GHOSTLY COUNSEL.
November came, and with it came the Pembroke fellowship examination.
Ernest went in manfully, and tried hard to do his best; for
somehow, in spite of the immorality of fellowships, he had a sort
of floating notion in his head that he would like to get one,
because he was beginning to paint himself a little fancy picture
of a home that was to be, with a little fairy Edie flitting through
it, and brightening it all delightfully with her dainty airy
presence. So he even went so far as to mitigate considerably the
native truculence of his political economy paper, after Edie's
advice--not, of course, by making any suggestion of opinions he did
not hold, but by suppressing the too-prominent expression of those
he actually believed in. Max Schurz's name was not once mentioned
throughout the whole ten or twelve pages of closely written foolscap;
'Gold and the Proletariate' was utterly ignored; and in place of
the strong meat served out for men by the apostles of socialism in
the Marylebone dancing-saloon, Ernest dished up for his examiner's
edification merely such watery milk for babes as he had extracted
from the eminently orthodox economical pages of Fawcett, Mill, and
Thorold Rogers. He went back to his rooms, satisfied that he had
done himself full justice, and anxiously waited for the result to
be duly announced on the Saturday morning.
Was it that piece of Latin prose, too obviously modelled upon the
Annals of Tacitus, while the senior tutor was a confirmed Ciceronian,
with the Second Philippic constitutionally on the brain? Was
it the Greek verse, containing one senarius with a long syllable
before the caesura in the fifth foot, as Herbert pointed out to
his brother on the very evening when that hideous oversight--say
rather crime--had been openly perpetrated in plain black and white
on a virgin sheet of innocent paper? Was it some faint ineffaceable
savour of the Schurzian economics, peeping through in spite of all
disguises, like the garlic in an Italian ragout, from under the
sedulous cloak of Ricardo's theory of rent? Was it some flying
rumour, extra-official, and unconnected with the examination in
any way, to the effect that young Le Breton was a person of very
dubious religious, political, and social orthodoxy? Or was it merely
that fortunate dispensation of Providence whereby Oxford almost
invariably manages to let her best men slip unobserved through her
fingers, and so insures a decent crop of them to fill up her share
of the passing vacancies in politics, literature, science, and art?
Heaven or the Pembroke examiners alone can answer these abstruse
and difficult questions; but this much at least is certain, that
when Ernest Le Breton went into the Pembroke porter's lodge on the
predestined Saturday, he found another name than his placarded upon
the notice board, and turned back, sick at heart and disappointed,
to his lonely lodgings. There he spent an unhappy hour or two, hewing
down what remained of his little aerial castle off-hand; and then
he went out for a solitary row upon the upper river, endeavouring
to work off his disappointment like a man, with a good hard spell
of muscular labour.
Edie had already returned to Calcombe-Pomeroy, so in the evening
he went to tell his misfortune to Harry Oswald. Harry was really
sorry to hear it, for Ernest was his best friend in Oxford, and
he had hoped to have him settled close by. 'You'll stop up and
try again for Christ Church in February, won't you, Le Breton?' he
asked.
'No,' said Ernest, shaking his head a little gloomily; 'I don't
think I will. It's clear I'm not up to the Oxford standard for a
fellowship, and I couldn't spend another term in residence without
coming down upon my mother to pay my expenses--a thing she can't
easily afford to do. So I suppose I must fall back for the present
upon the Exmoor tutorship. That'll give me time to look about me,
till I can get something else to do; and after all, it isn't a bit
more immoral than a fellowship, when one comes to look it fairly
in the face. However, I shall go first and ask Herr Max's opinion
upon the matter.'
'I'm going to spend a fortnight in town in the Christmas vac,'
said Oswald, 'and I should like to go with you to Max's again, if
I may.'
Ernest coloured up a little, for he would have liked to invite Oswald
to his mother's house; and yet he felt there were two reasons why
he should not do so; he must himself be dependent this time upon
his mother's hospitality, and he didn't think Lady Le Breton would
be perfectly cordial in her welcome to Harry Oswald.
In the end, however, it was arranged that Harry should engage rooms
at his former lodgings in London, and that Ernest should take him
once more to call upon the old socialist when he went to consult
him on the question of conscience.
'For my part, Ernest,' said Lady Le Breton to her son, the morning
after his return from Oxford, 'I'm not altogether sorry you didn't
get this Pembroke fellowship. It would have kept you among the
same set you are at present mixing in for an indefinite period.
Of course now you'll accept Lady Exmoor's kind proposal. I saw her
about it the same morning we got Hilda's letter; and she offers
200L. a year, which, of course, is mere pocket money, as your board
and lodging are all found for you, so to speak, and you'll have
nothing to do but to dress and amuse yourself.'
'Well, mother, I shall see about it. I'm going to consult Herr
Schurz upon the subject this morning.'
'Herr Schurz!' said Lady Le Breton, in her bitterest tone of irony.
'It appears to me you make that snuffy old German microscope man
your father confessor. It's very disagreeable to a mother to find
that her sons, instead of taking her advice about what is most
material to their own interests, should invariably go to confer
with communist refugees and ignorant ranters. Ronald, what is your
programme, if you please, for this morning's annoyance?'
Ronald, with the fear of the fifth commandment steadily before
his eyes, took no notice of the last word, and answered calmly,
'You know, mother, this is the regular day for the mission-house
prayer-meeting.'
'The mission-house prayer-meeting! I know nothing of the sort, I
assure you. I don't keep a perfect calendar in my mind of all your
meetings and your religious engagements. Then I suppose I must go
alone to the Waltons' to see Mr. Walton's water-colours?'
'I'll give up the prayer-meeting, if you wish it,' Ronald answered,
with his unvarying meekness. 'Only, I'm afraid I must walk very
slowly. My cough's rather bad this morning.'
'No, no,' Ernest put in, 'you mustn't dream of going, Ronald;
I couldn't allow you to walk so far on any account. I'll put off
my engagement with Oswald, who was going with me to Herr Schurz's,
and I'll take you round to the Waltons', mother, whenever you like.'
'Dear me, dear me,' moaned Lady Le Breton, piteously, pretending
to wring her hands in lady-like and mitigated despair; 'I can't
do anything without its being made the opportunity for a scene, it
seems. I shall NOT go to the Waltons'; and I shall leave you both
to follow your own particular devices to your heart's content. I'm
sorry I proposed anything whatsoever, I'm sure, and I shall take
care never to do such an imprudent thing again.' And her ladyship
walked in her stateliest and most chilly manner out of the freezing
little dining-room.
'It's a great cross, living always with poor mother, Ernest,' said
Ronald, his eyes filling with tears as he spoke; 'but we must try
to bear with her, you know, for after all she leads a very lonely
life herself, because she's so very unsympathetic.' Ernest took
the spare white hand in his and smoothed it compassionately. 'My
dear, dear Ronald,' he said, 'I know it's hard for you. I must try
the best I can to make it a little easier!'
They walked together as far as the mission-house, arm in arm, for
though in some things the two young Le Bretons were wide apart
as the poles, in others they were fundamentally at one in inmost
spirit; and even Ronald, in spite of his occasional little narrow
sectarianisms, felt the underlying unity of purpose no less than
Ernest. He was one of those enthusiastic ethereal natures which
care little for outer forms or ceremonies, and nothing at all for
churches and organisations, but love to commune as pure spirit
with pure spirit, living every day a life of ecstatic spirituality,
and never troubling themselves one whit about theological controversy
or established religious constitutions. As long as Ronald Le Breton
could read his Greek Testament every morning, and talk face to
face in their own tongue with the Paul of First Corinthians or the
John of the Epistles, in the solitude of his own bedroom, he was
supremely indifferent about the serious question, of free-will
and fore-knowledge, or about the important question of apostolical
succession, or even about that other burning question of eternal
punishment, which was just then setting his own little sect of
Apostolic Christian Missioners roundly by the ears. These things
seemed to his enthusiastic mind mere fading echoes of an alien
language; all that he himself really cared for in religion was the
constant sense of essential personal communion with that higher
Power which spoke directly to his soul all day long and always; or
the equally constant sense of moral exaltation which he drew from
the reading of the written Word in its own original language. He
had never BECOME an Apostolic Christian; he had grown up to be one,
unconsciously to himself. 'Your son Ronald's religion, my dear
Lady Le Breton,' Archdeacon Luttrell used often to say, 'is, I
fear, too purely emotional. He cannot be made to feel sufficiently
the necessity for a sound practical grasp of doctrinal Christianity.'
To Ronald himself, he might as well have talked about the necessity
for a sound practical grasp of doctrinal Buddhism. And if Ronald
had really met a devout Buddhist, he would doubtless have found,
after half an hour's conversation, that they were at one in everything
save the petty matter of dialect and vocabulary.
At Oswald's lodging, Ernest found his friend ready and waiting for
him. They went on together to the same street in Marylebone as
before, and mounted the stair till they reached Herr Schurz's gloomy
little work-room on the third floor. The old apostle was seated
at his small table by the half-open window, grinding the edges of
a lens to fit the brass mounting at his side; while his daughter
Uta, a still good-looking, quiet, broad-faced South German woman,
about forty or a little more, sat close by, busily translating a
scientific book into English by alternate reading and consultation
with her father. Harry saw the title on her page was 'Researches
into the Embryology of the Isopodal Crustaceans,' and conceived
at once an immense respect for the learning and wisdom of the
communist exile's daughter. Herr Schurz hardly stopped a moment
from his work--he never allowed his numerous visitors to interfere
in any way with his daily duties--but motioned them both to seats
on the bare bench beside him, and waited to bear the nature of
their particular business. It was an understood thing that no one
came to see the Socialist leader on week days except for a good
and sufficient reason.
The talk at first was general and desultory; but after a little time
Ernest brought conversation round to its proper focus, and placed
his case of conscience fairly before his father confessor. Was it
allowable for a consistent socialist to accept the place of tutor
to the son of a peer and a landowner?
'For my part, Herr Schurz,' Oswald said confidently, 'I don't see
any reason on earth, from the point of view of any political economy
whatsoever, why Ernest shouldn't take the position. The question
isn't how the Exmoors have come by their money, even allowing that
private property in land is in itself utterly indefensible; which
is a proposition I don't myself feel inclined unreservedly to admit,
though I know you and Le Breton do: the real question's this,--since
they've got this money into their hands to distribute, and since
in any case they will have the distribution of it, isn't it better
that some of it should go into Le Breton's pocket than that it
should go into any other person's? That's the way I for my part
look at the matter.'
'What do you say to that, friend Ernest?' asked the old German,
smiling and waiting to see whether Ernest would detect what from
their own standpoint he regarded as the ethical fallacy of Harry
Oswald's argument.
'Well, to tell you the truth, Herr Schurz,' answered Ernest, in his
deliberate, quiet way, 'I don't think I've envisaged the subject
to myself from quite the same point of view as Oswald has done. I
have rather asked myself whether it was right of a man to accept
a function in which he would really be doing nothing worthy for
humanity in return for his daily board and lodging. It isn't so much
a question who exactly is to get certain sums out of the Exmoors'
pockets, which ought no doubt never to have been in them; it's more
a question whether a man has any right to live off the collective
labour of the world, and do nothing of any good to the world on
his own part by way of repayment.'
'That's it, friend Ernest,' cried the old man, with a pleased nod
of his big grey head; 'the socialistic Iliad in a nutshell! That's
the very root of the question. Don't be deceived by capitalist
sophisms. So long as we go on each of us trying to get as much as
we can individually out of the world, instead of asking what the
world is getting out of us, in return, there will be no revolution
and no millennium. We must make sure that we're doing some good
ourselves, instead of sponging upon the people perpetually to feed
us for nothing. What's the first gospel given to man at the creation
in your popular cosmogonies? Why, that in the sweat of his face
shall he eat bread, and till the ground from which he was taken.
That's the native gospel of the toiling many, always; your doctrines
of fair exchange, and honest livelihoods, and free contract, and
all the rest of it, are only the artificial gospel of the political
economists, and of the bourgeoisie and the aristocrats into whose
hands they play--the rascals!'
'Then you think I oughtn't to take the post?' asked Ernest, a little
ruefully.
'I don't say that, Le Breton--I don't say that,' said Herr Schurz,
more quietly than before, still grinding away at his lens. 'The
question's a broad one, and it has many aspects. The best work
a man can do is undoubtedly the most useful work--the work that
conduces most to the general happiness. But we of the proletariate
can't take our choice always: as your English proverb plainly puts
it, with your true English bluntness, "beggars mustn't be choosers."
We must, each in his place, do the work that's set before us by the
privileged classes. It's impossible for us to go nicely discriminating
between work that's useful for the community, work that's merely
harmless, and work that's positively detrimental. How can we insure
it? A man's a printer, say. There's a generally useful trade, in
which, on the whole, he labours for the good and enlightenment of
the world--for he may print scientific books, good books, useful
books; and most printing, on the average, is useful. But how's he
to know what sort of thing he's printing? He may be printing "Gold
and the Proletariate," or he may be printing obscurantist and
retrogressive treatises by the enemies of humanity. Look at my own
trade, again. You'd say at first sight, Mr. Oswald, that to make
microscopes must be a good thing in the end for the world at large:
and so it is, no doubt; but half of them--ay, more than half of
them--are thrown away: mere wasted labour, a good workman's time
and skill lavished needlessly on some foolish rich man's caprices
and amusement. Often enough, now, I make a good instrument--an
instrument, with all its fittings, worth fifty or a hundred pounds.
That takes a long time to make, and I'm a skilled workman; and
the instrument may fall into the hands of a scientific man who'll
use it in discovery, in verification, in promoting knowledge, in
lessening disease and mitigating human suffering. That's the good
side of my trade. But, mark you, now,' and the old man wiped his
forehead rapidly with his sleeve, 'it has its bad side too. As often
as not, I know, some rich man will buy that machine, that cost me
so much time and trouble to make, and will buy a few dozen stock
slides with it, and will bring it out once in a moon to show his
children or a few idle visitors the scales on a butterfly's wing,
or the hairs on the leg of a common flea. Uta sets those things
up by the thousand for the dealers to sell to indolent dilettanti.
The appetite of the world at large for the common flea is simply
insatiable. And it's for that, perhaps, that I'm spoiling my
eyesight now, grinding and grinding and grinding at this very lens,
and fitting the thing to an accurate fraction of a millimetre, as
we always fit these things--we who are careful and honest workmen--to
show an idle man's friends the hairs on a flea's fore-leg. If that
isn't enough to make a man ashamed of our present wasteful and
chaotic organisation, I should think he must be a survival from
the preglacial epoch--as, indeed, most of us actually are!'
'But, after all, Herr Schurz,' said Harry, expostulating, 'you get
paid for your labour, and the rich man is doing better by encouraging
your skill than by encouraging the less useful skill of other
workmen.'
'Ah, yes,' cried Herr Schurz, warmly, 'that's the doctrine of the
one-eyed economists; that's the capitalist way of looking at it;
but it isn't our way--it isn't ours. Is it nothing, think you,
that all that toil of mine--of a sensible man's--goes to waste,
to gratify the senseless passing whim of a wealthy nobody? Is it
nothing that he uselessly monopolises the valuable product of my
labour, which in other and abler hands might be bringing forth good
fruit for the bettering and furthering of universal humanity? I
tell you, Mr. Oswald, half the best books, half the best apparatus,
half the best appliances in all Europe, are locked up idle in
rich men's cabinets, effecting no good, begetting no discoveries,
bringing forth no interest, doing nothing but foster the anti-social
pride of their wealthy possessors. But that isn't what friend
Ernest wants to ask me about to-day. He wants to know about his own
course in a difficult case; and instead of answering him, here am
I, maundering away, like an old man that I am, into the generalised
platitudes of "Gold and the Proletariate." Well, Le Breton, what
I should say in your particular instance is this. A man with the
fear of right before his eyes may, under existing circumstances,
lawfully accept any work that will keep him alive, provided he sees
no better and more useful work equally open to him. He may take
the job the capitalists impose, if he can get nothing worthier to
do elsewhere. Now, if you don't teach this young Tregellis, what
alternative have you? Why, to become a master in a school--Eton,
perhaps, or Rugby, or Marlborough--and teach other equally useless
members of prospective aristocratic society. That being so, I think
you ought to do what's best for yourself and your family for the
present--for the present--till the time of deliverance comes. You
see, there is one member of your family to whom the matter is of
immediate importance.'
'Ronald,' said Ernest, interrupting him.
'Yes, Ronald. A good boy; a socialist, too, though he doesn't know
it--one of us, born of us, and only apart from us in bare externals.
Well, would it be most comfortable for poor Ronald that you should
go to these Exmoor people, or that you should take a mastership,
get rooms somewhere, and let him live with you? He's not very happy
with your mother, you say. Wouldn't he be happier with you? What
think you? Charity begins at home, you know: a good proverb--a
good, sound, sensible, narrow-minded, practical English proverb!'
'I've thought of that,' Ernest said, 'and I'll ask him about it.
Whichever he prefers, then, I'd better decide upon, had I?'
'Do so,' Herr Max answered, with a nod. 'Other things equal, our
first duty is to those nearest to us.'
What Herr Max said was law to his disciples, and Ernest went his
way contented.
'Mr. Oswald seems a very nice young man,' Uta Schurz said, looking
up from the microscope slides she had begun to mount at the moment
her regular translating work was interrupted by their sudden entry.
She had been taking quiet glances at Harry all the while, in her
unobtrusive fashion; for Uta had learned always to be personally
unobtrusive--'the prophet's donkey,' those irreverent French exiles
used to call her--and she had come to the conclusion that he was
a decidedly handsome and manly fellow.
'Which do you like best, Uta--Oswald or Le Breton?' asked her
father.
'Personally,' Uta answered, 'I should prefer Mr. Oswald. To live
always with Mr. Le Breton would be like living with an abstraction.
No woman would ever care for him; she might just as well marry
Spinoza's Ethics or the Ten Commandments. He's a perfect model of
a socialist, and nothing else. Mr. Oswald has some human nature in
him as well.'
'There are two kinds of socialists,' said Herr Max, bending once
more over his glasses; 'the one kind is always thinking most of
its rights; the other kind is always thinking most of its duties.
Oswald belongs to the first, Le Breton to the second. I've often
observed it so among men of their two sorts. The best socialists
never come from the bourgeoisie, nor even from the proletariate;
they come from among the voluntarily déclassés aristocrats. Your
workman or your bourgeois who has risen, and who interests himself
in social or political questions, is always thinking, "Why shouldn't
I have as many rights and privileges as these other people have?"
The aristocrat who descends is always thinking, "Why shouldn't
these other people have as many rights and privileges as I have?"
The one type begets aggressive self-assertion, the other type
begets a certain gentle spirit of self-effacement. You don't often
find men of the aristocratic class with any ethical element in
them--their hereditary antecedents, their breeding, their environment,
are all hostile to it; but when you do find them, mark my words,
Uta, they make the truest and most earnest friends of the popular
cause of any. Their sympathy and interest in it is all unselfish.'
'And yet,' Uta answered firmly, 'I still prefer Mr. Oswald. And
if you care for my opinion, I should say that the aristocrat does
all the dreaming, but the bourgeois does all the fighting; and
that's the most important thing practically, after all.'
An hour later, Ernest was talking his future plans over with his
brother Ronald. Would it be best for Ronald that he should take
a mastership, and both should live together, or that he should go
for the present to the Exmoors', and leave the question of Ronald's
home arrangements still unsettled?
'It's so good of you to think of me in the matter, Ernest,' Ronald
said, pressing his hand gently; 'but I don't think I ought to
go away from mother before I'm twenty-one. To tell you the truth,
Ernest, I hardly flatter myself she'd be really sorry to get rid
of me; I'm afraid I'm a dreadful thorn in her side at present; she
doesn't understand my ways, and perhaps I don't sympathise enough
with hers; but still, if I were to propose to go, I feel sure
she'd be very much annoyed, and treat it as a serious act of
insubordination on my part. While I'm a minor, at least, I ought
to remain with her; the Apostle tells us to obey our parents, in
the Lord; and as long as she requires nothing from me that doesn't
involve a dereliction of principle I think I must bear with it,
though I acknowledge it's a cross, a heavy cross. Thank you so much
for thinking of it, dearest Ernest.' And his eyes filled once more
with tears as he spoke.
So it was finally arranged that for the present at least Ernest
should accept Lady Exmoor's offer, and that as soon as Ronald
was twenty-one he should look about for a suitable mastership, in
order for the two brothers to go immediately into rooms together.
Lady Le Breton was surprised at the decision; but as it was in her
favour, she wisely abstained from gratifying her natural desire to
make some more uncomplimentary references to the snuffy old German
socialist. Sufficient unto the day was the triumph thereof; and she
had no doubt in her own mind that if once Ernest could be induced
to live for a while in really good society the well-known charms
and graces of that society must finally tame his rugged breast,
and wean him away from his unaccountable devotion to those horrid
continental communists.