Born in Exile (7 page)

Not a house in Kingsmill opened hospitable doors to the lonely
student; nor was anyone to blame for this. With no family had he
friendly acquaintance. When, towards the end of his second year, he
grew sufficiently intimate with Buckland Warricombe to walk out
with him to Thornhaw, it could be nothing more than a scarcely
welcome exception to the rule of solitude. Impossible for him to
cultivate the friendship of such people as the Warricombes, with
their large and joyous scheme of life. Only at a hearth where
homeliness and cordiality united to unthaw his proud reserve could
Godwin perchance have found the companionship he needed. Many such
homes existed in Kingsmill, but no kindly fortune led the young man
within the sphere of their warmth.

His lodgings were in a very ugly street in the ugliest outskirts
of the town; he had to take a long walk through desolate districts
(brick-yard, sordid pasture, degenerate village) before he could
refresh his eyes with the rural scenery which was so great a joy to
him as almost to be a necessity. The immediate vicinage offered
nothing but monotone of grimy, lower middle-class dwellings,
occasionally relieved by a public-house. He occupied two rooms, not
unreasonably clean, and was seldom disturbed by the attentions of
his landlady.

An impartial observer might have wondered at the negligence
which left him to arrange his life as best he could,
notwithstanding youth and utter inexperience. It looked indeed as
if there were no one in the world who cared what became of him. Yet
this was merely the result of his mother's circumstances, and of
his own character. Mrs Peak could do no more than make her small
remittances, and therewith send an occasional admonition regarding
his health. She did not, in fact, conceive the state of things,
imagining that the authority and supervisal of the College extended
over her son's daily existence, whereas it was possible for Godwin
to frequent lectures or not, to study or to waste his time, pretty
much as he chose, subject only to official inquiry if his
attendance became frequently irregular. His independent temper, and
the seeming maturity of his mind, supplied another excuse for the
imprudent confidence which left him to his own resources. Yet the
perils of the situation were great indeed. A youth of less
concentrated purpose, more at the mercy of casual allurement, would
probably have gone to wreck amid trials so exceptional.

Trials not only of his moral nature. The sums of money with
which he was furnished fell short of a reasonable total for bare
necessities. In the calculation made by Mrs. Peak and her sister,
outlay on books had practically been lost sight of; it was presumed
that ten shillings a term would cover this item. But Godwin could
not consent to be at a disadvantage in his armoury for academic
contest. The first month saw him compelled to contract his diet,
that he might purchase books; thenceforth he rarely had enough to
eat. His landlady supplied him with breakfast, tea, and supper—each
repast of the very simplest kind; for dinner it was understood that
he repaired to some public table, where meat and vegetables, with
perchance a supplementary sweet when nature demanded it, might be
had for about a shilling. That shilling was not often at his
disposal. Dinner as it is understood by the comfortably clad, the
'regular meal' which is a part of English respectability, came to
be represented by a small pork-pie, or even a couple of buns, eaten
at the little shop over against the College. After a long morning
of mental application this was poor refreshment; the long afternoon
which followed, again spent in rigorous study, could not but reduce
a growing frame to ravenous hunger. Tea and buttered bread were the
means of appeasing it, until another four hours' work called for
reward in the shape of bread and cheese. Even yet the day's toil
was not ended. Godwin sometimes read long after midnight, with the
result that, when at length he tried to sleep, exhaustion of mind
and body kept him for a long time feverishly wakeful.

These hardships he concealed from the people at Twybridge.
Complaint, it seemed to him, would be ungrateful, for sacrifices
were already made on his behalf. His father, as he well remembered,
was wont to relate, with a kind of angry satisfaction, the miseries
through which he had fought his way to education and the
income-tax. Old enough now to reflect with compassionate
understanding upon that life of conflict, Godwin resolved that he
too would bear the burdens inseparable from poverty, and in some
moods was even glad to suffer as his father had done. Fortunately
he had a sound basis of health, and hunger and vigils would not
easily affect his constitution. If, thus hampered, he could
outstrip competitors who had every advantage of circumstance, the
more glorious his triumph.

Sunday was an interval of leisure. Rejoicing in deliverance from
Sabbatarianism, he generally spent the morning in a long walk, and
the rest of the day was devoted to non-collegiate reading. He had
subscribed to a circulating library, and thus obtained new
publications recommended to him in the literary paper which again
taxed his stomach. Mere class-work did not satisfy him. He was
possessed with throes of spiritual desire, impelling him towards
that world of unfettered speculation which he had long indistinctly
imagined. It was a great thing to learn what the past could teach,
to set himself on the common level of intellectual men; but he
understood that college learning could not be an end in itself,
that the Professors to whom he listened either did not speak out
all that was in their minds, or, if they did, were far from
representing the advanced guard of modern thought. With eagerness
he at length betook himself to the teachers of philosophy and of
geology. Having paid for these lectures out of his own pocket, he
felt as if he had won a privilege beyond the conventional course of
study, an initiation to a higher sphere of intellect. The result
was disillusion. Not even in these class-rooms could he hear the
word for which he waited, the bold annunciation of newly discovered
law, the science which had completely broken with tradition. He
came away unsatisfied, and brooded upon the possibilities which
would open for him when he was no longer dependent.

His evening work at home was subject to a disturbance which
would have led him to seek other lodgings, could he have hoped to
find any so cheap as these. The landlady's son, a lank youth of the
clerk species, was wont to amuse himself from eight to ten with
practice on a piano. By dint of perseverance he had learned to
strum two or three hymnal melodies popularised by American
evangelists; occasionally he even added the charm of his voice,
which had a pietistic nasality not easily endured by an ear of any
refinement. Not only was Godwin harassed by the recurrence of these
performances; the tunes worked themselves into his brain, and
sometimes throughout a whole day their burden clanged and squalled
incessantly on his mental hearing. He longed to entreat forbearance
from the musician, but an excess of delicacy—which always ruled his
behaviour—kept him silent. Certain passages in the classics, and
many an elaborate mathematical formula, long retained for him an
association with the cadences of revivalist hymnody.

Like all proud natures condemned to solitude, he tried to
convince himself that he had no need of society, that he despised
its attractions, and could be self-sufficing. So far was this from
the truth that he often regarded with bitter envy those of his
fellow-students who had the social air, who conversed freely among
their equals, and showed that the pursuits of the College were only
a part of their existence. These young men were either preparing
for the University, or would pass from Whitelaw to business,
profession, official training; in any case, a track was marked out
for them by the zealous care of relatives and friends, and their
efforts would always be aided, applauded, by a kindly circle. Some
of them Godwin could not but admire, so healthful were they, so
bright of intellect, and courteous in manner,—a type distinct from
any he had formerly observed. Others were antipathetic to him.
Their aggressive gentility conflicted with the wariness of his
self-esteem; such a one, for instance, as Bruno Chilvers, the sound
of whose mincing voice, as he read in the class, so irritated him
that at times he had to cover his ears. Yet, did it chance that one
of these offensive youths addressed a civil word to him, on the
instant his prejudice was disarmed, and his emotions flowed forth
in a response to which he would gladly have given free expression.
When he was invited to meet the relatives of Buckland Warricombe,
shyness prepossessed him against them; but the frank kindness of
his reception moved him, and on going away he was ashamed to have
replied so boorishly to attentions so amiably meant. The same note
of character sounded in what personal intercourse he had with the
Professors. Though his spirit of criticism was at times busy with
these gentlemen, he had for most of them a profound regard; and to
be elected by one or other for a word of commendation, a little
private assistance, a well-phrased inquiry as to his progress,
always made his heart beat high with gratitude. They were his first
exemplars of finished courtesy, of delicate culture; and he could
never sufficiently regret that no one of them was aware how
thankfully he recognised his debt.

In longing for the intimacy of refined people, he began to
modify his sentiments with regard to the female sex. His first
prize-day at Whitelaw was the first occasion on which he sat in an
assembly where ladies (as he understood the title) could be seen
and heard. The impression he received was deep and lasting. On the
seat behind him were two girls whose intermittent talk held him
with irresistible charm throughout the whole ceremony. He had not
imagined that girls could display such intelligence, and the sweet
clearness of their intonation, the purity of their accent, the
grace of their habitual phrases, were things altogether beyond his
experience. This was not the English he had been wont to hear on
female lips. His mother and his aunt spoke with propriety; their
associates were soft-tongued; but here was something quite
different from inoffensiveness of tone and diction. Godwin
appreciated the differentiating cause. These young ladies behind
him had been trained from the cradle to speak for the delight of
fastidious ears; that they should be grammatical was not
enough—they must excel in the art of conversational music. Of
course there existed a world where only such speech was
interchanged, and how inestimably happy those men to whom the
sphere was native!

When the proceedings were over, he drew aside and watched the
two girls as they mingled with acquaintances; he kept them in view
until they left the College. An emotion such as this he had never
known; for the first time in his life he was humiliated without
embitterment.

The bitterness came when he had returned to his home in the back
street of Twybridge, and was endeavouring to spend the holidays in
a hard 'grind'. He loathed the penurious simplicity to which his
life was condemned; all familiar circumstances were become petty,
coarse, vulgar, in his eyes; the contrast with the idealised world
of his ambition plunged him into despair: Even Mr. Gunnery seemed
an ignoble figure when compared with the Professors of Whitelaw,
and his authority in the sciences was now subjected to doubt.
However much or little might result from the three years at
College, it was clear to Godwin that his former existence had
passed into infinite remoteness; he was no longer fit for
Twybridge, no longer a companion for his kindred. Oliver, whose
dulness as a schoolboy gave no promise of future achievements, was
now learning the business of a seedsman; his brother felt ashamed
when he saw him at work in the shop, and had small patience with
the comrades to whom Oliver dedicated his leisure. Charlotte was
estranged by religious differences. Only for his mother did the
young man show increased consideration. To his aunt he endeavoured
to be grateful, but his behaviour in her presence was elaborate
hypocrisy. Hating the necessity for this, he laid the blame on
fortune, which had decreed his birth in a social sphere where he
must ever be an alien.

With the growth of his militant egoism, there had developed in
Godwin Peak an excess of nervous sensibility which threatened to
deprive his character of the initiative rightly belonging to it.
Self-assertion is the practical complement of self-esteem. To be
largely endowed with the latter quality, yet constrained by a
coward delicacy to repress it, is to suffer martyrdom at the
pleasure of every robust assailant, and in the end be driven to the
refuge of a moody solitude. That encounter with his objectionable
uncle after the prize distribution at Whitelaw showed how much
Godwin had lost of the natural vigour which declared itself at
Andrew Peak's second visit to Twybridge, when the boy certainly
would not have endured his uncle's presence but for hospitable
considerations and the respect due to his mother. The decision with
which he then unbosomed himself to Oliver, still characterised his
thoughts, but he had not courage to elude the dialogue forced upon
him, still less to make known his resentment of the man's offensive
vulgarity. He endured in silence, his heart afire with scornful
wrath.

The affliction could not have befallen him at a time when he was
less capable of supporting it resignedly. Notwithstanding his
noteworthy success in two classes, it seemed to him that he had
lost everything—that the day was one of signal and disgraceful
defeat. In any case that sequence of second prizes must have filled
him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow
as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer
of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah!
The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak
always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the
serious trial came he would show what was really in him. Too late
he recognised his error, though he tried not to admit it. The extra
subjects had exacted too much of him; there was a limit to his
powers. Within the College this would be well enough understood,
but to explain a disagreeable fact is not to change it; his name
was written in pitiful subordination. And as for the public
assembly—he would have sacrificed some years of his life to have
stepped forward in facile supremacy, beneath the eyes of those
clustered ladies. Instead of that, they had looked upon his shame;
they had interchanged glances of amusement at each repetition of
his defeat; had murmured comments in their melodious speech; had
ended by losing all interest in him—as intuition apprised him was
the wont of women.