Rickie by now had got into a fluster. At the kitchens he had lost his head, and when his turn came—he had had to wait—he had yielded his place to those behind, saying that he didn’t matter. And he had wasted more precious time buying bananas, though he knew that the Pembrokes were not partial to fruit. Amid much tardy and chaotic hospitality the meal got under way. All the spoons and forks were anyhow, for Mrs. Aberdeen’s virtues were not practical. The fish seemed never to have been alive, the meat had no kick, and the cork of the college claret slid forth silently, as if ashamed of the contents. Agnes was particularly pleasant. But her brother could not recover himself. He still remembered their desolate arrival, and he could feel the waters of the Pem eating into his instep.
“Rickie,” cried the lady, “are you aware that you haven’t congratulated me on my engagement?”
Rickie laughed nervously, and said, “Why no! No more I have.”
“Say something pretty, then.”
“I hope you’ll be very happy,” he mumbled. “But I don’t know anything about marriage.”
“Oh, you awful boy! Herbert, isn’t he just the same? But you do know something about Gerald, so don’t be so chilly and cautious. I’ve just realized, looking at those groups, that you must have been at school together. Did you come much across him?”
“Very little,” he answered, and sounded shy. He got up hastily, and began to muddle with the coffee.
“But he was in the same house. Surely that’s a house group?”
“He was a prefect.” He made his coffee on the simple system. One had a brown pot, into which the boiling stuff was poured. Just before serving one put in a drop of cold water, and the idea was that the grounds fell to the bottom.
“Wasn’t he a kind of athletic marvel? Couldn’t he knock any boy or master down?”
“Yes.”
“If he had wanted to,” said Mr. Pembroke, who had not spoken for some time.
“If he had wanted to,” echoed Rickie. “I do hope, Agnes, you’ll be most awfully happy. I don’t know anything about the army, but I should think it must be most awfully interesting.”
Mr. Pembroke laughed faintly.
“Yes, Rickie. The army is a most interesting profession,—the profession of Wellington and Marlborough and Lord Roberts; a most interesting profession, as you observe. A profession that may mean death—death, rather than dishonour.”
“That’s nice,” said Rickie, speaking to himself. “Any profession may mean dishonour, but one isn’t allowed to die instead. The army’s different. If a soldier makes a mess, it’s thought rather decent of him, isn’t it, if he blows out his brains? In the other professions it somehow seems cowardly.”
“I am not competent to pronounce,” said Mr. Pembroke, who was not accustomed to have his schoolroom satire commented on. “I merely know that the army is the finest profession in the world. Which reminds me, Rickie—have you been thinking about yours?”
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“No.”
“Now, Herbert, don’t bother him. Have another meringue.”
“But, Rickie, my dear boy, you’re twenty. It’s time you thought. The Tripos is the beginning of life, not the end. In less than two years you will have got your B.A. What are you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’reM.A., aren’t you?” asked Agnes; but her brother proceeded—
“I have seen so many promising, brilliant lives wrecked simply on account of this—not settling soon enough. My dear boy, you must think. Consult your tastes if possible—but think. You have not a moment to lose. The Bar, like your father?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t like that at all.”
“I don’t mention the Church.”
“Oh, Rickie, do be a clergyman!” said Miss Pembroke. “You’d be simply killing in a wide-awake.”
He looked at his guests hopelessly. Their kindness and competence overwhelmed him. “I wish I could talk to them as I talk to myself,” he thought. “I’m not such an ass when I talk to myself. I don’t believe, for instance, that quite all I thought about the cow was rot.” Aloud he said, “I’ve sometimes wondered about writing.”
“Writing?” said Mr. Pembroke, with the tone of one who gives everything its trial. “Well, what about writing? What kind of writing?”
“I rather like,”—he suppressed something in his throat,—“I rather like trying to write little stories.”
“Why, I made sure it was poetry!” said Agnes. “You’re just the boy for poetry.”
“I had no idea you wrote. Would you let me see something? Then I could judge.”
The author shook his head. “I don’t show it to any one. It isn’t anything. I just try because it amuses me.”
“What is it about?”
“Silly nonsense.”
“Are you ever going to show it to any one?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mr. Pembroke did not reply, firstly, because the meringue he was eating was, after all, Rickie’s; secondly, because it was gluey and stuck his jaws together. Agnes observed that the writing was really a very good idea: there was Rickie’s aunt,—she could push him.
“Aunt Emily never pushes any one; she says they always rebound and crush her.”
“I only had the pleasure of seeing your aunt once. I should have thought her a quite uncrushable person. But she would be sure to help you.”
“I couldn’t show her anything. She’d think them even sillier than they are.”
“Always running yourself down! There speaks the artist!”
“I’m not modest,” he said anxiously. “I just know they’re bad.”
Mr. Pembroke’s teeth were clear of meringue, and he could refrain no longer. “My dear Rickie, your father and mother are dead, and you often say your aunt takes no interest in you. Therefore your life depends on yourself. Think it over carefully, but settle, and having once settled, stick. If you think that this writing is practicable, and that you could make your living by it—that you could, if needs be, support a wife—then by all means write. But you must work. Work and drudge. Begin at the bottom of the ladder and work upwards.”
Rickie’s head drooped. Any metaphor silenced him. He never thought of replying that art is not a ladder—with a curate, as it were, on the first rung, a rector on the second, and a bishop, still nearer heaven, at the top. He never retorted that the artist is not a bricklayer at all,
