Outside the laboratory windows was a watery-grey fog, and within
a close warmth and the yellow light of the green-shaded gas lamps
that stood two to each table down its narrow length. On each table
stood a couple of glass jars containing the mangled vestiges of the
crayfish, mussels, frogs, and guineapigs, upon which the students had
been working, and down the side of the room, facing the windows, were
shelves bearing bleached dissections in spirits, surmounted by a row
of beautifully executed anatomical drawings in whitewood frames and
overhanging a row of cubical lockers. All the doors of the laboratory
were panelled with blackboard, and on these were the half-erased
diagrams of the previous day's work. The laboratory was empty, save for
the demonstrator, who sat near the preparation-room door, and silent,
save for a low, continuous murmur, and the clicking of the rocker
microtome at which he was working. But scattered about the room were
traces of numerous students: hand-bags, polished boxes of instruments,
in one place a large drawing covered by newspaper, and in another a
prettily bound copy of _News from Nowhere_, a book oddly at variance
with its surroundings. These things had been put down hastily as the
students had arrived and hurried at once to secure their seats in the
adjacent lecture theatre. Deadened by the closed door, the measured
accents of the professor sounded as a featureless muttering.
Presently, faint through the closed windows came the sound of the
Oratory clock striking the hour of eleven. The clicking of the
microtome ceased, and the demonstrator looked at his watch, rose,
thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked slowly down the
laboratory towards the lecture theatre door. He stood listening for a
moment, and then his eye fell on the little volume by William Morris.
He picked it up, glanced at the title, smiled, opened it, looked at the
name on the fly-leaf, ran the leaves through with his hand, and put
it down. Almost immediately the even murmur of the lecturer ceased,
there was a sudden burst of pencils rattling on the desks in the
lecture theatre, a stirring, a scraping of feet, and a number of voices
speaking together. Then a firm footfall approached the door, which
began to open, and stood ajar, as some indistinctly heard question
arrested the new-comer.
The demonstrator turned, walked slowly back past the microtome, and
left the laboratory by the preparation-room door. As he did so,
first one, and then several students carrying notebooks entered the
laboratory from the lecture theatre, and distributed themselves among
the little tables, or stood in a group about the doorway. They were an
exceptionally heterogeneous assembly, for while Oxford and Cambridge
still recoil from the blushing prospect of mixed classes, the College
of Science anticipated America in the matter years ago--mixed socially,
too, for the prestige of the College is high, and its scholarships,
free of any age limit, dredge deeper even than do those of the Scotch
universities. The class numbered one-and-twenty, but some remained in
the theatre questioning the professor, copying the blackboard diagrams
before they were washed off, or examining the special specimens he had
produced to illustrate the day's teaching. Of the nine who had come
into the laboratory three were girls, one of whom, a little fair woman,
wearing spectacles and dressed in greyish-green, was peering out of
the window at the fog, while the other two, both wholesome-looking,
plain-faced schoolgirls, unrolled and put on the brown holland aprons
they wore while dissecting. Of the men, two went down the laboratory
to their places, one a pallid, dark-bearded man, who had once been
a tailor; the other a pleasant-featured, ruddy young man of twenty,
dressed in a well-fitting brown suit; young Wedderburn, the son of
Wedderburn the eye specialist. The others formed a little knot near
the theatre door. One of these, a dwarfed, spectacled figure, with
a hunch back, sat on a bent wood stool; two others, one a short,
dark youngster, and the other a flaxen-haired, reddish-complexioned
young man, stood leaning side by side against the slate sink, while
the fourth stood facing them, and maintained the larger share of the
conversation.
This last person was named Hill. He was a sturdily built young fellow,
of the same age as Wedderburn; he had a white face, dark grey eyes,
hair of an indeterminate colour, and prominent, irregular features.
He talked rather louder than was needful, and thrust his hands deeply
into his pockets. His collar was frayed and blue with the starch of a
careless laundress, his clothes were evidently readymade, and there
was a patch on the side of his boot near the toe. And as he talked
or listened to the others, he glanced now and again towards the
lecture theatre door. They were discussing the depressing peroration
of the lecture they had just heard, the last lecture it was in the
introductory course in zoology. "From ovum to ovum is the goal of the
higher vertebrata," the lecturer had said in his melancholy tones,
and so had neatly rounded off the sketch of comparative anatomy he
had been developing. The spectacled hunchback had repeated it, with
noisy appreciation, had tossed it towards the fair-haired student with
an evident provocation, and had started one of those vague, rambling
discussions on generalities, so unaccountably dear to the student mind
all the world over.
"That is our goal, perhaps--I admit it--as far as science goes," said
the fair-haired student, rising to the challenge. "But there are things
above science."
"Science," said Hill confidently, "is systematic knowledge. Ideas that
don't come into the system--must anyhow--be loose ideas." He was not
quite sure whether that was a clever saying or a fatuity until his
hearers took it seriously.
"The thing I cannot understand," said the hunchback, at large, "is
whether Hill is a materialist or not."
"There is one thing above matter," said Hill promptly, feeling he had
a better thing this time, aware, too, of someone in the doorway behind
him, and raising his voice a trifle for her benefit, "and that is, the
delusion that there is something above matter."
"So we have your gospel at last," said the fair student. "It's all
a delusion, is it? All our aspirations to lead something more than
dogs' lives, all our work for anything beyond ourselves. But see how
inconsistent you are. Your socialism, for instance. Why do you trouble
about the interests of the race? Why do you concern yourself about
the beggar in the gutter? Why are you bothering yourself to lend that
book"--he indicated William Morris by a movement of the head--"to
everyone in the lab.?"
"Girl," said the hunchback indistinctly, and glanced guiltily over his
shoulder.
The girl in brown, with the brown eyes, had come into the laboratory,
and stood on the other side of the table behind him, with her rolled-up
apron in one hand, looking over her shoulder, listening to the
discussion. She did not notice the hunchback, because she was glancing
from Hill to his interlocutor. Hill's consciousness of her presence
betrayed itself to her only in his studious ignorance of the fact; but
she understood that, and it pleased her. "I see no reason," said he,
"why a man should live like a brute because he knows of nothing beyond
matter, and does not expect to exist a hundred years hence."
"Why shouldn't he?" said the fair-haired student.
"Why _should_ he?" said Hill.
"What inducement has he?"
"That's the way with all you religious people. It's all a business of
inducements. Cannot a man seek after righteousness for righteousness'
sake?"
There was a pause. The fair man answered, with a kind of vocal padding,
"But--you see--inducement--when I said inducement," to gain time. And
then the hunchback came to his rescue and inserted a question. He was
a terrible person in the debating society with his questions, and they
invariably took one form--a demand for a definition. "What's your
definition of righteousness?" said the hunchback at this stage.
Hill experienced a sudden loss of complacency at this question,
but even as it was asked, relief came in the person of Brooks, the
laboratory attendant, who entered by the preparation-room door,
carrying a number of freshly killed guineapigs by their hind legs.
"This is the last batch of material this session," said the youngster,
who had not previously spoken. Brooks advanced up the laboratory,
smacking down a couple of guineapigs at each table. The rest of the
class, scenting the prey from afar, came crowding in by the lecture
theatre door, and the discussion perished abruptly as the students who
were not already in their places hurried to them to secure the choice
of a specimen. There was a noise of keys rattling on split rings as
lockers were opened and dissecting instruments taken out. Hill was
already standing by his table, and his box of scalpels was sticking out
of his pocket. The girl in brown came a step towards him, and, leaning
over his table, said softly, "Did you see that I returned your book,
Mr. Hill?"
During the whole scene she and the book had been vividly present in his
consciousness; but he made a clumsy pretence of looking at the book and
seeing it for the first time. "Oh yes," he said, taking it up. "I see.
Did you like it?"
"I want to ask you some questions about it--some time."
"Certainly," said Hill. "I shall be glad." He stopped awkwardly. "You
liked it?" he said.
"It's a wonderful book. Only some things I don't understand."
Then suddenly the laboratory was hushed by a curious braying noise. It
was the demonstrator. He was at the blackboard ready to begin the day's
instruction, and it was his custom to demand silence by a sound midway
between the "Er" of common intercourse and the blast of a trumpet. The
girl in brown slipped back to her place: it was immediately in front
of Hill's, and Hill, forgetting her forthwith, took a notebook out of
the drawer of his table, turned over its leaves hastily, drew a stumpy
pencil from his pocket, and prepared to make a copious note of the
coming demonstration. For demonstrations and lectures are the sacred
text of the College students. Books, saving only the Professor's own,
you may--it is even expedient to--ignore.
* * * * *
Hill was the son of a Landport cobbler, and had been hooked by a chance
blue paper the authorities had thrown out to the Landport Technical
College. He kept himself in London on his allowance of a guinea a
week, and found that, with proper care, this also covered his clothing
allowance, an occasional waterproof collar, that is; and ink and
needles and cotton, and such-like necessaries for a man about town.
This was his first year and his first session, but the brown old man
in Landport had already got himself detested in many public-houses by
boasting of his son, "the Professor." Hill was a vigorous youngster,
with a serene contempt for the clergy of all denominations, and a
fine ambition to reconstruct the world. He regarded his scholarship
as a brilliant opportunity. He had begun to read at seven, and had
read steadily whatever came in his way, good or bad, since then. His
worldly experience had been limited to the island of Portsea, and
acquired chiefly in the wholesale boot factory in which he had worked
by day, after passing the seventh standard of the Board school. He had
a considerable gift of speech, as the College Debating Society, which
met amidst the crushing machines and mine models in the metallurgical
theatre downstairs, already recognised--recognised by a violent
battering of desks whenever he rose. And he was just at that fine
emotional age when life opens at the end of a narrow pass like a broad
valley at one's feet, full of the promise of wonderful discoveries and
tremendous achievements. And his own limitations, save that he knew
that he knew neither Latin nor French, were all unknown to him.
At first his interest had been divided pretty equally between his
biological work at the College and social and theological theorising,
an employment which he took in deadly earnest. Of a night, when the
big museum library was not open, he would sit on the bed of his room
in Chelsea with his coat and a muffler on, and write out the lecture
notes and revise his dissection memoranda, until Thorpe called him
out by a whistle,--the landlady objected to open the door to attic
visitors,--and then the two would go prowling about the shadowy, shiny,
gas-lit streets, talking, very much in the fashion of the sample
just given, of the God Idea, and Righteousness, and Carlyle, and the
Reorganisation of Society. And, in the midst of it all, Hill, arguing
not only for Thorpe, but for the casual passer-by, would lose the
thread of his argument glancing at some pretty painted face that looked
meaningly at him as he passed. Science and Righteousness! But once or
twice lately there had been signs that a third interest was creeping
into his life, and he had found his attention wandering from the fate
of the mesoblastic somites or the probable meaning of the blastopore,
to the thought of the girl with the brown eyes who sat at the table
before him.
She was a paying student; she descended inconceivable social altitudes
to speak to him. At the thought of the education she must have had,
and the accomplishments she must possess, the soul of Hill became
abject within him. She had spoken to him first over a difficulty about
the alisphenoid of a rabbit's skull, and he had found that, in biology
at least, he had no reason for self-abasement. And from that, after
the manner of young people starting from any starting-point, they got
to generalities, and while Hill attacked her upon the question of
socialism,--some instinct told him to spare her a direct assault upon
her religion,--she was gathering resolution to undertake what she told
herself was his æsthetic education. She was a year or two older than
he, though the thought never occurred to him. The loan of _News from
Nowhere_ was the beginning of a series of cross loans. Upon some absurd
first principle of his, Hill had never "wasted time" upon poetry,
and it seemed an appalling deficiency to her. One day in the lunch
hour, when she chanced upon him alone in the little museum where the
skeletons were arranged, shamefully eating the bun that constituted
his midday meal, she retreated, and returned to lend him, with a
slightly furtive air, a volume of Browning. He stood sideways towards
her and took the book rather clumsily, because he was holding the bun
in the other hand. And in the retrospect his voice lacked the cheerful
clearness he could have wished.
That occurred after the examination in comparative anatomy, on the
day before the College turned out its students, and was carefully
locked up by the officials, for the Christmas holidays. The excitement
of cramming for the first trial of strength had for a little while
dominated Hill, to the exclusion of his other interests. In the
forecasts of the result in which everyone indulged, he was surprised
to find that no one regarded him as a possible competitor for the
Harvey Commemoration Medal, of which this and the two subsequent
examinations disposed. It was about this time that Wedderburn, who
so far had lived inconspicuously on the uttermost margin of Hill's
perceptions, began to take on the appearance of an obstacle. By a
mutual agreement, the nocturnal prowlings with Thorpe ceased for the
three weeks before the examination, and his landlady pointed out that
she really could not supply so much lamp oil at the price. He walked to
and fro from the College with little slips of mnemonics in his hand,
lists of crayfish appendages, rabbits' skull-bones, and vertebrate
nerves, for example, and became a positive nuisance to foot passengers
in the opposite direction.
But, by a natural reaction, Poetry and the girl with the brown eyes
ruled the Christmas holiday. The pending results of the examination
became such a secondary consideration that Hill marvelled at his
father's excitement. Even had he wished it, there was no comparative
anatomy to read in Landport, and he was too poor to buy books, but the
stock of poets in the library was extensive, and Hill's attack was
magnificently sustained. He saturated himself with the fluent numbers
of Longfellow and Tennyson, and fortified himself with Shakespeare;
found a kindred soul in Pope, and a master in Shelley, and heard and
fled the siren voices of Eliza Cook and Mrs. Hemans. But he read no
more Browning, because he hoped for the loan of other volumes from Miss
Haysman when he returned to London.
He walked from his lodgings to the College with that volume of Browning
in his shiny black bag, and his mind teeming with the finest general
propositions about poetry. Indeed, he framed first this little speech
and then that with which to grace the return. The morning was an
exceptionally pleasant one for London; there was a clear, hard frost
and undeniable blue in the sky, a thin haze softened every outline, and
warm shafts of sunlight struck between the house blocks and turned the
sunny side of the street to amber and gold. In the hall of the College
he pulled off his glove and signed his name with fingers so stiff with
cold that the characteristic dash under the signature he cultivated
became a quivering line. He imagined Miss Haysman about him everywhere.
He turned at the staircase, and there, below, he saw a crowd struggling
at the foot of the notice-board. This, possibly, was the biology list.
He forgot Browning and Miss Haysman for the moment, and joined the
scrimmage. And at last, with his cheek flattened against the sleeve of
the man on the step above him, he read the list--