Читать книгу The Measure of the Rule - Robert Barr - Страница 4

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Down came the storm and smote amain The vessel in its strength.

'Wreck of the Hesperus.'

The annals of next morning have frequently been written, and are sad reading. I regret, for the sake of the warning they might convey, that my experiences differed from those of the printed word. Perhaps my strenuous rural training had warded off the effects I was entitled to, for I had no headache, no parched throat or woolly feeling in the mouth, and no remorse. I confess to some uneasiness regarding what I had said the night before, of which not the faintest recollection remained beyond a misty remembrance of being on my feet, having trouble with my knees, and talking. Not one of those who were gathered round the table could I recognize if I met him again, except Dr. Darnell, who remained in my mind vivid as chiselled marble, and I prayed I might never more on this earth encounter him; indeed, the chance of a future meeting was so remote that I brushed my uneasiness aside, and set my face towards the future. One conventional thing I did, which was to resolve I should never look upon the wine again, when it was white or red, and thus obey the Scriptures.

I was astonished to find myself with my clothes and boots on. The wonder was that I had escaped freezing, for the morning was intensely cold, and although the sun shone brilliantly outside, its rays made no impression on the frosted pane, and my pitcher was full of solid ice. I rang for something more liquid, and took a long draught of it when it arrived, with a keen enjoyment of its cool refreshment. A wash and brush-up, a clean collar and tie, prepared me for the hot breakfast down-stairs, to which a rural appetite did ample justice. Yesterday was a day that did not count; a mere interlude between the end of one section of life and the beginning of another, and so out into the street, breathing an air so crisp and exhilarating that it almost became competitor to the Rhine wine. Early as it was, the streets were already thronged. This thoroughfare appeared to be the busiest in the world, and the huge commercial buildings on either side spoke of unlimited wealth to a young fellow with very little money at his command. I was keenly enjoying the novelty of my environment when suddenly I became aware of a beaming face and an outstretched hand.

"Good-morning. I'm glad to see you looking as fresh as a snow-drift."

"Not as white, I hope."

"No, you're all right, and a good healthful colour. I say, my son, you did rub it into old Darnell last night. I never enjoyed myself so much in my life. You see, he's rather sarcastic sometimes, and to tell you the truth, we're all a little afraid of him. They say his books on education are A1, though I've never read any of them myself, and to see you take him on his own ground, and simply mop the floor with him, was too rich for words, and I tell you, my boy, I agree with every word you said, and so did every one there."

"Did they?" I gasped.

"Yes, your comparison of the teacher and the preacher was masterly. Of course, as you said, the future of the nation rests with the teacher, and not with the preacher. The one works with humanity at the malleable age, the other attempts to influence those whose characters and opinions are hardened and fixed, but the moment we realized old Darnell was having some home truths thrust upon him, which many of us had thought but none dared say, the interest was intensified. You should have seen his face. It was a study in conflicting emotions. You see he is not only one of our leading clergymen, but also perhaps our most notable teacher, so while you were scoring off one half of him, as it were, you pleased the other half, and I could see the old man didn't quite know how to take it. I saw a look almost of terror come into his eyes when you began to tell stories. I suppose he thought that finding yourself in the company of men——Oh, well, I don't know what he thought—but as the stories were all right, he laughed just as heartily as any one. You must join our Lodge. Get a demit from the Temple you hail from, and be one of us while you're in the city."

I shook my head. "I've no money to spare," I said. "I have two strenuous years ahead of me at the University, and just barely enough to carry me through with the strictest economy."

"Are you on your way to the University now?"

"Yes."

The man looked at me with that expression of envy with which elderly middle-age sometimes regards ambitious youth.

"Lucky devil," he said.

"Are you on your way to business so early as this?"

"Yes," he replied. "I generally get there before my clerks do. That's my establishment," and he waved his hand towards an immense block that housed a hive of retail industries.

"Are you the owner of that name?" I asked, nodding towards the huge sign across the end of the store towards us, familiar in big letters on the advertising pages of the daily papers.

"Yes," he replied.

"Lucky devil," said I, and we laughed and parted, never to meet again.

So now I knew the subject of my discourse, and it frightened me to think that a man might lose touch with his brain and remember nothing of what he had spoken. Again I resolved to leave wine alone in future, thanking my stars that I had seemingly got off so cheaply in my first encounter.

All was bustle and rush when I reached the University. The splendid edifice seemed to me as soul-satisfying in the sunlight as it had appeared in the mystery of the night before, and the interior was no less impressive and medieval than the outside. Just within the hall a group of young men were studying written and printed communications tacked to a notice-board against the wall. Another boisterous company besieged the door of some official near the entrance, who, breathless and worried, was answering questions. I wished to put a few queries to this official myself, but I thought I had better wait until the present scramble was done with.

Groups of three and four stood here and there exchanging greetings after the Christmas holidays. Solitary, studious individuals paced slowly up and down reading, or sat with books in the embrasures of the mullioned windows.

I had come from a land of wood. The houses were of wood smoothed by the plane; the much larger barns were of rough wood from the saw, the former painted white, sometimes with shutters of green, the latter rarely touched, even by whitewash. Here and there the log house still existed, and the framed house was considered a long stride towards a more perfect civilization. In our building out west there had been little attempt at ornamentation, except, perhaps, at the cornices. The architectural aspect of the western landscape was strictly utilitarian, and the houses were so much alike that they might all have been built by the same man, which indeed, within the range of eye, they usually were. Every carpenter was his own architect, an art in which he had received not the slightest training, nor did he or his clients feel the least need of it. To-day, in the same district, there is an era of brick, supposed to be another step forward.

Here, then, I stood in an edifice of hewn, rough, and carven stone, with stained-glass windows, with cloisters, with long echoing halls, with ceilings of timber. The architect, I was told, had wandered in Europe, visiting ancient seats of learning, and here, from the Aladdin's lamp of his experience, had conjured up in the new world a dream of the old. I had always loved to read of bygone times, and in spite of the modern young men around me, in spite of my own modernness, and in the teeth of the fact that I was about to begin the study of the most unromantic, practical profession in the world, the glamour of medievalism was over me, and I felt as if I were taking part in some pageant of the past in a mouldering castle or college or monastery. It seemed incredible that such luck should be mine, and I found it difficult to understand the nonchalant air with which my fellow students bore their great privilege, feeling certain it would never become common to me through months of custom.

In the midst of my exultation a deep bell tolled in the Norman tower. The solemn sonorousness of the peal was in keeping with the character of the place, falling mellow on the ear like the note of a distant cathedral chime.

While the air still quivered with melody the hall emptied itself, the scholars, active and passive, trooping off in one direction or the other, until I found myself deserted. School had begun. I sought the man in the little office to learn my own part in the programme, but he also had disappeared. I went down the hall, and caught a glimpse of a belated student's coat-tails whisking up a stair. Him I followed, and came at last through an open door into the upper part of what looked like the gallery of a theatre, where I sank unobserved on the end of the uppermost semi-circular seat. The class was all assembled in curved terraces step by step below me, and at the bottom, on a little platform, stood a middle-aged man talking in an easy conversational tone about Roman history. I had evidently got into a room that I should not see again, for, excellent road-builders as the Romans undoubtedly were, the record of their strenuous lives would be of small assistance in aiding me to pass an examination in civil engineering. However, the lecture was interesting, and I sat out the session even though I had no blank book in which to take down those notes that kept all the others busily employed.

I next drifted into a class-room devoted to chemistry, and there felt more at home, for I was reasonably well versed in the subject. I was fascinated by the personality of the grim old man whose spectacled eyes glared upon me now and then, for he was of sinister celebrity in our land. Something of the mantle of the hangman fell in invisible folds from his shoulders. In murder cases where poison had been used, his unerring analysis had sent many a criminal to the gallows. On a table by his side stood some instruments of glass, and a servitor handed to him this or that as he needed it, or brought from the laboratory whatever had been forgotten, or was suddenly required. I think it was not imagination that gave me the impression of his glasses flashing oftener at me than at any one else in that gallery, for at last he whispered to his underling, who disappeared at once, and returned shortly after empty-handed. The keen-eyed old professor had detected a foreign body in the human mixture before him.

Absorbed in an experiment, I was startled by a slight tap on the shoulder, almost as if the analyst before me had passed upon my case, and now I was arrested in the name of the law. Looking round, I saw that the official of the little office near the entrance had tip-toed in. He motioned with his finger for me to follow him. I did so without disturbing the class, and caught another dazzling glance from the spectacles as I departed. That glance sent a shiver of apprehension down my spine, for the grisly professor, with his long claws and his hooked nose, looked like some ill-omened bird of prey that would yet be my undoing unless I used the pistol instead of poison.

My conductor, without a word, led me along the hall, and knocked at a door, opened it softly, ushering me in with a slight wave of the hand, closing the door in silence when I had entered. I found myself in a small, extremely cosy library, oblong in shape, lined with books in rich leathern bindings. An open fire burned brightly on the hearth, at the further end, and before it stood a man who was, I surmised at once and correctly, the Head of the University. His face resembled that of Mr. Gladstone, and was surrounded by a plentiful crop of hair, pure white. His whole attitude and expression may be summed up in the one word, benign. Instinctively a person liked him and trusted him. His feet were set well apart, his back to the blaze, and with the forefinger of his right hand he was tapping the lid of a snuff-box, looking at me the while over the top of his glasses with a most benevolent regard. A slight smile hovered about his lips, aiding and abetting an equally slight twinkle in the eye, as if the snuff were particularly good which he was now partaking of by shaking forefinger and thumb alternately at each nostril.

"I think I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before," he began, and his velvet tones gave one the impression that this had been a great deprivation, now happily ended. He tapped the snuff-box again, and treated himself with an air of distinction to another duplex inhalation.

"I am here," I said, "to begin a two years' course in civil engineering."

"Ah," said the old gentleman, the exclamation long drawn out, the pinch of snuff arrested midway between the box and the nose. "The University grants the degree, but civil engineering is not yet taught in the College. Not yet, not yet."

He lingered over the words with an intonation of regret. The smile faded from his lips, and the twinkle from his eye, for my face must have shown my bitter disappointment. It was the same information that I had so light-heartedly received the night before from Dr. Darnell, and to which I had paid so little heed that it had not served even to soften the blow which now authoritatively fell.

"Thank you, sir. Good-day," was all I could bring myself to say. I reached for the door-handle, and had some difficulty in finding it. He saw I was hard hit.

"One moment," he said, and I faced him again. He was taking great pinches of snuff with reckless extravagance from the open box, and the powder was descending from finger and thumb in a drizzling brown mist.

"Excuse my indulgence," he continued. "The infirmity of an old man. Ah, my young friend, beware of traffic with tobacco in any form. At first it is an insidious, stealthy friend; then a domineering tyrant."

Between every few words he was shaking the stimulant into one nostril, then into the other, bending his attention to this rather than to what he was saying, but I knew that he was merely giving me a chance to recover my composure. Real sympathy and the odour of snuff permeated the air. At last he closed the box with a click, and placed it with some force on the mantelpiece at his back.

"Get thee behind me, Satan," he murmured, with that winning smile of his, as he dusted off coat and waistcoat with his fingers, and at last he drew an old-fashioned brown silk handkerchief from his coat-tails, and blew into it a blast like a trumpet call. When once more he looked at me over his glasses, and saw something remotely resembling a smile on my own face, he cried heartily—

"That's right, that's right. We are a new country, you see, and must creep before we walk. We take the name of University although our teaching is not so universal as it should be. All will come in time, no doubt. With our undeveloped west, civil engineering is doubtless one of the great professions of the future, and there are those who say that instruction in this and other similar branches is much more to the purpose than the study of Latin or Greek which we are so fond of here. Perhaps so, perhaps so. I am old-fashioned, and love the classics. There is a bright side to everything if we can but see it. If you apprentice yourself for two years to a civil engineer or a land surveyor, you will get an education such as no college can bestow. You will learn the things by doing them, and when you come up to our periodical examinations, your pen will describe in your own words the actions your hand has already performed, and that, I assure you, is better than learning from books. But study the books in your spare time. I will give you a list of them."

"I already have it," I interrupted. It was the printed slip that had originally caused the trouble.

"Very well. Study those books diligently, and come up for your exams, when you think you can pass them."

During this useful and kindly exordium his right hand was searching nervously, and doubtless unconsciously, for the snuff-box at the rear.

"Sir," I said, "I thank you very much for what you have told me. I shall need to think a little over the situation before I decide what to do. And now, if I may carry away with me the knowledge that your hand has found the snuff-box, I shall bid you good-bye with a lighter heart than I possessed a few minutes ago."

The old gentleman laughed heartily, and with a sigh of relief turned to the mantelshelf, but the snuff-box was not there. The laugh stopped abruptly, and a look of consternation came into his eyes.

"Can I have knocked it down?" he cried, glancing at the empty hearth beneath him, then he suddenly opened his left hand and disclosed the little box.

"However did it get there?" he exclaimed. "Surely a case of the right hand not knowing what the left did." But he refrained from indulging in his infirmity, as he called it. Coming forward, he clasped me by the hand.

"I am very sorry," he said, "that we lose you for the moment. Perhaps some day we may see you here again, going in for the Arts course if the apprenticeship should prove disappointing. And now, good-bye."

He held the door open for me, and as I walked down the echoing hall, I heard the vigorous tapping of his fingers on the lid of the snuff-box even before he closed the door. So ended my University career of half-a-day.