Jack Sandys was a pupil of Howard's in whom he had a special interest.
He was the son of Frank Sandys, the Vicar of the Somersetshire parish
where Mrs. Graves, Howard's aunt, lived at the Manor-house. Frank
Sandys was a cousin of Mrs. Graves' deceased husband. She had advised
the Vicar to send Jack to Beaufort, and had written specially
commending him to Howard's care. But the boy had needed little
commendation. From the first moment that Jack Sandys had appeared,
smiling and unembarrassed, in Howard's room, a relation that was almost
filial and paternal had sprung up between them. He had treated Howard
from the outset with an innocent familiarity, and asked him the most
direct questions. He was not a particularly intellectual youth, though
he had some vague literary interests; but he was entirely healthy,
good, and quite irresistibly charming in his naivete and simplicity.
Howard had a dislike of all sentimentality, but the suppressed paternal
instinct which was strong in him had been awakened; and though he made
no emotional advances, he found himself strangely drawn to the boy,
with a feeling for which he could not wholly account. He did not care
for Jack's athletic interests; his tastes and mental processes were
obscure to him. Howard's own nature was at once intellectual and
imaginative, but he felt an extreme delight in the fearless and direct
confidence which the boy showed in him. He criticised his work
unsparingly, he rallied him on his tastes, he snubbed him, but all with
a sense of real and instinctive sympathy which made everything easy.
The boy never resented anything that he said, asked his advice, looked
to him to get him out of any small difficulties that arose. They were
not very much together, and mostly met only on official occasions.
Howard was a busy man, and had little time, or indeed taste, for vague
conversation. Jack was a boy of natural tact, and he treated all the
authorities with the same unembarrassed directness. Undergraduates are
quick to remark on any sort of favouritism, but only if they think that
the favoured person gets any unfair advantage by his intimacy. But
Howard came down on Jack just as decisively as he came down on anyone
else whose work was unsatisfactory. It was known that they were a sort
of cousins; and, moreover, Jack Sandys was generally popular, though
only in his first year, because he was free from any touch of
uppishness, and of an imperturbable good-humour.
But his own feeling for the boy surprised Howard. He did not think him
very interesting, nor had they much in common except a perfect
goodwill. It was to Howard as if Jack represented something beyond and
further than himself, for which Howard cared--as one might love a house
for the sake of someone that had inhabited it, or because of events
that had happened there. He tried vaguely to interest Jack in some of
the things he cared about, but wholly in vain. That cheerful youth went
quietly on his own way--modest, handsome, decided, knowing exactly what
he liked, with very material tastes and ambitions, not in the least
emotional or imaginative, and yet with a charm of which all were
conscious. He was bored by any violent attempts at friendship, and
quite content in almost anyone's company, naturally self-contained and
temperate, making no claims and giving no pledges; and yet Howard was
deeply haunted by the sense that Jack stood for something almost
bewilderingly fine which he himself could not comprehend or interpret,
and of which the boy himself was wholly and radiantly unconscious. It
gave him, indeed, a sudden warmth about the heart to see Jack in the
court, or even to think of him as living within the same walls; but
there was nothing jealous or exclusive about his interest, and when
they met, there was often nothing particular to say.
Presently lunch was announced, and Howard led the way to a little
panelled parlour which looked out on the river. They both ate with
healthy appetites; and presently Jack, looking about him, said, "This
room is rather nice! I don't know how you make your rooms so nice?"
"Mostly by having very little in them except what I want," said Howard.
"These panelled rooms don't want any ornaments; people spoil rooms by
stuffing them, just as you spoil my cat,"--Jack was feeding the cat
with morsels from his plate.
"It's a nice cat," said Jack; "at least I like it in your rooms. I
wouldn't have one in my rooms, not if I were paid for it--it would be
what the Master calls a serious responsibility." Presently, after a
moment's silence, Jack said, "It's rather convenient to be related to a
don, I think. By the way, what sort of screw do they give you--I mean
your income--I suppose I oughtn't to ask?"
"It isn't usually done," said Howard, "but I don't mind your asking,
and I don't mind your knowing. I have about six hundred a year here."
"Oh, then I was right," said Jack. "Symonds said that all the dons had
about fifteen hundred a year out of the fees; he said that it wouldn't
be worth their while to do it for less. But I said it was much less. My
father only gets about two hundred a year out of his living, and it all
goes to keep me at Cambridge. He says that when he is vexed about
things; but he must have plenty of his own. I wish he would really tell
me. Don't you think people ought to tell their sons about their
incomes?"
"I am afraid you are a very mercenary person," said Howard.
"No, I'm not," said Jack; "only I think one ought to know, and then one
could arrange. Father's awfully good about it, really; but if ever I
spend too much, he shakes his head and talks about the workhouse. I
used to be frightened, but I don't believe in the workhouse now."
When luncheon was over, they went back to the other room. It was true
that, as Jack had said, Howard managed to make something pleasant out
of his rooms. The study was a big place looking into the court; it was
mostly lined with books, the bookcases going round the room in a band
about three feet from the floor and about seven feet high. It was a
theory of Howard's that you ought to be able to see all your books
without either stooping or climbing. There was a big knee-hole table
and half a dozen chairs. There was an old portrait in oils over the
mantelpiece, several arm-chairs, one with a book-rest. Half a dozen
photographs stood on the mantelpiece, and there was practically nothing
else in the room but carpets and curtains. Jack lit a cigarette, sank
into a chair, and presently said, "You must get awfully sick of the
undergraduates, I should think, day after day?"
"No, I don't," said Howard; "in fact I must confess that I like work
and feel dull without it--but that shows that I am an elderly man."
"Yes, I don't care about my work," said Jack, "and I think I shall get
rather tired of being up here before I have done with it. It's rather
pointless, I think. Of course it's quite amusing; but I want to do
something real, make some real money, and talk about business. I shall
go into the city, I think."
"I don't believe you care about anything but money," said Howard; "you
are a barbarian!"
"No, I don't care about money," said Jack; "only one must have
enough--what I like are REAL things. I couldn't go on just learning
things up till I was twenty-three, and then teaching them till I was
sixty-three. Of course I think it is awfully good of you to do it, but
I can't think why or how you do it."
"I suppose I don't care about real things," said Howard.
"No, I can't quite make you out," said Jack with a smiling air,
"because of course you are quite different from the other dons--nobody
would suppose you were a don--everyone says that."
"It's very kind of you to say so," said Howard, "but I am not sure that
it is a compliment--a tradesman ought to be a tradesman, and not to be
ashamed of it. I'm a sophist, of course."
"What's a sophist?" said Jack. "Oh, I know. You lectured about the
sophists last term. I don't remember what they were exactly, but I
thought the lecture awfully good--quite amusing! They were a sort of
parsons, weren't they?"
"You are a wonderful person, Jack!" said Howard, laughing. "I declare I
have never had such extraordinary things said to me as you have said in
the last half-hour."
"Well, I want to know about people," said Jack, "and I think it pays to
ask them. You don't mind, do you? That's the best thing about you, that
I can say what I think to you without putting my foot in it. But you
said you were going to lecture me about my sins--come on!"
"No," said Howard, "I won't. You are not serious enough to-day, and I
am not vexed enough. You know quite well what I think. There isn't any
harm in you; but you are idle, and you are inquisitive. I don't want
you to be very different, on the whole, if only you would work a little
more and take more interest in things."
"Well," said Jack, "I do take interest--that's the mischief; there
isn't time to work--that's the truth! I shall scrape through the Trip,
and then I shall have done with all this nonsense about the classics;
it really is humbug, isn't it? Such a fuss about nothing. The books I
like are those in which people say what they might say, not those in
which they say what they have had days to invent. I don't see the good
of that. Why should I work, when I don't feel interested?"
"Because whatever you do, you will have to do things in which you are
not interested," said Howard.
"Well, I think I will wait and see," said Jack. "And now I must be off.
I really have said some awful things to you to-day, and I must
apologise; but I can't help it when I am with you; I feel I must say
just what comes into my head; I must fly; thank you for lunch; and I
truly will do better, but mind only for YOU, and not because I think
it's any good." He put down the cat with a kiss. "Good-bye, Mimi," he
said; "remember me, I beseech you!" and he hurried away.
Howard sat still for a minute or two, looking at the fire; then he gave
a laugh, got up, stretched himself, and went out for a walk.
Even so quiet a thing as a walk was not unattended by a certain amount
of ceremonial. Howard passed some six or seven men of his acquaintance,
some of whom presented a stick or raised a stiff hand without a smile
or indeed any sign of recognition; one went so far as to say, "Hullo,
Kennedy!" and one eager conversationalist went so far as to say, "Out
for a walk?" Howard pushed on, walking lightly and rapidly, and found
himself at last at Barton, one of those entirely delightful pastoral
villages that push up so close to Cambridge on every side; a vague
collection of quaint irregular cottages, whitewashed and thatched, with
bits of green common interspersed, an old manorial farm with its byres
and ricks, surrounded by a moat fringed with little pollarded elms. The
plain ancient tower of the church looked gravely out over all. In the
distance, over pastoral country, rose low wolds, pleasantly shaped,
skirted with little hamlets, surrounded by orchards; the old untroubled
necessary work of the world flows on in these fields and villages,
peopled with lives hardly conscious of themselves, with no aims or
theories, just toiling, multiplying, dying, existing, it would seem,
merely to feed and clothe the more active part of the world. Howard
loved such little interludes of silence, out in the fresh country, when
the calm life of tree and herb, the delicate whisper of dry,
evenly-blowing breezes, tranquillised and hushed his restless thoughts.
He lost himself in a formless reverie, exercising no control over his
trivial thoughts.
By four o'clock he was back, made himself some tea, put on a cap and
gown, and walked out to a meeting. In a high bare room in the
University offices the Committee sat. The Vice-Chancellor, a big,
grave, solid man, Master of St. Benedict's, sat in courteous state.
Half a dozen dons sat round the great tables, ranged in a square. The
business was mostly formal. The Vice-Chancellor read the points from a
paper in his resonant voice, comments and suggestions were made, and
the Secretary noted down conclusions. Howard was struck, as he often
had been before, to see how the larger questions of principle passed
almost unnoticed, while the smaller points, such as the wording of a
notice, were eagerly and humorously debated by men of acute minds and
easy speech. It was over in half an hour. Howard strolled off with one
of the members, and then, returning to his rooms, wrote some letters,
and looked up a lecture for the next day, till the bell rang for Hall.
Beaufort was a hospitable and sociable College, and guests often
appeared at dinner. On this night Mr. Redmayne was in the chair, at the
end of a long table; eight or ten dons were present. A gong was struck;
an undergraduate came up and scrambled through a Latin Grace from a
board which he held in his hand. The tables filled rapidly with lively
young men full of talk and appetite. Howard found himself sitting next
one of his colleagues, on the other side of him being an ancient crony
of Mr. Redmayne's, the Dean of a neighbouring College. The talk was
mainly local and personal, diverging at times into politics. It was
brisk, sensible, good-natured conversation, by no means unamusing. Mr.
Redmayne was an unashamed Tory, and growled denunciations at a
democratic Government, whom he credited with every political vice under
the sun, depicting the Cabinet as men fishing in troubled seas with
philanthropic baits to catch votes. One of the younger dons, an ardent
Liberal, made a mild protest. "Ah," said Mr. Redmayne, "you are still
the prey of idealistic illusions. Politics are all based, not on
principles or programmes, but on the instinctive hatred of opponents."
There was a laugh at this. "You may laugh," said Mr. Redmayne, "but you
will find it to be true. Peace and goodwill are pretty words to play
with, but it is combativeness which helps the world along; not the
desire to be at peace, but the wish to maul your adversary!"
It was the talk of busy men who met together, not to discuss, but to
eat, and conversed only to pass the time. But it was all good-humoured
enough, and even the verbal sharpness which was employed was evidence
of much mutual confidence and esteem.
Howard thought, looking down the Hall, when the meal was in full fling,
what a picturesque, cheerful, lively affair it all was. The Hall was
lighted only by candles in heavy silver candlesticks, which flared away
all down the tables. In the dark gallery a couple of sconces burned
still and clear. The dusty rafters, the dim portraits above the
panelling, the gleam of gilded cornices were a pleasant contrast to the
lively talk, the brisk coming and going, the clink and clatter below.
It was noisy indeed, but noisy as a healthy and friendly family party
is noisy, with no turbulence. Once or twice a great shout of laughter
rang out from the tables and died away. There was no sign of
discipline, and yet the whole was orderly enough. The carvers carved,
the waiters hurried to and fro, the swing-doors creaked as the men
hurried out. It was a very business-like, very English scene, without
any ceremony or parade, and yet undeniably stately and vivid.
The undergraduates finished their dinners with inconceivable rapidity,
and the Hall was soon empty, save for the more ceremonious and
deliberate party at the high table. Presently these adjourned in
procession to the Parlour, a big room, comfortably panelled, opening
off the Hall, where the same party sat round the fire at little tables,
sipped a glass of port, and went on to coffee and cigarettes, while the
talk became more general. Howard felt, as he had often felt before, how
little attention even able and intellectual Englishmen paid to the form
of their talk. There was hardly a grammatical sentence uttered, never
an elaborate one; the object was, it seemed, to get the thought uttered
as quickly and unconcernedly as possible, and even the anecdotes were
pared to the bone. A clock struck nine, and Mr. Redmayne rose. The
party broke up, and Howard went off to his rooms.
He settled down to look over a set of compositions. But he was in a
somewhat restless frame of mind to-night, and a not unpleasant mood of
reflection and retrospect came over him. What an easy, full, lively
existence his was! He seemed to himself to be perfectly contented. He
remembered how he, the only son of rather elderly parents, had gone
through Winchester with mild credit. He had never had any difficulties
to contend with, he thought. He had been popular, not distinguished at
anything--a fair athlete, a fair scholar, arousing no jealousies or
enmities. He had been naturally temperate and self-restrained. He had
drifted on to Beaufort as a Scholar, and it had been the same thing
over again--no ambitions, no failures, friends in abundance. Then his
father had died, and it had been so natural for him, on being elected
to a Fellowship, just to carry on the same life; he had to settle to
work at once, as his mother was not well off and much invalided. She
had not long survived his father. He had taught, taken pupils, made a
fair income. He had had no break of travel, no touch with the world; a
few foreign tours in the company of an old friend had given him nothing
but an emotional tincture of recollections and associations--a touch of
varnish, so to speak. Suddenly the remembrance of some of the things
which Jack Sandys had said that morning came back to him; "real things"
the boy had said, so lightly and yet so decisively. He wondered; had he
himself ever had any touch with realities at all? He had been touched
by no adversity or tragedy, he had been devastated by no disappointed
ambitions, shattered by no emotions. His whole life had been perfectly
under his control, and he had grown into a sort of contempt for all
unbalanced people, who were run away with by their instincts or
passions. It had been a very comfortable, sheltered, happy life; he was
sure of that; he had enjoyed his work, his relations with others, his
friendships; but had he ever come near to any fulness of living at all?
Was it not, when all was said and done, a very empty affair--void of
experience, guarded from suffering? "Suffering?" he hardly knew the
meaning of the word. Had he ever felt or suffered or rebelled? Yes,
there was one little thing. He had had a small ambition once; he had
studied comparative religion very carefully at one time to illustrate
some lectures, and a great idea had flashed across him. It was a big, a
fruitful thought; he had surveyed that strange province of human
emotion, the deepest strain of which seemed to be a disgust for
mingling with life, a loathing of bodily processes and instincts, which
drove its votaries to a deliberate sexlessness, and set them at
variance with the whole solid force of Nature, the treacherous and
alluring devices by which she drove men to reproduction with an
insatiable appetite; that mystical strain, which appeared at all times
and in all places, a spiritual rebellion against material bondage, was
not that the desperate cry of the fettered spirit? The conception of
sin, by which Nature traversed her own activities and made them
void--there was a great secret hidden here. He had determined to follow
this up, and to disguise with characteristic caution and courtesy a
daring speculation under the cloak of orthodox research.
He had begun his work in a great glow of enthusiasm; but it had been
suspended time after time. He had sketched his theory out; but it lay
there in one of his table-drawers, a skeleton not clothed with words.
Why had he let this all drop? Why had he contented himself with the
easy, sociable life? Effective though he was as a teacher, he had no
real confidence in the things which he taught. They only seemed to him
a device of reason for expending its energies, just as men deprived by
complex life of manual labour sought to make up for the loss by the
elaborate pursuit of games. He did not touch the springs of being at
all. He had collapsed, he felt, into placid acquiescence; Nature had
been too strong for him. He had fitted so easily into the pleasant
scheme of things, and he was doing nothing in the world but helping to
prolong the delusion, just as men set painted glass in a window to shut
out the raincloud and the wind. He was a conformist, he felt, in
everything--in religion, intellect, life--but a sceptic underneath. Was
he not perhaps missing the whole object and aim of life and experience,
in a fenced fortress of quiet? The thought stung him suddenly with a
kind of remorse. He was doing no part of the world's work, not sharing
its emotions or passions or pains or difficulties; he was placidly at
ease in Zion, in the comfortable city whose pleasures were based on the
toil of those outside. That was a hateful thought! Had not the boy been
right after all? Must one not somehow link one's arm with life and
share its pilgrimage, even in weariness and tears?
There came a tap at the door, and one of his shyest pupils entered--a
solitary youth, poor and unfriended, who was doing all he could to get
a degree good enough to launch him in the world. He came to ask some
advice about work. Howard entered into his case as well as he could,
told him it was important that he should get certain points clear, gave
him an informal lecture, distinctly and emphatically, and made a few
friendly remarks. The man beamed with unexpressed gratitude.
"What solemn nonsense I have been talking!" thought Howard to himself
as the young man slipped away. "Of course he must learn all this--but
what for? To get a mastership, and to retail it all over again! It's a
vicious circle, this education which is in touch with nothing but the
high culture of a nation which lived in ideas; while with us culture is
just a plastering of rough walls--no part of the structure! Why cannot
we put education in touch with life, try to show what human beings are
driving at, what arrangements they are making that they may live? It is
all arrangements with us--the frame for the picture, the sheath for the
sword--and we leave the picture and the sword to look after themselves.
What a wretched dilettante business it all is, keeping these boys
practising postures in the anteroom of life! Cannot we get at the real
thing, teach people to do things, fill their minds with ideas, break
down the silly tradition of needless wealth and absurd success? And I
must keep up all this farce, simply because I am fit for nothing
else--I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed. Oh, hold your tongue, you
ass!" said Howard, apostrophising his rebellious mind. "Don't you see
where you are going? You can't do anything--it is all too big and
strong for you. You must just let it alone."