he had gone to
the trouble of memorizing, in that far-off time, but he still looked at
buildings with a kind of professional consciousness. Hadlow House
said intelligible things to him, and he was pleased with himself for
understanding them. It was not new in any part, apparently, but there
was nothing pretentious in its antiquity. It had never been a castle,
or a fortified residence. No violent alteration in habits or needs
distinguished its present occupants from its original builders. It
had been planned and reared as a home for gentle people, at some
not-too-remote date when it was already possible for gentle people to
have homes, without fighting to defend them. One could fancy that its
calm and infinitely comfortable history had never been ruffled from that
day to this. He recalled having heard it mentioned the previous evening
that the house stood upon the site of an old monastery. No doubt that
accounted for its being built in a hollow, with the ground-floor on the
absolute level of the earth outside. The monks had always chosen these
low-lying sheltered spots for their cloisters. Why should they have done
so? he wondered--and then came to a sudden mental stop, absorbed in a
somewhat surprised contemplation of a new version of himself. He was
becoming literary, historical, bookish! His mind had begun to throw open
again, to abstract thoughts and musings, its long-closed doors. He had
read and dreamed so much as a lad, in the old book-shop! For many years
that boyhood of eager concern in the printed page had seemed to him to
belong to somebody else. Now, all at once, it came back to him as his
own possession; he felt that he could take up books again where he had
dropped them, perhaps even with the old rapt, intent zest.

Visions rose before him of the magnificent library he would gather for
himself. And it should be in no wise for show--the gross ostentation of
the unlettered parvenu--but a genuine library, which should minister
to his own individual culture. The thought took instant hold upon his
interest. By that road, his progress to the goal of gentility would be
smooth and simple. He seemed not to have reasoned it out to himself in
detail before, but now, at all events, he saw his way clearly enough.
Why should he be tormented with doubts and misgivings about himself, as
if he had come out of the gutter?

Why indeed? He had passed through--and with credit, too--one of the
great public schools of England. H