There seemed a little strain in his voice, and I wondered what thoughts had passed through his mind last night about me, and if his affection for me had really changed.

If you leave like this it will never be the same again, and I begged of him not to go away. You thought that I spoke with the express intention of wounding your feelings, but you are wrong.

He did not answer for some time, and when I pressed him he repeated what he had said before, adding that the engagement could not be broken.

And when are you going back to the West?

At the end of next week or the week following.

But won't you spend the interval here?

No; I'm going on to see some other friends.

And then?

Well, then I shall go back to the West.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry ... this religion has estranged us.

Don't let us speak on that subject again.

No, let us never speak on that subject again.

But you can't help yourself.

By going away you'll give importance to words which they really don't deserve. Nothing has happened, only a few words—nothing more. And after all, you can't blame me if I'm interested in your children. It's only natural.

You said you'd seek my children out for the express purpose—

Excuse me; I said I would not seek them out.

And as I stood looking at him the thought crossed my mind that there was a good deal to be said in support of his view, so I said: I suppose that if the father's right to bring up his children as he chooses be taken from him, he loses all his pleasure in his children.

It seems the more humane view.

His voice altered, and, seeing that we were on the point of being reconciled, I said: You always had more conscience than I had; even when you were four years old you objected to my putting back the clock in the passage to deceive Miss Westby. And in the hope of distracting his thoughts from last night's quarrel, I asked him if he remembered my first governess, Miss Beard. I remember crying when she went away to be married; and it was possibly for those tears that she came to see me at Oscott, and brought a cake with her. A tall, blond girl succeeded her, but she had to leave because of something the matter with her hip.

The Colonel did not remember either.

Nor grandmother?

Oh yes, I remember grandmother quite well.

But only as a cripple. My first memory is going along the passage with her to the dining-room, and hearing her say the gingerbread nuts were too hard, and my first disappointment was at seeing them sent back to the kitchen. She promised that some more should be made. But a few days or a few weeks after she was picked up at the foot of the stairs. She never recovered from that fall; she never walked again, but was carried out by two villagers in a chair on poles.

I remember seeing her dead, and the funeral train going up the narrow path through the dark wood to Kiltoon.

Half-way up that pathway there is a stone seat. It was she who had it put there. She walked to Kiltoon every day till her accident. She is there now, and father and mother are there. The tomb must be nearly full of us. Are you going there? I'm not. Does it ever occur to you that we have very little more life to live, only the lag end of the journey? I cannot believe myself to be an old man.

You're not.

I don't know what else to call myself. How unreal it all is! For if we look back, we discover very few traces of our flight. Our lives float away like the clouds. Father was in London fighting Ireland's battle when mother and I used to spend the evening together in the summer room—she in one armchair, I in another. Our lives begin in a grey dusk. I can remember settling myself in the chair every night and waiting for her to begin her tale of loneliness; and I must have enjoyed it, for when she started up out of her chair, crying, Why, it's eleven o'clock; we must get to bed, I was loath to go. She used to read father's speeches.

To whom?

To grandmother. She was a young woman at the time—not thirty, and was glad when father's political career ended and he returned to live in Moore Hall with her. You're writing his life, and have heard me tell how he was pricked by a sudden curiosity to hear me read aloud, and how the long ff's broke me down again and again. My mother and Miss Westby were called in, and father assured us that he used to read The Times aloud to his parents when he was three. And then I think he ceased to interest himself in my education for some while—a respite much appreciated by me and my governess. He turned to racing—

The usual thing for an Irish gentleman of those days to do when he left politics.

You know about Wolf Dog and Carenna—you have read the subject up; but you don't remember the old Cook—the last of the first racing stud: an old mare that had drifted into the shafts of the side-car that used to take us to church and to Ballinrobe. How very Irish it all is! But when father gave up politics, she was sent to the Curragh to be served by Mountain Deer. Her first foal was a chestnut filly—Molly Carew—but she was too slow to win a selling race, and I don't know what became of her. She bred another chestnut filly—the Cat—and she was as slow as her sister—a very vicious animal that nearly killed both my father and mother. After her came Croagh Patrick, a brown colt. There seems never to have been any doubt that he was a good one. I remember hearing—and perhaps you do, too—that when the grooms appeared at the gate with sieves of oats Croagh Patrick always came up the field streets ahead.

No, I never heard that. I'm glad to you told me.

All the same, he didn't win his two-year-old races at the Curragh.

Yes, he did; he won the Madrids, for I saw him win. He was a black, ratlike horse, with four white legs. And what I remember best is how I made my way to the railings, and gradually slipped down them till I was on my knees, for I wanted to say a little prayer that the horse might win; and I remember then how I looked round, terribly frightened lest any one had seen me pray.

He couldn't have won the Madrids before he won the Steward's Cup, for the handicapper let him in at six stone. It must have been as a four-year-old you saw him run, or in the autumn. You were a baby boy when Croagh Patrick went to Cliff's to do his last gallops before running at Goodwood. I was at Cliff's at the time and saw him do them. Father and mother went away with the horse—

And what became of you?

I was left at Cliff's, and enjoyed myself immensely among the stable-boys. There was a green parrot in the parlour—it was the first time I had ever seen a parrot, and Polly was often brought out into the stable-yard, and I thought it cruel to throw water on her, till it was pointed out to me that the bird enjoyed her bath.



I don't know. Mrs Cliff probably saw that I put on my trousers. But I remember the pony I used to ride out on the downs, and Vulture, a horse so vicious that if he had succeeded in ridding himself of the boy he would have eaten him. The Lawyer was there at the time, the last half-bred that won a flat race. Once I lost myself on the downs. You never heard of my stay at Cliff's?

I always thought that you went straight from Moore Hall to Oscott.

After Goodwood father and mother went off somewhere, and presumably forgot all about me. Of course, they knew I was quite safe.

Among stable-boys! I don't think I should care to leave Rory and Ulick at a racing-stable for three weeks. How long were you there?

A month, perhaps; but I can't say. And then a little kid of nine was pitched headlong into the midst of a hundred and fifty boys. How well I remember leaving Cliff's for Oscott! My one thought at the time was that the train didn't travel fast enough, and all the way I was asking father how far we were from Oscott, and if we should get there before evening. You remember the fringe of trees and the gate-house rising above them, and the great red-brick building, the castellated tower with the clock in it, and the tall belfry! I left father and mother talking with the President in the pompous room reserved for visitors, and raced through the empty playgrounds (it was class-time) delirious; and it was with difficulty that I was found when the time came for father and mother to bid me goodbye. They were a little shocked, I think, at my seeming heartlessness, but I could only think of the boys waiting to make my acquaintance. A few hours later they came trooping out of the classrooms, formed a procession, and marched into the refectory, I bringing up the rear. Father Martin came down the refectory and, to my great surprise, told me that I must hold my tongue. As soon as he had turned his back I asked my neighbour in a loud voice why the priest had told me I wasn't to talk. The question caused a loud titter, and before the meal had ended I had become a little character in the school. I never told you of my first day at Oscott. It seemed to me a fine thing to offer to match myself to fight the smallest boy present in the play-room after supper. But he was two or three years older than I was, and, though a Peruvian, he pummelled me, and the glamour of school-life must have begun to dim very soon—probably that very night, as soon as my swollen head was laid on the pillow. At Hedgeford Mrs Cliff must have helped me a little, but at Oscott there was no one to help me. Imagine a child of nine getting up at half-past six, dressing himself, and beaten if he was not down in time for Mass. There was no matron, no kindness, no pity, nor, as well as I can remember, the faintest recognition of the fact that I was but a baby. When my parents returned they found that the high-spirited child they had left at Oscott had been changed into a frightened, blubbering little coward that begged to be taken home. In those days children were not treated mercifully, and I remained at Oscott till my health yielded to cold and hunger and floggings. You remember my coming home and hearing that I wasn't returning to Oscott for a year or two.

You very nearly died, and if it hadn't been for cod-liver oil you would have died. But how difficult it was to get you to take it!

Those two years spent at Moore Hall were the best part of my childhood. Long days spent on the lake, two boatmen rowing us from island to island, fishing for trout and eels. How delightful! We sought for birds' nests in the woods and the bogs; I made a collection of wild birds' eggs, and wrote to my school-fellows of my finds. One of our tutors, Feeney, passed you afterwards for the army. We had many tutors, but Father James Browne is the only one that I remember with real affection. He loved literature for its own sake. Father didn't. I always felt he didn't, and that's what separated us.

He was a man of action.

Yes, I suppose he was, and could, therefore, learn lessons.

He seems to have been a model schoolboy. It was not till he went to Cambridge—

Whereas I couldn't learn.

You could learn quickly enough when there was anything to be gained that you wanted especially; and the Colonel reminded me that I had learnt up Greek and Latin history in a few weeks, because the reward was a day's outing in Warwickshire.

Any one can learn a little history. I often asked mother if I was really stupid, but was never able to get a clear answer from her. But you often see our old governess—would you mind asking her?

I have asked her, and she remembers you as the most amiable child she ever knew.

Did she tell you anything more about me?

No; I think that's all she said.

You like seeing the old people who knew us in childhood, but I don't. I never know what to say to them.

The Colonel did not answer, and at the end of a long silence I asked him if he remembered being taken to Castlebar and measured for clothes, and travelling over to England in the charge of Father Lavelle, who was going to Birmingham to spend his holidays with his cousin, a provision-dealer.

I can never forget that shop, the Colonel said; the smell of the cheese is in my nostrils at this moment. I always hated cheese.

You didn't like to stay the night there. You asked me, Why did you agree to stay here? I think it was because the people were so common.

I remember nothing of that, but I remember the provision-dealer's shirt-sleeves clearly; his face is indistinct.

A plump, cheery fellow, who came round the great piles of butter and cheese and shook hands with Father Lavelle, and was introduced to us, and begged that we should stay to dinner. Dinner was served in the back parlour, and was interrupted many times by customers.

I don't remember the dinner, but what I remember very well is that a number of people came in after dinner, and that a piper was sent for, and that we were asked to say if he was as good as our Connaught pipers. They all turned towards us, waiting for us to speak, and I can remember my embarrassment, and my effort to get at a fair decision, and wishing to say that Moran was the better piper.

It is curious how one man remembers one thing and another another. The people coming in, and the piper and the discussion about the piping have passed completely out of my memory, but I do remember very well lying down together side by side on flock mattresses in a long garret-room under a window for which there was no blind, and you reproaching me again for having consented to stay the night, and I suppose to your complaint I must have answered, You don't know Oscott. But perhaps I didn't wish to discourage you. A cab was called in the morning, and I congratulated myself that there were six miles still between us and that detestable college, and wished the horse would fall down and break his leg.

It was on my lips to say My God! you remember Oscott, and yet you're sending your son to be educated by priests. But quarrelling with my brother would not save the boy, and I said:

Things must have improved since then. Let us hope the windows in the corridors have been mended, and that a matron has been engaged to look after the smaller boys. Do you remember the dormitories, and thirty or forty boys, and a priest in a room at the end to see that we didn't speak to each other? All that was thought of was the modesty of the wooden partition. There were not sufficient bedclothes, we were often kept awake by the cold, and as for washing—none in winter was possible, the water in the jug being a solid lump of ice in the morning; but our ears were pinched by the Prefect because our necks were dirty. The injustice, the beastliness of that place—is it possible to forget it?

I remember praying on those cold mornings that I might not be sent to the Prefect's room to be beaten. Do you remember the order, Go to the Prefect's room and ask for four or six, and we had to wander down a long passage, doors all the way on the right and left, till we came to the last door? If the Prefect wasn't in we had to wait, and when he came to his room we told him who had sent us to him, and he took out of a cupboard a stick with a piece of waxed leather on the end of it, told us to hold out our hands, and we received four or six strokes delivered with all his strength.

He enjoyed it; men do enjoy cruelty, especially priests. I hope the food isn't so bad now as it was in the 'sixties.

The food that was given us at Oscott was worse than bad—it was disgusting, the Colonel answered.

Do you remember the bowl of slop called tea, and the other bowl of slop called coffee, and the pat of grease called butter? Some stale bread was handed about in a basket, and that was our breakfast; never an egg—a bleak meal, succeeded by half an hour's recreation, and then more lessons. At dinner, do you remember the iridescent beef, purple, with blue lines in it?

I'm convinced that very often it wasn't beef at all, but the carcass of some decayed jackass.

Whatever it was, I never touched it, but ate a little bread and drank a little beer. You couldn't touch the beef nor the cheese. Nor could my love of cheese enable me to eat it. What was it most like—soap, or decayed cork? It was like nothing but itself. Forty years have gone by and I remember it still.

One day in the week there were ribs of beef—

Those I used to eat; but the worst day of all was Thursday, for it was on that day large dishes of mince came up, I never touched it—did you?

Never.

Do you remember one morning at breakfast lumps of mince were discovered in the tea? The Prefect looked into the bowl handed to him, and acquiesced in the opinion that perhaps no tea or coffee had better be drunk that morning.

But if the Colonel had forgotten that incident, he remembered the tarts: sour damson jam poured into crusts as hard as bricks, and these tarts were alternated with a greasy suet-pudding served with a white sauce that made it even more disagreeable.

A horrible place! I muttered; and we continued to speak of those meals, eaten in silence, listening to a boy reading, the Prefect walking up and down watching us. Was any place ever more detestable than Oscott? At five o'clock beer was served out—vinegar would have been better. And the bread!

At seven sloppy tea and coffee, greasy butter, bread that looked as if it had been thrown about the floor! And then the dormitories!

The Colonel would not, of course, agree with me that any great harm is done to a boy by giving him over, body and soul, to a priest; but he remembered that our Castlebar clothes were soon threadbare and in holes, and our letters home, begging for an order for new clothes, were disregarded.

I think it must have been that father had lost money at racing, and as he hadn't paid the school fees, he didn't like to write to the President. When I left Oscott I used to hear people say they were cold, but I didn't understand what they meant. The hard life of Oscott gave us splendid health, which has lasted ever since.

Yes, it seems to have done that; and that's about all. We learnt nothing.

Nothing whatever; in many respects we unlearnt a great deal. I had learnt a good deal of French from our governess, but I forgot it all; yet we were taught French at Oscott.

Taught French! We weren't even taught English.

It was assumed that we knew English.

The English language begins in the Bible, and Catholics don't read the Bible. Do you remember the Bible stories we were given, written in very Catholic English?

Yes, I remember, the Colonel answered; and I think it's a great mistake that the Bible isn't taught in Catholic schools. There is nothing that I admire more than the Psalms—those great solemn rhythms.

We used to hear the Gospels read out in Chapel—

The door opened: the parlourmaid had come to tell the Colonel that a man downstairs would like to speak to him, and he left the room abruptly.

He never seems free from business, I muttered. Just as the conversation was beginning to get interesting. Oscott had every chance of turning out a well-educated boy in him, for he was willing to learn; but with me it was different. Oscott didn't get a fair chance. And I sat perplexed, unable to decide whether I could or would not learn, thinking it probable that my brain developed slowly, remembering that my mother had told me that father used to say, George is a chrysalis out of which a moth or butterfly may come. Now, which am I? Would father have been able to tell if he had lived? Can anybody tell me? But why should I want anybody to tell me? I am a reasonable being, and should know whether I am moth or butterfly. But I don't. Every man has asked himself if he is moth or butterfly, and, receiving no answer, he begins to wonder at the silence that has so suddenly gathered round him. Out of the void memories arise, and he wonders if they have arisen to answer his question. There was a round table in grandfather's library and it was filled with books—illustrated editions of Gulliver's Travels and the Arabian Nights; and on the page facing the picture of Gulliver astride on the nipple of a young Brobdingnagian's breast, I used to read how she undressed Gulliver for the amusement of her girl-friends, setting him astride on the nipple of one of her breasts. As she was forty-three feet high, Gulliver used to lean forward, clasping with both his arms the prodigious breast, very frightened lest he should fall; and I used to think that if she held out her apron I should not mind. But Swift speaks of the smells that these hides exhaled, and disgusted I would close the book and open the Arabian Nights and read again and again the story of the two travellers who saw a huge wreath of smoke rise out of the sea; it quickly shaped itself into a Genie, and, terribly frightened, the travellers climbed into a high tree and watched him come ashore and unlock a crystal casket, out of which a beautiful lady stepped to be enjoyed by the Genie, who fell asleep after his enjoyment. As soon as the lady saw she was released from his vigilance, she wandered a little way looking round as if to find somebody, seeking behind the rocks, looking up into the trees. On perceiving the travellers, she called to them to come down, and on their refusal to descend from fear of the Genie, she threatened to awake him and deliver them over to him. Branch by branch they descended tremblingly, and when they were by her she invited one to follow her into a dark part of the wood, telling the other to wait till she returned. After a little while she returned and retired with the second, and when she came back she said: I see rings upon your fingers; each must give me a ring, and your rings added to the ninety-eight in this handkerchief will make a hundred. I have sworn to deceive the Genie who keeps me locked in that casket a hundred times. Even more than the tale of the two travellers, that of the two men who went by night to a tomb appealed to my imagination, for it was related that they descended a staircase, spread with the rarest carpets, through burning perfumes, to a great tapestried saloon, where lamps were burning as if for a festival. A table was spread with delicate meats and wines. But the feasters were only two—a young man and woman, now lying side by side on a couch, dead. As soon as the elder man catches sight of them he draws off his slipper and slaps the faces of the dead and spits upon them, to the great horror of his companion, who seizes him by the arms, asking why he insults the dead. The dead whom you see lying before you are my son and daughter; whereupon he begins to tell how his son conceived a fatal passion for his sister. His passion was unfortunately returned, and, to escape from the world which holds such love in abhorrence, they retired to this dwelling. But even here, you see, the vengeance of God has overtaken them.

It had seemed to me that the brother and sister had probably lighted a pan of charcoal, choosing to die rather than that their love might die before them; and their love, so reprobate that it could only be enjoyed in a tomb, appealed to my perverse mind, prone to sympathise with every revolt against the common law. Each age selects a special sin to protest against, and in the beginning of the nineteenth century it was incest that excited the poetical imagination. Byron loved his half-sister, and Genesis sheltered his Cain. Shelley's poem Laon and Cythna was not in print when I was a child, but a note in the edition of Shelley's works that I discovered in my grandfather's library and took to Oscott College with me informed me that The Revolt of Islam was a revised version of it—revised by Shelley himself at the instigation of his publisher, who thought that England was not yet ripe for a poem on the subject of the love of brother and sister. The title The Revolt of Islam appealed to my imagination more than the first title, and connected the story in my mind with the story that I had read in the Arabian Nights; and, delighted by the beautiful names of the lovers, I often allowed my thoughts to wander away during class-time, wondering if they loved each other as deeply as the brother and sister that had perished in the tomb, and Marlow—where the poem was written in the ideal company of his mistress, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin—was for ever sanctified in my eyes.

I was as much given to dreaming as to games, and determined to indulge myself to the top of my bent, I would lean over my desk, a Latin grammar in front of me, my head clasped between my hands, and abandon myself to my imagination. However cold the morning might be, I could kick the world of rule away and pass into one in which all I knew of love was accomplished amid pale yellow, slowly moving tapestries, within fumes of burning perfume: dim forms of lovers, speaking with hushed voices, floated before me, and their stories followed them, woven without effort. I looked forward to the time apportioned out for the learning of our lessons, for it was only then that I could be sure of being able to leave Oscott without fear of interruption. It was in my mind that I found reality—Oscott and its masters were but a detestable dream. One priest and only one suspected my practice, and he would walk behind me and lay his hand on my shoulder, or rap my skull with his knuckles, rousing me so suddenly that I could not suppress a cry. And then, what agony to look round and find myself in the cold study with an unlearnt lesson before me, and the certainty in my heart that when I was called to repeat it I should be sent to the Prefect for a flogging for my stupidity or for my idleness, or for both!

One day coming out of the refectory I said to the Prefect, I brought a volume of Shelley's poems from home with me. I have been reading it ever since, and have begun to wonder if it is wrong to read his poems, for he denies the existence of God.

He just asked me to give him the book. The days went by without hearing any more of the volume. It had been sacrificed for nothing, and as soon as the Colonel returned I told him how I had sacrificed my volume of Shelley in the hope of being expelled for introducing an atheistical work into school.

You see you were in the big division and only rumours of your trouble used to reach me. I remember, however, the row you got into about betting; you used to lay the odds.

And once overlaid myself against one horse that had come along in the betting, and had to send ten shillings to London to back him. The Prefect gave me the bookmaker's letter and asked me to open it in his presence.

The prize fight created some little stir.

I remember it came off in the band-room, a sovereign a side, but before either was beaten the watch came running up the stairs to announce that the Prefect was going his rounds.

You were always in a row of some kind, always in that study place learning Latin lines.

Oscott was a vile hole, a den of priests. Every kind of priest. I remember one, a tall bald-headed fellow about five-and-thirty who kept me one whole summer afternoon learning and relearning lines that I knew quite well. Every time I went up to the desk to say them his arm used to droop about my shoulders, and with some endearing phrase he would send me back. We were alone and I could hear my fellows playing cricket outside. I must send you back once more, and when I came up again with the lines quite perfect his hand nearly slipped into my trouser pocket. At last the five o'clock bell rang and I was still there with the lines unlearnt. To be revenged on him for keeping me in the whole afternoon, I went to confession and mentioned the circumstance; I was curious to test the secrecy of the confessional. I was quite innocent as to his intentions, and the result of my confession was that a few days afterwards we heard he was leaving Oscott, and a rumour went round the school that he used to ask the boys to his room and give them cake and wine.

It doesn't follow that—

I know that a Catholic believes that a priest may murder, steal, fornicate, but he will never betray a secret revealed in the confessional. But we won't argue it. Do you remember the little housemaid?

I remember hearing that you had discovered a pretty maid-servant among the hideous lot that collected in the back benches, and I wondered how you managed to distinguish her looks, for you could only get sight of her by glancing over your shoulder.

You were nearly three years young than I was at the time, and had not reached the age of puberty; myself and a chosen few used to walk together round the playground, telling each other the adventures that had befallen us during the vacations. Do you remember Frank ——? He was one of my pals and liked telling of his adventures among maid-servants when he went home for the holidays. We could not stand his introductory chapters, long as Sir Walter Scott's, and used to cry, Begin with the bubbles.

But what has this story got to do with the pretty housemaid that you spotted at the back of the chapel?

Only this. An innocent question revealed my ignorance of woman, and, fearful lest Frank should tell on me, I spoke of Agnes.

Was that her name?

I don't know. The name started up in my mind and it seems to me in keeping with my memory of her, a low-sized girl, the shoulders slightly too high, a pointed oval face and demure overshadowed eyes. No one at Oscott had ever looked at a maid-servant before, and in a sudden inspiration I said that I would present Agnes with a bouquet. The project astonished and delighted my companions, and every evening I waited for her at the foot of the stairs leading to the organ-loft. It wouldn't be possible to offer her my bouquet till she came alone, and every day I answered my companions, No; I didn't get a chance last night. At last my chance came, and, descending the stairs, I offered the girl my flowers, mentioning that they would look well in the bosom of her dress. On another occasion I met her in the dormitories, but she begged me not to speak to her, for if I did she would be sent away.

Is that all?

It was the only thing I could think of to break the monotony of the Oscott day; and if I suggest that one of my boon companions may have yielded to scruples of conscience and betrayed me in confession—

A Catholic is only obliged to tell the sins he commits himself.

By acquiescing in my poor gallantries he may have thought he made himself responsible for them.

You very likely talked openly yourself, and—

Anything rather than admit that the confessional is used as a means of government. For what else do you think the sacrament was substituted?

I was many years at Oscott and never had any reason to suspect that an improper use was made of the confessional.

The secret leaked out; all secrets do in Catholic communities and some great trouble must have arisen, or I should not have written to father.

I knew nothing about that.

I wrote the miserable little story to him, adding that if the girl were sent away my conscience would leave me no peace, and that I should marry her as soon as I got the opportunity.

I had no idea it was so serious.



Of course I do; the sons of English tradesmen who were educated at Oscott, at our expense, for the priesthood.

When one of those cads came up to me in the playground and told me I was wanted in the visitor's room, my heart sank, and I could hardly crawl up the Gothic staircase. I was in an awful funk, for I could not think of father as being anything else but dreadfully angry with me; whereas he was surprisingly gentle, and listened to my foolish story without reproving me. I don't know if you remember father's eyes—clear, blue eyes—they embarrassed me all the while, making me feel a little hypocrite, for I didn't intend to carry out my threat. Even in those times I was just as I have ever been, very provident about my own life, and determined to make the most of it. I was a little hypocrite, for all the time I was cajoling him, I was thinking what my chances were of being taken out to Birmingham and given a dinner at the Queen's Hotel, a meal which I sadly needed. I wish I could remember his words; the sensation of the scene is present in my mind, but as soon as I seek his words they elude me. Northcote came into the room, and I think it became plain to me at once that he had already been speaking to father, and that the girl was not going to be dismissed. You remember Northcote—a great-bellied, big, ugly fellow, whom we used to call the Gorilla. He was almost as hairy, great tufts starting out of his ears and out of his nostrils; the backs of his hands were covered, and hair grew thickly between the knuckles. I was thinking how cleverly I had escaped a thrashing and of the pleasure in store for me—a long drive with my father in a hansom, and of the dinner in the coffee-room of the Queen's Hotel, when the Gorilla startled me out of my reverie. George, he said, has refused to go to confession. At once I felt my father's eyes grow sterner, and my dream at that moment seemed a mirage. George, he said, is this true? The Prefect told me the other day to go to confession, but I had nothing to confess. He insisted, and when I answered that I'd go to the confessor but I could tell him nothing, he ordered me to his room for a flogging. I said I'd like to see the President about that, and I told Dr Northcote that I had written to you about the housemaid. Our father agreed with the Gorilla that there are always sins to confess for him who chooses to look for them, and I remember the Gorilla reminding me that, probably, I had not examined my conscience closely. The authorities are all old coaxers when parents are present.



Did you? He asked me if my attention had never wandered at Mass? If I had never lost my temper? or been disobedient to my master? or lazy? It was impossible for me to deny that some of these things had happened, and, feeling that I must be truthful if I were to win my father over to my side, I said—and the words slipped out quite easily—But, Dr Northcote, I'm not sure that I believe in confession, so why should I be obliged to go to confession? The President raised his shaggy eyebrows. It isn't my fault, and to communicate when in doubt would be—A very grave look must have come into his face, and a certain gravity stole into my father's, and then, in answer to another question, posed with awful deliberation, I remember saying, and in these very words, But, Dr Northcote, you didn't always believe in confession yourself. Dr Northcote was a convert to Catholicism; he had become a priest at his wife's death, and his son was in my class. Our father turned away from the table and walked towards the window, and I can still see his plump back in shadow and one side whisker showing against the light. The Gorilla hesitated, unable to think of an appropriate answer, and father, as if he divined the priest's embarrassment, returned from the window. But I could see he had been laughing.

And did he take you out to Birmingham on that occasion?

I think he did, for I remember a conversation about Shelley's poems with him. But he couldn't have taken me out to Birmingham and left you behind.

I don't ever remember driving out to Birmingham with father.

Not on any occasion?

No.

How very odd. If the Queen's Hotel still exists I could find the table in the coffee-room at which we used to sit. I remember listening in admiration to father talking to Judge Fitzgerald. All the Fitzgeralds were there.

The Fitzgeralds left Oscott together, just before I went there. One of them wrote a book of verses about the bunkers, and there was a law-suit. I only remember our father once at Oscott, and forget the occasion; but I can still see him giving an exhibition of billiards and showing off some strokes.

I don't recollect a billiard-table at Oscott—not in my time. Where was it?

A top room where I never was before. You say you remember a conversation with father about Shelley. Did he admire Shelley?

Not much, I think. He didn't like The Pine Forest by the Sea, for I remember his very words, Why do you waste time learning bad verses? He liked the opening lines of Queen Mab, How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep, and spoke of Byron and quoted some verses from Sardanapalus which I thought very fine. I remember him saying to me at the end of a religious argument that out of the many religious reformers Christ was the only one that had declared himself to be God and had been accepted as such by his disciples. A very flimsy proof this seemed to me to be of Christ's divinity, and my admiration of father's intelligence declined from that moment. My admiration for him as a kindly human being increased. Our parting was most affectionate; I don't think that he told me; it must have been the Prefect that told me I was not returning to Oscott after the long vacation. I was not to speak, he said, to any of my schoolmates during the remainder of the term. But rumour was soon busy that I had successfully defied the whole College, and many were the attempts made to speak to me, but I shook my head always, smiled and passed on. The outcast is never as unhappy as the herd imagines him to be, and these last six weeks of my Oscott life were not disagreeable to me, and the pleasantest moment of all was when I asked the Prefect on the last day of the term for his permission to say goodbye to my school-fellows. So I left Oscott, I said to the Colonel, in flying colours, at least flying the colours which I wished to fly. A detestable place it was to me, mentally and physically. You only suffered physical cold, hunger, and canings, but I suffered in my mind. I couldn't breathe in Catholicism.

You always hated Christianity, especially in its Catholic form.

Only in its Catholic form.

When you were at Oscott there was no question of your becoming a Protestant?

My dear Colonel, I answer you as I answered Edward; one doesn't become a Protestant, one discovers oneself to be a Protestant, and I discovered in those days that magicians and their sacraments estranged me from all religious belief, instead of drawing me closer to it.

The Colonel smiled sadly.

We shall get you back one of these days.

When I lose my self, perhaps. I have often wondered at my hatred of Catholicism, so original, so inherent is it. Sometimes I have wondered if it may not be an inheritance of some remote ancestor.

Not so very remote, the Colonel said.

Why? Weren't we originally a Catholic family?

No, it was our great-grandfather at the end of the eighteenth century that changed his religion.

So our great-grandfather became a Catholic. He went to Spain, I know that, and made a great fortune and married in Spain; but whom did he marry? A Spaniard?

A Miss O'Kelly.



Her family, the Colonel said, had been in Spain so long that she was practically a Spaniard.

And grandfather was an Agnostic, mother told me, so there is only one generation of pure Catholicism behind me. You don't know how happy you've made me. Your news comes as sweetly as the south wind blowing over the downs.

Note.—My great-grandfather did not become a Catholic. His will instructed his executors that he was to be buried in the old family burial-ground at Ashbrook. This matter is cleared up earlier in this volume.