The Youth of Parnassus and Other Stories Part 11

"Yes," Craik said, smiling, "wasn't it silly?"

They walked with slow steps around the shadowed cloisters, and Miss Lamb talked idly of the party. It was such a pretty party, so amusing. Did he often go to garden parties? No! How odd! She did--to ever so many, in America, in London, and now in Oxford. The Oxford parties were the best though. Then suddenly she cried in a changed voice, "But how frivolous I am, Mr. Craik! I can see that you are quite shocked."

"Shocked! oh no, not at all."

"Well, then, you ought to be! Imagine being so frivolous in a solemn place like this. Tell me, you study philosophy, don't you? It must be splendid; I do envy you so! When I am in a place like Oxford I feel so frivolous, somehow, and ignorant. Why, I feel afraid--" Then after a moment's charming hesitation, "Yes, quite afraid to talk to clever people. You mustn't mind what I say, will you?"

"But I'm not clever!" he exclaimed. "Why--"

"Oh, but Mr. Craik! Why, you've written a book!"

"But that's nothing. And it's only a sort of study, nothing really."

"I wish I could read it."

"Oh no! don't try; it's a stupid thing, only meant for students."

Miss Lamb paused, and, turning her eyes to Craik with a look full of reproach, she said: "Ah! you are like the others, you don't think I am serious; you think I would not understand it!"

"Oh no, not that!" Craik urged in quick distress. "You would understand it, of course, what there is to understand. I only meant," he stammered, "I only meant that it was not well written, not interesting--not really worth reading, I mean."

"Oh, I'm sure it is worth reading, and I hear it's so clever. It is about Asia Minor, isn't it. Asia Minor is so interesting; I wish you would tell me something about it, and about your work. Do you like it here? Of course you do. Have you been in Oxford long?"

For a third time they pa.s.sed round the cloister square, loitering with slow footsteps, through the old arches and past the epitaphs of the ancient celibate Fellows, and Craik, talking with an unreserve that was intimate and sudden, and yet somehow seemed quite natural to him, told about his work, and the writing of his book. Then, in answer to a question of Miss Lamb's, he described his quiet bringing up in an obsolete old town where his parents were tradespeople; his early schooling, how he had come to Oxford on a scholars.h.i.+p, and how he had stayed there ever since, living in the same College, his parents having died, and the Logic tutors.h.i.+p being offered to him just when he had taken his degree. So he seemed to have lived a long while there, in that sleepy old College, within its high walls and buildings: as an undergraduate first, busy and almost solitary, save for a few friends similar to himself; then as a tutor, still more busy with his work, and still more solitary; and above all, during the last few years, when all his thought and leisure had been given to his book on Ionic philosophers. How many years was it altogether? Eight; no, ten. And then, as she seemed to be really interested, he gave a sketch, half humorous and half serious, of his life in College, his amus.e.m.e.nts, his walks with Ranken. A bare, monastic life it seemed to himself when he came to describe it. So little to tell of in so many years; and how long ago it seemed!

"But dear me!" Craik exclaimed at last, with a blush, "I don't think I have ever talked so much of myself before. It sounds rather dull, I'm afraid."

Miss Lamb stopped for a moment.

"Dull, Mr. Craik," she cried, "oh no, I think it is n.o.ble! To have achieved so much already. You don't know how I have been interested!

Only it is so--I mean it makes me seem so--so--. I suppose you hate women."

"Oh no--_no_!"

"I mean look down on them, despise them."

"No! why I--"

"I'm afraid you really do, only you're too polite to say so. You don't think, do you, that they could understand philosophy?"

"Of course they could, quite as well as we do, if they would only try."

"Do you think it would be any use my trying? Really, do you really? I should so love to, if it would be of any use. You know, I have always wanted to understand about it, and there is hardly anyone in the world I admire so much as the philosophers. They are the real leaders of the world--Socrates, and Emerson, and Herbert Spencer. And a frivolous life like mine seems sometimes so--; But then people will never believe I am in earnest, and they all make fun of me and discourage me so. Perhaps they are right; but I have never had any one to help me."

"Oh, I am sure they are wrong!" Craik cried. "If you would only try. Do you think I could--could help you?"

"Oh, you are too kind! And perhaps, if you wouldn't mind coming to see me some afternoon to talk to me about it. And maybe you would bring your book; I should so love to see it! And then if you would let me look at one or two of your lectures, those you have for just the stupidest of your pupils. No! don't tell me I'm not stupid, for I am, I a.s.sure you.

And I have no right to ask you to come; you are so busy."

"Oh, but I should be only too delighted! If I may; if you don't think I should be a--with ladies, you know, I am always so afraid of being a bore."

She smiled at him.

"Ah, you do yourself injustice, Mr. Craik. Indeed you do! But come," she added suddenly, "we must be going back to the garden. How I hate to leave this dear old cloister!"

"Must we really go?"

"Yes, we really must. Isn't it horrid, when you have had such an interesting talk, to have to go back and say stupid and silly things to stupid and silly people?"

They left the cloisters and, crossing the quadrangle, they stopped for a moment, and looked at the blue picture set in an archway of grey walls, the blue picture of the afternoon light and air in the depth and distance of the garden.

"How pretty! It's like,--what is it like?"

"Like standing in the past, and looking into the present?" Craik romantically suggested.

"Yes, it's like that. But I mean the people, the way they look so far off and blue, as if they were under water. There's something else it reminds me of."

"A tank at an aquarium, when you look through the plate gla.s.s?"

"Yes, it _is_ like that, really!"

"With Professors and Heads of Houses swimming about like old fat carp."

"Oh, Mr. Craik, how can you? For shame!"

She paused again when she got through the archway.

"Tell me, Mr. Craik," she said, "is this the tower you live in? And the gargoyle you told me about? I should so like to see him. He must be charming. That face up there, peering over the roof? Oh yes, I see. How too delightful! My! isn't that quaint? Just think, he looks back on the past, and on the present, and on the town; and it symbolizes--symbolizes--Life, doesn't it?"

"Yes,--perhaps it does," Craik said rather dubiously.

"He hasn't exactly a kind expression," said Miss Lamb, looking up again.

"No," Craik answered, looking up himself and laughing. "That's his way.

Then to-day he's shocked at seeing so many ladies here. He doesn't like ladies, you know."

"How horrid of him! Why, what harm can we do here?"

"Harm! Why, Miss Lamb," Craik said with quaint politeness, "your visits are our greatest blessings!"

Craik knew the old garden well, he thought, and he had certainly been in it in all weathers. But to-day it came over him that he had never seen the place before looking so oddly green and s.h.i.+ning. Certainly, when he and Ranken had walked there--poor Ranken! Craik smiled a little.

"What are you smiling at?" Miss Lamb asked.

"Smiling?" Craik said in embarra.s.sment. "Why, was I smiling?"

"Certainly you were. It is strange, really it is, how much you are like a friend of mine in America. The way you smile reminds me so much of him. Really it is quite funny, the resemblance. But perhaps you don't like to be told you look like other people?"