Born in Exile (36 page)

'You think them so degraded?'

'It is impossible, without seeming inhumanly scornful, to give a
just account of their ignorance and baseness. The two things,
speaking generally, go together. Of the ignorant, there are very
few indeed who can think purely or aspiringly. You, of course,
object the teaching of Christianity; but the lowly and the humble
of whom it speaks scarcely exist, scarcely can exist, in our day
and country. A ludicrous pretence of education is banishing every
form of native simplicity. In the large towns, the populace sink
deeper and deeper into a vicious vulgarity, and every rural
district is being affected by the spread of contagion. To flatter
the proletariat is to fight against all the good that still
characterises educated England—against reverence for the beautiful,
against magnanimity, against enthusiasm of mind, heart, and
soul.'

He quivered with vehemence of feeling, and the flush which rose
to his hearer's cheek, the swimming brightness of her eye, proved
that a strong sympathy stirred within her.

'I know nothing of the uneducated in towns,' she said, 'but the
little I have seen of them in country places certainly supports
your opinion. I could point to two or three families who have
suffered distinct degradation owing to what most people call an
improvement in their circumstances. Father often speaks of such
instances, comparing the state of things now with what he can
remember.'

'My own experience,' pursued Godwin, 'has been among the lower
classes in London. I don't mean the very poorest, of whom one hears
so much nowadays; I never went among them because I had no power of
helping them, and the sight of their vileness would only have moved
me to unjust hatred. But the people who earn enough for their
needs, and whose spiritual guide is the Sunday newspaper—I know
them, because for a long time I was obliged to lodge in their
houses. Only a consuming fire could purify the places where they
dwell. Don't misunderstand me; I am not charging them with what are
commonly held vices and crimes, but with the consistent love of
everything that is ignoble, with utter deadness to generous
impulse, with the fatal habit of low mockery. And
these
are
the people who really direct the democratic movement. They set the
tone in politics; they are debasing art and literature; even the
homes of wealthy people begin to show the effects of their
influence. One hears men and women of gentle birth using phrases
which originate with shopboys; one sees them reading print which is
addressed to the coarsest million. They crowd to entertainments
which are deliberately adapted to the lowest order of mind. When
commercial interest is supreme, how can the tastes of the majority
fail to lead and control?'

Though he spoke from the depths of his conviction, and was so
moved that his voice rose and fell in tones such as a drawing-room
seldom hears, he yet kept anxious watch upon Sidwell's countenance.
That hint afforded him by Fanny was invaluable; it had enabled him
to appeal to Sidwell's nature by the ardent expression of what was
sincerest in his own. She too, he at length understood, had the
aristocratic temperament. This explained her to him, supplied the
key of doubts and difficulties which had troubled him in her
presence. It justified, moreover, the feelings with which she had
inspired him—feelings which this hour of intimate converse had
exalted to passion. His heart thrilled with hope. Where sympathies
so profound existed, what did it matter that there was variance on
a few points between his intellect and hers? He felt the power to
win her, and to defy every passing humiliation that lay in his
course.

Sidwell raised her eyes with a look which signified that she was
shaping a question diffidently.

'Have you always thought so hopelessly of our times?'

'Oh, I had my stage of optimism,' he answered, smiling. 'Though
I never put faith in the masses, I once believed that the
conversion of the educated to a purely human religion would set
things moving in the right way. It was ignorance of the world.'

He paused a moment, then added:

'In youth one marvels that men remain at so low a stage of
civilisation. Later in life, one is astonished that they have
advanced so far.'

Sidwell met his look with appreciative intelligence and
murmured:

'In spite of myself, I believe that expresses a truth.'

Peak was about to reply, when Fanny and her friend reappeared.
Bertha approached for the purpose of taking leave, and for a minute
or two Sidwell talked with her. The young girls withdrew again
together.

By the clock on the mantelpiece it was nearly six. Godwin did
not resume his seat, though Sidwell had done so. He looked towards
the window, and was all but lost in abstraction, when the soft
voice again addressed him:

'But you have not chosen your life's work without some hope of
doing good?'

'Do you think,' he asked, gently, 'that I shall be out of place
in the Christian Church?'

'No—no, I certainly don't think that. But will you tell me what
you have set before yourself?'

He drew nearer and leaned upon the back of a chair.

'I hope for what I shall perhaps never attain. Whatever my first
steps may be—I am not independent; I must take the work that
offers—it is my ambition to become the teacher of some rural parish
which is still unpolluted by the influences of which we have been
speaking—or, at all events, is still capable of being rescued. For
work in crowded centres, I am altogether unfit; my prejudices are
too strong; I should do far more harm than good. But among a few
simple people I think my efforts mightn't be useless. I can't
pretend to care for anything but individuals. The few whom I know
and love are of more importance to me than all the blind multitude
rushing to destruction. I hate the word
majority
; it is the
few, the very few, that have always kept alive whatever of
effectual good we see in the human race. There are individuals who
outweigh, in every kind of value, generations of ordinary people.
To some remote little community I hope to give the best energies of
my life. My teaching will avoid doctrine and controversy. I shall
take the spirit of the Gospels, and labour to make it a practical
guide. No doubt you find inconsistencies in me; but remember that I
shall not declare myself to those I instruct as I have done to you.
I have been laying stress on my antipathies. In the future it will
be a duty and a pleasure to forget these and foster my sympathies,
which also are strong when opportunity is given them.'

Sidwell listened, her face bent downwards but not hidden from
the speaker.

'My nature is intolerant,' he went on, 'and I am easily roused
to an antagonism which destroys my peace. It is only by living
apart, amid friendly circumstances, that I can cultivate the
qualities useful to myself and others. The sense that my life was
being wasted determined me a year ago to escape the world's uproar
and prepare myself in quietness for this task. The resolve was
taken here, in your house.'

'Are you quite sure,' asked Sidwell, 'that such simple duties
and satisfactions'—

The sentence remained incomplete, or rather was finished in the
timid glance she gave him.

'Such a life wouldn't be possible to me,' he replied, with
unsteady voice, 'if I were condemned to intellectual solitude. But
I have dared to hope that I shall not always be alone.'

A parched throat would have stayed his utterance, even if words
had offered themselves. But sudden confusion beset his mind—a sense
of having been guilty of monstrous presumption—a panic which threw
darkness about him and made him grasp the chair convulsively. When
he recovered himself and looked at Sidwell there was a faint smile
on her lips, inexpressibly gentle.

'That's the rough outline of my projects,' he said, in his
ordinary voice, moving a few steps away. 'You see that I count much
on fortune; at the best, it may be years before I can get my
country living.'

With a laugh, he came towards her and offered his hand for
good-bye. Sidwell rose.

'You have interested me very much. Whatever assistance it may be
in my father's power to offer you, I am sure you may count
upon.'

'I am already much indebted to Mr. Warricombe's kindness.'

They shook hands without further speech, and Peak went his
way.

For an hour or two he was powerless to collect his thoughts. All
he had said repeated itself again and again, mixed up with turbid
comments, with deadly fears and frantic bursts of confidence, with
tumult of passion and merciless logic of self-criticism. Did
Sidwell understand that sentence: 'I have dared to hope that I
shall not always be alone'? Was it not possible that she might
interpret it as referring to some unknown woman whom he loved? If
not, if his voice and features had betrayed him, what could her
behaviour mean, except distinct encouragement? 'You have interested
me very much.' But could she have used such words if his meaning
had been plain to her? Far more likely that her frank kindness came
of misconception. She imagined him the lover of some girl of his
own 'station'—a toiling governess, or some such person; it could
not enter into her mind that he 'dared' so recklessly as the truth
implied.

But the glow of sympathy with which she heard his immeasurable
scorn: there was the spirit that defies artificial distances. Why
had he not been bolder? At this rate he must spend a lifetime in
preparing for the decisive moment. When would another such occasion
offer itself?

Women are won by audacity; the poets have repeated it from age
to age, and some truth there must be in the saying. Suspicion of
self-interest could not but attach to him; that was inherent in the
circumstances. He must rely upon the sincerity of his passion,
which indeed was beginning to rack and rend him. A woman is
sensitive to that, especially a woman of Sidwell's refinement. In
matters of the intellect she may be misled, but she cannot mistake
quivering ardour for design simulating love. If it were impossible
to see her again in private before she left Exeter, then he must
write to her. Half a year of complete uncertainty, and of
counterfeiting face to face with Bruno Chilvers, would overtax his
resolution.

The evening went by he knew not how. Long after nightfall he was
returning from an aimless ramble by way of the Old Tiverton Road.
At least he would pass the house, and soothe or inflame his
emotions by resting for a moment thus near to Sidwell.

What? He had believed himself incapable of erotic madness? And
he pressed his forehead against the stones of the wall to relieve
his sick dizziness.

It was Sidwell or death. Into what a void of hideous futility
would his life be cast, if this desire proved vain, and he were
left to combat alone with the memory of his dishonour! With Sidwell
the reproach could be outlived. She would understand him, pardon
him—and thereafter a glorified existence, rivalling that of
whosoever has been most exultant among the sons of men!

Earwaker's struggle with the editor-in-chief of
The Weekly
Post
and the journalist Kenyon came to its natural close about
a month after Godwin Peak's disappearance. Only a vein of obstinacy
in his character had kept him so long in a position he knew to be
untenable. From the first his sympathy with Mr. Runcorn's politics
had been doubtful, and experience of the working of a Sunday
newspaper, which appealed to the ignobly restive, could not
encourage his adhesion to this form of Radicalism. He anticipated
dismissal by retirement, and Kenyon, a man of coarsely vigorous
fibre, at once stepped into his place.

Now that he had leisure to review the conflict, Earwaker
understood that circumstances had but hastened his transition from
a moderate ardour in the parliamentary cause of the people, to a
regretful neutrality regarding all political movements. Birth
allied him with the proletarian class, and his sentiment in favour
of democracy was unendangered by the disillusions which must come
upon every intellectual man brought into close contact with public
affairs. The course of an education essentially aristocratic (Greek
and Latin can have no other tendency so long as they are the
privilege of the few) had not affected his natural bent, nor was he
the man to be driven into reaction because of obstacles to his
faith inseparable from human weakness. He had learnt that the
emancipation of the poor and untaught must proceed more slowly than
he once hoped—that was all. Restored to generous calm, he could
admit that such men as Runcorn and Kenyon—the one with his
polyarchic commercialism, the other with his demagogic violence—had
possibly a useful part to play at the present stage of things. He,
however, could have no place in that camp. Too indiscreetly he had
hoisted his standard of idealism, and by stubborn resistance of
insuperable forces he had merely brought forward the least
satisfactory elements of his own character. 'Hold on!' cried
Malkin. 'Fight the grovellers to the end!' But Earwaker had begun
to see himself in a light of ridicule. There was just time to save
his self-respect.

He was in no concern for his daily bread. With narrower
resources in the world of print, he might have been compelled, like
many another journalist, to swallow his objections and write as
Runcorn dictated; for the humble folks at home could not starve to
allow him the luxury of conscientiousness, whatever he might have
been disposed to do on his own account. Happily, his pen had a
scope beyond politics, and by working steadily for reviews, with
which he was already connected, he would be able to keep his
finances in reasonable order until, perchance, some hopeful
appointment offered itself. In a mood of much cheerfulness he
turned for ever from party uproar, and focused his mind upon those
interests of humanity which so rarely coincide with the aims of any
league among men.