Part 4 (2/2)
John laughed, and was about to reply, when the clanging of the college bell was heard.
”I am afraid that is dinner-time.”
”Afraid, I am delighted; you don't suppose that every one can live, chameleon-like, on air, or worse still, on false quant.i.ties. Ha, ha, ha!
And those pictures too. That snow is more violet than white.”
When dinner was over, John and Mr Hare walked out on the terrace. The carriage waited in the wet in front of the great oak portal; the grey, stormy evening descended on the high roofs, smearing the red out of the walls and b.u.t.tresses, and melancholy and tall the red college seemed amid its dwarf plantation, now filled with night wind and drifting leaves. Shadow and mist had floated out of the shallows above the crests of the valley, and the lamps of the farm-houses gleamed into a pale existence.
”And now tell me what I am to say to your mother. Will you come home for Christmas?”
”I suppose I must. I suppose it would seem so unkind if I didn't. I cannot account even to myself for my dislike to the place. I cannot think of it without a revulsion of feeling that is strangely personal.”
”I won't argue that point with you, but I think you ought to come home.”
”Why? Why ought I to come to Suss.e.x, and marry my neighbour's daughter?”
”There is no reason that you should marry your neighbour's daughter, but I take it that you do not propose to pa.s.s your life here.”
”For the present I am concerned mainly with the problem of how I may make advances, how I may meet life, as it were, half-way; for if possible I would not quite lose touch of the world. I would love to live in its shadow, a spectator whose duty it is to watch and encourage, and pity the hurrying throng on the stage. The church would approve this att.i.tude, whereas hate and loathing of humanity are not to be justified.
But I can do nothing to hurry the state of feeling I desire, except of course to pray. I have pa.s.sed through some terrible moments of despair and gloom, but these are now wearing themselves away, and I am feeling more at rest.”
Then, as if from a sudden fear of ridicule, John said, laughing: ”Besides, looking at the question from a purely practical side, it must be hardly wise for me to return to society for the present. I like neither fox-hunting, marriage, Robert Louis Stevenson's stories, nor Sir Frederick Leighton's pictures; I prefer monkish Latin to Virgil, and I adore Degas, Monet, Manet, and Renoir, and since this is so, and alas, I am afraid irrevocably so, do you not think that I should do well to keep outside a world in which I should be the only wrong and vicious being?
Why spoil that charming thing called society by my unlovely presence?
”Selfishness! I know what you are going to say--here is my answer. I a.s.sure you I administer to the best of my ability the fortune G.o.d gave me--I spare myself no trouble. I know the financial position of every farmer on my estate, the property does not owe fifty pounds;--I keep the tenants up to the mark; I do not approve of waste and idleness, but when a little help is wanted I am ready to give it. And then, well, I don't mind telling you, but it must not go any further. I have made a will leaving something to all my tenants; I give away a fixed amount in charity yearly.”
”I know, my dear John, I know your life is not a dissolute one; but your mother is very anxious, remember you are the last. Is there no chance of your ever marrying?”
”I don't think I could live with a woman; there is something very degrading, something very gross in such relations. There is a better and a purer life to lead ... an inner life, coloured and permeated with feelings and tones that are, oh, how intensely our own, and he who may have this life, shrinks from any advent.i.tious presence that might jar or destroy it. To keep oneself unspotted, to feel conscious of no sense of stain, to know, yes, to hear the heart repeat that this self--hands, face, mouth and skin--is free from all befouling touch, is all one's own. I have always been strongly attracted to the colour white, and I can so well and so acutely understand the legend that tells that the ermine dies of gentle loathing of its own self, should a stain come upon its immaculate fur.... I should not say a legend, for that implies that the story is untrue, and it is not untrue--so beautiful a thought could not be untrue.”
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Qui Romam regis.]
CHAPTER III.
”Urns on corner walls, pilasters, circular windows, flowerage and loggia. What horrible taste, and quite out of keeping with the landscape!” He rang the bell.
”How do you do, Master John!” cried the tottering old butler who had known him since babyhood. ”Very glad, indeed, we all are to see you home again, sir!”
Neither the appellation of Master John, nor the sight of the four paintings, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, which decorated the walls of the pa.s.sage, found favour with John, and the effusiveness of Mrs Norton, who rushed out of the drawing-room, followed by Kitty, and embraced her son, at once set on edge all his curious antipathies. Why this kissing, this approachment of flesh? Of course she was his mother.... Then this smiling girl in the background! He would have to amuse her and talk to her; what infinite boredom it would be! He trusted fervently that her visit would not be a long one.
Then through what seemed to him the pollution of triumph, he was led into the library; and he noticed, notwithstanding the presiding busts of Shakespeare and Milton, that there was but one wretched stand full of books in the room, and that in the gloom of a far corner. His mother sat down, and there was a resoluteness in her look and att.i.tude that seemed to proclaim, ”Now I hold you captive;” but she said:
”I was very much alarmed, my dear John, about your not sleeping. Mr Hare told me you said that you went two and three nights without closing your eyes, and that you had to have recourse to sleeping draughts.”
”Not at all, mother, I never took a sleeping draught but twice in my life.”
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