Watersprings | Page 4

lead-topped cupola over all. Half the court was in shadow. It was
incredibly picturesque, but it had somehow the look of a fortress rather
than of a house. It did not exist only to be beautiful, but had a
well-worn beauty of age and use. There was no domestic adornment of
flower-bed or garden- border, merely four squares of grass, looking like
faded carpets laid on the rather uncompromising pebbles which floored
the pathways. The golden hands of the clock pointed to a quarter to ten,
and the chimes uttered their sharp, peremptory voices. Two or three
young men stood talking at the vaulted gateway, and one or two figures
in dilapidated gowns and caps, holding books, fled out of the court.
A firm footstep came down one of the stairways; a man of about forty

passed out into the court--Howard Kennedy, Fellow and Classical
Lecturer of the College. His thick curly brown hair showed a trace of
grey, his short pointed beard was grizzled, his complexion sanguine,
his eyebrows thick. There were little vague lines on his forehead, and
his eyes were large and clear; an interesting, expressive face, not
technically handsome, but both clever and good-natured. He was
carelessly dressed in rather old but well-cut clothes, and had an air of
business-like decisiveness which became him well, and made him seem
comfortably at home in the place; he nodded and smiled to the
undergraduates at the gate, who smiled back and saluted. He met a
young man rushing down the court, and said to him, "That's right, hurry
up! You'll just be in time," a remark which was answered by a gesture
of despair from the young man. Then he went up the court towards the
Hall, entered the flagged passage, looked for a moment at the notices
on the screen, and went through into the back court, which was
surrounded by a tiny cloister.
Here he met an elderly man, clean-shaven, fresh-coloured, acute-
looking, who wore a little round bowler hat perched on a thick shock of
white hair. He was dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, with a black
tie, and wore rather light grey trousers. One would have taken him for
an old-fashioned country solicitor. He was, as a matter of fact, the
Vice-Master and Senior Fellow of the College-- Mr. Redmayne, who
had spent his whole life there. He greeted the younger man with a
kindly, brisk, ironical manner, saying, "You look very virtuous,
Kennedy! What are you up to?"
"I am going for a turn in the garden," said Howard; "will you come
with me?"
"You are very good," said Mr. Redmayne; "it will be quite like a
dialogue of Plato!"
They went down the cloister to a low door in the corner, which Howard
unlocked, and turned into a small old-fashioned garden, surrounded on
three sides by high walls, and overlooking the river on the fourth side; a
gravel path ran all round; there were a few trees, bare and leafless, and
a big bed of shrubs in the centre of the little lawn, just faintly pricked

with points of green. A few aconites showed their yellow heads above
the soil.
"What are those wretched little flowers?" said Mr. Redmayne, pointing
at them contemptuously.
"Oh, don't say that," said Howard; "they are always the first to struggle
up, and they are the earliest signs of spring. Those are aconites."
"Aconites? Deadly poison!" said Mr. Redmayne, in a tone of horror.
"Well, I don't object to them,--though I must say that I prefer the works
of man to the works of God at all times and in all places. I don't like the
spring--it's a languid and treacherous time; it always makes me feel that
I wish I were doing something else."
They paced for some minutes round the garden gossiping, Redmayne
making very trenchant criticisms, but evidently enjoying the younger
man's company. At something which he said, Howard uttered a low
laugh, which was pleasant to hear from the sense of contented
familiarity which it gave.
"Ah, you may laugh, my young friend," said Redmayne, "but when you
have reached my time of life and see everything going to pieces round
you, you have occasionally to protest against the general want of
backbone, and the sentimentality of the age."
"Yes, but you don't REALLY object," said Howard; "you know you
enjoy your grievances!"
"Well, I am a philosopher," said Mr. Redmayne, "but you are
overdoing your philanthropics. Luncheon in Hall for the boys, dinner at
seven-thirty for the boys, a new cricket-ground for the boys; you
pamper them! Now in my time, when the undergraduates complained
about the veal in Hall, old Grant sent for us third-year men, and said
that he understood there were complaints about the veal, of which he
fully