Читать книгу The Coward - Robert Hugh Benson - Страница 16

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THE dinner-party of which Lady Beatrice had spoken took place the night before the boys went abroad—if that can be called a dinner-party at which there are but two guests; and when Val came down, still rather out of breath with the desperation with which he had dressed, he found the two being entertained by the girls, while Austin looked picturesque on the hearth-rug. He said the proper things and retired to a window-seat.

Of the two there was no choice as to which was the most impassive. He had met Professor Macintosh once or twice before (the Professor was a college friend of his father’s, he knew), but his appearance never failed to strike awe into the beholder.

For, first of all, he was a tall man, much bent, who grew his white hair and beard very long, and wore spectacles; and secondly, his costume marked him out evidently as a genius of the highest rank. (It was supposed, by Professor Macintosh’s admirers, that he was unaware of any startling difference between his dress and that of others, or, at the very least, was unaware that evening-dress was usually governed by any code but that of individual taste.) He wore a brown velvet jacket and waistcoat, loose black trousers, and, most supreme of all, a crimson skull-cap not unlike those of the Renaissance Popes. His waistcoat was, of course, only slit down the front, disclosing a hemmed shirt held together by three pearl buttons. He wore square-toed, blacked boots upon his feet.

It was a tradition in the Medd family that the Professor was a man of gigantic knowledge. He did not actually occupy a Chair in any known University of the British Isles; but he had once, many years before, been an assistant lecturer at Owen’s College, Manchester. There his startling views and his unorthodoxy had, it was understood, aroused the jealousy of the scientific world generally; and it had been left for Chicago to honour a man of whom his own country was not worthy. As regards the particular line in which he was eminent, General Medd could certainly have been evasive, if he had been questioned exactly on the point. The General was himself a man who laid no claim at all to learning, but he had always understood that “Science” was the Professor’s subject. Further than that he could not penetrate. It is uncertain whence he had learned even these particulars; but the Professor’s critics did not hesitate to assert that the only serious advocate of Professor Macintosh’s claim to eminence was Professor Macintosh. All this, however, was to the General’s mind only one more proof of his friend’s greatness, since none but a great man could be such a storm-centre in the scientific world, or the occasion of such extraordinary bitterness. The Professor lived in Hendon, in a small villa, with his wife, and was believed to pass the greater part of his life in the reading-rooms of the British Museum. He had issued two or three pamphlets, printed without a publisher’s name; and was understood to be engaged upon a gigantic work which was to be the monument of his misunderstood life—subject unspecified.

Val, in the window-seat, therefore, looked upon him with a proper awe.

The second guest, to whom he gave scarcely a glance, was Father Maple—a smallish man, also grey-haired, with a palish face and bright grey eyes. He was disappointing, thought Val to himself, for he was dressed like an ordinary clergyman in long frock-coat and trousers. He had expected something more sensational. The priest at this instant was turning over the books on the table.

“So you boys are off to Switzerland to-morrow, I hear,” said the Professor in his hearty voice. (Val was not quite old enough to know why he disliked this heartiness, or even the fact that he did so.)

Austin said that that was so. They were to catch the seven-fifteen, which would take them up to town in time for the eleven o’clock train from Victoria.

“Ah, ha,” mused the Professor, “my climbing days were over ten years ago.... Dear old Tyndall! Many’s the walk and talk I’ve had with him.”

“Professor Tyndall?” asked May, who was a confirmed worshipper at the shrine, and would as soon have doubted the existence of God as the eminence of Dr. Macintosh.

“Yes, my dear.... Dear old Tyndall. I remember on the Aletsch glacier once——”

Then Lady Beatrice rustled in, apologetic but perfectly dignified, followed by her husband. It appeared that her maid was responsible.

Val for the last fortnight had, so to speak, eaten, drunk, tasted, and smelt Switzerland and Switzerland only. The thing had seized on his imagination, as such things will at such an age; and even Austin had been inspired. So it seemed to him an extraordinary opportunity that the Professor had come to stay at such a moment, and by the time that the fish was removed, under the fire of the boys’ enthusiasm, the subject had taken possession of the table and the Professor of the subject.

This was rather his way. It was said amongst his friends that he was a conversationalist, and that is always a fatal incentive to prolonged soliloquy. It was his habit therefore, positively forced on him by such a reputation and by the hushed silence that fell among his admirers, to use such social occasions as these to deliver a discourse on whatever subject had come up. (His friends used to say to one another, after such an evening, that “the Professor had been in great form.”)

The impression diffused this evening was that the little band of scientists who for so long were associated with the Alps had by now positively been reduced to the Professor himself. Tyndall was gone, Huxley was gone, Hardy was gone; Macintosh only remained. He did not actually say this outright, but it was impossible to draw any other conclusion, and he was regarded with an ever deeper and more affectionate awe as the minutes passed by this extremely simple country-house party. A second impression made upon the company was to the effect that, in his younger days, there was scarcely an expedition of note with which he had not been closely connected. It appeared that he had been among the first to meet the diminished party that returned from the first ascent of the Matterhorn; that he had watched Hardy’s conquest of the Finsteraarhorn through a telescope; and that there was not a peak or pass of any notoriety which he had not himself, at some time or another, ascended. Again, he did not say these things....

He grew very eloquent at the end of his soliloquy, which was delivered in the form of a paternal lecture to the boys on the subject of a mountaineer’s mental and moral equipment.

“You can take it from me, boys,” he said impressively, “that it’s nothing but foolhardiness to climb unless you’ve got the head and the nerves for it. There’s nothing to be proud of in possessing them; there’s nothing to be ashamed of in being without them. For myself, I’m as happy on an arête as on the king’s highway; but that’s neither here nor there. And if you’ll take my advice, if you find that you haven’t the head for it, why, be courageous and don’t attempt to climb. It needs more courage to refuse to climb than to be foolhardy. Remember that.”

He paused to put a spoonful of vanilla ice into his mouth; and the priest, who had been listening attentively with downcast eyes, looked up.

“You think, then, that the nerve for climbing can’t be gained by effort, Professor?”

“Certainly not, Father, certainly not. It’s a purely physical matter. I remember myself having to blindfold a young officer—it was on the Jungfraujoch, I remember—and to lead him by the hand before he could move. And I’m not talking of mere physical giddiness: I mean that nerve, as it’s called, which many folks seem to think is a moral matter, is nothing of the sort. It’s as physical as anything else. I should no more blame a man for ... for funking a bad descent than I should blame him for falling over a precipice if I pushed him over.”

“Do you hold that all the so-called virtues—I know no other word to use, I am afraid—are merely the result of physical conditions?”

A large, kindly smile beamed out on the Professor’s face.

“Ah, ha, Father, we’re touching on delicate ground there.” (He glanced round at the faces of the young persons who were watching him.) “I’m a shocking materialist, you know—a shocking materialist.”

He finished his ice in silence, with an air of extraordinary discretion.

“And what do you think about it all—er—Mr. Maple,” said the General after a moment. (He was a humble and rather stupid man, and thought all these questions very important and very confusing. He was also intensely full of his traditional contempt for a Papist, but veiled it admirably under courteous attentions.) “A cur’s a cur, it seems to me.” (He stroked his grey moustache.)

The priest, who had dropped his eyes, looked up again, smiling.

“I entirely disagree with the Professor, I am afraid,” he said. “I hold that a man is what his will is; or, rather, that he will become so; and that qualities like nerve and fortitude can certainly be acquired.”

Val fidgeted suddenly. It seemed to him an extraordinarily tiresome conversation.

“Do tell us more about step-cutting,” he said shyly to the Professor.