The Lost Girl Part 12

"What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?"

He stared at her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.

"Are they for me?" she said, with false brightness. "Thank you."

James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly, at the flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and sharp-toothed ferrets. Then he looked as suspiciously at the hand which Albert at last extended to him. He shook it slightly, and said:

"Take a seat."

"I'm afraid I'm disturbing you in your reading," said Albert, still having the drawn, excited smile on his face.

"Well--" said James Houghton. "The light is fading."

Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.

"Haven't they a lovely scent?" she said.

"Do you think so?" he replied, again with the excited smile. There was a pause. Albert, rather embarra.s.sed, reached forward, saying:

"May I see what you're reading!" And he turned over the book.

"'Tommy and Grizel!' Oh yes! What do you think of it?"

"Well," said James, "I am only in the beginning."

"I think it's interesting, myself," said Albert, "as a study of a man who can't get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like that. What I wonder is why they find it such a drawback."

"Find what a drawback?" asked James.

"Not being able to get away from themselves. That self-consciousness. It hampers them, and interferes with their power of action. Now I wonder why self-consciousness should hinder a man in his action? Why does it cause misgiving? I think I'm self-conscious, but I don't think I have so many misgivings. I don't see that they're necessary."

"Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he's a despicable character," said James.

"No, I don't know so much about that," said Albert. "I shouldn't say weak, exactly. He's only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is why he feels guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there's no need to feel guilty about it, is there?"

He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.

"I shouldn't say so," replied James. "But if a man never knows his own mind, he certainly can't be much of a man."

"I don't see it," replied Albert. "What's the matter is that he feels guilty for not knowing his own mind. That's the unnecessary part. The guilty feeling--"

Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular interest for James.

"Where we've got to make a change," said Albert, "is in the feeling that other people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and do. n.o.body knows what another man ought to feel. Every man has his own special feelings, and his own right to them. That's where it is with education. You ought not to want all your children to feel alike. Their natures are all different, and so they should all feel different, about practically everything."

"There would be no end to the confusion," said James.

"There needn't be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number of rules and conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in private you feel just as you do feel, without occasion for trying to feel something else."

"I don't know," said James. "There are certain feelings common to humanity, such as love, and honour, and truth."

"Would you call them feelings?" said Albert. "I should say what is common is the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you've put it into words. But the feeling varies with every man. The same idea represents a different kind of feeling in every different individual. It seems to me that's what we've got to recognize if we're going to do anything with education. We don't want to produce ma.s.s feelings. Don't you agree?"

Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to agree.

"Shall we have a light, Alvina?" he said to his daughter.

Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as she reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly.

It seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all.

He did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what he was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said.

Yet she believed he was clever.

It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way, sitting there at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and talking animatedly. The uncomfortable thing was that though he talked in the direction of his interlocutor, he did not speak _to_ him: merely said his words towards him. James, however, was such an airy feather himself he did not remark this, but only felt a little self-important at sustaining such a subtle conversation with a man from Oxford. Alvina, who never expected to be interested in clever conversations, after a long experience of her father, found her expectation justified again. She was not interested.

The man was quite nicely dressed, in the regulation tweed jacket and flannel trousers and brown shoes. He was even rather smart, judging from his yellow socks and yellow-and-brown tie. Miss Pinnegar eyed him with approval when she came in.

"Good-evening!" she said, just a trifle condescendingly, as she shook hands. "How do you find Woodhouse, after being away so long?"

Her way of speaking was so quiet, as if she hardly spoke aloud.

"Well," he answered. "I find it the same in many ways."

"You wouldn't like to settle here again?"

"I don't think I should. It feels a little cramped, you know, after a new country. But it has its attractions." Here he smiled meaningful.

"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar. "I suppose the old connections count for something."

"They do. Oh decidedly they do. There's no a.s.sociations like the old ones." He smiled flatly as he looked towards Alvina.

"You find it so, do you!" returned Miss Pinnegar. "You don't find that the new connections make up for the old?"

"Not altogether, they don't. There's something missing--" Again he looked towards Alvina. But she did not answer his look.

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar. "I'm glad we still count for something, in spite of the greater attractions. How long have you in England?"

"Another year. Just a year. This time next year I expect I shall be sailing back to the Cape." He smiled as if in antic.i.p.ation. Yet it was hard to believe that it mattered to him--or that anything mattered.

"And is Oxford agreeable to you?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. I keep myself busy."

"What are your subjects?" asked James.

"English and History. But I do mental science for my own interest."

Alvina had taken up a piece of sewing. She sat under the light, brooding a little. What _had_ all this to do with her. The man talked on, and beamed in her direction. And she felt a little important. But moved or touched?--not the least in the world.

She wondered if any one would ask him to supper--bread and cheese and currant-loaf, and water, was all that offered. No one asked him, and at last he rose.

"Show Mr. Witham out through the shop, Alvina," said Miss Pinnegar.