Born in Exile (8 page)

As soon as he had escaped from his uncle, he relapsed into
musing upon the position to which he was condemned when the new
session came round. Again Chilvers would be in the same classes
with him, and, as likely as not, with the same result. In the
meantime, they were both 'going in' for the First B.A.; he had no
fear of failure, but it might easily happen that Chilvers would
achieve higher distinction. With an eye to awards that might be
won—substantial cash-annuities—he was reading for Honours; but it
seemed doubtful whether he could present himself, as the second
examination was held only in London. Chilvers would of course be an
Honours candidate. He would smile—confound him!—at an objection on
the score of the necessary journey to London. Better to refrain
altogether than again to see Chilvers come out ahead. General
surprise would naturally be excited, questions asked on all hands.
How would it sound: 'I simply couldn't afford to go up'—?

At this point of the meditation he had reached his lodgings; he
admitted himself with a latch-key, turned into his murky
sitting-room, and sat down.

The table was laid for tea, as usual. Though he might have gone
to Twybridge this evening, he had preferred to stay overnight, for
an odd reason. At a theatre in Kingsmill a London company, headed
by an actress of some distinction, was to perform
Romeo and
Juliet
, and he purposed granting himself this indulgence before
leaving the town. The plan was made when his eye fell upon the
advertisement, a few days ago. He then believed it probable that an
evening at the theatre would appropriately follow upon a day of
victory. His interest in the performance had collapsed, but he did
not care to alter his arrangements.

The landlady came in bearing the tea-pot. He wanted nothing, yet
could not exert himself to say so.

But he was losing sight of a menace more formidable than defeat
by Chilvers. What was it his blackguard uncle had said? Had the
fellow really threatened to start an eating-house opposite the
College, and flare his name upon a placard? 'Peak's Dining and
Refreshment Rooms'—merciful heavens!

Again the mood of laughter came upon him. Why, here was a
solution of all difficulties, as simple as unanticipated. If indeed
that awful thing came to pass, farewell to Whitelaw! What
possibility of pursuing his studies when every class-companion,
every Professor,—nay, the very porters,—had become aware that he
was nephew to the man who supplied meals over the way? Moral
philosophy had no prophylactic against an ordeal such as this.
Could the most insignificant lad attending lectures afford to
disregard such an occasion of ridicule and contempt?

But the scheme would not be realised; it sounded too unlikely.
Andrew Peak was merely a loose-minded vagabond, who might talk of
this and that project for making money, but would certainly never
quit his dirty haunts in London. Godwin asked himself angrily why
he had submitted to the fellow's companionship. This absurd
delicacy must be corrected before it became his tyrant. The idea of
scrupling to hurt the sensibilities of Andrew Peak! The man was
coarse-hided enough to undergo kicking, and then take sixpence in
compensation,—not a doubt of it. This detestable tie of kindred
must no longer be recognised. He would speak gravely to his mother
about it. If Andrew again presented himself at the house he should
be given plainly to understand that his visits were something less
than welcome,—if necessary, a downright blunt word must effect
their liberation. Godwin felt strong enough for that, musing here
alone. And, student-like, he passed on to debate the theory of the
problem. Andrew was his father's brother, but what is a mere tie of
blood if nature has alienated two persons by a subtler distinction?
By the dead man, Andrew had never been loved or esteemed; memory
supplied proof of this. The widow shrank from him. No obligation of
any kind lay upon them to tolerate the London ruffian.—Enough; he
should be got rid of!

Alternating his causes of misery, which—he could not quite
forget—might blend for the sudden transformation of his life,
Godwin let the tea grow cold upon the table, until it was time, if
he still meant to visit the theatre, for setting forth. He had no
mind to go, but as little to sit here and indulge harassing
reflection. With an effort, he made ready and left the house.

The cost of his seat at the theatre was two shillings. So nicely
had he adjusted the expenses of these last days that, after paying
the landlady's bill to-morrow morning, there would remain to him
but a few pence more than the money needed for his journey home.
Walking into the town, he debated with himself whether it were not
better to save this florin. But as he approached the pit door, the
spirit of pleasure revived in him; he had seen but one of
Shakespeare's plays, and he believed (naturally at his age) that to
see a drama acted was necessary for its full appreciation. Sidling
with affected indifference, he added himself to the crowd.

To stand thus, expectant of the opening doors, troubled him with
a sense of shame. To be sure, he was in the spiritual company of
Charles Lamb, and of many another man of brains who has waited
under the lamp. But contact with the pittites of Kingsmill offended
his instincts; he resented this appearance of inferiority to people
who came at their leisure, and took seats in the better parts of
the house. When a neighbour addressed him with a meaningless joke
which defied grammar, he tried to grin a friendly answer, but
inwardly shrank. The events of the day had increased his
sensibility to such impressions. Had he triumphed over Bruno
Chilvers, he could have behaved this evening with a larger
humanity.

The fight for entrance—honest British stupidity, crushing ribs
and rending garments in preference to seemly order of
progress—enlivened him somewhat, and sent him laughing to his
conquered place; but before the curtain rose he was again depressed
by the sight of a familiar figure in the stalls, a fellow-student
who sat there with mother and sister, black-uniformed, looking very
much a gentleman. 'I, of course, am not a gentleman,' he said to
himself, gloomily. Was there any chance that he might some day take
his ease in that orthodox fashion? Inasmuch as it was
conventionality, he scorned it; but the privileges which it
represented had strong control of his imagination. That lady and
her daughter would follow the play with intelligence. To exchange
comments with them would be a keen delight. As for him—he had a
shop-boy on one hand and a grocer's wife on the other.

By the end he had fallen into fatigue. Amid clamour of
easily-won applause he made his way into the street, to find
himself in a heavy downpour of rain. Having no umbrella, he looked
about for a sheltered station, and the glare of a neighbouring
public-house caught his eye; he was thirsty, and might as well
refresh body and spirit with a glass of beer, an unwonted
indulgence which had the pleasant semblance of dissipation. Arrived
at the bar he came upon two acquaintances, who, to judge by their
flushed cheeks and excited voices, had been celebrating jovially
the close of their academic labours. They hailed him.

'Hollo, Peak! Come and help us to get sober before bedtime!'

They were not exactly studious youths, but neither did they
belong to the class that Godwin despised, and he had a comrade-like
feeling for them. In a few minutes his demeanour was wholly
changed. A glass of hot whisky acted promptly upon his nervous
system, enabled him to forget vexations, and attuned him to kindred
sprightliness. He entered merrily into the talk of a time of life
which is independent of morality—talk distinct from that of the
blackguard, but equally so from that of the reflective man. His
first glass had several successors. The trio rambled arm in arm
from one place of refreshment to another, and presently sat down in
hearty fellowship to a supper of such viands as recommend
themselves at bibulous midnight. Peak was drawing recklessly upon
the few coins that remained to him; he must leave his landlady's
claim undischarged, and send the money from home. Prudence be
hanged! If one cannot taste amusement once in a twelvemonth, why
live at all?

He reached his lodgings, at something after one o'clock,
drenched with rain, gloriously indifferent to that and all other
chances of life. Pooh! his system had been radically wrong. He
should have allowed himself recreation once a week or so; he would
have been all the better for it, body and mind. Books and that kind
of thing are all very well in their way, but one must live; he had
wasted too much of his youth in solitude.
O mihi proeteritos
referat si Jupiter annos!
Next session he would arrange things
better. Success in examinations—what trivial fuss when one looked
at it from the right point of view! And he had fretted himself into
misery, because Chilvers had got more 'marks',—ha, ha, ha!

The morrow's waking was lugubrious enough. Headache and nausea
weighed upon him. Worse still, a scrutiny of his pockets showed
that he had only the shamefaced change of half-a-crown wherewith to
transport himself and his belongings to Twybridge. Now, the railway
fare alone was three shillings; the needful cab demanded
eighteenpence. O idiot!

And he hated the thought of leaving his bill unpaid; the more so
because it was a trifling sum, a week's settlement. To put himself
under however brief an obligation to a woman such as the landlady
gnawed at his pride. Not that only. He had no business to make a
demand upon his mother for this additional sum. But there was no
way of raising the money; no one of whom he could borrow it;
nothing he could afford to sell—even if courage had supported him
through such a transaction. Triple idiot!

Bread turned to bran upon his hot palate; he could only swallow
cups of coffee. With trembling hands he finished the packing of his
box and portmanteau, then braced himself to the dreaded interview.
Of course, it involved no difficulty, the words once uttered; but,
when he was left alone again, he paced the room for a few minutes
in flush of mortification. It had made his headache worse.

The mode of his homeward journey he had easily arranged. His
baggage having been labelled for Twybridge, he himself would book
as far as his money allowed, then proceed on foot for the remaining
distance. With the elevenpence now in his pocket he could purchase
a ticket to a little town called Dent, and by a calculation from
the railway tariff he concluded that from Dent to Twybridge was
some five-and-twenty miles. Well and good. At the rate of four
miles an hour it would take him from half-past eleven to about six
o'clock. He could certainly reach home in time for supper.

At Dent station, ashamed to ask (like a tramp) the way to so
remote a place as Twybridge, he jotted down a list of intervening
railway stoppages, and thus was enabled to support the semblance of
one who strolls on for his pleasure. A small handbag he was obliged
to carry, and the clouded sky made his umbrella a requisite. On he
trudged steadily, for the most part by muddy ways, now through a
pleasant village, now in rural solitude. He had had the precaution,
at breakfast time, to store some pieces of bread in his pocket, and
after two or three hours this resource was welcome. Happily the air
and exercise helped him to get rid of his headache. A burst of
sunshine in the afternoon would have made him reasonably cheerful,
but for the wretched meditations surviving from yesterday.

He pondered frequently on his spasmodic debauch, repeating, as
well as memory permitted, all his absurdities of speech and action.
Defiant self-justification was now far to seek. On the other hand,
he perceived very clearly how easy it would be for him to lapse by
degrees of weakened will into a ruinous dissoluteness. Anything of
that kind would mean, of course, the abandonment of his ambitions.
All he had to fight the world with was his brain; and only by
incessant strenuousness in its exercise had he achieved the
moderate prominence declared in yesterday's ceremony. By birth, by
station, he was of no account; if he chose to sink, no influential
voice would deplore his falling off or remind him of what he owed
to himself. Chilvers, now—what a wide-spreading outcry, what
calling upon gods and men, would be excited by any defection of
that brilliant youth! Godwin Peak must make his own career, and
that he would hardly do save by efforts greater than the ordinary
man can put forth. The ordinary man?—Was he in any respect
extraordinary? were his powers noteworthy? It was the first time
that he had deliberately posed this question to himself, and for
answer came a rush of confident blood, pulsing through all the
mechanism of his being.

The train of thought which occupied him during this long trudge
was to remain fixed in his memory; in any survey of the years of
pupilage this recollection would stand prominently forth,
associated, moreover, with one slight incident which at the time
seemed a mere interruption of his musing. From a point on the
high-road he observed a small quarry, so excavated as to present an
interesting section; though weary, he could not but turn aside to
examine these strata. He knew enough of the geology of the county
to recognise the rocks and reflect with understanding upon their
position; a fragment in his hand, he sat down to rest for a moment.
Then a strange fit of brooding came over him. Escaping from the
influences of personality, his imagination wrought back through
eras of geologic time, held him in a vision of the infinitely
remote, shrivelled into insignificance all but the one fact of
inconceivable duration. Often as he had lost himself in such
reveries, never yet had he passed so wholly under the dominion of
that awe which attends a sudden triumph of the pure intellect. When
at length he rose, it was with wide, blank eyes, and limbs partly
numbed. These needed half-an-hour's walking before he could recover
his mood of practical self-search.