"I wish they hadn't asked me," said Matthew Craik, the Logic tutor of
St. Mary's, as he looked down at the party in the old secluded College
garden. "I wonder," he added, glancing at the reflection of his red tie
in the glass, his new tie, his black coat, his young and scholarly face,
"I wonder--but no, it isn't too red; they wear them red," he continued,
with attempted cheerfulness. "No--," but hearing the laughter of ladies
below his window, he scuttled back hastily.
His rooms were high up in the garden tower, almost up amongst the
topmost boughs of the College elms; and when, after a moment, he
returned to his window and peered down, he could see, through the green
of the trees, the white and pink of ladies' dresses, dappling the lawn,
and moving and meeting on the College paths. Among the summer leaves the
summer wind was breathing; now and then it blew in at the window, laden
with scents from the garden, and the happy stir and hum of human voices;
and Matthew Craik, or the Corn-Craik, as the undergraduates called him,
felt his heart beating high with an unwonted emotion of youth and
excitement.
The early philosophers of Asia Minor were very remarkable and suggestive
men; but they had lived a long while ago, and now that he had finished
and published his book about them, he meant to enjoy himself a little.
And what shallow wisdom it was, moreover, to live in the almost solitary
way he had been living all the winter. All the winter! All his life
really; wasting his youth among books, and almost shut out from
everything that is light and amiable in experience. Why, the greenest of
his undergraduate pupils might easily know more of modern life than he
did.
"Oh, don't harp so on modern life!" his friend Ranken, the junior Dean
of St. Thomas', often said to him in his acrid way. "Do for pity's sake
leave it alone and stick to your Asia Minor."
But then Ranken was absurdly cynical. Craik recalled with amusement some
of the remarks he had made during the winter, when they walked out
together for their Sunday walks; remembering how, as they returned in
the dusk through the red fringe of villas between Oxford and the
country, Ranken had sometimes paused opposite an uncurtained window, and
made merry, with bitter merriment, over the domestic picture they saw in
the golden light within,--a family at tea very likely, or an academic
parent romping with his children. Craik had always listened in
uncontradicting silence; only, standing in the chill gray of the
twilight, he would draw his coat about him more tightly; and afterwards,
alone in his rooms, these visions would sometimes haunt him, and not
unpleasantly.
As he looked down now, it was agreeable to him to see so many ladies in
the old garden; he had never quite believed that Ranken had very
authentic grounds for his narrow prejudice. For Ranken would have liked
to shut ladies out of Oxford altogether; and would have liked to keep it
a tranquil home of learning and celibacy, as it used to be before the
Royal Commission had granted the Fellows the liberty of marrying. For
this unblest liberty, he maintained, had filled the University with
frivolity and ladies, and so destroyed the old character of the place
that now, as was notorious, the whole of the Summer Term, with a good
part of the rest of the academic year, was given over to dances, and
picnics, and parties, and other silly and deteriorating trifles. Craik
had not been able to contradict his friend, for hitherto the sounds and
echoes of this social dissipation had hardly reached his retired corner,
save as he had heard them reverberating through the gloomy caverns of
Ranken's imagination. But he could not quite believe--here Craik began
to laugh, for his eye at that moment was caught by the gargoyle just
above him, which was also leaning over and looking into the sunshiny
garden. For hundreds of years it had sat there making faces, but now its
visage seemed more than ever twisted with a look of Gothic cynicism. As
Craik lingered, looking out, himself almost like a second gargoyle, he
thought he could see in the garden below two ladies of his acquaintance,
Mrs. Cotton and Mrs. Trotter. How ridiculous Ranken was in his views!
almost as grotesque as the gargoyle. Craik took his hat and stick, and
started downstairs. He would see for himself.