The Youth of Parnassus and Other Stories Part 5

"What I call an all-round-man?" Ames looked bewildered.

"I mean," Waters continued, with desperate efforts to explain himself, "I mean the man who is rather good all round, rows, and that sort of thing. Perhaps he didn't get a First; didn't care much what he got, didn't approve of the system."

Ames seemed busy looking for his gla.s.ses.

"There are people who don't approve of the system," Waters went on. "I read an article once by someone, Professor something, not approving of examinations. I forget just who it was."

"Professor Freeman, perhaps?"

"Yes, that's it! Well now, a man like that, what is he going to do?"

Waters asked, with renewed confidence.

"But Professor Freeman is dead, you know."

"But,--but,--I'm not speaking of Professor Freeman."

"How would you like to be a solicitor?" Ames asked, putting on his gla.s.ses.

"A solicitor! oh, I shouldn't care for that," Waters promptly replied.

"You see it isn't the kind of work I like, and then the vacations are too short."

Ames said nothing. He was sitting unusually still, and his large gla.s.ses reflecting the light, resembled two enormous s.h.i.+ning oval eyes in the smoothness of his face. What he was really looking at Waters could not tell, and he grew more and more uncomfortable. At last, with diminished confidence, "There _are_ men who get on well at the Bar?" he said.

"There are."

"And if I were living in London I might do some writing? They do that, don't they?"

"They do." Then Ames sighed and shook his head. "I think you had better go home, Waters," he added; "I'm afraid there's nothing else. If you had spoken to me before, I should have told you this."

"Oh, good Lord, Mr. Ames, you don't mean there's nothing!" Waters sat up in his chair, with open mouth, staring at his tutor.

"Well, you know, I'm afraid there isn't."

"Oh but, Mr. Ames, there must be something!"

"Well you can try; but honestly, I think you had--if your father can have you--I think you had better go home."

Waters looked at him. "He knows I helped to paint his door red last week," the young man muttered to himself, "and now he's furious about it."

But the comfort of this ebbed away gradually, as Ames went on to describe the different professions, the struggle for success, the cruel compet.i.tion. Ames indeed seemed to have focussed himself, and instead of the vague astonished way in which he was wont to speak of practical affairs, he now showed a precision, and clearness, and knowledge of life that was really appalling. "I am sorry it is so, Waters," he ended. "We live pleasantly here, and we almost forget what the world outside is like."

"I do think some one might have told me, Mr. Ames; I do indeed." Waters could have cried with disappointment.

"You would never have believed it, Waters; we none of us can believe that the world doesn't need us. It's hard, but whether we live or die, the world doesn't care, can get on perfectly well without us. We each have to find it out for ourselves." He sighed as if he too had once known youth and hope, and the indifference of the world.

"But, Mr. Ames, I can't go home, indeed I can't. My other brother was going into the business, and I always told people,--and everybody supposed,--and to think that all my time here is wasted."

"Oh, not exactly wasted," Ames answered kindly. "It will always help you, to be an Oxford man, and you will be sure to find it pleasanter at home than you expected." Then beginning again to look at his papers, he added, more in his old distant way, "I'll see you again, I hope, before you go down. They'll miss you in College," he added politely, as Waters moved towards the door. "I'm sure the 'Torpid'--"

"I might be a solicitor, Mr. Ames," Waters said in a meek voice, as he stood disconsolately, his hand on the door-k.n.o.b.

"Well, talk it over with your father," Ames replied, without looking up.

"It takes time and money you know. You think he wouldn't mind?"

"Oh no, he won't mind," Waters said, although he knew his father would mind very much indeed.

He walked away slowly through the familiar quadrangle. His father!--how would he ever dare tell his father? But no, it couldn't be true that there was nothing for him, that n.o.body wanted him. He was well known in College, had played in the football team, and rowed in the "Torpid," and people liked him. Besides it was such a thing, they always said, to be an English gentleman; and then Oxford culture--and you read of the successful careers of rowing men, how they became Cabinet Ministers, and Bishops, and things. No, it couldn't be true....

"Poor Lo-Ben," he said, patting his dog tenderly, as he unchained him in the porch. "Poor old Lo-Ben, you'll stick to your master, won't you?"

The dog whined and licked the young man's hand, and they went out into the street together.

Well, they would live alone, he and Lo-Ben, and they would go out for lonely walks, after the long dreary days of work in his father's office.

And the people there would see him, and wonder about him; but he would always be distant, only coldly polite when they met. Sometimes his old College friends would come to stay in the neighbourhood; but they would not look him up: all his friends would forget him, though he would always remember them. And that afternoon they would all drive off without him, probably they would be really glad not to have him. And they would be perfectly happy; but he would never be happy again.

For no, it was not true, what Ames had said, about his getting to like it at home. He would always hate it, he told himself desperately; and life and everything was hateful; there was a chill in the suns.h.i.+ne, the streets seemed full of noise and work and ugly working people. What was the good of it? he wondered. And Ames said it was all like that. What was the good of it, he asked again, when he flung himself down into one of the great easy chairs in his lodgings. If you had to live in a dirty provincial town, and sit on a stool all day, what was the good? Of course some of the men at home seemed happy enough; they had their cricket on Sat.u.r.days and things; but then they weren't university men.

For himself, Waters decided, for the first time in his life considering in his concrete way the problem of existence, for himself it was all finished; there was nothing more in life which could give him pleasure.

The servant brought up luncheon. At first Waters thought he could eat nothing, and when he did begin in a melancholy way, he bitterly contrasted his lonely meal with the happy party in College. He felt an immense pity for himself; he would die young, he was sure; the life might even drive him to suicide--such things had happened.

After his luncheon and beer he lit his pipe. By this time Buller and Philpotts must have finished their luncheon too, and have started for the stables. They would wonder at first why he did not come, but they would not really care.

And now they must have started. He had done well not to go with them; he would not have enjoyed it, Waters a.s.sured himself, repeating the old phrases; he would never enjoy anything again. He looked at his watch furtively. What! they wouldn't start for three minutes yet. Then he had still just time enough to catch them. He seized his hat, and without waiting for a reason--he had no time to wait--he hurried out, Lo-Ben barking at his heels.

_The Claim of the Past_

They had all been to luncheon with Mr. Windus, and now, under his guidance, they started out to see the College, walking together across the quadrangle through the summer suns.h.i.+ne. Mr. Windus talked to Mrs.

Ellwood of Dalmouth, the Devons.h.i.+re town where she lived, and he had friends; the others were gossiping of the heat, the Oxford dances, while Ruth Ellwood and young Rutherford came last of all.

Rutherford too belonged to Dalmouth, was, indeed, a cousin of the Ellwoods--all the Dalmouth families were somehow related; but going away early to school, and afterwards to Oxford, he had come at last to seem more like a stranger to them than a friend or cousin. And this invitation to meet the Ellwoods he had accepted merely out of politeness; he was busy with his work, felt in no mood for the Oxford gaieties, and anyhow cared, or thought he cared, very little indeed for Dalmouth or the Dalmouth people.

But soon he had begun to listen with pleasure and interest to the home news, as his charming cousin told it.

"And so the town isn't much changed?" he asked; "and the different cousins, what has become of them all?"

With eager interest she went on telling him of all the old families, who lived in the different houses; how the young girls had grown up--there were so many pretty ones among the cousins!--and the young men had gone into the family offices. Some of them were married and settled down already.

"And Aunt Warner's house under the beeches, with its lawn, where we used to play, is it just the same?"

"Oh, yes, just the same, only the Bartons live there now--Uncle James's family; and on Thursdays we meet there--I mean the cousins' Tennis Club--and when it rains we dance in the old drawing room. But how shocked dear old Aunt Warner would have been to see us!" Then, as they went through the gateway into the College garden, she added, "I'm afraid all this gossip bores you; it's interesting for us who live at home, but for other people--"

"Oh, but I belong to Dalmouth!" he protested.

"Of course you do, only it's so long since you've been there," she said in half apology, "and we thought--I thought you didn't care."

It was indeed a long time, it was years since he had been there, he remembered with a certain regret for the preoccupation, the youthful intolerance, that had made him half despise his home. It was a charming place after all, the grey seaport town with its wharves, and s.h.i.+pping, and narrow streets, and the pleasant homes and gardens just outside where his cousins and uncles, the merchants, lived--where as a boy he had lived. How well he remembered watching, on summer afternoons, the white sails of the family s.h.i.+ps, as they floated up with the tide past the green lawns and square old houses. A pleasant life it must be there, he thought, and quite untroubled in its tranquil interests by any great ambitions or ideas--the echoes of which, indeed, could hardly reach them in their quiet old corner of the world.