He had the long thin nose
which looked as if, for preference, it would be for ever thrust among
the pages of the Fathers; and anyone might observe the width of his
mouth without perhaps detecting the patience and decision of the upper
lip. The indignity of spectacles he did not yet wear, but it hovered
over him; it was indispensable to his personality in the long run. In
figure he was indifferently tall and thin and stooping, made to pass
unobservedly along a pavement, or with the directness of humble but
important business among crowds. At Oxford he had interested some of his
friends and worried others by wistful inclinations toward the shelter of
that Mother Church which bids her children be at rest and leave to her
the responsibility. Lindsay, with his robust sense of a right to exist
on the old unmuddled fighting terms, to be a sane and decent animal,
under civilised moral governance a miserable sinner, was among those who
observed his waverings without prejudice, or anything but an
affectionate solicitude that whichever way Arnold went he should find
the satisfactions he sought. The conviction that settled the matter was
accidental, the work of a moment, a free instinct and a thing made with
hands--the dead Shelley where the sea threw him and the sculptor fixed
him, under his memorial dome in the gardens of University College.
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