Guy Livingstone | Page 5

for for a very pleasant evening, and he hoped everyone had enjoyed themselves very much"--which was philanthropic, to say the least of it.
I don't know if it was our imagination, but we fancied that when the head master called up Livingstone in form after this, he did so with an air of grave defiance, such as a duelist of the Old R��gime may have worn when, doffing his plumed hat, he said to his adversary, "_En garde!_"
There was little time to make observations, for shortly afterward Guy went up to Oxford, whither, six months later, I followed him.
CHAPTER III.
"Through many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, Like Hezekiah's, backward runs The shadow of my days."
When I came up, I found Guy quite established and at home. He was a general favorite with all the men he knew at college, though intimate with but very few. There was but one individual who hated him thoroughly, and I think the feeling was mutual--the senior tutor, a flaccid being, with a hand that felt like a fish two days out of water, a large nose, and a perpetual cold in his head. He consistently and impartially disbelieved every one on their word, requiring material proof of each assertion; an original mode of acquiring the confidence of his pupils, and precluding any thing like an attempt at deception on their part. I remember well a discussion on his merits that took place in the porter's lodge one night just after twelve. When several had given their opinions more or less strongly, some one asked the gate-ward what he thought of the individual in question, to which that eminent functionary thus replied: "Why, you see, sir, I'm only a servant, and, as such, can't speak freely, but I wish he was dead, I do."
As I have said, Livingstone disliked Selkirk heartily, and did not take the trouble to conceal it. He used to look at him sometimes with a curious expression in his eyes, which made the tutor twirl and writhe uncomfortably in his chair. The latter annoyed him as much as he possibly could, but Guy held on the even tenor of his way, seldom contravening the statutes except in hunting three days a week, which he persisted in doing, all lectures and regulations notwithstanding. He rode little under fourteen stone even then; but the three horses he kept were well up to his weight, and he stood A 1 in Jem Hill's estimation as "the best heavy-weight that had come out of Oxford for many a day;" for he not only went straight as a die, but rode to hounds instead of over them. I suppose this latter practice is inherent in University sportsmen. I know, in my time, the way in which they pressed on hounds, for the first two fields out of cover or after a check, used to make the gray hairs, which were the brave old huntsman's crown of glory, stand on end with indignation and terror, so that he prayed devoutly for a big fence which, like the broken bridge at Leipsic, might prove a stopper to the pursuing army. There was the making of a good rider in many of them, too; they only wanted ballast, for they knew no more of fear than Nelson did, and would grind over the Vale of the Evenlode and the Marsh Gibbon double timber as gayly and undauntedly as over the accommodating Bullingdon hurdles. And what screws they rode! ancient animals bearing as many scars as a vieux de la vieille, that were considered short of work if they did not come out five days a fortnight. This was Guy's favorite pursuit; but he threw off the superfluity of his animal energies in all sorts of athletics: in sparring especially he attained a rare excellence; so well-known was it, indeed, that he passed his first year without striking a blow in anger, through default of an antagonist, except a chance one or two exchanged in the _mel��e_ which is imperative on the 5th of November.
I did not hunt much myself, for my health was far from strong, and, I confess, my University recollections are not lively.
After the first flush of novelty had worn off, they bored one intensely--those large wines and suppers where, night by night, a score of Nephel��geret? sat shrouded in smoke, chanting the same equivocal ditties, drinking the same fiery liquors miscalled the juice of the grape, villainous enough to make the patriarch that planted the vine stir remorsefully in his grave under Ararat--each man all the while talking "shop," _�� l'outrance_. The skeleton of ennui sat at these dreary feasts; and it was not even crowned with roses. I often used to wonder what the majority of my contemporaries conversed about, when in