«Thank goodness,» said Roger, «we still hammer a little solid stuff into them. But there’s been a great deal of fuss lately about new curriculums and so forth. They do a lot of science now and things of that kind, but I don’t believe the children learn anything at all. It’s pure waste of time.»
«So is all education, I dare say,» said Jacobsen lightly.
«Not if you teach them discipline. That’s what’s wanted—discipline. Most of these little boys need plenty of beating, and they don’t get enough now. Besides, if you can’t hammer knowledge in at their heads, you can at least beat a little in at their tails.»
«You’re very ferocious, Roger,» said Mr. Petherton, smiling. He was feeling better; the duck was settling down.
«No, it’s the vital thing. The best thing the war has brought us is discipline. The country had got slack and wanted tightening up.» Roger’s face glowed with zeal.
From the other end of the table Guy’s voice could be heard saying, «Do you know Cesar Franck’s ‘ Dieu s’avance a travers la lande ‘? It’s one of the finest bits of religious music I know.»
Mr. Petherton’s face lighted up; he leaned forward. «No,» he said, throwing his answer unexpectedly into the midst of the young people’s conversation. «I don’t know it; but do you know this? Wait a minute.» He knitted his brows, and his lips moved as though he were trying to recapture a formula. «Ah, I’ve got it. Now, can you tell me this? The name of what famous piece of religious music do I utter when I order an old carpenter, once a Liberal but now a renegade to Conservatism, to make a hive for bees?»
Guy gave it up; his guardian beamed delightedly.
«Hoary Tory, oh, Judas! Make a bee-house,» he said. «Do you see? Oratorio Judas Maccabeus»
Guy could have wished that this bit of flotsam from Mr. Petherton’s sportive youth had not been thus washed up at his feet. He felt that he had been peeping indecently close into the dark backward and abysm of time.
«That was a good one,» Mr. Petherton chuckled. «I must see if I can think of some more.»
Roger, who was not easily to be turned away from his favourite topic, waited till this irrelevant spark of levity had quite expired, and continued: «It’s a remarkable and noticeable fact that you never seem to get discipline combined with the teaching of science or modern languages. Who ever heard of a science master having a good house at a school? Scientists’ houses are always bad.»
«How very strange! «said Jacobsen.
«Strange, but a fact. It seems to me a great mistake to give them houses at all if they can’t keep discipline. And then there’s the question of religion. Some of these men never come to chapel except when they’re on duty. And then, I ask you, what happens when they prepare their boys for Confirmation? Why, I’ve known boys come to me who were supposed to have been prepared by one or other of these men, and, on asking them, I’ve found that they know nothing whatever about the most solemn facts of the Eucharist.—May I have some more of those excellent cherries please, White? —Of course, I do my best in such cases to tell the boys what I feel personally about these solemn things. But there generally isn’t the time; one’s life is so crowded; and so they go into Confirmation with only the very haziest knowledge of what it’s all about. You see how absurd it is to let anyone but the classical men have anything to do with the boys’ lives.»
«Shake it well, dear,» Mr. Petherton was saying to his daughter, who had come with his medicine.
«What is that stuff?» asked Roger,
«Oh, it’s merely my peptones. I can hardly digest at all without it, you know.»
«You have all my sympathies. My poor colleague, Flexner, suffers from chronic colitis. I can’t imagine how he goes on with his work.»
«No, indeed. I find I can do nothing strenuous.»
Roger turned and seized once more on the unhappy George. «White,» he said, «let this be a lesson to you. Take care of your inside; it’s the secret of a happy old age.»
Guy looked up quickly. «Don’t worry about his old age,» he said in a strange harsh voice, very different from the gentle, elaborately modulated tone in which he generally spoke. «He won’t have an old age. His chances against surviving are about fourteen to three if the war goes on another year.»
«Come,» said Roger, «don’t let’s be pessimistic.»
«But I’m not. I assure you, I’m giving you a most rosy view of George’s chance of reaching old age.»
It was felt that Guy’s remarks had been in poor taste. There was a silence; eyes floated vaguely and uneasily, trying not to encounter one another. Roger cracked a nut loudly. When he had sufficiently relished the situation, Jacobsen changed the subject by remarking:
«That was a fine bit of work by our destroyers this morning, wasn’t it?»
«It did one good to read about it,» said Mr. Petherton. «Quite the Nelson touch.»
Roger raised his glass. «Nelson!» he said, and emptied it at a gulp. «What a man! I am trying to persuade the Headmaster to make Trafalgar Day a holiday. It is the best way of reminding boys of things of that sort.»
«A curiously untypical Englishman to be a national hero, isn’t he?» said Jacobsen. «So emotional and lacking in Britannic phlegm.»
The Reverend Roger looked grave. «There’s one thing I’ve never been able to understand about Nelson, and that is, how a man who was so much the soul of honour and of patriotism could have been—er—immoral with Lady Hamilton, I know people say that it was the custom of the age, that these things meant nothing then, and so forth; but all the same, I repeat, I cannot understand how a man who was so intensely a patriotic Englishman could have done such a thing.»
«I fail to see what patriotism has got to do with it,» said Guy.
Roger fixed him with his most pedagogic look and said slowly and gravely, «Then I am sorry for you. I shouldn’t have thought it was necessary to tell an Englishman that purity of morals is a national tradition: you especially, a public-school man.»
«Let us go and have a hundred up at billiards,» said Mr. Petherton. «Roger, will you come? And you, George, and Guy? «
«I’m so incredibly bad,» Guy insisted, «I’d really rather not.»
«So am I,» said Jacobsen.
«Then, Marjorie, you must make the fourth.»
The billiard players trooped out; Guy and Jacobsen were left alone, brooding over the wreckage of dinner. There was a long silence. The two men sat smoking, Guy sitting in a sagging, crumpled attitude, like a half-empty sack abandoned on a chair, Jacobsen very upright and serene.
«Do you find you can suffer fools gladly?» asked Guy abruptly.
«Perfectly gladly.»
«I wish I could. The Reverend Roger has a tendency to make my blood boil.»
«But such a good soul,» Jacobsen insisted.
«I dare say, but a monster all the same.»
«You should take him more calmly. I make a point of never letting myself be moved by external things. I stick to my writing and thinking. Truth is beauty, beauty is truth, and so forth: after all, they’re the only things of solid value.» Jacobsen looked at the young man with a smile as he said these words. There is no doubt, he said to himself, that that boy ought to have gone into business; what a mistake this higher education is, to be sure.
«Of course, they’re the only things,» Guy burst out passionately. «You can afford to say so because you had the luck to be born twenty years before I was, and with five thousand miles of good deep water between you and Europe. Here am I, called upon to devote my life, in a very different way from which you devote yours to truth and beauty—to devote my life to—well, what? Pm not quite sure, but I preserve a touching faith that it is good. And you tell me to ignore external circumstances. Come and live in Flanders a little and try . . .» He launched forth into a tirade about agony and death and blood and putrefaction.
«What is one to do?» he concluded despairingly. «What the devil is right? I had meant to spend my life writing and thinking, trying to create something beautiful or discover something true. But oughtn’t one, after all, if one survives, to give up everything else and try to make this hideous den of a world a little more habitable? «
«I think you can take it that a world which has let itself be dragooned into this criminal folly is pretty hopeless. Follow your inclinations; or, better, go into a bank and make a lot of money.»
Guy burst out laughing, rather too loudly. «Admirable, admirable!» he said. «To return to our old topic of fools: frankly, Jacobsen, I cannot imagine why you should elect to pass your time with my dear old guardian. He’s a charming old man, but one must admit» He waved his hand.
«One must live somewhere,» said Jacobsen. «I find your guardian a most interesting man to be with. — Oh, do look at that dog! ‘: On the hearth-rug Marjorie’s little Pekingese, Confucius, was preparing to lie down and go to sleep. He went assiduously through the solemn farce of scratching the floor, under the impression, no doubt, that he was making a comfortable nest to lie in. He turned round and round, scratching earnestly and methodically. Then he lay down, curled himself up in
