Man and Wife Page 23

Lundie dispatched Blanche to him with the list of her guests at

  the dinner. "For your uncle's approval, my dear, as head of the

  family."

  While Sir Patrick was looking over the list, and while Arnold was

  making his way to Blanche, at the back of her uncle's chair, One,

  Two, and Three--with the Chorus in attendance on them--descended

  in a body on Geoffrey, at the other end of the room, and appealed

  in rapid succession to his superior authority, as follows:

  "I say, Delamayn. We want You. Here is Sir Patrick running a

  regular Muck at us. Calls us aboriginal Britons. Tells us we

  ain't educated. Doubts if we could read, write, and cipher, if he

  tried us. Swears he's sick of fellows showing their arms and

  legs, and seeing which fellow's hardest, and who's got three

  belts of muscle across his wind, and who hasn't, and the like of

  that. Says a most infernal thing of a chap. Says--because a chap

  likes a healthy out-of-door life, and trains for rowing and

  running, and the rest of it, and don't see his way to stewing

  over his books--_therefore_ he's safe to commit all the crimes in

  the calendar, murder included. Saw your name down in the

  newspaper for the Foot-Race; and said, when we asked him if he'd

  taken the odds, he'd lay any odds we liked against you in the

  other Race at the University--meaning, old boy, your Degree.

  Nasty, that about the Degree--in the opinion of Number One. Bad

  taste in Sir Patrick to rake up what we never mention among

  ourselves--in the opinion of Number Two. Un-English to sneer at a

  man in that way behind his back--in the opinion of Number Three.

  Bring him to book, Delamayn. Your name's in the papers; he can't

  ride roughshod over You."

  The two choral gentlemen agreed (in the minor key) with the

  general opinion. "Sir Patrick's views are certainly extreme,

  Smith?" "I think, Jones, it's desirable to hear Mr. Delamayn on

  the other side."

  Geoffrey looked from one to the other of his admirers with an

  expression on his face which was quite new to them, and with

  something in his manner which puzzled them all.

  "You can't argue with Sir Patrick yourselves," he said, "and you

  want me to do it?"

  One, Two, Three, and the Chorus all answered, "Yes."

  "I won't do it."

  One, Two, Three, and the Chorus all asked, "Why?"

  "Because," answered Geoffrey, "you're all wrong. And Sir

  Patrick's right."

  Not astonishment only, but downright stupefaction, struck the

  deputation from the garden speechless.

  Without saying a word more to any of the persons standing near

  him, Geoffrey walked straight up to Sir Patrick's arm-chair, and

  personally addressed him. The satellites followed, and listened

  (as well they might) in wonder.

  "You will lay any odds, Sir," said Geoffrey "against me taking my

  Degree? You're quite right. I sha'n't take my Degree. You doubt

  whether I, or any of those fellows behind me, could read, write,

  and cipher correctly if you tried us. You're right again--we

  couldn't. You say you don't know why men like Me, and men like

  Them, may not begin with rowing and running and the like of that,

  and end in committing all the crimes in the calendar: murder

  included. Well! you may be right again there. Who's to know what

  may happen to him? or what he may not end in doing before he

  dies? It may be Another, or it may be Me. How do I know? and how

  do you?" He suddenly turned on the deputation, standing

  thunder-struck behind him. "If you want to know what I think,

  there it is for you, in plain words."

  There was something, not only in the shamelessness of the

  declaration itself, but in the fierce pleasure that the speaker

  seemed to feel in making it, which struck the circle of

  listeners, Sir Patrick included, with a momentary chill.

  In the midst of the silence a sixth guest appeared on the lawn,

  and stepped into the library--a silent, resolute, unassuming,

  elderly man who had arrived the day before on a visit to

  Windygates, and who was well known, in and out of London, as one

  of the first consulting surgeons of his time.

  "A discussion going on?" he asked. "Am I in the way?"

  "There's no discussion--we are all agreed," cried Geoffrey,

  answering boisterously for the rest. "The more the merrier, Sir!"

  After a glance at Geoffrey, the surgeon suddenly checked himself

  on the point of advancing to the inner part of the room, and

  remained standing at the window.

  "I beg your pardon," said Sir Patrick, addressing himself to

  Geoffrey, with a grave dignity which was quite new in Arnold's

  experience of him. "We are not all agreed. I decline, Mr.

  Delamayn, to allow you to connect me with such an expression of

  feeling on your part as we have just heard. The language you have

  used leaves me no alternative but to meet your statement of what

  you suppose me to have said by my statement of what I really did

  say. It is not my fault if the discussion in the garden is

  revived before another audience in this room--it is yours,"

  He looked as he spoke to Arnold and Blanche, and from them to the

  surgeon standing at the window.

  The surgeon had found an occupation for himself which completely

  isolated him among the rest of the guests. Keeping his own face

  in shadow, he was studying Geoffrey's face, in the full flood of

  light that fell on it, with a steady attention which must have

  been generally remarked, if all eyes had not been turned toward

  Sir Patrick at the time.

  It was not an easy face to investigate at that moment.

  While Sir Patrick had been speaking Geoffrey had seated himself

  near the window, doggedly impenetrable to the reproof of which he

  was the object. In his impatience to consult the one authority

  competent to decide the question of Arnold's position toward

  Anne, he had sided with Sir Patrick, as a means of ridding

  himself of the unwelcome presence of his friends--and he had

  defeated his own purpose, thanks to his own brutish incapability

  of bridling himself in the pursuit of it. Whether he was now

  discouraged under these circumstances, or whether he was simply

  resigned to bide his time till his time came, it was impossible,

  judging by outward appearances, to say. With a heavy dropping at

  the corners of his mouth, with a stolid indifference staring dull

  in his eyes, there he sat, a man forearmed, in his own obstinate

  neutrality, against all temptation to engage in the conflict of

  opinions that was to come.

  Sir Patrick took up the newspaper which he had brought in from

  the garden, and looked once more to see if the surgeon was

  attending to him.

  No! The surgeon's attention was absorbed in his own subject.

  There he was in the same position, with his mind still hard at

  work on something in Geoffrey which at once interested and

  puzzled it! "That man," he was thinking to himself, "has come

  here this morning after traveling from London all night. Does any

  ordinary fatigue explain what I se
e in his face? No!"

  "Our little discussion in the garden," resumed Sir Patrick,

  answering Blanche's inquiring look as she bent over him, "began,

  my dear, in a paragraph here announcing Mr. Delamayn's

  forthcoming appearance in a foot-race in the neighborhood of

  London. I hold very unpopular opinions as to the athletic

  displays which are so much in vogue in England just now. And it

  is possible that I may have expressed those opinions a li ttle

  too strongly, in the heat of discussion, with gentlemen who are

  opposed to me--I don't doubt, conscientiously opposed--on this

  question."

  A low groan of protest rose from One, Two, and Three, in return

  for the little compliment which Sir Patrick had paid to them.

  "How about rowing and running ending in the Old Bailey and the

  gallows? You said that, Sir--you know you did!"

  The two choral gentlemen looked at each other, and agreed with

  the prevalent sentiment. "It came to that, I think, Smith." "Yes,

  Jones, it certainly came to that."

  The only two men who still cared nothing about it were Geoffrey

  and the surgeon. There sat the first, stolidly

  neutral--indifferent alike to the attack and the defense. There

  stood the second, pursuing his investigation--with the growing

  interest in it of a man who was beginning to see his way to the

  end.

  "Hear my defense, gentlemen," continued Sir Patrick, as

  courteously as ever. "You belong, remember, to a nation which

  especially claims to practice the rules of fair play. I must beg

  to remind you of what I said in the garden. I started with a

  concession. I admitted--as every person of the smallest sense

  must admit--that a man will, in the great majority of cases, be

  all the fitter for mental exercise if he wisely combines physical

  exercise along with it. The whole question between the two is a

  question of proportion and degree, and my complaint of the

  present time is that the present time doesn't see it. Popular

  opinion in England seems to me to be, not only getting to

  consider the cultivation of the muscles as of equal importance

  with the cultivation of the mind, but to be actually

  extending--in practice, if not in theory--to the absurd and

  dangerous length of putting bodily training in the first place of

  importance, and mental training in the second. To take a case in

  point: I can discover no enthusiasm in the nation any thing like

  so genuine and any thing like so general as the enthusiasm

  excited by your University boat-race. Again: I see this Athletic

  Education of yours made a matter of public celebration in schools

  and colleges; and I ask any unprejudiced witness to tell me which

  excites most popular enthusiasm, and which gets the most

  prominent place in the public journals--the exhibition, indoors

  (on Prize-day), of what the boys can do with their minds? or the

  exhibition, out of doors (on Sports-day), of what the boys can do

  with their bodies? You know perfectly well which performance

  excites the loudest cheers, which occupies the prominent place in

  the newspapers, and which, as a necessary consequence, confers

  the highest social honors on the hero of the day."

  Another murmur from One, Two, and Three. "We have nothing to say

  to that, Sir; have it all your own way, so far."

  Another ratification of agreement with the prevalent opinion

  between Smith and Jones.

  "Very good," pursued Sir Patrick. "We are all of one mind as to

  which way the public feeling sets. If it is a feeling to be

  respected and encouraged, show me the national advantage which

  has resulted from it. Where is the influence of this modern

  outburst of manly enthusiasm on the serious concerns of life? and

  how has it improved the character of the people at large? Are we

  any of us individually readier than we ever were to sacrifice our

  own little private interests to the public good? Are we dealing

  with the serious social questions of our time in a conspicuously

  determined, downright, and definite way? Are we becoming a

  visibly and indisputably purer people in our code of commercial

  morals? Is there a healthier and higher tone in those public

  amusements which faithfully reflect in all countries the public

  taste? Produce me affirmative answers to these questions, which

  rest on solid proof, and I'll accept the present mania for

  athletic sports as something better than an outbreak of our

  insular boastfulness and our insular barbarity in a new form."

  "Question! question!" in a general cry, from One, Two, and Three.

  "Question! question!" in meek reverberation, from Smith and

  Jones.

  "That is the question," rejoined Sir Patrick. "You admit the

  existence of the public feeling and I ask, what good does it do?"

  "What harm does it do?" from One, Two, and Three.

  "Hear! hear!" from Smith and Jones.

  "That's a fair challenge," replied Sir Patrick. "I am bound to

  meet you on that new ground. I won't point, gentlemen, by way of

  answer, to the coarseness which I can see growing on our national

  manners, or to the deterioration which appears to me to be

  spreading more and more widely in our national tastes. You may

  tell me with perfect truth that I am too old a man to be a fair

  judge of manners and tastes which have got beyond my standards.

  We will try the issue, as it now stands between us, on its

  abstract merits only. I assert that a state of public feeling

  which does practically place physical training, in its

  estimation, above moral and mental training, is a positively bad

  and dangerous state of feeling in this, that it encourages the

  inbred reluctance in humanity to submit to the demands which

  moral and mental cultivation must inevitably make on it. Which am

  I, as a boy, naturally most ready to do--to try how high I can

  jump? or to try how much I can learn? Which training comes

  easiest to me as a young man? The training which teaches me to

  handle an oar? or the training which teaches me to return good

  for evil, and to love my neighbor as myself? Of those two

  experiments, of those two trainings, which ought society in

  England to meet with the warmest encouragement? And which does

  society in England practically encourage, as a matter of fact?"

  "What did you say yourself just now?" from One, Two, and Three.

  "Remarkably well put!" from Smith and Jones.

  "I said," admitted Sir Patrick, "that a man will go all the

  better to his books for his healthy physical exercise. And I say

  that again--provided the physical exercise be restrained within

  fit limits. But when public feeling enters into the question, and

  directly exalts the bodily exercises above the books--then I say

  public feeling is in a dangerous extreme. The bodily exercises,

  in that case, will be uppermost in the youth's thoughts, will

  have the strongest hold on his interest, will take the lion's

  share of his time, and will, by those means--barring the few

  purely exceptional instances--slowly and surely end in leaving

  h
im, to all good moral and mental purpose, certainly an

  uncultivated, and, possibly, a dangerous man."

  A cry from the camp of the adversaries: "He's got to it at last!

  A man who leads an out-of-door life, and uses the strength that

  God has given to him, is a dangerous man. Did any body ever hear

  the like of that?"

  Cry reverberated, with variations, by the two human echoes: "No!

  Nobody ever heard the like of that!"

  "Clear your minds of cant, gentlemen," answered Sir Patrick. "The

  agricultural laborer leads an out-of-door life, and uses the

  strength that God has given to him. The sailor in the merchant

  service does the name. Both are an uncultivated, a shamefully

  uncultivated, class--and see the result! Look at the Map of

  Crime, and you will find the most hideous offenses in the

  calendar, committed--not in the towns, where the average man

  doesn't lead an out-of-door life, doesn't as a rule, use his

  strength, but is, as a rule, comparatively cultivated--not in the

  towns, but in the agricultural districts. As for the English

  sailor--except when the Royal Navy catches and cultivates

  him--ask Mr. Brinkworth, who has served in the merchant navy,

  what sort of specimen of the moral influence of out-of-door life

  and muscular cultivation _he_ is."

  "In nine cases out of ten," said Arnold, "he is as idle and

  vicious as ruffian as walks the earth."

  Another cry from the Opposition: "Are _we_ agricultural laborers?

  Are _we_ sailors in the merchant service?"

  A smart reverberation from the human echoes: "Smith! am I a

  laborer?" "Jones! am I a sailor?"

  "Pray let us not be personal, gentlemen," said Sir Patrick. "I am

  speaking generally, and I can only meet extreme objections by

  pushing my argument to extreme limits. The laborer and the sailor

  have served my purpose. If the laborer and

  the sailor offend you, by all means let them walk off the stage!

  I hold to the position which I advanced just now. A man may be

  well born, well off, well dressed, well fed--but if he is an

  uncultivated man, he is (in spite of all those advantages) a man

  with special capacities for evil in him, on that very account.

  Don't mistake me! I am far from saving that the present rage for

  exclusively muscular accomplishments must lead inevitably

  downward to the lowest deep of depravity. Fortunately for

  society, all special depravity is more or less certainly the

  result, in the first instance, of special temptation. The

  ordinary mass of us, thank God, pass through life without being

  exposed to other than ordinary temptations. Thousands of the

  young gentlemen, devoted to the favorite pursuits of the present

  time, will get through existence with no worse consequences to

  themselves than a coarse tone of mind and manners, and a

  lamentable incapability of feeling any of those higher and

  gentler influences which sweeten and purify the lives of more

  cultivated men. But take the other case (which may occur to any

  body), the case of a special temptation trying a modern young man

  of your prosperous class and of mine. And let me beg Mr. Delamayn

  to honor with his attention what I have now to say, because it

  refers to the opinion which I did really express--as

  distinguished from the opinion which he affects to agree with,

  and which I never advanced."

  Geoffrey's indifference showed no signs of giving way. "Go on!"

  he said--and still sat looking straight before him, with heavy

  eyes, which noticed nothing, and expressed nothing.

  "Take the example which we have now in view," pursued Sir

  Patrick--"the example of an average young gentleman of our time,

  blest with every advantage that physical cultivation can bestow

  on him. Let this man be tried by a temptation which insidiously

  calls into action, in his own interests, the savage instincts

  latent in humanity--the instincts of self-seeking and cruelty

  which are at the bottom of all crime. Let this man be placed

  toward some other person, guiltless of injuring him, in a