Delphi Collected Works of Grant Allen Page 9

  The old shoemaker laughed aloud. ‘Oh no, Artie, my boy,’ he said cheerily, shaking his head with a continuous series of merry chuckles. ‘It won’t do at all, it won’t do, I assure you. I may be a terrible free-thinker and all that kind of thing, as the neighbours say I am — poor bodies, they never read a word of modern criticism in their lives, heaven bless ’em — stragglers from the march of intellect, mere stragglers — but I’ve too much respect for the cloth to bring a curate of St. Fredegond’s into such disgrace as that would mean for you, Artie. You shan’t have your career at Oxford spoiled by its being said of you that your father was a working shoemaker. What with the ready-closed uppers, and what with your ten shillings a week, and what with all the presents you give me, and what with the hire of the piano, I’m as comfortable as ever I want to be, growing into a gentleman in my old age, Artie, and I even begin to have my doubts as to whether it’s quite consistent in me as a good Radical to continue my own acquaintance with myself — I’m getting to be such a regular idle do-nothing aristocrat! Go to Oxford and mend shoes, indeed, with you living there as a full-fledged parson in your own rooms at Magdalen! No, no, I won’t hear of it. I’ll come up for a day or two in long vacation, my boy, as I’ve always done hitherto, and take a room in Holywell, and look in upon you a bit, accidentally, so as not to shame you before the scouts (who are a servile set of flunkeys, incapable of understanding the elevated feelings of a journeyman shoemaker); but I wouldn’t dream of going to live in the place, any more than I’d dream of asking to be presented at court on the occasion of my receiving a commission for a pair of evening shoes for the Queen’s head footman.’

  ‘Father,’ said Arthur, smiling, ‘you’re absolutely incorrigible. Such a dreadful old rebel against all constituted authority, human and divine, I never did meet in the course of my existence, I believe you’re really capable of arguing a point of theology against an archbishop. But I don’t want you to come up to Oxford as a shoemaker; I mean you to come up and live with me in rooms of our own, out of college. Whenever I think of you, dear Father — you, who are so infinitely nobler, and better, and truer, and more really a gentleman than any other than I ever knew in my life — whenever I think of you, coming secretly up to Oxford as if you were ashamed of yourself, and visiting your own son by stealth in his rooms in college as if you were a dun coming to ask him for money, instead of the person whom he delights to honour — whenever I think of it, Father, it makes my cheeks burn with shame, and I loathe myself for ever allowing you so to bemean your own frank, true, noble nature. I oughtn’t to permit it, Father, I oughtn’t to permit it; and I won’t permit it any longer.’

  ‘Well, you never would have permitted it, Artie, if I hadn’t compelled you; for I’ve got all the prudence and common sense of the family bottled up here in my own forehead,’ said the old man, tapping his bulging brow significantly. ‘I don’t deny that Oxford may be an excellent school for Greek and Latin, and philosophy, and so forth; but if you want prudence and sagacity and common-sense it’s a well-known fact that there’s nothing like the practice of making ready-closed uppers, sir, to develop ’em. If I’d taken your advice, my boy, I’d have come up to visit you when you were an undergraduate, and ruined your prospects at the very outset. No, no, Artie, I shall stop here, and stick to my last, my dear boy, stick to my last, to the end of all things.’

  ‘You shall do nothing of the sort, Daddy; that I’m determined upon,’ Arthur cried vehemently. ‘I’m not going to let you do any more shoemaking. The time has come when you must retire, and devote all your undivided energies to the constant study of modern criticism. Whether you come to Oxford or stop in London, I’ve made up my mind that you shan’t do another stroke of work as long as you live. Look here, dear old Daddy, I’m getting to be a perfect millionaire, I assure you. Do you see this fiver? well, I got that for knocking out that last trashy little song for Fradelli; and it cost me no more trouble to compose it than to sit down and write the score out on a sheet of ruled paper. I’m as rich as Croesus — made a hundred and eighty pounds last year, and expect to make over two hundred this one. Now, if a man with that perfectly prodigious fortune can’t afford to keep his own father in comfort and affluence, what an absolute Sybarite and gourmand of a fellow he must be himself.’

  ‘It’s a lot of money, certainly, Artie,’ said the old shoemaker, turning it over thoughtfully: ‘two hundred pounds is a lot of money; but I doubt very much whether it’s more than enough to keep you up to the standard of your own society, up there at Oxford. As John Stuart Mill says, these things are all comparative to the standard of comfort of your class. Now, Artie, I believe you have to stint yourself of things that everybody else about you has at Oxford, to keep me in luxuries I was never used to.’

  ‘My dear Dad, it’s only of the nature of a repayment,’ cried Arthur, earnestly. ‘You slaved and sacrificed and denied yourself when I was a boy to send me to school, without which I would never have got to Oxford at all; and you taught me music in your spare hours (when you had any); and I owe everything I have or am or ever will be to your unceasing and indefatigable kindness. So now you’ve got to take repayment whether you will or not, for I insist upon it. And if you won’t come up to Oxford, which perhaps would be an uncongenial place for you in many ways, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Daddy; I’ll look out for a curacy somewhere in London, and we’ll take a little house together, and I’ll furnish it nicely, and there we shall live, sir, whatever you say, so not another word about it. And now I want you to listen to the very best thing I’ve ever composed, and tell me what you think of it.’

  He sat down to the little hired cottage piano that occupied the corner of the neat small room, and began to run his deft fingers lightly over the keys. It was the Butterfly fantasia. The father sat back in his red easy-chair, listening with all his ears, first critically, then admiringly, at last enthusiastically. As Arthur’s closing notes died away softly towards the end, the old shoemaker’s delight could be restrained no longer. ‘Artie,’ he cried, gloating over it, ‘that’s music! That’s real music! You’re quite right, my boy; that’s far and away the best thing you’ve ever written. It’s exquisite — so light, so airy, so unearthlike. But, Artie, there’s more than that in it. There’s soul in it; and I know what it means. You don’t deceive your poor old Progenitor in a matter of musical inspiration, I can tell you. I know where you got that fantasia from as well as if I’d seen you getting it. You got it out of your own heart, my boy, out of your own heart. And the thing it says to me as plain as language is just this — you’re in love! You’re in love, Artie, and there’s no good denying it. If any man ever wrote that fantasia without being in love at the time — first love — ecstasy — tremor — tiptoe of expectation — why, then, I tell you, music hasn’t got such a thing as a tongue or a meaning in it.’

  Arthur looked at him gently and smiled, but said nothing.

  ‘Will you tell me about her, Artie?’ asked the old man, caressingly, laying his hand upon his son’s arm.

  ‘Not now, Father; not just now, please. Some other time, perhaps, but not now. I hardly know about it myself, yet. It may be something — it may be nothing; but, at any rate, it was peg enough to hang a fantasia upon. You’ve surprised my little secret, Father, and I dare say it’s no real secret at all, but just a passing whiff of fancy. If it ever comes to anything, you shall know first of all the world about it. Now take out your violin, there’s a dear old Dad, and give me a tune upon it.’

  The father took the precious instrument from its carefully covered case with a sort of loving reverence, and began to play a piece of Arthur’s own composition. From the moment the bow touched the chords it was easy enough to see whence the son got his musical instincts. Old George Berkeley was a born musician, and he could make his violin discourse to him with rare power of execution. There they sat, playing and talking at intervals, till nearly eight, when Arthur went out hurriedly to catch the last train to Oxford, and left the old shoemaker
once more to his week’s solitude. ‘Not for much longer,’ the curate whispered to himself, as he got into his third-class carriage quickly; ‘not for much longer, if I can help it. A curacy in or near London’s the only right thing for me to look out for!’

  CHAPTER VII.

  GHOSTLY COUNSEL.

  November came, and with it came the Pembroke fellowship examination. Ernest went in manfully, and tried hard to do his best; for somehow, in spite of the immorality of fellowships, he had a sort of floating notion in his head that he would like to get one, because he was beginning to paint himself a little fancy picture of a home that was to be, with a little fairy Edie flitting through it, and brightening it all delightfully with her dainty airy presence. So he even went so far as to mitigate considerably the native truculence of his political economy paper, after Edie’s advice — not, of course, by making any suggestion of opinions he did not hold, but by suppressing the too-prominent expression of those he actually believed in. Max Schurz’s name was not once mentioned throughout the whole ten or twelve pages of closely written foolscap; ‘Gold and the Proletariate’ was utterly ignored; and in place of the strong meat served out for men by the apostles of socialism in the Marylebone dancing-saloon, Ernest dished up for his examiner’s edification merely such watery milk for babes as he had extracted from the eminently orthodox economical pages of Fawcett, Mill, and Thorold Rogers. He went back to his rooms, satisfied that he had done himself full justice, and anxiously waited for the result to be duly announced on the Saturday morning.

  Was it that piece of Latin prose, too obviously modelled upon the Annals of Tacitus, while the senior tutor was a confirmed Ciceronian, with the Second Philippic constitutionally on the brain? Was it the Greek verse, containing one senarius with a long syllable before the caesura in the fifth foot, as Herbert pointed out to his brother on the very evening when that hideous oversight — say rather crime — had been openly perpetrated in plain black and white on a virgin sheet of innocent paper? Was it some faint ineffaceable savour of the Schurzian economics, peeping through in spite of all disguises, like the garlic in an Italian ragout, from under the sedulous cloak of Ricardo’s theory of rent? Was it some flying rumour, extra-official, and unconnected with the examination in any way, to the effect that young Le Breton was a person of very dubious religious, political, and social orthodoxy? Or was it merely that fortunate dispensation of Providence whereby Oxford almost invariably manages to let her best men slip unobserved through her fingers, and so insures a decent crop of them to fill up her share of the passing vacancies in politics, literature, science, and art? Heaven or the Pembroke examiners alone can answer these abstruse and difficult questions; but this much at least is certain, that when Ernest Le Breton went into the Pembroke porter’s lodge on the predestined Saturday, he found another name than his placarded upon the notice board, and turned back, sick at heart and disappointed, to his lonely lodgings. There he spent an unhappy hour or two, hewing down what remained of his little aerial castle off-hand; and then he went out for a solitary row upon the upper river, endeavouring to work off his disappointment like a man, with a good hard spell of muscular labour.

  Edie had already returned to Calcombe-Pomeroy, so in the evening he went to tell his misfortune to Harry Oswald. Harry was really sorry to hear it, for Ernest was his best friend in Oxford, and he had hoped to have him settled close by. ‘You’ll stop up and try again for Christ Church in February, won’t you, Le Breton?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Ernest, shaking his head a little gloomily; ‘I don’t think I will. It’s clear I’m not up to the Oxford standard for a fellowship, and I couldn’t spend another term in residence without coming down upon my mother to pay my expenses — a thing she can’t easily afford to do. So I suppose I must fall back for the present upon the Exmoor tutorship. That’ll give me time to look about me, till I can get something else to do; and after all, it isn’t a bit more immoral than a fellowship, when one comes to look it fairly in the face. However, I shall go first and ask Herr Max’s opinion upon the matter.’

  ‘I’m going to spend a fortnight in town in the Christmas vac,’ said Oswald, ‘and I should like to go with you to Max’s again, if I may.’

  Ernest coloured up a little, for he would have liked to invite Oswald to his mother’s house; and yet he felt there were two reasons why he should not do so; he must himself be dependent this time upon his mother’s hospitality, and he didn’t think Lady Le Breton would be perfectly cordial in her welcome to Harry Oswald.

  In the end, however, it was arranged that Harry should engage rooms at his former lodgings in London, and that Ernest should take him once more to call upon the old socialist when he went to consult him on the question of conscience.

  ‘For my part, Ernest,’ said Lady Le Breton to her son, the morning after his return from Oxford, ‘I’m not altogether sorry you didn’t get this Pembroke fellowship. It would have kept you among the same set you are at present mixing in for an indefinite period. Of course now you’ll accept Lady Exmoor’s kind proposal. I saw her about it the same morning we got Hilda’s letter; and she offers 200L. a year, which, of course, is mere pocket money, as your board and lodging are all found for you, so to speak, and you’ll have nothing to do but to dress and amuse yourself.’

  ‘Well, mother, I shall see about it. I’m going to consult Herr Schurz upon the subject this morning.’

  ‘Herr Schurz!’ said Lady Le Breton, in her bitterest tone of irony. ‘It appears to me you make that snuffy old German microscope man your father confessor. It’s very disagreeable to a mother to find that her sons, instead of taking her advice about what is most material to their own interests, should invariably go to confer with communist refugees and ignorant ranters. Ronald, what is your programme, if you please, for this morning’s annoyance?’

  Ronald, with the fear of the fifth commandment steadily before his eyes, took no notice of the last word, and answered calmly, ‘You know, mother, this is the regular day for the mission-house prayer-meeting.’

  ‘The mission-house prayer-meeting! I know nothing of the sort, I assure you. I don’t keep a perfect calendar in my mind of all your meetings and your religious engagements. Then I suppose I must go alone to the Waltons’ to see Mr. Walton’s water-colours?’

  ‘I’ll give up the prayer-meeting, if you wish it,’ Ronald answered, with his unvarying meekness. ‘Only, I’m afraid I must walk very slowly. My cough’s rather bad this morning.’

  ‘No, no,’ Ernest put in, ‘you mustn’t dream of going, Ronald; I couldn’t allow you to walk so far on any account. I’ll put off my engagement with Oswald, who was going with me to Herr Schurz’s, and I’ll take you round to the Waltons’, mother, whenever you like.’

  ‘Dear me, dear me,’ moaned Lady Le Breton, piteously, pretending to wring her hands in lady-like and mitigated despair; ‘I can’t do anything without its being made the opportunity for a scene, it seems. I shall NOT go to the Waltons’; and I shall leave you both to follow your own particular devices to your heart’s content. I’m sorry I proposed anything whatsoever, I’m sure, and I shall take care never to do such an imprudent thing again.’ And her ladyship walked in her stateliest and most chilly manner out of the freezing little dining-room.

  ‘It’s a great cross, living always with poor mother, Ernest,’ said Ronald, his eyes filling with tears as he spoke; ‘but we must try to bear with her, you know, for after all she leads a very lonely life herself, because she’s so very unsympathetic.’ Ernest took the spare white hand in his and smoothed it compassionately. ‘My dear, dear Ronald,’ he said, ‘I know it’s hard for you. I must try the best I can to make it a little easier!’

  They walked together as far as the mission-house, arm in arm, for though in some things the two young Le Bretons were wide apart as the poles, in others they were fundamentally at one in inmost spirit; and even Ronald, in spite of his occasional little narrow sectarianisms, felt the underlying unity of purpose no less than Ernest
. He was one of those enthusiastic ethereal natures which care little for outer forms or ceremonies, and nothing at all for churches and organisations, but love to commune as pure spirit with pure spirit, living every day a life of ecstatic spirituality, and never troubling themselves one whit about theological controversy or established religious constitutions. As long as Ronald Le Breton could read his Greek Testament every morning, and talk face to face in their own tongue with the Paul of First Corinthians or the John of the Epistles, in the solitude of his own bedroom, he was supremely indifferent about the serious question, of free-will and fore-knowledge, or about the important question of apostolical succession, or even about that other burning question of eternal punishment, which was just then setting his own little sect of Apostolic Christian Missioners roundly by the ears. These things seemed to his enthusiastic mind mere fading echoes of an alien language; all that he himself really cared for in religion was the constant sense of essential personal communion with that higher Power which spoke directly to his soul all day long and always; or the equally constant sense of moral exaltation which he drew from the reading of the written Word in its own original language. He had never BECOME an Apostolic Christian; he had grown up to be one, unconsciously to himself. ‘Your son Ronald’s religion, my dear Lady Le Breton,’ Archdeacon Luttrell used often to say, ’is, I fear, too purely emotional. He cannot be made to feel sufficiently the necessity for a sound practical grasp of doctrinal Christianity.’ To Ronald himself, he might as well have talked about the necessity for a sound practical grasp of doctrinal Buddhism. And if Ronald had really met a devout Buddhist, he would doubtless have found, after half an hour’s conversation, that they were at one in everything save the petty matter of dialect and vocabulary.