PAUL MARKHAM went back to his rooms, and sat down again amid the ruins. His heart was as heavy in his bosom as a lump of lead. It weighed upon him, hindered his breathing, refused to rise or to beat more lightly, let him do what he would. He had taken down his pictures, his china, all that he had thought luxurious, from his walls long before. Nothing remained of all his decorations which he had once loved but a copy of Albert Dürer’s Melancholia, which he had kept, thinking it symbolical. Besides, it was only a photograph. Had it been an original print, worth a great deal more than its weight in gold, he would not have thought himself at liberty to keep it. He looked round upon his books with gloomy eyes. Ruins—nothing but ruins—all around him! What was the good of them? They had done him all the service they were capable of, and in his life there was no further place for them. No schools now for him, no honours, no need of endless philosophical hair-splitting, this one’s theory of being, that one’s of knowing. He was going to put all that babble away. There were a few that he might take with him. Theocritus his Idylls; grey old Hesiod, that antique husbandman; Plato in his Republic. But even Plato, what was the good of him, with all his costly paraphernalia of a new society? Spears would do it all with much less trouble. No long education would be wanted for his rulers—if, indeed, any rulers should be needed. Less trouble! After all, when he came to think of it, it was by no means sure that Spears’s process was less painful, less costly than Plato’s. Himself, for example. Would every pioneer who joined their ranks, every leader among them, be obliged to pay his footing as dearly as Paul had done? To turn his back upon his father and mother, to cast all his antecedents to the winds, everything, from filial affection to the books upon his shelves—it could not be said that this was a cheap or easy probation.
He sat thus for he did not know how long, the sunshine of the August afternoon getting round the corner and streaming straight in, inquisitive and troublesome. What were they doing now at the inn? Sir William had been very gentle; he had not said a word of blame. His tone, his looks, his very weakness had been conciliatory. Paul, when he covered his eyes with his hands, seemed to see that scene again, and twinges came to his heart, sudden impulses to get up and go to them—to go at least to the place and ask after his father. There are temptations to do right as well as to do wrong. Impulses came to him like little good angels pulling at his sleeve, entreating him to come; but alas! it is always more easy to resist temptations to do well than to do ill. Once or twice he was so far moved that he got up from his chair; but always sat down again after a blank look from the window over the deserted quadrangle and the parched trees. Why should he go? It would but raise vain hopes in them that he meant to yield: and he did not mean to yield. This kept him a prisoner in his room; for if he did not go there, where should he go? He paid no attention to the hour of dinner. He could not, he felt, have gone to Hall where there was the little dinner for the scanty summer contingent, the “men” who were “staying up to read.” Even these heroes were dropping away daily, and at the best of times the little group in a place which held so many was depressing; and Paul did not want to dine—the common offices of life were disgusting and distasteful to him. He roused himself to go out at last when the daylight had begun to wane. There was to be a meeting that night in the shop of Spears, of the people who were going with them to found the new colony—for to this their plan of emigration had grown; but it was still too early for that. The shadows were lengthening, the light almost level, when Paul came out. He did not know where to go; he wandered through the streets where the townspeople were all about enjoying the beautiful evening, and strolled heedlessly, not caring where he went, towards the inn. He could not get out of his mind the recollection of the little party who would get no good of the beautiful evening. His mother and Alice, like most mothers and sisters, had always imagined themselves to be “very fond of Oxford.” They had liked to hear of all its habits, and foolish, youthful ways—the nightly flights from the proctors, the corners where some hairbreadth ’scape had been made, the “High” and the “Broad,” and all that innocent slang which a happy boy pours forth on his first introduction to these delights. It had always been an excitement, a delight to them to come here. Now he could not but think of them shut up in that bare, gloomy room, with the high, pale walls, and long green curtains. Oh, how they plucked at his sleeve and at his heart, those persuading angels! How he was tempted to go back again to bid bygones be bygones, to forgive everything (this was his way of putting it)! But, no. Had it been the other kind of angel leading him to another kind of presence most likely the young man would not have stood out half so bravely. He strolled down to the river where one or two melancholy “men” in boats were keeping themselves as retired as possible from the splashing of the released shopboys, and the still more uncomfortable vicinity of the town boats, which were rowed almost as well as the ’Varsity. The sky was all rosy with sunset, glowing over the long reflections in the water, touching the greenness of the banks and trees into a fuller tint, and making more blue, with all those contrasting tints of rose, the blueness of the sky. The soft summer evening, with a gentle exhaustion in it—sweet langour, yet relief after the heat and work of the day—the soft plash of the oars, the voices all harmonised by the warm air, the movement and simple enjoyment about, were all like so many reproaches to him. How they would have liked to walk with him, to laugh softly back to every sound of pleasure, to talk of everything. Paul said to himself that all that was over. It was a pity for Alice to be shut up in a dingy room, but to-morrow she would be at home among their own woods, and what would it matter? As for himself, it must be his henceforward to tread the stern path of a higher duty—alone.
Paul met with one or two interruptions on the way. He saw Fairfax at a distance, and saw that he avoided him, turning quickly away; and he met one or two others of those who were “staying up to read.” Finally he met a being of a different order, less easy to separate himself from, a young Don, who turned and walked with him, anxiously intimating that it was quite immaterial which way he went,—a young man, not much older than Paul himself, but cultivated to the very finger-tips, and anxious to exercise a good influence if that might prove possible. This new companion gave him a stab unawares by asking if it was true what he had heard, that Sir William Markham was ill? Even in a deserted college in the midst of the long vacation, when there happens to be a tragic chapter of life going on, some echo of it will get abroad. The young Don was very modest, and anxious not to offend or intrude upon any “man” in trouble; but yet he would have been glad could he have exercised a good influence. They walked along the river bank while the sunset faded out of the west, and Paul at last acknowledged the relief of companionship by plunging forth into a statement of his own intentions which filled his auditor with horror and dismay. A man who did not intend to take his degree was as a lost soul to the young Don. But even in these appalling circumstances he could not be impolite. He listened with gentle disapproval and regret, shaking his head now and then, yet saying softly, “I see what you mean,” when Paul poured forth a passionate statement of his difficulties, his sense of the injustice of his own position, his horror at the corruption and falsehood of the world, and determination never to sanction, never to accept in his own person the cruel advantages to which he had been born. After all that had come and gone it was a great ease to the young revolutionary, upon such a verge of high devotion yet despair as he was, to make one impassioned assertion of his principles, the higher rule of his conduct. Probably the college, too, and all the men would hear that it was for the love of Spears’s daughter that he was throwing his life away. He was glad (when he came to think of it) of this chance of setting himself right. “I see what you mean,” said the young Don. He would have said the same thing with the same regretful air, non-argumentative and sympathetic, yet with his own opinion in the background, had Paul poured into his ear a confession of passionate attachment for Janet Spears. He understood what political enthusiasm was, and he knew that the world might be well lost for love, though he did not approve either of these passions. In either case he would have been very glad to have established a good influence over the man thus carried away, whether by the head or the heart. Paul, however, if he did not come under any good influence, was solaced by his own outburst. He got cooler as they turned back towards the towers now rising dimly into the cooled and softened atmosphere of the night, and the glimmer of the friendly lights.
It was a disappointment to the young Don when his companion left him abruptly, long before they reached their college. He had meant to be very kind to him at this violent crisis of life, and who could tell, perhaps to win him back to safer views—at least to put before him so forcibly the absolute necessity of taking his degree that passion itself would be forced to pause. But Paul did not give him this chance. He said a hurried good-night when they reached the spot at which he had met his mother in the morning, the point at which the picturesque and graceful old street was crossed by the line of uneven thoroughfares, in which Spears’s house lay. The young Don looked after him in surprise and disappointment as he walked away. He shook his head. He would not doubt the authenticity of Paul’s confession of faith, but the low street breathed out of it a chill of suspicion. He could understand anything that was theoretical however wrong-headed, but Spears’s shop and the street in which it stood was a great deal more difficult to understand.
Paul sped along, relieved of the immediate pressure on his heart, and more determined than ever in his resolution. He had said little in the morning in answer to Spears’s question. He had declared that it was not love alone which had brought him there; that there had been nothing feigned in his enthusiasm for that teaching in which the salvation of the world he believed would be found to lie; but further he had said nothing. And Spears had been too much relieved on his own account and was too delicate on his child’s, to pursue the subject. To tell the truth, the demagogue, though the kindest of fathers, had not been delighted by the thought that his own favourite disciple, his captive aristocrat, the young hero whom he had won out of the enemy’s ranks, and who was his pride, had been all the time only his daughter’s lover. The thought had hurt and humbled him. That Paul might love Janet in the second place, might have learned to love her after his introduction to the shop, was a different matter. The gratification of recovering his own place and influence drove the other question from his mind; and by the time it recurred to him, the delicacy of a mind full of natural refinement had resumed its sway. It was for the lover to open this subject, not the girl or her friends. And though he wondered a little that Paul said nothing more to him, he asked no further question. It was a relief to Paul, on the other hand, not to be called to account. The evil day was deferred at least, if no more, and he was very glad to put it off, to wait for what might happen, to hope perhaps that after all nothing would happen. Paul did not know what had passed or what his mother had said. Her own broken and tremulous confession of wrong, and Janet’s consciousness, had been his only guides. He had thought himself for the moment bound to Janet; but perhaps things had not gone so far as he thought; and though he was determined to hold firmly to any bond of honour that might hold him, even though it were not of his own making, yet the sense that his freedom was still intact was an unspeakable relief to him. Since then he had managed to forget Janet; but when he turned his face towards her home it was not so easy to continue to forget. The twilight was brightened by the twinkle of the lamps all the way down the vista of the street, and by a dimmer light here and there from a window. The shutters had been put up in Spears’s shop, but the door was open, and in the doorway, faintly indicated by the light behind, stood some one looking out. Paul knew, before he could see, who it was. She was looking out for him. It is hard to find our arrival uncared for by those whom we want to see, but it is, if not more hard, at least far more embarrassing, to find ourselves eagerly looked for by those whom we have no wish to see. Paul’s heart sank when he saw the girl, with the long lines of her black gown filling the doorway, leaning out her graceful shoulders and fair head in an attitude of anxious expectation looking for him. What could he say to her? The return of her image thus suddenly thrust before him filled him with impatience and annoyance. Yet he could not withdraw himself; he went on without a pause, wondering with a troubled mind how far his mother had committed him, what she expected; what she wanted, this girl who was no heroine, no ideal woman, but only Janet Spears.
Her eyes drooped as he came forward, with a shyness which had in it something of finer feeling than Janet had yet known. He was very dazzling to her in the light of his social superiority. A gentleman! Janet had heard all her life that a gentleman was the work of nature, not of circumstance, that those who arrogated the title to themselves had often far less right to bear it than the working men whom they scorned; but all these theories had passed lightly over her. She knew the difference. They might talk what stuff they liked, but that would not make one of them a Sir—a man whose wife would be “my Lady,” a dazzling personage who drove in his carriage, who had horses to ride, and men in livery to walk behind him. The other was all talk! fudge! rubbish! but these things were realities. She watched him coming down the street in the grey twilight, in the faint yellow of the lamps. His very walk was different, the way in which he held his arms, not to speak of his clothes, of which even the Sunday clothes of the others bore but the faintest resemblance. Janet’s nature, such as it was, prostrated itself before the finest thing, the highest thing she knew. And if this is noble in other matters, why not in the most important of all? If it is a sign of an elevated soul to seek the best and loftiest, why not in a husband? Janet did not stand upon logic, yet her logic here was far better practically than her father’s. She recognised Paul without a moment’s hesitation as the best thing within her reach, and why should not she put forth her entire powers to gain the perfection she sought?
“They have not come yet, Mr.—Paul,” said Janet, casting down her eyes.
She had always called him Mr. Markham before; but she could not help hoping that now he would tenderly reprove her for the previous title, and bid her call him by his Christian name. Was not this the first step in lovers’ intimacy? But this was not what happened. It struck Paul disagreeably to hear his name at all, even with the Mr. before it. His mind rebelled at this half appropriation of him. He could not help feeling that it was cowardly of him to be rough with Janet, who had no power of defending herself; but he could not help it. He brushed past her with a half-sensation of disgust.
“Haven’t they?” he said; “never mind. I dare say your father is in.”
“Father is not in, Mr. Paul. He’s gone to tell Fraser, the Scotchman, to come. He didn’t know there was a meeting. I am the only one that is in to keep the house. The girls have gone to the circus—did you know there was a circus?—but I,” said Janet, “I don’t care for such things. I’ve stayed at home.”
Then there was a pause. Paul had gone into the shop, which was swept, and arranged with benches, and a table in the middle, for the emigrants’ meeting, and Janet following him so far as to stand in the inner instead of the outer doorway, stood gazing at him by the imperfect light of the lamp. How could she help gazing at him? She expected him to say something. This was not how he had looked at her in the morning. Poor Janet was disappointed to the bottom of her heart.
“That’s a pity,” said Paul, brusquely. “If I had known Spears would not be here I should not have come so soon. I don’t see why he should keep me waiting for him. I have a thousand things to do; all my time is taken up. I might have been with my father, who is ill, if I had not come here.”
“Oh, is he ill?” said Janet. Her eyes grew bigger in the dim light gazing at him. “It must be very strange to be a gentleman’s son like that,” she added softly; “and to think what a difference it might make all at once if—— And you never can tell what may happen,” she concluded with a sigh of excitement. “I don’t wonder you’re in a way.”
“Am I in a way? I don’t think so,” said Paul. “I hope there is nothing much the matter with my father,” he added, after a little pause.
“Oh!” said Janet, disappointed; but she added, “There will be some time. Some time or other you will be a great man, with a title and all that property. Oh, I wanted to say one thing to you before those men come. What in the world have you to do with them, Mr. Paul? They may think themselves ill-used, but you can’t think yourself ill-used. Why should you go away when you have everything, everything you can set your face to, at home? Plenty of money, and a grand house, and horses and carriages, and all sorts of things. You can understand folks doing it that have nothing; but a gentleman like you that only need to wish and have, whatever can you want to emigrate for?” Janet cried.