Paul Markham went back to his rooms, and sat down again amid the ruins.
His heart was as heavy in his bosom as a lump of lead. It weighed upon
him, hindered his breathing, refused to rise or to beat more lightly,
let him do what he would. He had taken down his pictures, his china, all
that he had thought luxurious, from his walls long before. Nothing
remained of all his decorations which he had once loved but a copy of
Albert Dürer’s _Melancholia_, which he had kept, thinking it symbolical.
Besides, it was only a photograph. Had it been an original print, worth
a great deal more than its weight in gold, he would not have thought
himself at liberty to keep it. He looked round upon his books with
gloomy eyes. Ruins--nothing but ruins--all around him! What was the
good of them? They had done him all the service they were capable of,
and in his life there was no further place for them. No schools now for
him, no honours, no need of endless philosophical hair-splitting, this
one’s theory of being, that one’s of knowing. He was going to put all
that babble away. There were a few that he might take with him.
Theocritus his _Idylls_; grey old Hesiod, that antique husbandman; Plato
in his _Republic_. But even Plato, what was the good of him, with all
his costly paraphernalia of a new society? Spears would do it all with
much less trouble. No long education would be wanted for _his_
rulers--if, indeed, any rulers should be needed. Less trouble! After
all, when he came to think of it, it was by no means sure that Spears’s
process was less painful, less costly than Plato’s. Himself, for
example. Would every pioneer who joined their ranks, every leader among
them, be obliged to pay his footing as dearly as Paul had done? To turn
his back upon his father and mother, to cast all his antecedents to the
winds, everything, from filial affection to the books upon his
shelves--it could not be said that this was a cheap or easy probation.
He sat thus for he did not know how long, the sunshine of the August
afternoon getting round the corner and streaming straight in,
inquisitive and troublesome. What were they doing now at the inn? Sir
William had been very gentle; he had not said a word of blame. His tone,
his looks, his very weakness had been conciliatory. Paul, when he
covered his eyes with his hands, seemed to see that scene again, and
twinges came to his heart, sudden impulses to get up and go to them--to
go at least to the place and ask after his father. There are temptations
to do right as well as to do wrong. Impulses came to him like little
good angels pulling at his sleeve, entreating him to come; but alas! it
is always more easy to resist temptations to do well than to do ill.
Once or twice he was so far moved that he got up from his chair; but
always sat down again after a blank look from the window over the
deserted quadrangle and the parched trees. Why should he go? It would
but raise vain hopes in them that he meant to yield: and he did not mean
to yield. This kept him a prisoner in his room; for if he did not go
_there_, where should he go? He paid no attention to the hour of dinner.
He could not, he felt, have gone to Hall where there was the little
dinner for the scanty summer contingent, the “men” who were “staying up
to read.” Even these heroes were dropping away daily, and at the best of
times the little group in a place which held so many was depressing; and
Paul did not want to dine--the common offices of life were disgusting
and distasteful to him. He roused himself to go out at last when the
daylight had begun to wane. There was to be a meeting that night in the
shop of Spears, of the people who were going with them to found the new
colony--for to this their plan of emigration had grown; but it was still
too early for that. The shadows were lengthening, the light almost
level, when Paul came out. He did not know where to go; he wandered
through the streets where the townspeople were all about enjoying the
beautiful evening, and strolled heedlessly, not caring where he went,
towards the inn. He could not get out of his mind the recollection of
the little party who would get no good of the beautiful evening. His
mother and Alice, like most mothers and sisters, had always imagined
themselves to be “very fond of Oxford.” They had liked to hear of all
its habits, and foolish, youthful ways--the nightly flights from the
proctors, the corners where some hairbreadth ’scape had been made, the
“High” and the “Broad,” and all that innocent slang which a happy boy
pours forth on his first introduction to these delights. It had always
been an excitement, a delight to them to come here. Now he could not but
think of them shut up in that bare, gloomy room, with the high, pale
walls, and long green curtains. Oh, how they plucked at his sleeve and
at his heart, those persuading angels! How he was tempted to go back
again to bid bygones be bygones, to forgive everything (this was his way
of putting it)! But, no. Had it been the other kind of angel leading him
to another kind of presence most likely the young man would not have
stood out half so bravely. He strolled down to the river where one or
two melancholy “men” in boats were keeping themselves as retired as
possible from the splashing of the released shopboys, and the still more
uncomfortable vicinity of the town boats, which were rowed almost as
well as the ’Varsity. The sky was all rosy with sunset, glowing over the
long reflections in the water, touching the greenness of the banks and
trees into a fuller tint, and making more blue, with all those
contrasting tints of rose, the blueness of the sky. The soft summer
evening, with a gentle exhaustion in it--sweet langour, yet relief after
the heat and work of the day--the soft plash of the oars, the voices all
harmonised by the warm air, the movement and simple enjoyment about,
were all like so many reproaches to him. How they would have liked to
walk with him, to laugh softly back to every sound of pleasure, to talk
of everything. Paul said to himself that all that was over. It was a
pity for Alice to be shut up in a dingy room, but to-morrow she would be
at home among their own woods, and what would it matter? As for himself,
it must be his henceforward to tread the stern path of a higher
duty--alone.
Paul met with one or two interruptions on the way. He saw Fairfax at a
distance, and saw that he avoided him, turning quickly away; and he met
one or two others of those who were “staying up to read.” Finally he met
a being of a different order, less easy to separate himself from, a
young Don, who turned and walked with him, anxiously intimating that it
was quite immaterial which way he went,--a young man, not much older
than Paul himself, but cultivated to the very finger-tips, and anxious
to exercise a good influence if that might prove possible. This new
companion gave him a stab unawares by asking if it was true what he had
heard, that Sir William Markham was ill? Even in a deserted college in
the midst of the long vacation, when there happens to be a tragic
chapter of life going on, some echo of it will get abroad. The young Don
was very modest, and anxious not to offend or intrude upon any “man” in
trouble; but yet he would have been glad could he have exercised a good
influence. They walked along the river bank while the sunset faded out
of the west, and Paul at last acknowledged the relief of companionship
by plunging forth into a statement of his own intentions which filled
his auditor with horror and dismay. A man who did not intend to take his
degree was as a lost soul to the young Don. But even in these appalling
circumstances he could not be impolite. He listened with gentle
disapproval and regret, shaking his head now and then, yet saying
softly, “I see what you mean,” when Paul poured forth a passionate
statement of his difficulties, his sense of the injustice of his own
position, his horror at the corruption and falsehood of the world, and
determination never to sanction, never to accept in his own person the
cruel advantages to which he had been born. After all that had come and
gone it was a great ease to the young revolutionary, upon such a verge
of high devotion yet despair as he was, to make one impassioned
assertion of his principles, the higher rule of his conduct. Probably
the college, too, and all the men would hear that it was for the love of
Spears’s daughter that he was throwing his life away. He was glad (when
he came to think of it) of this chance of setting himself right. “I see
what you mean,” said the young Don. He would have said the same thing
with the same regretful air, non-argumentative and sympathetic, yet with
his own opinion in the background, had Paul poured into his ear a
confession of passionate attachment for Janet Spears. He understood what
political enthusiasm was, and he knew that the world might be well lost
for love, though he did not approve either of these passions. In either
case he would have been very glad to have established a good influence
over the man thus carried away, whether by the head or the heart. Paul,
however, if he did not come under any good influence, was solaced by his
own outburst. He got cooler as they turned back towards the towers now
rising dimly into the cooled and softened atmosphere of the night, and
the glimmer of the friendly lights.
It was a disappointment to the young Don when his companion left him
abruptly, long before they reached their college. He had meant to be
very kind to him at this violent crisis of life, and who could tell,
perhaps to win him back to safer views--at least to put before him so
forcibly the absolute necessity of taking his degree that passion itself
would be forced to pause. But Paul did not give him this chance. He said
a hurried good-night when they reached the spot at which he had met his
mother in the morning, the point at which the picturesque and graceful
old street was crossed by the line of uneven thoroughfares, in which
Spears’s house lay. The young Don looked after him in surprise and
disappointment as he walked away. He shook his head. He would not doubt
the authenticity of Paul’s confession of faith, but the low street
breathed out of it a chill of suspicion. He could understand anything
that was theoretical however wrong-headed, but Spears’s shop and the
street in which it stood was a great deal more difficult to understand.
Paul sped along, relieved of the immediate pressure on his heart, and
more determined than ever in his resolution. He had said little in the
morning in answer to Spears’s question. He had declared that it was not
love alone which had brought him there; that there had been nothing
feigned in his enthusiasm for that teaching in which the salvation of
the world he believed would be found to lie; but further he had said
nothing. And Spears had been too much relieved on his own account and
was too delicate on his child’s, to pursue the subject. To tell the
truth, the demagogue, though the kindest of fathers, had not been
delighted by the thought that his own favourite disciple, his captive
aristocrat, the young hero whom he had won out of the enemy’s ranks, and
who was his pride, had been all the time only his daughter’s lover. The
thought had hurt and humbled him. That Paul might love Janet in the
second place, might have learned to love her after his introduction to
the shop, was a different matter. The gratification of recovering his
own place and influence drove the other question from his mind; and by
the time it recurred to him, the delicacy of a mind full of natural
refinement had resumed its sway. It was for the lover to open this
subject, not the girl or her friends. And though he wondered a little
that Paul said nothing more to him, he asked no further question. It was
a relief to Paul, on the other hand, not to be called to account. The
evil day was deferred at least, if no more, and he was very glad to put
it off, to wait for what might happen, to hope perhaps that after all
nothing would happen. Paul did not know what had passed or what his
mother had said. Her own broken and tremulous confession of wrong, and
Janet’s consciousness, had been his only guides. He had thought himself
for the moment bound to Janet; but perhaps things had not gone so far as
he thought; and though he was determined to hold firmly to any bond of
honour that might hold him, even though it were not of his own making,
yet the sense that his freedom was still intact was an unspeakable
relief to him. Since then he had managed to forget Janet; but when he
turned his face towards her home it was not so easy to continue to
forget. The twilight was brightened by the twinkle of the lamps all the
way down the vista of the street, and by a dimmer light here and there
from a window. The shutters had been put up in Spears’s shop, but the
door was open, and in the doorway, faintly indicated by the light
behind, stood some one looking out. Paul knew, before he could see, who
it was. She was looking out for him. It is hard to find our arrival
uncared for by those whom we want to see, but it is, if not more hard,
at least far more embarrassing, to find ourselves eagerly looked for by
those whom we have no wish to see. Paul’s heart sank when he saw the
girl, with the long lines of her black gown filling the doorway, leaning
out her graceful shoulders and fair head in an attitude of anxious
expectation looking for him. What could he say to her? The return of her
image thus suddenly thrust before him filled him with impatience and
annoyance. Yet he could not withdraw himself; he went on without a
pause, wondering with a troubled mind how far his mother had committed
him, what she expected; what she wanted, this girl who was no heroine,
no ideal woman, but only Janet Spears.
Her eyes drooped as he came forward, with a shyness which had in it
something of finer feeling than Janet had yet known. He was very
dazzling to her in the light of his social superiority. A gentleman!
Janet had heard all her life that a gentleman was the work of nature,
not of circumstance, that those who arrogated the title to themselves
had often far less right to bear it than the working men whom they
scorned; but all these theories had passed lightly over her. _She_ knew
the difference. They might talk what stuff they liked, but that would
not make one of them a _Sir_--a man whose wife would be “my Lady,” a
dazzling personage who drove in his carriage, who had horses to ride,
and men in livery to walk behind him. The other was all talk! fudge!
rubbish! but these things were realities. She watched him coming down
the street in the grey twilight, in the faint yellow of the lamps. His
very walk was different, the way in which he held his arms, not to speak
of his clothes, of which even the Sunday clothes of the others bore but
the faintest resemblance. Janet’s nature, such as it was, prostrated
itself before the finest thing, the highest thing she knew. And if this
is noble in other matters, why not in the most important of all? If it
is a sign of an elevated soul to seek the best and loftiest, why not in
a husband? Janet did not stand upon logic, yet her logic here was far
better practically than her father’s. She recognised Paul without a
moment’s hesitation as the best thing within her reach, and why should
not she put forth her entire powers to gain the perfection she sought?
“They have not come yet, Mr.--Paul,” said Janet, casting down her eyes.
She had always called him Mr. Markham before; but she could not help
hoping that now he would tenderly reprove her for the previous title,
and bid her call him by his Christian name. Was not this the first step
in lovers’ intimacy? But this was not what happened. It struck Paul
disagreeably to hear his name at all, even with the Mr. before it. His
mind rebelled at this half appropriation of him. He could not help
feeling that it was cowardly of him to be rough with Janet, who had no
power of defending herself; but he could not help it. He brushed past
her with a half-sensation of disgust.
“Haven’t they?” he said; “never mind. I dare say your father is in.”
“Father is not in, Mr. Paul. He’s gone to tell Fraser, the Scotchman, to
come. He didn’t know there was a meeting. I am the only one that is in
to keep the house. The girls have gone to the circus--did you know
there was a circus?--but I,” said Janet, “I don’t care for such things.
I’ve stayed at home.”
Then there was a pause. Paul had gone into the shop, which was swept,
and arranged with benches, and a table in the middle, for the emigrants’
meeting, and Janet following him so far as to stand in the inner instead
of the outer doorway, stood gazing at him by the imperfect light of the
lamp. How could she help gazing at him? She expected him to say
something. This was not how he had looked at her in the morning. Poor
Janet was disappointed to the bottom of her heart.
“That’s a pity,” said Paul, brusquely. “If I had known Spears would not
be here I should not have come so soon. I don’t see why he should keep
me waiting for him. I have a thousand things to do; all my time is taken
up. I might have been with my father, who is ill, if I had not come
here.”
“Oh, is he ill?” said Janet. Her eyes grew bigger in the dim light
gazing at him. “It must be very strange to be a gentleman’s son like
that,” she added softly; “and to think what a difference it might make
all at once if---- And you never can tell what may happen,” she
concluded with a sigh of excitement. “I don’t wonder you’re in a way.”
“Am I in a way? I don’t think so,” said Paul. “I hope there is nothing
much the matter with my father,” he added, after a little pause.
“Oh!” said Janet, disappointed; but she added, “There will be some time.
Some time or other you will be a great man, with a title and all that
property. Oh, I wanted to say one thing to you before those men come.
What in the world have you to do with _them_, Mr. Paul? They may think
themselves ill-used, but you can’t think yourself ill-used. Why should
you go away when you have everything, everything you can set your face
to, at home? Plenty of money, and a grand house, and horses and
carriages, and all sorts of things. You can understand folks doing it
that have nothing; but a gentleman like you that only need to wish and
have, whatever can _you_ want to emigrate for?” Janet cried.