.
“Oh!” he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air, “am
I intruding, Turl?”
The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,
“Not at all, Berryman--take a pew!”
The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with his
fine eyes.
Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the newcomer
sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.
“Trimmer and Washer are coming round,” he said, and as he spoke the
door opened to admit these gentlemen. Of the same height, but different
appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly supercilious, as
if they tolerated everything. The one whose name was Trimmer had patches
of red on his large cheek-bones, and on his cheeks a bluish tint. His
lips were rather full, so that he had a likeness to a spider. Washer,
who was thin and pale, wore an intellectual smile.
The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.
“Crocker, Shelton,” he said.
An awkward silence followed. Shelton tried to rouse the cultured portion
of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated seriously
paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the glowing tip of
his cigar. It seemed to him unfair to have intruded on these gentlemen
without its having been made quite clear to them beforehand who and what
he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer had begun to speak.
“Madame Bovary!” he said quizzically, reading the title of the book
on the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his
boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, “Madame
Bovary!”
“Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?” said
Berryman.
As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had galvanised
him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down a book,
opened it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way about the
room.
“Ha! Berryman,” said a conciliatory voice behind--it came from Trimmer,
who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with either hand a
fistful of his gown--“the book's a classic!”
“Classic!” exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes; “the
fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such putridity!”
A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at his
little host, who, however, merely blinked.
“Berryman only means,” explains Washer, a certain malice in his smile,
“that the author is n't one of his particular pets.”
“For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!” growled the
little fat man suddenly.
Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down. There
was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-mindedness.
“Imagine a man writing that stuff,” he said, “if he'd ever been at Eton!
What do we want to know about that sort of thing? A writer should be a
sportsman and a gentleman”; and again he looked down over his chin at
Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the sentiment.
“Don't you--” began the latter.
But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.
“I really don't care,” said he, “to know what a woman feels when she is
going to the dogs; it does n't interest me.”
The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:
“Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more.”
He had stretched his legs like compasses,--and the way he grasped his
gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales. His lowering smile
embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions. “After all,” he
seemed to say, “we are men of the world; we know there 's not very much
in anything. This is the modern spirit; why not give it a look in?”
“Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy
book?” asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little
fat man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, “Nothing
pleasanter, don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather.”
Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to dip
into his volume and walk up and down.
“I've nothing to say,” he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and looking
down, as if at last aware of him, “to those who talk of being justified
through Art. I call a spade a spade.”
Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman was
addressing him or society at large. And Berryman went on:
“Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a
taste for vice? Tell me the point of it. No man who was in the habit of
taking baths would choose such a subject.”
“You come to the question of-ah-subjects,” the voice of Trimmer genially
buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back--“my dear
fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects.”
“For Art,” squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and taking
down a third, “you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian; for
garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen.”
There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn. With the
exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically, they
wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider any
subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were so
profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem
impertinent. It may have been some glimmer in this glance of Shelton's
that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his compromising air.
“The French,” said he, “have quite a different standard from ourselves
in literature, just as they have a different standard in regard to
honour. All this is purely artificial.”
What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.
“Honour,” said Washer, “'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful
wives--”
He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little fat
man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it within
two inches of his chin, murmured:
“You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour.”
He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.
Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down
a fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as
dumb-bells.
“Quite so,” said Trimmer; “the change from duelling to law courts is
profoundly--”
Whether he were going to say “significant” or “insignificant,” in
Shelton's estimate he did not know himself. Fortunately Berryman broke
in:
“Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall
punch his head!”
“Come, come!” said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.
Shelton had a gleam of inspiration. “If your wife deceived you,” he
thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, “you 'd keep it quiet, and hold it
over her.”
Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never wavered;
he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an epigram.
The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level with
his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of view.
His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical. Almost
painful was this combination of the “strong” man and the student who was
bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.
“As for forgiving faithless wives,” he said, “and all that sort of
thing, I don't believe in sentiment.”
The words were high-pitched and sarcastic. Shelton looked hastily
around. All their faces were complacent. He grew red, and suddenly
remarked, in a soft; clear voice:
“I see!”
He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this
sort, and that he never would again. The cold hostility flashing out
all round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite,
satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men. Crocker rose
nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton,
following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said
good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.
“Who are your unshaven friends?” he heard as the door was closed behind
them.