IV

On this visit to Gorpel he pursued what was becoming his usual technique. It was at once subtle and a trifle crazy. There was a streak of masochism about it. He had written all his books so far to appeal to the heroic common humanity in all of us. And now he was using the same stuff to eliminate, so to speak, common humanity. He was looking for minds that did not respond.

He had brought down a lecture that had always proved extremely successful with ordinary schoolboys, 'The Grandeur That Was Rome’. In this he unfolded his tale of the heroic patriots who stud the Latin tradition, from Horatius defending the Bridge, to Caesar crowning the great task of the Republic by annexing it to British history, Octavius creating the Empire and Justinian giving us Roman law. It was a procession of statuesque figures, more or less clean–shaven and for the most part in togas, evoking as they passed a fungoid growth of unnecessary aqueducts, corpulent amphitheatres, and Corinthian columns, and conferring on the whole world the blessings of the Pax Romana. The Punic Wars, with a faint flavouring of Anti–Semitism, too faint to be disagreeable, he presented as a gigantic necessary struggle between noble north–side soldiers and revengeful, obdurate, but extremely competent south–side loanmongers. He ignored every reality of hate, suspicion, greed, panic, and brutish cruelty that characterized that monstrous mutual destruction of the Mediterranean civilizations, the Punic Wars, and still less did he let those essential features of the mighty Pax, the omnipresent cross for rebels and the omnipresent tax–collector for every one, peep out from behind those glorious Roman arches. As he orated this familiar discourse he watched the boys. A few, incapable of attention, were inattentive, but the discipline of the school was good and their inattention was passive. The majority were responsive. They drank in the mighty fable. Their eyes betrayed their imaginative excitement. Their faces became nobler, stern. They became conquering generals subduing barbarians, pro–consuls assuaging the bickerings of subject races.

It was an answer to trumpets that stirred in them. It was what he had heard someone call the 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' reaction.

With all that Davis was familiar. But now he was looking for scepticism and intelligent dissent.

There was one little fellow sitting up near the corner who from the start he felt assured was Martianized. He had untidy hair and a shrewd faintly humorous white face, and he listened throughout, cheek on hand, very attentively and with a questioning expression. He heard, untouched. The real Martian quality.

'That's my boy here,' said Davis and inquired about him afterwards.

'A queer little chap,' said the headmaster. 'A queer little chap. Behaves pretty well, but he's somehow disappointing. Doesn't throw himself into things. A streak of something very nearly amounting to—well, scepticism. Yet his people are quite decent people and the Dean of Clumps is his uncle. He asks questions no other boy would think of. The other day he asked, what is spiritual?

'Well,' said Mr. Davis after a thoughtful pause, 'what is spiritual?'

'But need I tell you of all people?'

'What did you tell him? I'm finding a sort of difficulty in putting this in a chapter I am writing about the saintly life.'

The headmaster of Gorpel did not answer the question immediately. Instead he went on to say in a slightly offended voice: 'I find all my normal boys understand the word without discussion, take it for granted. Spiritual–Material, a natural opposition. One ascends, the other gravitates. There it is, plain as a pikestaff. No need to discuss it'

'Unless some little—toad, like that, asks the question point–blank.'

'He refuses to see. Why, he said, should we make a sort of extract of reality and call it spirituality and pretend the two things are primary opposites?'

'He said that! Rather—subtle.'

'Too subtle for a boy of his age. Unwholesome.'

'But spirit isn't an extract, is it?'

'So I said to him. "Life," he said, "seems to me just one, Sir. I can't think of it in any other way. Sorry, Sir, I've tried."'

'He said that—that he couldn't think in any other way? That's very interesting. How did you meet that?'

'In his particular case I explained by means of illustrations.'

'And he was satisfied?'

'Not in the least. He criticized my illustrations. Rather penetratingly, I admit. He wanted me to define. But you see, Mr. Davis, the fundamental things of life cannot be defined. He made me realize that more clearly than I have ever done before. All the great fundamentals, Deity, Eternity—Faith in What?—it is as if there was a sort of holy of holies beyond the reach of exact definitions. So it seems to me. It is useless, I find, to argue about them. It robs our attitudes of dignity … robs them of dignity…. We are reduced to logic chopping. Quibbles…. We understand by intuition what we mean and what other people mean. Best to leave it at that.'

'And you told him if he didn't understand what spiritual meant, not to go on thinking about it yet but wait.'

'And pray,' said the headmaster of Gorpel.

'In effect I said that. In effect. Not exactly. Not too definitely. One must go carefully. Afterwards I made him learn Corinthians One Thirteen by heart – not as if it was exactly an answer but as if it threw a light – and I hope it did him good.'

'You don't know?'

'I don't know. These are elusive matters, Mr. Davis. A boy who wants to argue must not be indulged too far. There are limits.'

'I wonder,' said Mr. Davis, feeling his way carefully, 'if perhaps types—types like this youngster may really be something more than merely obstinate. Whether by some instinctive necessity, by some difference in themselves, they may not find something—some inacceptable lack of fineness, some lack of clearness, in various distinctions we assume, distinctions we have assumed and which we make by habit….'

'I can't entertain thoughts like that,' said the headmaster abruptly. 'I cannot conduct the work of this great school and prepare my regiment of youngsters year by year for their attack on life and responsibility, if I am also to carry on an examination of the fundamental values we set on things.'

'But if presently instead of one inassimilable boy you find half a dozen of him turning up—or a score?'

The headmaster looked at his visitor. 'I devoutly hope not, Mr. Davis,' he said. 'I devoutly hope not. You are giving me food—not for thought—no!—for nightmares….'

'Now here, now there,' said Mr. Davis as he stood on the headmaster's doorstep. 'Certainly that boy is one of them. They don't see life as we see it. They can't think of it in our way. And they make us begin to doubt that we see it ourselves as we have always imagined we did.'