great friends. In fact the idea of close and intimate relationship
with others fell more and more into the background; he became
interested rather in the superficial and spectatorial aspect of things
and persons. He began to see how differences of character and
temperament played into each other, and formed a resultant which merged
itself in the slow current of affairs. But he seemed to himself to be
acquiring and sorting tangible experiences, and to have little
speculative interest at all; he neither craved to make or to receive
confidences. The hours not occupied by business were given to social
life and to reading; and he was, or fancied himself to be, perfectly
contented.
But as the years went on, instead of sinking into purely conventional
ways, Hugh found a mood of dissatisfaction growing upon him. He found
that after his holidays he came back with increasing reluctance to his
work. The work itself, how unsatisfactory it became! Half the time
and energy of the office seemed to be spent on creating rather than
performing work; an immense amount of detail seemed to be entirely
useless, and to cumber rather than to assist the conduct of the
business that was important. Of course much of it was necessary work
which had to be done by some one; but Hugh began to wonder whether his
life was well bestowed in carrying out a system of which so much seemed
to consist in dealing with unimportant minutiae, and in amassing
immense records of things that deserved only to be forgotten. He found
himself reflecting that life was short, and that he tended to spend the
greater part of his waking hours in matters that were essentially
trivial. He began to question whether there was any duty for him in
the matter at all, and by what law, human or divine, a man was bound to
spend his days in work in the usefulness of which he did not wholly
believe.
Living, as he did, an inexpensive life of great simplicity, he had
contrived to save a certain amount of money, and he was surprised to
find how fast it accumulated. When he had been some fifteen years in
his office, a great-uncle of his died, leaving Hugh quite unexpectedly
a sum of a few thousand pounds, which, together with his savings, gave
him a small but secure competence, as large, in fact, as the income he
was accustomed to spend.
Even so, he did not at once decide to leave his official career. It
seemed to him at first that the abandonment of a chosen profession
ought not to depend upon the fact that one could live independently
without it; he felt that there ought to be a better reason for pursuing
a certain course of life than mere livelihood. But his accession of
means enabled Hugh to give up all literary hack-work, such as
reviewing, which had long been somewhat of a burden to him; he had
found himself of late agreeing more and more with William Morris's
doctrine, that there was something degrading in a man's printing his
opinions about other persons' books for money; and he now began to
indulge in more ambitious literary schemes. This involved him in a
good deal of reading; but he found himself thwarted at every turn by
the pressure of official business. He found that his reading had to be
done over and over again; that he would master a section of his
subject, and then for lack of time be compelled to put it aside, until
it had passed out of his mind and needed to be recovered.
At last he made up his mind that he would take the first obvious
opportunity that offered itself, to end his official work. It came in
the form of an offer which, a year or two before, would have gratified
his ambition, and which would have bound him without question to
official work for the rest of his active life; he was offered in very
complimentary terms the headship of a newly created department. He not
only declined it, to the surprise and disappointment of his chief, but
he resigned his appointment at the same time. He had a somewhat
painful interview with the head of the office, who told him that he was
sacrificing a brilliant and honourable career at the very moment when
it was opening before him. Hugh did not, however, hesitate; he found
it a difficult task to explain to his superior exactly what he intended
to do, who expressed a good-humoured contempt for the idea of making a
mild literary experiment, at an age when literary success seemed
unattainable. The great man, indeed, one of whose virtues was an easy
frankness, said that it seemed to him as absurd as if Hugh had
expressed the intention of devoting the rest of his life to practising
the piano or drawing in water-colours. Hugh was quite aware that his
literary position was of a dilettante kind, and that he had done
nothing to justify the hope that success in literature was within his
reach. He pleaded that the service of the State was encumbered by a
mass of unnecessary detail, in the usefulness of which he did not
believe. The Secretary said that of course there was a good deal of
drudgery, but that the same applied to most lives of practical
usefulness; and he pointed out that by accepting the new appointment,
Hugh would be set free to attend to work of a more original and
important kind. But Hugh felt himself sustained by a curiously
inflexible determination, for which he could not wholly account; he
merely said that he had considered the question in all its bearings,
and that his mind was made up; upon which the Secretary shrugged his
shoulders, and said that he did not wish to over-persuade him; and that
indeed, if Hugh accepted the new post merely in deference to
persuasion, it would be good neither for himself nor for the service.
He added a few conventional words to the effect that the office would
be sorry to lose so courteous and competent an official; and Hugh
recognised that his chief, with the instinct of a thoroughly practical
man, had dismissed him from his thoughts, as an entirely fantastic and
wrong-headed person.
His retirement was not unattended by pain; he found that the
announcement of his departure aroused more surprise and sorrow among
his colleagues than he had expected; it was depressing, too, to say
good-bye to the well-known faces, the familiar rooms, the routine that
formed so substantial a part of his life. But he found in himself a
wholly unanticipated courage, and even a secret glee at the prospect of
his release, which revealed to him how congenial it was. He cleared up
the accumulations of years; he made his adieux with much real emotion;
yet it was a solemn rather than a sad moment when he put his papers
away for the last time, and handed over the keys of the familiar boxes
to his successor. He went slowly down the stairs alone, and stopped at
the door to say good-bye to the old attendant, whom he never remembered
to have seen absent from his place. The old man said, "Well, sir, I
did think as you would not have left us yet." Hugh replied, smiling,
"Well, we have all to move on when our time comes, and I hope I leave
only friends behind me." The old man seemed much affected by this, and
said, "Yes, sir, we shall be glad to see you whenever you can look in
upon us"--and then with much fumbling drew out and presented a small
pen-wiper to Hugh, which he had made with his own hands--"and God bless
you, sir!" he added, with an apology for the liberty he was taking.
This was the only incident in his leave-taking which affected Hugh to
tears; but they were tears of emotion, not of regret. He was looking
on to the new life, and not back to the old; and as he went out into
the foggy air, and along the familiar pavement, there was nothing in
his heart that called him back. He was grateful for all the kindness
and affection of his friends, and the thought that he held a place in
their hearts. What he hoped, he hardly knew; but the release from the
burden of the tedious and useless work was like that which Christian
experienced, when the burden rolled from his back into the grave that
stood in the bottom, and he saw it no more.
VI
His Father's Friendship--His Sister's Death--The Silent River
One of the best things that Hugh's professional life had brought him
was a friendship with his father; their relations had been increasingly
tense all through the undergraduate days; if Hugh had not been of a
superficially timorous temperament, disliking intensely the atmosphere
of displeasure, disapproval, or misunderstanding, among those with whom
he lived, there would probably have been sharp collisions. His father
did not realise that the boy was growing up; active and vigorous
himself, he felt no diminution of energy, no sense of age, and he
forgot that the relations of the home circle were insensibly altering.
He took an intense interest in his son's university career, but
interfered with his natural liberty, expecting him to spend all his
vacations at home, and discouraging visits to houses of which he did
not approve. He was very desirous that Hugh should ultimately take
orders, and was nervously anxious that he should come under no
sceptical influences. The result was that Hugh simply excluded his
father from his confidence, telling him nothing except the things of
which he knew he would approve, and never asking his advice about
matters on which he felt at all keenly; because he knew that his father
would tend to attempt to demolish, with a certain bitterness and
contempt, the speculations in which he indulged, and would be shocked
and indignant at the mere beckoning of ideas which Hugh found to be
widely entertained even by men whom he respected greatly. His father's
faith indeed, subtle and even beautiful as it was, was built upon
axioms which it seemed to him a kind of puerile perversity to deny.
Religion came to him in definite and traditional channels, and to seek
it in other directions appeared to him a species of wanton profanity.
The result was an entire divergence of thought, of which Hugh was fully
conscious; but it did not seem to him that there was anything to be
gained by candid avowal. He was at one with his father in the
essential doctrines of Christianity; and being by nature of a
speculative turn, he considered the discrimination of religious truth,
the criticism of religious tradition, to be rather a stimulating and
agreeable mental pastime than a question of ethics or morals. Thus he
was led into practising a kind of hypocrisy with his father in matters
of religion. He felt that it was not worth while engaging in argument
of a kind that would have distressed his father and irritated himself,
upon matters which he believed to be intellectual, while his father
believed them to be ethical. Hugh often pondered over this condition
of things, which he felt to be unsatisfactory, but no solution occurred
to him; he said to himself that he valued domestic peace rather than a
frank understanding upon matters to which he and his father attached a
wholly different value. But meantime he drifted further and further
away from the ecclesiastical attitude, though his fondness for
ecclesiastical art and ceremony effectually disguised from his father
the speculative movement of his mind.
But his independent entrance upon his professional life had given him
an emancipation of which he was not at first fully conscious. He did
not act from set purpose, and only became aware later that if he had
thought out a diplomatic scheme of action, he could not have devised a
more effectual one. He simply made his own arrangements for the
holidays; he travelled, he paid visits; he came home when it was
convenient to him; but the result was that in the early years of his
professional life he was very little at home. Hugh supposed afterwards
that his father must have felt this deeply; but he did not show it,
except that suddenly, almost in a day and an hour, Hugh became aware
that their relations had completely altered. He found himself met with
a deference, a courteous equality which he had never before
experienced. Instead of giving him advice, his father began to ask it,
and consulted him freely on matters which he had hitherto kept entirely
in his own hands. The result was at once an extraordinary expansion of
affection and admiration on Hugh's part. He realised, as he had never
done before, the richness and energy of his father's mind within
certain limits, his practical ability, his high-mindedness, his amazing
moral purity. Once freed from the subservient relation imposed upon
him by habit, Hugh saw in his father a man of real genius and
effectiveness. The effectiveness he had hitherto taken as a matter of
course; he had thought of his father as effective in the same way that
he had thought of him as severe, dignified, handsome--it had seemed a
part of himself; but he now began to compare his father with other men,
and to realise that he was not only an exceptional man, but a man with
a rare intensity of nature, whose whole life was lived on a plane and
in an atmosphere that was impossible to easy, tolerant, conventional
natures. He realised his father's capacity for leadership, his
extraordinary and unconscious influence over all with whom he came in
contact, the burning glow of his fervid temperament, his scorn and
detestation of all that was vile or mean. It did not at once become
easier for Hugh to speak freely of what was passing in his own mind;
indeed he realised that his father was one of those whose prejudices
were so strong, and whose personal magnetism was so great, that not
even his oldest and most intimate friends could afford to express
opposition to him in matters on which he felt deeply. But Hugh saw
that he must accept it as an unalterable condition of his father's
nature, and realising this, he felt that he could concede him an honour
and a homage, due to one of commanding moral greatness, which he had
never willingly conceded to his paternal authority. The result was a
great and growing happiness. Sometimes indeed Hugh made mistakes,
beguiled by the increasing freedom of their intercourse; he allowed
himself to discuss lightly matters on which he could hardly believe
that any one could feel passionately. But a real and deep friendship
sprang up between the two, and Hugh was at times simply astonished at
the confidence which his father reposed in him. There were still,
indeed, days when the tension was felt. But Hugh became aware that his
father made strong efforts to banish his own depression and melancholy
when he was with his son, that it might not cloud their intercourse.
Signs such as these came home to Hugh with intense pathos, and evoked
an affection which became one of the real forces of his life. His
father had consented to Hugh's entering the Civil Service, but he
continued to hope that his son might ultimately decide to take orders;
he had cherished that hope from Hugh's earliest years, and seeing
Hugh's fondness for the externals of religion, while he knew nothing of
his mental attitude, he still believed and prayed that Hugh might be
led to enter the service of the Church. Hugh realised that this was
still his father's deep preoccupation, and perceived that he avoided
any direct expression of his wishes, exercising only a transparent
diplomacy which was infinitely touching--so touching indeed that Hugh
sometimes debated within himself whether he might not so far sacrifice
his own bent, which was more and more directed to the maintenance of an
independent attitude, in order to give his father so deep and lasting a
delight. But he was forced to decide that the motive was not cogent
enough, and that to adopt a definite position, involving the
suppression of some of his strongest convictions, for the sake of
giving one he loved a pleasure, was like exposing the ark to the risks
of battle. He knew well enough that if he had declared his full mind
on the subject to his father, the extent to which he felt forced to
suspend his judgment in religious matters, his father would have
desired the step no longer.
With the rest of the family circle, in these years, Hugh's relations
were affectionate but colourless. With his natural reticence, he
shrank from speaking of the thoughts which predominated in his mind;
especially while there was an abundance of interesting and
uncontroversial topics which afforded endless subjects of conversation;
and the tendency to leave matters alone which, if debated, might have
caused distress, was heightened by the death of one of Hugh's sisters.
She was a girl of a very deep, loyal, and generous nature, full of
activities and benevolences, and at the same time of a reflective order
of mind. She had been a strong central force in the family; and Hugh
found it strange to realise, after her death, that each member of the
family had felt themselves in a peculiar relation to her, as the object
of her special preoccupation. The event, which was strangely sudden,
stirred Hugh to the bottom of his soul. The vacant chair, the closed
loom, the sudden cessation of a hundred activities, brought sharply to
his mind the dark mystery of death. That a door should thus have been
suddenly opened, and one of the familiar band bidden to enter, and that
the loving heart that had left them should be unable to communicate the
slightest hint of its presence to those who desired her in vain, seemed
to him a horrible and desperate thing. For the first time in his life
the terrible secrets of identity opened before his eyes. He could not
bring himself to believe in the extinction of so vital, so individual a
force, but he recognised with a mournful terror that, so far as
scientific evidence went, the whole preponderating force of facts
tended to prove that the individuality was, if not extinguished, at
least merged in some central tide of life, and that the only rebutting
evidence was the cry of the burdened heart that dared not believe a
possibility so stern, so appalling. He wrestled dumbly and darkly
against these sad convictions, and how many times, in miserable
solitude, did he send out a wistful prayer that, if it were possible,
some hint, some slender vision might be granted him as a proof that one
so dear, so desired, so momently missed, was still near him in spirit.
But no answer came back from the dark threshold, and, leaning in, he
could but discern a landscape of shapeless horror, in which no live
thing moved by the shore of a grey and weltering sea. Little by little
a dim hint came to comfort him; he thought of all the unnumbered
generations of men who had lived their brief lives in sun and shade,
full of hopes and schemes and affections. One by one they had lain
down in the dust. In the face of so immutable, so absolute a law, it
seemed that rebellion and questioning was fruitless. God gives, God
takes away, He makes and mars, He creates, He dissolves; and if we
cannot trust the Will that bids us be and not be, what else in this
shifting world, full of dark secrets, can we trust? It cannot be said
that this thought comforted Hugh, but it sustained him. He learnt
again to suspend his hopes and fears, and to leave all confidently in
the hands of God; and time, too, had its healing balm; the bitter loss,
by soft gradations, became a sweet and loving memory, and a memory that
sweetened the thought of the dark world whither too he must sometime
turn his steps. For if indeed our individuality endures, he could
realise that one who loved so purely, so loyally, so intensely, would
not fail him on the other side of the silent river, but would welcome
him with unabated love, perhaps only feeling a tender wonder that those
who yet had the passage to make should find it to be so terrible, so
unendurable.
VII
Liberty--Cambridge--Literary Work--Egotism
The question which, when he resigned his appointment, occupied Hugh,
was where he should live. He would have preferred to settle in the
country, loving, as he did, silence and pure air, woods and fields. He
had never liked London, though it had become endurable to him by
familiarity. He decided, however, that at first, at all events, he
must if possible find a place where he could see a certain amount of
society, and where he would be able to obtain the books he expected to
need. He was afraid that if he transferred himself at once to the
country, he might sink into a morbid seclusion, as he had no strong
sociable impulses. His thoughts naturally turned to his own
university. He thought that if he could find a small house at
Cambridge, suitable to his means, he would be able to have as much or
as little society as he desired, while at the same time he would be on
the edge of the country. Moreover the flat fenland, which is generally
supposed to be unattractive, had always possessed a peculiar charm for
Hugh. He spent some time at home, revelling in his freedom, while he
made inquiries for a house. The thought of a long perspective of days
before him, without fixed engagements, without responsibilities, so
that he could come and go as he pleased, filled him with delight.
His father had not at all disapproved of the decision. Hugh had shown
him that he was pecuniarily independent; but he was aware that in the
background of his father's mind lay the hope that, even so late in
life, he might still be drawn to enter the ministry of the Church. At
all events he thought that Hugh might gain some academical position;
and thus he gave a decidedly cordial assent to the change, only
expressing a hope that Hugh would not make a hurried decision.
Hugh did not delay to sketch out a plan of work. But whereas before he
had worked only when he could, he now found himself in the blessed
position of being able to work when he would. Instead of becoming, as
he had feared, desultory, he found that his work exercised a strong
attraction over him--indeed that it became for him, with an amazing
swiftness, the one pursuit in the world about which exercise, food,
amusement, grouped themselves as secondary accessories. This was no
doubt in part accounted for by the fact that he had acquired a habit of
regular work, a craving for steady occupation; but it was also far more
due to the fact that Hugh had really, and almost as though by accident,
discovered his ruling passion. He was in truth a writer, a
word-artist; his only fear was, whether, in the hard-worked unmitigated
years of specified toil, he had not perhaps lost the requisite mental
agility, whether he had not failed to acquire the elastic use of words,
the almost instinctive sense of colour and motion in language, which
can only be won through constant and even unsuccessful use. That
remained to be seen; and meanwhile his plans settled themselves. He
found a small, picturesque, irregularly-built house crushed in between
the road and the river, which in fact dipped its very feet in the
stream; from its quaint oriel and gallery, Hugh could look down, on a
bright day, into the clear heart of the water, and survey its swaying
reeds and poising fish. The house was near the centre of the town; yet
from its back windows it overlooked a long green stretch of rough
pasture-land, now a common, and once a fen, which came like a long
green finger straight into the very heart of the town. There was a
great sluice a few yards away, through which the river poured into a
wide reach of stream, so that the air was always musical with the sound
of falling water, the murmur of which could be heard on still nights
through the shuttered and curtained casements. The sun, on the short
winter days, used to set, in smouldering glory, behind the long lines
of leafless trees which terminated the fen; and in summer the little
wooded peninsula that formed part of a neighbouring garden, was rich in
leaf, and loud with the song of birds. The little house had, in fact,
the poetical quality, and charmed the eye and ear at every turn, the
whisper of the little weir outside seeming to brim with sweet contented
sound every corner of the quaint, irregular, and low-ceiled rooms, with
their large beams and dark corners.