GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

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One morning Miss Carew sat on the bank of a great pool in the park, throwing pebbles two by two into the water, and intently watching the intersection of the circles they made on its calm surface. Alice was seated on a campstool a little way off, sketching the castle, which appeared on an eminence to the southeast. The woodland rose round them like the sides of an amphitheatre; but the trees did not extend to the water’s edge, where there was an ample margin of bright greensward and a narrow belt of gravel, from which Lydia was picking her pebbles.

Presently, hearing a footstep, she looked back, and saw Cashel Byron standing behind Alice, apparently much interested in her drawing. He was dressed as she had last seen him, except that he wore primrose gloves and an Egyptian red scarf. Alice turned, and surveyed him with haughty surprise; but he made nothing of her looks; and she, after glancing at Lydia to reassure herself that she was not alone, bade him good-morning, and resumed her work.

“Queer place,” he remarked, after a pause, alluding to the castle. “Chinese looking, isn’t it?”

“It is considered a very fine building,” said Alice.

“Oh, hang what it is considered!” said Cashel. “What IS it? That is the point to look to.”

“It is a matter of taste,” said Alice, very coldly.

“Mr. Cashel Byron.”

Cashel started and hastened to the bank. “How d’ye do, Miss Carew,” he said. “I didn’t see you until you called me.” She looked at him; and he, convicted of a foolish falsehood, quailed. “There is a splendid view of the castle from here,” he continued, to change the subject. “Miss Goff and I have just been talking about it.”

“Yes. Do you admire it?”

“Very much indeed. It is a beautiful place. Every one must acknowledge that.”

“It is considered kind to praise my house to me, and to ridicule it to other people. You do not say, ‘Hang what it is considered,’ now.”

Cashel, with an unaccustomed sense of getting the worst of an encounter, almost lost heart to reply. Then he brightened, and said, “I can tell you how that is. As far as being a place to sketch, or for another person to look at, it is Chinese enough. But somehow your living in it makes a difference. That is what I meant; upon my soul it is.”

Lydia smiled; but he, looking down at her, did not see the smile because of her coronet of red hair, which seemed to flame in the sunlight. The obstruction was unsatisfactory to him; he wanted to see her face. He hesitated, and then sat down on the ground beside her cautiously, as if getting into a very hot bath.

“I hope you won’t mind my sitting here,” he said, timidly. “It seems rude to talk down at you from a height.”

She shook her head and threw two more stones into the pool. He could think of nothing further to say, and as she did not speak, but gravely watched the circles in the water, he began to stare at them too; and they sat in silence for some minutes, steadfastly regarding the waves, she as if there were matter for infinite thought in them, and he as though the spectacle wholly confounded him. At last she said,

“Have you ever realized what a vibration is?”

“No,” said Cashel, after a blank look at her.

“I am glad to hear you make that admission. Science has reduced everything nowadays to vibration. Light, sound, sensation — all the mysteries of nature are either vibrations or interference of vibrations. There,” she said, throwing another pair of pebbles in, and pointing to the two sets of widening rings as they overlapped one another; “the twinkling of a star, and the pulsation in a chord of music, are THAT. But I cannot picture the thing in my own mind. I wonder whether the hundreds of writers of textbooks on physics, who talk so glibly of vibrations, realize them any better than I do.”

“Not a bit of it. Not one of them. Not half so well,” said Cashel, cheerfully, replying to as much of her speech as he understood.

“Perhaps the subject does not interest you,” she said, turning to him.

“On the contrary; I like it of all things,” said he, boldly.

“I can hardly say so much for my own interest in it. I am told that you are a student, Mr. Cashel Byron. What are your favorite studies? — or rather, since that is generally a hard question to answer, what are your pursuits?”

Alice listened.

Cashel looked doggedly at Lydia, and his color slowly deepened. “I am a professor,” he said.

“A professor of what? I know I should ask of where; but that would only elicit the name of a college, which would convey no real information to me.”

“I am a professor of science,” said Cashel, in a low voice, looking down at his left fist, which he was balancing in the air before him, and stealthily hitting his bent knee as if it were another person’s face.

“Physical or moral science?” persisted Lydia.

“Physical science,” said Cashel. “But there’s more moral science in it than people think.”

“Yes,” said Lydia, seriously. “Though I have no real knowledge of physics, I can appreciate the truth of that. Perhaps all the science that is not at bottom physical science is only pretentious nescience. I have read much of physics, and have often been tempted to learn something of them — to make the experiments with my own hands — to furnish a laboratory — to wield the scalpel even. For, to master science thoroughly, I believe one must take one’s gloves off. Is that your opinion?”

Cashel looked hard at her. “You never spoke a truer word,” he said. “But you can become a very respectable amateur by working with the gloves.”

“I never should. The many who believe they are the wiser for reading accounts of experiments deceive themselves. It is as impossible to learn science from theory as to gain wisdom from proverbs. Ah, it is so easy to follow a line of argument, and so difficult to grasp the facts that underlie it! Our popular lecturers on physics present us with chains of deductions so highly polished that it is a luxury to let them slip from end to end through our fingers. But they leave nothing behind but a vague memory of the sensation they afforded. Excuse me for talking figuratively. I perceive that you affect the opposite — a reaction on your part, I suppose, against tall talk and fine writing. Pray, should I ever carry out my intention of setting to work in earnest at science, will you give me some lessons?”

“Well,” said Cashel, with a covert grin, “I would rather you came to me than to another professor; but I don’t think it would suit you. I should like to try my hand on your friend there. She’s stronger and straighter than nine out of ten men.”

“You set a high value on physical qualifications then. So do I.”

“Only from a practical point of view, mind you,” said Cashel, earnestly. “It isn’t right to be always looking at men and women as you would at horses. If you want to back them in a race or in a fight, that’s one thing; but if you want a friend or a sweetheart, that’s another.”

“Quite so,” said Lydia, smiling. “You do not wish to commit yourself to any warmer feeling towards Miss Goff than a critical appreciation of her form and condition.”

“Just that,” said Cashel, satisfied. “YOU understand me, Miss Carew. There are some people that you might talk to all day, and they’d be no wiser at the end of it than they were at the beginning. You’re not one of that sort.”

“I wonder do we ever succeed really in communicating our thoughts to one another. A thought must take a new shape to fit itself into a strange mind. You, Mr. Professor, must have acquired special experience of the incommunicability of ideas in the course of your lectures and lessons.”