Watersprings, Arthur Christopher Benson [free novels .txt] 📗

own position.

"I am delighted to hear it," said Mr. Redmayne: "a landed proprietor, that's a very comfortable thing! Now how will that affect your position here? Ah yes, I see--only the heir-apparent at present. Well, you will probably find that the estate has all been run on very sentimental lines by your worthy aunt. You take my advice, and put it all on a business-like footing. Let it be clear from the first that you won't stand any nonsense. Ideas!" said Mr. Redmayne in high disdain, "that's the curse of the country. Ideas everywhere, about the empire, about civic rights and duties, about religion, about art"--he made a long face as though he had swallowed medicine. "Let us all keep our distance and do our work. Let us have no nonsense about the brotherhood of man. I hope with all my heart, Howard, that you won't permit anything of that kind. I don't feel as sure of you as I should like; but this will be a very good thing for you, if it shows you that all this stuff will not do in practice. I'm an honest Whig. Let everyone have a vote, and let them give their votes for the right people, and then we shall get on very well."


XV


JACK'S ESCAPADE

The college slowly filled; the term began; Howard went back to his work, and the perplexities of Windlow rather faded into the background. He would behave very differently when he went there next. It should all be cool, friendly, unemotional. But in spite of everything, his aunt's words came sometimes into his mind, troubling it with a sudden thrill. "Power, spirit, the development of life,"--were these real things, had one somehow to put oneself into touch with them? Was the life of serene and tranquil work but marking time, wasting opportunity? Had one somehow to be stirred into action and reality? Was there something in the background, which did not insist or drive or interfere with one's inclinations, because it knew that it would be obeyed and yielded to some time? Was it just biding its time, waiting, impelling but not forcing one to change? It gave him an impulse to look closer at his own views and aims, to consider what his motives really were, how far he could choose, how much he could prevail, to what extent he could really do as he hoped and desired. He was often haunted by a sense of living in a mechanical unreality, of moving simply on lines of easy habit. That was a tame, a flat business, perhaps; but it was what seemed to happen.

And yet all the time he was more and more haunted by the thought of Maud. He could not get her out of his head. Over and over again he lived through the scenes of their meetings. Against the background of the dusk, that slender figure outlined itself, the lines of her form, her looks, her smiles; he went again and again through his talks with her--the walk on the down, the sight of her in the dimly-lighted room; he could hear the very tones of her low voice, and see the childlike appeal of her eyes. Worst of all the scene at the Vicarage, the book held in her slender fingers, her look of bewilderment and distress--what a pompous ass he had been, how stupid and coarse! He thought of writing to her; he did write--but the dignified patronage of his elder-brotherly style sickened him, and he tore up his unfinished letter. Why could he not simply say that he cared for her, and was miserable at having hurt her? That was just, he thought, what he must not do; and yet the idea that she might be making other friends and acquaintances was a jealous horror to him. He thought of writing to his aunt about it--he did write regularly to her, but he could not explain what he had done. Strangest of all, he hardly recognised it as love. He did not face the idea of a possible life with Maud. It was to be an amiable and brotherly relation, with a frank confidence and an outspoken affection. He lost his old tranquil spirits in these reveries. It was painful to him to find how difficult it was becoming to talk to the undergraduates; his mild and jocose ironies seemed to have deserted him. He saw little of Jack; they were elaborately unaffected with each other, but each felt that there had been a sort of exposure, and it seemed impossible to regain the old relation.

One morning he had an unpleasant surprise. The Dean of the College, Mr. Gretton, a tall, rather grimly handsome man, who was immensely conscientious and laborious, and did his work as well as a virtuous man could, who was not interested in education, and frankly bored by the irresponsibility of undergraduates, walked into his rooms one morning and said, "I hope I don't interrupt you? I want to have a word with you about Sandys, as he is your cousin. There was a dinner in College last night--a club, I think--Guthrie and that lot--and Sandys got undeniably drunk. They were making a horrible row about two o'clock, and I went down and dispersed them. There were some outside men there whose names I took; but Sandys was quite out of control, and spoke very impertinently to me. He must come and apologise, or I shall ask that he may be sent down. He is a respectable man on the whole, so I shall not push it to extremes. But he will be gated, of course, and I shall write to his father. I thought you had better see him, and try if you can do anything. It is a great nuisance, and the less said about it the better; but of course we can't stand this kind of thing, and it had better be stopped at once."

"Yes, I will see him at once," said Howard. "I am very sorry. I did not think he would play the fool like that."

"One never knows!" said the Dean; "to speak plainly, I don't think he is doing much good here. Rather too much a man of the world for my taste. But there is nothing particular against him, and I don't want to be hard on him."

Howard sent for Jack at once. He came in, in an obviously rebellious frame of mind.

"I know," he said. "Yes, of course I was a fool; but it isn't worth making a row about. I don't go in for soaking, like some of the men who don't get caught, and I have no intention of going to the bad, if that is what you mean."

"You are an ass!" said Howard, "a real ass! Now don't say a word yet, till I have told you what I think. You may have your say afterwards. I don't care twopence about your getting drunk once in a way. It's a stupid thing to do, to my mind, and I don't see the point of it. I don't consider you a reprobate, nor am I going to take a high line about drunkenness; I know perfectly well that you are no more likely to take to drink than the Master is. But it isn't good enough. You put yourself on the wrong side, you give people a wrong idea of yourself. You get disapproved of by all the stupid and ordinary people who don't know you. Your father will be in an awful state of mind. It's an experiment, I suppose? I imagine you thought you would like to see how it felt to be drunk? Well, living at close quarters like this, that sort of thing can't be done. And then you were rude to Gretton. What's the point of that? He is a very good fellow, minds his own business, doesn't interfere, and keeps things very straight here. That part of it seems to me simply ungentlemanly. And in any case, you have no business to hurt the people who care for you, even if you think they ought not to be distressed. I don't say it is immoral, but I say it is a low business from beginning to end."

Jack, who bore signs of his overnight experience, gave Howard a smile. "That's all right!" he said. "I don't object to that! You have rather taken the wind out of my sails. If you had said I was a sensual brute, I should have just laughed. It is such NONSENSE the way these men go on! Why I was lunching with Gretton the other day, and Corry told a story about Wordsworth as an undergraduate getting drunk in Milton's rooms at Christ's, and how proud the old man was of it to the end of his life. Gretton laughed, and thought it a joke; and then when one gets roaring drunk, they turn up their eyes and say it is unmanly and so on. Why can't they stick to one line? If you go to bump-suppers and dinners, and just manage to carry your liquor, they think you a good sort of fellow, with no sort of nonsense about you--'a little natural boyish excitement'--you know the sort of rot. One glass more, and you are among the sinners."

"I know," said Howard, "and I perceive that I have had the benefit of your thought-out oration after all!"

Jack smiled rather sheepishly, and then said, "Well, what's to be done? Am I to be sent down?"

"Not if you do the right thing," said Howard. "You must just go to Gretton and say you are very sorry you got drunk, and still more sorry you were impertinent. If you can contrive to show him that you think him a good fellow, and are really vexed to have been such a bounder, so much the better. That I leave to your natural eloquence. But you will be gated, and he will write to your father."

Jack whistled. "I say, can't you stop that?" he said. "Father will be fearfully upset."

"No, I can't," said Howard, "and I wouldn't if I could. This is the music, and you have got to face it."

"Very well," said Jack rather glumly, "I suppose I must pay the score. I'll go and grovel to Gretton. I was simply beastly to him. My frank nature expanded in his presence."

Howard laughed. "Well, be off with you!" he said. "And I will tell you what. I will write to your father, and tell him what I think."

"Then it will be all right," said Jack, greatly relieved. "Anything to stop the domestic howl. I'll write too. After all, it is rather convenient to have a cousin among the Dons; and, anyhow, you have had your innings now. I was a fool, I admit. It won't happen again."

Howard wrote at once to the Vicar, and was rewarded by a long and grateful letter. "It is a disreputable affair," he wrote, "and it has upset me very much, and Maud even more. But you have put it in the right light, and I am very grateful to you for your good offices. I couldn't have believed it of Jack, but I look back to dear old Pembroke, and I remember there was one occasion--but I need not revive ancient memories, and I am sufficiently versed in human nature not to waste indignation over a boyish escapade. I have ventured to address letters to Mr. Gretton and the Master on the subject, apologising for Jack's misdemeanour, and saying how much I appreciate the excellence of the tone that prevails in the College."

What, however, pleased Howard still more was that Gretton spoke to him after Hall and said, "I