Guy Livingstone | Page 6

the bosom of their families, during the "long." They couldn't always have been inflicting Oxford on their miserable relatives; the weakest of human natures would have revolted against such tyranny; and yet the horizon of their ideas seemed as utterly bounded by Bagley and Headington Hill as if the great ocean-stream had flowed outside those limits. Some adventurous spirits, it is true, stretched away as far as Woodstock and Abingdon, but I doubt if they returned much improved by the grand tour.
One of their most remarkable characteristics was the invincible terror and repugnance that they appeared to entertain to the society of women of their own class. When the visitation was inevitable, it is impossible to describe the great horror that fell on these unfortunate boys. The feeling of Zanoni's pupil, as the Watcher on the Threshold came floating and creeping toward him, was nothing to it.
For example, at Commemoration--to which festival "lions" from all quarters of the earth resorted in vast droves--when one of this class was hard hit by the charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of expressing his admiration otherwise than by piteous looks, directed at her from an immense distance, out of shot for an opera-glass; when in her immediate vicinity his motto was that of the Breton baron--mourir muet. Claret-cup flowed and Champagne sparkled, powerless to raise him to the audacity of an avowal. Under the woods of Nuneham, in the gardens of Blenheim, amid the crowd of the Commemoration ball, the same deep river of diffidence flowed between him and his happiness. My own idea is that, after all was over, the silent ones, like Jacques' stricken deer, used to "go weep" over chances lost and opportunities neglected. With waitresses at wayside inns, et id genus omne, they were tolerably self-possessed and reliant; though even there "a thousand might well be stopped by three," and I would have backed an intelligent barmaid against the field at odds; indeed, I think I have seen a security nearly allied to contempt on the fine features of a certain "lone _star_" as she parried--so easily!--the compliments and repartees of a dozen assailants at once, accounted, in their own quadrangles, Millamours of the darkest dye.
Guy accounted for this unfortunate peculiarity by saying that a cigar in the mouth was the normal state of many of these men; so that, when circumstances debarred them from the Havana courage, they lost all presence of mind, and, being unable to retreat under cover of the smoke, lapsed instantly into a sullen despair, suffering themselves to be shot down unresistingly. Perhaps some future philosopher will favor us with a better solution to this important problem in physics; I know of none.
After all, the reading men did best, though we did not think so then, when we saw them creeping into morning chapel jaded and heavy-eyed, after a debauch over Herodotus or the Stagyrite. They had a purpose in view, at all events, and, I believe, were placidly content during the progress of its attainment--in the seventh heaven when their hopes were crowned by a First, or even a Second. True; the pace was too good for some of the half-bred ones, and such as could not stand the training, who departed, to fade away rapidly in the old house at home, or to pine, slowly, but very surely, in remote curacies.
Some of these, I fancy, must have sympathized with Madame de Sta?l's consumptive niece, who answered to the question, "Why she was weeping all alone?" "_Je me regrette._" When, resting in their daily walk, shortened till it became a toil to reach the shady seat under the elms at the garden's end, they watched the stalwart plowmen and drovers go striding by, without a trouble behind their tanned foreheads except the thought that wages might fall a shilling a week, was there no envy, I wonder, as they looked down on the wan hands lying so listless across their knees? Would they not have given their First, and their fellowship in embryo to boot, to have had the morning appetite of Tom Chauntrell, the horse-breaker, after twelve pipes overnight, with gin and water to match, or to have been able, like Joe Springett, the under keeper, to breast the steepest brae in Cumberland with never a sob or a painful breath? Did they never murmur while thinking how brightly the blade might have flashed, how deftly have been wielded, if the worthless scabbard had only lasted out till, on some grand field-day, the word was given, "Draw swords?" Some felt this, doubtless; but the most part, I imagine, were possessed with a comfortable assurance that their short life had been useful, if not ornamental; and so, to a certain extent, they had their reward. At any rate, their ending was