"That has never left me. You will ask why I have not done more, bestirred myself more; because that is just what one cannot do. All that matters nothing. The activities which one makes for oneself, they are the delusions which hide G.o.d from us. One must not strive or rebuke or arrange; one must simply love and be. Let me tell you one thing. I was haunted all my early life with a fear of death. I liked life so well, every moment of it, every incident, that I could not bear to think it should ever cease; now, though I shrink from pain as much as ever, I have no shrinking whatever from death. It is the perfectly natural and simple change, and one is with G.o.d there as here. The soul and G.o.d--those are the two imperishable things; one has not either to know or to act--one has only to feel."
She ceased speaking, and sat for a moment upright in her chair. Then she went on. "Now the moment I saw you, my dear boy, I loved you--indeed I have always loved you, I think, and I have always felt that some day in His good time G.o.d would bring us together. But I see too that you have not found the strength of G.o.d. You are not at peace.
Your life is full and active and kind; you are faithful and pure; but your self is still unbroken, like a crystal wall all round you. I think you will have to suffer; but you will believe, will you not, that you have not seen a half of the wonder of life? You are full of happy experience, but you have begun to feel the larger need. And I knew that when you began to feel that need, you would be brought to me, not to be given it, but to be shown it. That is all I can say to you now, but you will know the fulness of life. It is not experience, action, curiosity, ambition, desire, as many think, that is fulness of life; those are delusions, things through which the soul has to pa.s.s, just that it may learn not to rest in them. The fulness of life is the stillest, quietest, inner joy, which nothing can trouble or shadow; love is a part of it, but not quite all--for there is a shadow even in love; and this is the larger peace."
Howard sat amazed at the fire and glow of the words that came to him.
He did not fully understand all that was said, but he had a sense of being brought into touch with a very tremendous and overwhelming force indeed. But he could not for the moment revise his impressions; he only perceived that he had come unexpectedly upon a calm and radiating centre of energy, and it seemed in his mind that the pool which he had seen that morning was an allegory of what he had now heard. The living water, breaking up so clearly from underground in the gra.s.sy valley, and pa.s.sing downwards to gladden the earth! It would be used, be tainted, be troubled, but he saw that no soil or stain, no scattering or disruption, could ever really intrude itself into that elemental purity. The stream would reunite itself, the impregnable atom would let the staining substance fall unheeded. He would have to consider all that, scrutinise his life in a new light. He felt that he had been living on the surface of things, relying on impression, living in impression, missing the strong central current all the time. He rose, and taking his aunt"s hand, kissed her cheek.
"Those are my thanks!" he said smiling. "I can"t express my grat.i.tude, but you have given me so much to think about and to ponder over that I can say no more now. I do indeed feel that I have missed what is perhaps the greatest thing in the world. But I ask myself, Can I attain to this, is it for me? Am I not condemned by temperament to live in the surface-values?"
"No, dear child," said Mrs. Graves, looking at him, so that for an instant he felt like a child indeed at a mother"s knee; "we all come home thus, sooner or later; and the time has come for you. I knew it the moment I opened your letter. He is at the gate, I said, and I may have the joy of being beside him when the door is opened."
V
ON THE DOWN
Howard was very singularly impressed by this talk. It seemed to him, not certainly indeed, but possibly, that he had stumbled, almost as it were by accident, upon a great current of force and emotion running vehemently through the world, under the calm surface of things. How many apparently unaccountable events it might explain! one saw frail people doing fine things, sensitive people bearing burdens of ill-health or disappointment, placidly and even contentedly, men making gallant, unexpected choices, big expansive natures doing dull work and living cheerfully under cramped conditions. He had never troubled to explain such phenomena, beyond thinking that for some reason such a course of action pleased and satisfied people. Of course everyone did not hide the struggle; there were men he knew who had a grievance against the world, for ever parading a valuation of themselves with which no one concurred. But there were many people who had the material for far worse grievances, who never seemed to nourish them. Had they fought in secret and prevailed? Had they been floated into some moving current of strength by a rising tide? Were they, like the man in the Gospel, conscious of a treasure hidden in a field which made all other prizes tame by comparison? Was the Gospel in fact perhaps aiming at that--the pearl of price? To be born again--was that what had happened?
The thought cast a light upon his own serene life, and showed him that it was essentially a pagan sort of life, temperate perhaps and refined, but still unlit by any secret fire. It was not that his life was wrong, or that an abjuration was needed; it was still to be lived, and lived more intently, but no longer merely self-propelled. . . .
He needed to be alone, to consider, to focus his thought; he went off for a walk by himself among the hills, past the spring, up the valley, till he came to a place where the down ran out into the plain, the bluff crowned with a great earthwork. An enormous view lay spread out before him. To left and right the smooth elbows of the uplands ran down into the plain, their skirts clothed with climbing woods and orchards, hamlets half-hidden, with the smoke going up from their chimneys; further out the cultivated plain rose and fell, field beyond field, wood beyond wood, merging at last in a belt of deep rich colour, and beyond that, blue hills of hope and desire, and a pale gleam of sea beyond all. The westering sun filled the air with a golden haze, and enriched the land with soft rich shadows. There was life spread out before him, just so and not otherwise, life organised and constructed into toil and a certain order, out of what dim concourse and strife!
For whatever reason, it was there to be lived; one could not change the conditions of it, the sun and the rain, the winter and the spring; but behind all that definite set of forces, was there perhaps a stronger and larger force still, a br.i.m.m.i.n.g tide of energy, that clasped life close and loved it, and yet regarded something through it and beyond it that was not yet? His heart seemed full of a great longing, not to avoid life, but to return and live it in a larger way, at once more engaged in it, and more detached from it, each quality ministering to the other. It seemed to him that afternoon that there was something awaiting him greater than anything which had yet befallen him--an open door, through which he might pa.s.s to see strange things.
VI
THE HOME CIRCLE
He returned somewhat late, to find tea over and Mrs. Graves gone to her room; but there was tea waiting for him in the library; he went there, and for a while turned over his book, which seemed to him now to be illumined with a new light. It was this that he had been looking for, this gift of power; it was that which lay behind his speculations; he had suspected it, inferred it, but not perceived it; he saw now whither his thought had been conducting him, and why he had flagged in the pursuit.
He went up to dress for dinner, and came down as soon as the bell rang.
He found that Jack"s father and sister had arrived. He went into the dimly lighted room. Mr. Sandys, a fine-looking robust man, clean-shaven, curly-haired, carefully and clerically dressed, was standing by Mrs. Graves; he came forward and shook hands. "I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Kennedy," he said, "though indeed I seem to know a great deal about you from Jack. You are quite a hero of his, you know, and I want to thank you for all your kindness to him. I am looking forward to having a good talk with you about his future. By the way, here is my daughter, Maud, who is quite as anxious to see you as I am." A figure sitting in a corner, talking to Miss Merry, rose up, came forward into the light, and held out her hand with rather a shy smile.
Howard was amazed at what he saw. Maud had an extraordinary likeness to her brother, but with what a difference! Howard saw in an instant what it was that had haunted him in the aspect of Jack. This was what he seemed to have discerned all the time, and what had been baffling him.
He knew that she was nineteen, but she looked younger. She was not, he thought, exactly beautiful--but how much more than beautiful; she was very finely and delicately made, and moved with an extraordinary grace; pale and fair, but with a look of perfect health; her features were very small, and softly rather than finely moulded; she had the air of some flower--a lily he thought--which was emphasised by her simple white dress. The under-lip was a little drawn in, which gave the least touch of melancholy to the face; but she had clear blue trustful eyes, the expression of which moved him in a very singular manner, because they seemed to offer a sweet and frank confidence. Her self-possession gave the least little sense of effort. He took the small firm and delicate hand in his, and was conscious of something strong and resolute in the grasp of the tiny fingers. She murmured something about Jack being so sorry to be away; and Howard to recover himself said: "Yes, he wrote to me to explain--we are going to do some work together, I believe."
"Yes, it"s most kind of you," said Mr. Sandys, putting his arm within his daughter"s with a pleasant air of fatherliness. "I am afraid industry isn"t Jack"s strong point? Of course I am anxious about his future--you must be used to that sort of thing! but we will defer all this until after dinner, when Mrs. Graves will allow us to have a good talk."
"We will see," said Mrs. Graves, rising; "Howard is here for a holiday, you know. Howard, will you lead the way; you don"t know how my ceremonial soul enjoys having a real host to preside!"
Maud took Howard"s arm, and the touch gave him a quite unreasonable thrill of pleasure; but he felt too quite insupportably elderly. What could he find to talk to this enchanting child about? He wished he had learned more about her tastes and ideas. Was this the creature of whom Jack had talked so patronisingly? He felt almost angry with his absent pupil for not having prepared him for what he would meet.
As soon as they were seated Mr. Sandys launched into the talk, like an eagle dallying with the wind. He struck Howard as an extremely good-natured, sensible, buoyant man, with a perpetual flow of healthy interests. Nothing that he said had the slightest distinction, and his power of expression was quite unequal to the evident vividness of his impressions. He had a taste for ant.i.thesis, but no grasp of synonyms.
Every idea in Mr. Sandys" mind fell into halves, but the second clause was produced, not to express any new thought, but rather to echo the previous clause. He began at once on University topics. He had himself been a Pembroke man, and it had cost him an effort, he said, to send Jack elsewhere. "I don"t take quite the orthodox view of education," he said, "in fact I am decidedly heterodox about its aims and the object that it has. It ought not to fall behind its object, and all this specialisation seems to me to be dangerous, and in fact decidedly perilous. My own education was on the old cla.s.sical lines--an excellent gymnastic, I think, and distinctly fortifying. The old masterpieces, you know, Thucydides and so forth--they should be the basis--the foundation so to speak. But we must not forget the superstructure, the house of thought, if I may use the expression. You must forgive my ventilating these crude ideas, Mr. Kennedy. I went in myself, after taking my degree, for a course of general reading. Goethe and Schiller, you know. Yes, how fine that all is, though I sometimes feel it is a little Teutonic? One needs to correct the Teutonic bias, and it is just there that the gymnastic of the cla.s.sics comes in; it gives one a standard--a criterion in fact. One must have a criterion, mustn"t one, or it is all loose, and indeed, so to speak, illusive? I am all for formative education; and it is there that women--I speak frankly in the presence of three intelligent women--it is there that they suffer.
Their education is not formative enough--not formal enough, in fact!
Now, I have tried with dear Maud to communicate just that touch of formality. You would be surprised, Mr. Kennedy, to know what Maud has read under my guidance. Not learned, you know--I don"t care for that--but with a standard, or if I may revert to my former expression, a criterion."
He paused for a moment, saw that he was belated, and finished his soup hastily.
"Yes," said Howard, "of course that is the real problem of education--to give a standard, and not to extinguish the taste for intellectual things, which is too often what we contrive to do."
"Now we must not be too serious all at once," said Mrs. Graves. "If we exhaust ourselves about education, we shall have nothing to fall back upon--we shall be afraid to condescend. I am deplorably ill-educated myself. I have no standard whatever. I have to consult dear Jane, have I not? Jane is my intellectual touchstone, and saves me from entire collapse."
"Well, well," said Mr. Sandys good-humouredly, "Mr. Kennedy and I will fight it out together sometime. He will forgive an old Pembroke man for wanting to know what is going forward; for scenting the battle afar off, in fact."
Mr. Sandys found no lack of subjects to descant upon; but voluble, and indeed absurd as he was, Howard could not help liking him; he was a good fellow, he could see, and managed to diffuse a geniality over the scene. "I am interested in most things," he said, at the end of a breathless harangue, "and there is something in the presence of a real live student, from the forefront of the intellectual battle, which rouses all my old activities--stimulates them, in fact. This will be a memorable evening for me, Mr. Kennedy, and I have abundance of things to ask you." He did indeed ask a good many things, but he was content to answer them himself. Once indeed, in the course of an immense tirade, in which Mr. Sandys" intellectual curiosity took a series of ever-widening sweeps, Howard caught his neighbour regarding him with a half-amused look, and became aware that she was wondering if he were playing Jack"s game. Their eyes met, and he knew that she knew that he knew. He smiled and shook his head. She gave him a delighted little smile, and Howard had that touch of absurd ecstasy, which visits men no longer young, when they find themselves still in the friendly camp of the young, and not in the hostile camp of the middle-aged.
Presently he said to her something about Jack, and how much he enjoyed seeing him at Cambridge. "He is really rather a wonderful person," he added. "There isn"t anyone at Beaufort who has such a perfectly defined relation to everyone in the college, from the master down to the kitchen-boys. He talks to everyone without any embarra.s.sment, and yet no one really knows what he is thinking! He is very deep, really, and I think he has a fine future before him."
Maud lighted up at this, and said: "Do you really think so?" and added, "You know how much he admires you?"
"I am glad to be a.s.sured of it," said Howard; "you would hardly guess it from some of the things he says to me. It"s awful, but he can"t be checked--and yet he never oversteps the line, somehow."
"He"s a queer boy," said Maud. "The way he talked to the Archdeacon the other day was simply fearful; but the Archdeacon only laughed, and said to papa afterwards that he envied him his son. The Archdeacon was giggling half the afternoon; he felt quite youthful, he said."
"It"s the greatest gift to be able to do that," said Howard; "it"s a sort of fairy wand--the pumpkin becomes a coach and four."
"Jack"s right ear must be burning, I think," said Maud, "and yet he never seems to want to know what anyone thinks about him."
That was all the talk that Howard had with her at dinner. After the ladies had gone, Mr. Sandys became very confidential about Jack"s prospects.
"I look upon you as a sort of relation, you see," he said, "in fact I shall make bold to drop the Mr. and I hope you will do the same? May we indeed take a bold step into intimacy and be "Howard" and "Frank"
henceforth? I can"t, of course, leave Jack a fortune, but when I die the two dear children will be pretty well off--I may say that. What do you think he had better go in for? I should like him to take holy orders, but I don"t press it. It brings one into touch with human beings, and I like that. I find human beings very interesting--I am not afraid of responsibility."
Howard said that he did not think Jack inclined to orders.
"Then I put that aside," cried the good-natured Mr. Sandys. "No compulsion for me--the children may do as they like, live as they like, marry whom they like. I don"t believe in checking human nature. Of course if Jack could get a Fellowship, I should like him to settle down at Cambridge. There"s a life for you! In the forefront of the intellectual battle! It is what I should have liked myself, of all things. To hear what is going on in the intellectual line, to ventilate ideas, to write, to teach--that"s a fine life--to be able to hold one"s own in talk and discussion--that"s where we country people fail. I have plenty of ideas, you know, myself, but I can"t put them into shape, into form, so to speak."
"I think Jack would rather like a commercial career," said Howard.
"It"s the only thing he has ever mentioned; and I am sure he might do well if he could get an opening; he likes real things, he says."
"He does!" said Mr. Sandys enthusiastically--"that"s what he always says. Do you know, if you won"t think me very vain, Howard, I believe he gets that from me. Maud is different--she takes after her dear mother--whose loss was so irreparable a calamity--my dear wife was full of imagination; it was a beautiful mind. I will show you some of her sketches when you come to see us--I am looking forward to that--not much technique, perhaps, but a real instinct for beauty; to be just, a little lacking in form, but full of feeling. Well, Jack, as I was saying, likes reality. So do I! A firm hold on reality--that"s the best thing; I was not intellectual enough for the life of thought, and I fell back on humanity--vastly engrossing! I a.s.sure you, though you would hardly think it, that even these simple people down here are most interesting: no two of them alike. My old friends say to me sometimes that I must find country people very dull, but I always say, "No two of them alike!" Of course I try to keep my intellectual tastes alive--they are only tastes, of course, not faculties, like yours--but we read and talk and ventilate our ideas, Maud and I; and when we are tired of books, why I fall back on the great book of humanity. We don"t stagnate--at least I hope not--I have a horror of stagnation. I said so to the Archdeacon the other day, and he said that there was nothing stagnant about Windlow."
"No, I am quite sure there is not," said Howard politely.
"It"s very good of you to say so, Howard," said Mr. Sandys delightedly.
"Really quite a compliment! And I a.s.sure you, you don"t know what a pleasure it is to have a talk like this with a man like yourself, so well-read, so full of ideas. I envy Jack his privileges. I do indeed.
Now dear old Pembroke was not like that in my days. There was no one I could talk to, as Jack tells me he talks to you. A man like yourself is a vast improvement on the old type of don, if I may say so. I"m very free, you see! And so you think Jack might do well in commerce? Well, I quite approve. All I want is that he should not be out of touch with human beings. I"m not a metaphysician, but it seems to me that that is what we are here for--touch with humanity--of course on Church of England lines. I"m tolerant, I hope, and can see the good side of other creeds; but give me something comprehensive, and that is the glory of our English Church. Well, you have given me a lot to think of, Howard; I must just take it all away and think it over. It"s well to do that, I think? Not to be in a hurry, try to see all round a question? That is my line always!"
They walked into the drawing-room together; and Howard felt curiously drawn to the warm-hearted and voluble man. Perhaps it was for the sake of his children, he thought. There must be something fine about a man who had brought up two such children--but that was not all; the Vicar was enthusiastic; he revelled in life, he adored life; and Howard felt that there was a real fund of sense and even judgment somewhere, behind the spray of the cataract. He was a man whom one could trust, he believed, and whom it was impossible not to like.
When they reached the drawing-room, Mrs. Graves called the Vicar into a corner, and began to talk to him about someone in the village; Howard heard his talk plunge steadily into the silence. Miss Merry flitted about, played a few pieces of music; and Howard found himself left to Maud. He went and sate down beside her. In the dim light the girl sate forward in a big arm-chair; there was nothing languorous or listless about her. She seemed all alert in a quiet way. She greeted him with a smile, and sate turned towards him, her chin on her hand, her eyes upon him. Her shining hair fell over the curves of her young and pure neck.
She was holding a flower, which Mrs. Graves had given her, in her other hand, and its fragrance exhaled all about her. Once or twice she checked him with a little gesture of her hand, when Miss Merry began to play, and he could see that she was much affected by the music.