I met Owen at the station, and, as he jumped out of the carriage, he
cried, “I’ve got the letter. It was waiting for me when I reached
home.” He waved it triumphantly in my face, beaming with the delight of
it and with the pleasure of showing it to me.
“I can’t possibly read it here,” I said, grasping his bag.
“And I say, you know, you did rippingly in the exams. I knew you would.”
He had come down by the first train, and I wanted to take him for a
bathe, but he was so excited that he could hardly listen to me. I had
brought our towels, and I delivered Owen’s bag to a carman outside to
take up to the house.
“Where are we going now? It was jolly decent of him writing, wasn’t it?”
“Who? Tolstoy? Not bad. But we’re going to bathe: I waited for you.
It’s some distance away, unless you would rather wade in off the shore;
there’s plenty of time, however.”
“I’ll do whatever you like.”
“Then I think we’ll go round to Maggie’s Leap.”
As we went we talked of his precious letter. “You won’t like it, I
daresay,” he said. “It’s not much in your line.”
“I wish you would tell me what my line is. I’ve been trying to discover
during the last fortnight.”
“I know very well.... There’s one thing he says that I can’t quite――――”
“Well?”
“Well, it’s this: He says everything is in the Gospels. What people
have got to do is to read over the words of Christ, and mark with a red
pencil everything that is perfectly clear to them.”
“A red pencil?”
Owen was too eager to notice anything. “Yes. What are you amused at?
Then you cut those bits out, and never bother about the rest. In what
you cut out you’ll find everything that it is necessary to know in
order to map out your life and your work. The whole teaching of Christ,
all that is essential, will be in those bits. Later on you may read
over the other things, that were obscure, and perhaps some of them
will by then be plain. I am to consider what kind of work I have a
taste for, and at the same time the work I devote myself to must fulfil
certain tests or I am to have nothing to do with it. Work you do with
your hands is best of all. I haven’t shown the letter at home yet. I
thought I’d think it quietly over down here and talk about it with you.
We’ll read the Gospels together. My father wants me to be a solicitor
and go into his place, but I don’t want that. On the other hand, I must
make up my mind soon, I suppose. I’m seventeen, you know.”
I took the letter from him, and read it slowly and with some difficulty
as we walked along. After that, I thought over it for a while.
“Will you have to earn your living?”
“Yes, naturally. There are a good many of us, you know.”
“Then I don’t see how the Gospels are going to help you, no matter what
way you mark them.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll have to live as other people do, unless you can afford
to be different; and other people don’t live according to the Gospels.”
Owen was silent.
“A carpenter, a gardener, for instance,” he began, “couldn’t they live
in accordance with the teaching of Christ? Tolstoy says I will never be
happy unless I do.”
“It’s all very well for Tolstoy talking: he is his own master and has
plenty of money. But how can you be a carpenter or a gardener? Your
father would never allow you to, and the first thing would be a quarrel
with him. We go down here, over this wall.”
Owen scrambled after me.
“A man must leave his father and his mother.”
“Yes, Owen dear, but you’re not a bit the kind of man who does, to say
nothing of leaving your brother and your sisters. At any rate, while
you are learning to be a gardener your father will have to keep you.”
“I only mentioned those trades because they happened to occur to me;
there are plenty of others.”
“There are not plenty: that’s just the difficulty I’ve been finding.”
We clambered down on to the rocks, from which the sea stretched away,
deep and clear and blue, glittering in the hot sunshine, moving with a
low, smooth swell, like some huge, splendid, living creature.
“You will require a profession in which you can be your own master from
the very beginning. It wouldn’t do to be subordinate to anybody who
hadn’t had a letter from Tolstoy, or perhaps even read ‘Anna Karénine.’
If you go in for the Church, for example, you will have to do what you
are told until you get a church of your own, when you’ll be always
having rows with your parishioners and elders, for, of course, you’ll
have to preach the Tolstoy gospel or the tests will get in the way. If
you become a doctor you won’t make a living, because you will want to
doctor the widows and the fatherless, who are no use in the matter of
fees. I admit the lawyer idea is absurd――even without Tolstoy and the
Gospels it wouldn’t have done――and no doubt your father only thought
of it because he’s a solicitor himself. You’ll have to be content with
something that fulfils perhaps one or two of the tests. Then, when you
get married and have a swarm of children, your wife will rise in revolt
against them _all_.”
“I can choose a suitable wife, and there’s no need to have a swarm
of children. I shall have just as many as I can afford to bring up
properly.... That reminds me, I brought you down the ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’
It’s in my bag.”
“That’s all right; but it’s always people like you, frightfully earnest
and moral and all the rest of it, who have families of twelve or
thirteen.”
“I tell you I won’t have them,” said Owen, impatiently.
“But Tolstoy himself――――”
“I don’t care a hang about Tolstoy.”
“Oh――h! Owen!”
“Tolstoy could give his children a decent start in life; and if he can
do that, the more such a man has the better.”
During the latter part of this conversation, all of which Owen was
taking in dead seriousness, we were undressing, and I now dived into
the deep, green, glittering water. I turned on my back and lay watching
Owen, distinctly uneasy, stand hesitating on the edge of the rock.
“Is it cold?” he asked.
“No; come along.”
He pulled his shirt slowly off. “I brought you down some of the short
stories too.”
I laughed. “All right; I’ll read them when I come out.”
But Owen was really anxious now only about the temperature of the
water. He floundered in and came up spluttering. I was a much better
swimmer than he, and circled about him, showing off, delighting in the
power I felt. We swam out for fifty yards or so, and I timed my stroke
with Owen’s. He looked very funny. His eyes stared straight before
him as if he were set on some desperate adventure. On our way back I
splashed him a little and he got angry, swallowing a lot of water. I
told him how contrary to the teaching of the Gospels this was; when
I asked him to drink a pint of salt water he should swallow a quart;
etc., etc.
When we got to the rocks and he had scrambled out, scraping his knees
and one of his elbows in doing so, for it was not easy to get out
unless you knew the way, he was quite offended, and would hardly speak
to me. I was shaking with laughter, but I said I was sorry and gave
him some sticking-plaster. He took the sticking-plaster, but would
have none of my sympathy, and on the way home I had to soothe him into
a better temper. Then, as usual, the cloud passed quite suddenly, and
he was all right. As we drew near the house I wondered, uneasily,
what he would think of my father, and what he would think of my home.
Before coming to us he had been staying in Scotland with people who
had evidently possessed yachts and motor-cars and all kinds of things,
whereas we could not even boast a spare bed, and he would have to sleep
with me.
When we came in, I introduced him to my father, who was working in the
garden, and before dinner was over I was delighted to see that they
were going to get on well together. Owen seemed to notice none of his
peculiar habits, or, if he did, he was perfectly indifferent to them.
He displayed an extraordinary interest in the school, asking all kinds
of questions, and bringing out his own theories of education, which
may or may not have emanated from the sage in Russia. I let them talk
together without interfering much. I could see that my father was very
favourably impressed, though the fact that such an admirable youth
happened to be a particular friend of mine was naturally perplexing.
Owen was frightfully polite. He called my father “Sir,” and listened
deferentially to everything he had to say, never offering his own
opinion as of any particular value. They talked almost exclusively of
education. Owen told how he was teaching a boy at home in the evenings,
the son of their coachman, and how clever this boy was, and how he had
got Mr. Gill senior to promise to pay his college fees if he did well
at school during the next year or two. It was the first time I had
heard of the matter, but I supposed it was the mysterious something
which had interfered with his own work, and had made him so anxious
about retaining his exhibition. “Didn’t _he_ do splendidly?” Owen said
suddenly, nodding his head in my direction.
“Peter can be clever enough when he chooses,” my father answered dryly.
This was to prevent me from exaggerating the merit of my achievement,
but I did not care, for in my own mind my performance was somewhat
stale already, and I did not give a fig for such distinctions. It
occurred to me, as I watched them and listened to them, that Owen and
my father were perhaps more alike, mentally and spiritually, than Owen
and I, though my father had but a fraction of Owen’s fineness, and none
of his generosity. They were related as a coarse weed and a delicate
flower might be, but I was of a different genus. And then I thought
that, though I cared little for Gerald, and loved Owen, perhaps it was
Gerald with whom I had really most in common.