Philistia. Allen Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ ought to see these meadows in early spring, when the fritillaries are all out over the spongy places, Miss Oswald. Has your brother ever sent you any of the fritillaries?’

      ‘What? snake-heads? Oh, boxes full of them. They’re lovely flowers, but not lovelier than our own Devonshire daffodils. You should see a Devonshire water-meadow in April! Why don’t you come down some time to Calcombe Pomeroy? It’s the dearest little peaceful seaside corner in all England.’

      Harry bit his lip, for he was not over-fond of bringing people down to spy out his domestic sanctities; but Ernest answered cordially, ‘I should like it above everything in the world, Miss Oswald. If you will let me, I certainly shall as soon as possible. Mind, quick, get out of the way of that practising eight, or we shall foul her! Left, as hard as you can! That’ll do. The cox was getting as red as a salamander, till he saw it was a lady steering. When coxes catch a man fouling them, their language is apt to be highly unparliamentary.—Yes, I shall try to get away to Calcombe as soon as ever I can manage to leave Oxford. It wouldn’t surprise me if I were to run down and spend Christmas there.’

      ‘You’d find it as dull as ditch-water at Christmas, Le Breton,’ said Harry. ‘Much better wait till next summer.’

      ‘I’m sure I don’t think so, Harry dear,’ Edie interrupted, with that tell-tale blush of hers. ‘If Mr. Le Breton wants to come then, I believe he’d really find it quite delightful. Of course he wouldn’t expect theatres, or dances, or anything like that, in a country village; and we’re dreadfully busy just about Christmas day itself, sending out orders, and all that sort of thing,’—Harry bit his lip again:—‘but if you don’t mind a very quiet place and a very quiet time, Mr. Le Breton, I don’t think myself our cliffs ever look grander, or our sea more impressive, than in stormy winter weather.’

      ‘I wish to goodness she wasn’t so transparently candid and guileless,’ thought Harry to himself. ‘I never CAN teach her duly to respect the prejudices of Pi. Not that it matters twopence to Le Breton, of course: but if she talks that way to any of the other men here, they’ll be laughing in every common-room in Oxford over my Christmas raisins and pounds of sugar—commonplace cynics that they are. I must tell her about it the moment we get home again, and adjure her by all that’s holy not to repeat the indiscretion.’

      ‘A penny for your thoughts, Harry,’ cried Edie, seeing by his look that she had somehow vexed him. ‘What are you thinking of?’

      ‘Thinking that all Oxford men are horrid cynics,’ said Harry, boldly shaming the devil.

      ‘Why are they?’ Edie asked.

      ‘I suppose because it’s an inexpensive substitute for wit or intellect,’ Harry answered. ‘Indeed, I’m a bit of a cynic myself, I believe, for the same reason and on strictly economical principles. It saves one the trouble of having any intelligible or original opinion of one’s own upon any subject.’

      Below Iffley Lock they landed for half an hour, in order to give Edie time for a pencil sketch of the famous old Norman church-tower, with its quaint variations on the dog-tooth ornament, and its ancient cross and mouldering yew-tree behind. Harry sat below in the boat, propped on the cushions, reading the last number of the ‘Nineteenth Century;’ Ernest and Edie took their seat upon the bank above, and had a first chance of an unbroken tête-à-tête.

      ‘How delicious to live in Oxford always!’ said Edie, sketching in the first outline of the great round arches. ‘I would give anything to have the opportunity of settling here for life. Some day I shall make Harry set up house, and bring me up here as his housekeeper:—I mean,’ she added with a blush, thinking of Harry’s warning look just before, ‘as soon as they can spare me from home.’ She purposely avoided saying ‘when they retire from business,’ the first phrase that sprang naturally to her simple little lips. ‘Let me see, Mr. Le Breton; you haven’t got any permanent appointment here yourself, have you?’

      ‘Oh no,’ Ernest answered: ‘no appointment of any sort at all, Miss Oswald. I’m loitering up casually on the look-out for a fellowship. I’ve been in for two or three already, but haven’t got them.’

      ‘Why didn’t you?’ asked Edie, with a look of candid surprise.

      ‘I suppose I wasn’t clever enough,’ Ernest answered simply. ‘Not so clever, I mean, as the men who actually got them.’

      ‘Oh, but you MUST be,’ Edie replied confidently; ‘and a great deal cleverer, too, I’m sure. I know you must, because Harry told me you were one of the very cleverest men in the whole ‘Varsity. And besides, I see you are, myself. And Harry says most of the men who get fellowships are really great donkeys.’

      ‘Harry must have been talking in one of those cynical moods he told us about,’ said Ernest, laughing. ‘At any rate, the examiners didn’t feel satisfied with my papers, and I’ve never got a fellowship yet. Perhaps they thought my political economy just a trifle too advanced for them.’

      ‘You may depend upon it, that’s it,’ said Edie, jumping at the conclusion with the easy omniscience of a girl of nineteen. ‘Next time, make your political economy a little more moderate, you know, without any sacrifice of principle, just to suit them. What fellowship are you going in for now?’

      ‘Pembroke, in November.’

      ‘Oh, I do hope you’ll get it.’

      ‘Thank you very much. So do I. It would be very nice to have one.’

      ‘But of course it won’t matter so much to you as it did to Harry. Your family are such very great people, aren’t they?’

      Ernest smiled a broad smile at her delicious simplicity. ‘If by very great people you mean rich,’ he said, ‘we couldn’t very well be poorer—for people of our sort, I mean. My mother lives almost entirely on her pension; and we boys have only been able to come up to Oxford, just as Harry was, by the aid of our scholarships. If we hadn’t saved in our first two years, while we had our government allowances, we shouldn’t have been able to stop up for our degrees at all. So if I don’t get a fellowship I shall have to take to school-mastering or something of the sort, for a livelihood. Indeed, this at Pembroke will be my very last chance, for I can’t hold on much longer.’

      ‘And if you got a fellowship you could never marry, could you?’ asked Edie, going on with her work.

      ‘Not, while I held it, certainly. But I wouldn’t hold it long. I regard it only as a makeshift for a time. Unhappily, I don’t know how to earn my own bread by the labour of my hands, as I think we ought all to do in a well-constituted society; so unless I choose to starve (about the rightfulness of which I don’t feel quite certain), I MUST manage somehow to get over the interval. But as soon as I could I would try to find some useful work to do, in which I could repay society the debt I owe it for my bringing up. You see, I’ve been fed and educated by a Government grant, which of course came out of the taxes—your people have had to help, whether they would or not, in paying for my board and lodging—and I feel that I owe it as a duty to the world to look out some employment in which I could really repay it for the cost of my maintenance.’

      ‘How funnily you do look at everything, Mr. Le Breton,’ said Edie. ‘It would never have struck me to think of a pension from the army in that light. And yet of course it’s the right light; only we don’t most of us take the trouble to go to the bottom of things, as you do. But what will you do if you don’t get the fellowship?’

      ‘In that case, I’ve just heard from my mother СКАЧАТЬ