"What's the good?" Austen repeated. "I don't see how you can ask such a question; if what you say is true, you ought to want to change."
Arthur mused a moment. Then looking up, with apparent candour, he said, "Well, I suppose it is odd; but honestly, you know, I don't want to change in the least. You see, your respectable people, they don't want to have anything to do with me; and anyhow, the things they care for bore me to death, really they do. You only have one life, so why not be happy in your own way? that's my principle."
"But surely, Lestrange, you can't go on--"
"No, I suppose I can't for ever; but you try to enjoy it while it lasts; and anyhow, my father, you know how he died--I suppose it's fate; heredity you call those things, don't you?"
"Really, I'm shocked to hear you talk so recklessly, as if you didn't care. You seem very much changed."
"Am I changed? I don't know; I suppose I am. We've both changed a little, don't you think? At least, things seem different. I wonder where I put my gloves,--I really must be going."
"Well, of course, I can't keep you, Lestrange; I can only give you my advice. But I can't believe you're happy."
For a moment Arthur looked at him sullenly.
"Well, what if I ain't?" he asked. "What's that to you?"
"I was only going to say," Austen went on, "I was only going to say that it seems to me that if you would try--"
"Try! Good Lord, I've tried enough, but what's the good?" Arthur said, with his old calmness and indifference, as he turned away towards the door. "I don't care, and no one else does, either. But I must be off. Good bye."
He went down the steps quickly, whistling as he walked away through the darkness. He was angry at himself, and bitterly ashamed of his visit to Austen. They were all like that--he ought to have known. And yet it was a pity, too!
The two old gentlemen walked out of the Common Room, across the quadrangle to the porter's lodge: the Vicar of North Mims, who had been spending a few hours in Oxford and dining in College, wanted to catch the evening train back to North Mims, the College living he had held for the last ten years, and the Sub-Warden wanted to see the last of him.
"The point I make is this," the old Vicar said again, frowning with his bushy eyebrows in the moonlight; "the point I make is this: There would be no trouble at all, if it wasn't for the drinking. If they want meetings, let them have Temperance meetings; and I say that those Socialist fellows from London have absolutely no business meddling in the affairs of my parish. And as for the undergraduates who come out from Oxford to speak"--the Vicar's voice grew more solemnly irate--"as for those undergraduates, they should be punished. It is, I consider, a case in which both college and university authorities should intervene with prompt severity."