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A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN
AND HIS FAMILY
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF 'THE WIZARD'S SON,' 'HESTER,' ETC.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1887
_All rights reserved_
_Printed (3 Vols. Crown 8vo) by_ R. & R. CLARK, _1886_.
_Printed, Crown 8vo, 1 Vol., 1887._
A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN.
CHAPTER I.
Theodore Warrender was still at Oxford when his father died. He was a
youth who had come up from his school with the highest hopes of what he
was to do at the university. It had indeed been laid out for him by an
admiring tutor with anticipations which were almost certainties: "If you
will only work as well as you have done these last two years!" These
years had been spent in the dignified ranks of Sixth Form, where he had
done almost everything that boy can do. It was expected that the School
would have had a holiday when he and Brunson went up for the scholarships
in their chosen college, and everybody calculated on the "double event."
Brunson got the scholarship in question, but Warrender failed, which at
first astonished everybody, but was afterwards more than accounted for
by the fact that his fine and fastidious mind had been carried away by
the AEschylus paper, which he made into an exhaustive analysis of the
famous trilogy, to the neglect of other less inviting subjects. His
tutor was thus almost more proud of him for having failed than if he
had succeeded, and Sixth Form in general accepted Brunson's success
apologetically as that of an "all-round" man, whose triumph did not mean
so much. But if there is any place where the finer scholarship ought to
tell, it should be in Oxford, and his school tutor, as has been said,
laid out for him a sort of little map of what he was to do. There
were the Hertford and the Ireland scholarships, almost as a matter of
course; a first in moderations, but that went without saying; at least
one of the Vice-Chancellor's prizes--probably the Newdigate, or some
other unconsidered trifle of the kind; another first class in Greats; a
fellowship. "If you don't do more than this I will be disappointed in
you," the school tutor said.
The college tutors received Warrender with suppressed enthusiasm,
with that excitement which the acquisition of a man who is likely to
distinguish himself (and his college) naturally calls forth. It was not
long before they took his measure and decided that his school tutor was
right. He had it in him to bring glory and honour to their doors. They
surrounded him with that genial warmth of incubation which brings a
future first class tenderly to the top of the lists. Young Warrender
was flattered, his heart was touched. He thought, with the credulity of
youth, that the dons loved him for himself; that it was because of the
attractions of his own noble nature that they vied with each other
in breakfasting and dining him, in making him the companion of their
refined and elevated pleasures. He thought, even, that the Rector--that
name of fear--had at last found in himself the ideal which he had vainly
sought in so many examples of lettered youth. He became vain, perhaps,
but certainly a little self-willed, as was his nature, feeling himself
to be on the top of the wave, and above those precautions for keeping
himself there which had once seemed necessary. He did not, indeed, turn
to any harm, for that was not in his nature; but feeling himself no longer
a schoolboy, but a man, and the chosen friend of half the dons of his
college, he turned aside with a fine contempt from the ordinary ways of
fame-making, and betook himself to the pursuit of his own predilections
in the way of learning. He had a fancy for out-of-the-way studies, for
authors who don't pay, for eccentricities in literature; in short, for
having his own way and reading what he chose. Signals of danger became
gradually visible upon his path, and troubled consultations were held
over him in the common room. "He is paying no attention to his books,"
remarked one; "he is reading at large whatever pleases him." Much was
to be said for this principle, but still, alas, these gentlemen were all
agreed that it does not pay.
"If he does not mind, he will get nothing but a pass," the Rector said,
bending his brows. The learned society shrank, as if a sentence of death
had been pronounced.
"Oh no, not so bad as that!" they cried, with one voice.
"What do you call so bad as that? Is not a third worse than that? Is not
a second quite as bad?" said the majestic presiding voice. "In the gulf
there are no names mentioned. We are not credited with a mistake. It will
be better, if he does not stick to his books, that he should drop."
Young Warrender's special tutor made frantic efforts to arrest this
doom. He pointed out to the young man the evil of his ways. "In one
sense all my sympathies are with you," he said; "but, my dear fellow,
if you don't read your books you may be as learned as ----, and as
clear-sighted as ----" (the historian, being unlearned, does not know
what names were here inserted), "but you will never get to the head of
the lists, where we have hoped to see you."
"What does it matter?" said Warrender, in boyish splendour. "The lists
are merely symbols. You know one's capabilities without that; and as for
the opinion of the common mass, of what consequence is it to me?"
A cold perspiration came out on the tutor's brow. "It is of great
consequence to--the college," he said. "My dear fellow, so long as we
are merely mortal we can't despise symbols; and the Rector has set his
heart on having so many first classes. He doesn't like to be disappointed.
Come, after it's all over you will have plenty of time to read as you
like."
"But why shouldn't I read as I like now?" said Warrender. He was very
self-willed. He was apt to start off at a tangent if anybody interfered
with him,--a youth full of fads and ways of his own, scorning the common
path, caring nothing for results. And by what except by results is a
college to be known and assert itself? The tutor whose hopes had been
so high was in a state of depression for some time after. He even made
an appeal to the school tutor, the enthusiast who had sent up this
troublesome original with so many fine prognostications: who replied
to the appeal, and descended one day upon the youth in his room, quite
unexpectedly.
"Well, Theo, my fine fellow, how are you getting on? I hope you are
keeping your eyes on the examination, and not neglecting your books."
"I am delighted to see you, sir," said the lad. "I was just thinking I
should like to consult you upon"--and here he entered into a fine question
of scholarship,--a most delicate question, which probably would be
beyond the majority of readers, as it is of the writer. The face of the
public-school man was a wonder to see. It was lighted up with pleasure,
for he was an excellent scholar, yet clouded with alarm, for he knew the
penalties of such behaviour in a "man" with an examination before him.
"My dear boy," he said, "in which of your books do you find any reference
to that?"
"In none of them, I suppose," said the young scholar. "But, you don't
think there is any sanctity in a set of prescribed books?"
"Oh no, no sanctity: but use," said the alarmed master. "Come, Theo,
there's a good fellow, don't despise the tools we all must work with.
It's your duty to the old place, you know, which all these newspaper
fellows are throwing stones at whenever they have a chance: and it's
your duty to your college. I know what you are worth, of course: but
how can work be tested to the public eye except by the lists?"
"Why should I care for the public eye?" said the magnanimous young man.
"_We_ know that the lists don't mean everything. A headache might make
the best scholar that ever was lose his place. A fellow that knows
nothing might carry the day by a fluke. Don't you remember, sir, that
time when Daws got the Lincoln because of that old examiner, who gave
us all his own old fads in the papers? Every fellow that was any good
was out of it, and Daws got the scholarship. I am sure you can't have
forgotten that."
"Oh no, I have not forgotten it," said the master ruefully. "But that was
only once in a way. Come, Theo, be reasonable. As long as you are in
training, you know, you must keep in the beaten way. Think, my boy, of
your school--and of me, if you care for my credit as a tutor."
"You know, sir, I care for you, and to please you," said Warrender,
with feeling. "But as for your credit as a tutor, who can touch that?
And even I am not unknown here," he added, with a little boyish pride.
"Everybody who is of any importance knows that the Rector himself has
always treated me quite as a friend. I don't think"--this with the
ineffable simple self-assurance of youth, so happy in the discrimination
of those who approve of it that the gratification scarcely feels like
vanity--"that I shall be misunderstood here."
"Oh, the young ass!" said the master to himself, as he went away. "Oh,
the young idiot! Poor dear Theo, what will be his feelings when he finds
out that all they care for is the credit of the college?" But he was
not so barbarous as to say this, and Warrender was left to find out by
himself, by the lessening number of the breakfasts, by the absence of
his name on the lists of the Rector's dinner-parties, by the gradual
cooling of the incubating warmth, what had been the foundation of all
the affection shown him. It was not for some time that he perceived the
change which made itself slowly apparent, the gradual loss of interest
in him who had been the object of so much interest. The nest was, so to
speak, left cold, no father bird lending his aid to the development; his
books were no longer forced on his consideration; his tutor no longer
made anxious remarks. Like other silly younglings, the lad for a while
rejoiced in his freedom, and believed that he had succeeded in making
his pastors and teachers aware of a better way. And it was not till
there flashed upon him the awful revelation that _they were taking up
Brunson_, that he began to see the real state of affairs. Brunson was
the all-round man whom Sixth Form despised,--a fellow who had little or
no taste for the higher scholarship, but who always knew his books by
heart, mastering everything that would "pay" with a determined practical
faculty fertile of results. There is no one for whom the dilettante mind
has a greater contempt; and when Warrender saw that Brunson figured at
the Rector's dinner-parties as he himself had once done, that it was
Brunson who went on the river with parties of young dons and walked out
of college arm in arm with his tutor, the whole meaning of his own brief
advancement burst upon him. Not for himself, as he had supposed in the
youthful simplicity which he called vanity now, and characterised by
strong adjectives; not in the least for him, Theo Warrender, scholar and
gentleman, but for what he might bring to the college,--the honours, the
scholarships, the credit to everybody concerned in producing a successful
student. That he became angry, scornful, and Byronic on the spot need
surprise nobody. Brunson! who never had come within a hundred miles of him
or of his set at school; did not even understand the fine problems which
the initiated love to discuss; was nothing but a plodding fellow, who
stuck to his work, and cared no more for the real soul of Greek literature
or philosophy than the scout did. Warrender laughed aloud,--that hollow
laugh, which was once so grand an exponent of feeling, and which, though
the Byronic mood has gone out of fashion, will never go out of fashion
so long as there is youthful pride to be wounded, and patient merit
has to accept the spurns of the unworthy. No, perhaps the adjective is
mistaken, if Shakespeare ever was mistaken; not patient, but exasperated
merit, conscious to the very finger points of its own deserts.
Warrender was well enough aware that he could, if he chose, make up the
lost way and leave Brunson "nowhere" in the race for honours; but it was
his first disenchantment, and he felt it deeply. Letters are dear and
honours sweet, but our own beloved personality is dearer still; and there
is no one who does not feel humbled and wounded when he finds out that
he is esteemed, not for himself, but for what he can do,--and poor Theo
was only twenty, and had been made much of all his life. He began to ask
himself, too, whether his past popularity, the pleasant things that had
been always said of him, the pleasant way in which his friendship had
been sought, were perhaps all inspired by the same motive,--because he
was likely to do credit to his belongings and friends. It is a fine
thing to do credit to your belongings, to be the pride of your community,
to be quoted to future generations as the hero of the past. This was
what had occurred to him at school, and he had liked it immensely.
Warrender had been a word to conjure withal, named by lower boys with
awe, fondly cherished in the records of Sixth Form. But the glimmer in
the Head Master's eye as he said good-bye, the little falter in his
tutor's voice,--did these mean no more than an appreciation of his
progress, and an anticipation of the honour and glory he was to bring
them at the university, a name to fling in the teeth of the newspaper
fellows next time they demanded what were the results of the famous
public school system? This thought had a sort of maddening effect upon
the fastidious, hot-headed, impatient young man. He flung his books
into a corner of the room, and covered them over with a yellow cairn of
railway novels. If that was all, there let them lie. He resolved that
nothing would induce him to touch them more.
The result was--but why should we dwell upon the result? It sent a
shiver through the college, where there were some faithful souls who
still believed that Warrender could pick up even at the last moment,
if he liked. It produced such a sensation in his old school as relaxed
discipline entirely, and confounded masters and scholars in one dark
discouragement. "Warrender has only got a ---- in Mods." We decline to
place any number where that blank is; it filled every division (except
the lowest) with consternation and dismay. Warrender! who was as sure
of a first as--why, there was nobody who was so sure as Warrender! The
masters who were Cambridge men recovered their courage after a little,
and said, "I told you so! That was a boy who ought to have gone to
Cambridge, where individual characteristics are taken into consideration."
Warrender's tutor took to his bed, and was not visible for a week, after
which only the most unsympathetic, not to say brutal, of his colleagues
would have mentioned before him Warrender's name. However, time
reconciles all things, and after a while the catastrophe was forgotten
and everything was as before.
But not to Warrender himself. He smiled, poor boy, a Byronic smile,
with a curl of the upper lip such as suited the part, and saw himself
abandoned by the authorities with what he felt to be a lofty disdain;
and he relapsed into such studies as pleased him most, and set
prescribed books and lectures at defiance. What was worst to bear
was that other classes of "men" made up to him, after the men of
distinction, those whom the dons considered the best men, had withdrawn
and left him to pursue his own way. The men who loafed considered him
their natural prey; the aesthetic men who wrote bad verses opened their
arms, and were ready to welcome him as their own. And perhaps among
these classes he might have found disinterested friendship, for nobody
any longer sought Warrender on account of what he could do. But he
did not make the trial, wrapping himself up in a Childe-Harold-like
superiority to all those who would consort with him, now that he had
lost his hold of those with whom only he desired to consort. His mother
and sisters felt a little surprised, when they came up to Commemoration,
to find that they were not overwhelmed by invitations from Theo's friends.
Other ladies had not a spare moment: they were lost in a turmoil of
breakfasts, luncheons, water-parties, concerts, flower-shows, and knew
the interior of half the rooms in half the colleges. But with the Miss
Warrenders this was not so. They were asked to luncheon by Brunson,
indeed, and had tea in the rooms of a young Cavendish, who had been at
school with Theo. But that was all, and it mortified the girls, who were
not prepared to find themselves so much at a disadvantage. This was the
only notice that was taken of his downfall at home, where there was no
academical ambition, and where everybody was quite satisfied so long as
he kept his health and did not get into any scrape. Perhaps this made
him feel it all the more, that his disappointment and disenchantment
were entirely shut up in his own bosom, and that he could not confide to
any one the terrible disillusionment that had befallen him on the very
threshold of his life. That the Rector should pass him with the slightest
possible nod, and his tutor say "How d'ye do, Warrender?" without even a
smile when they met, was nothing to anybody except himself. Arm in arm
with Brunson, the don would give him that salutation. Brunson, who had
got his first in Mods, and was going on placidly, admired of all, to
another first in the final schools.
But if there was any one who understood Warrender's feelings it was this
same Brunson, who was in his way an honest fellow, and understood the
situation. "It is all pot-hunting, you know," this youth said. "They
don't care for me any more than they care for Jenkinson. It's all for
what I bring to the college, just as it was for what they expected
you were going to bring to the college; only I understood it, and you
didn't. I don't care for them any more than they do for me. Why, they
might see, if they had any sense, that to work at you, who care for that
sort of thing, would be far better than to bother me, who only care for
what it will bring. If they had stuck to you they might have done a deal
with you, Warrender: whereas I should have done just the same whether
they took any notice of me or not."
"You mean to say I'm an empty-headed fool that could be cajoled into
anything!" cried the other angrily.
"I mean nothing of the sort. I mean that I'm going to be a schoolmaster,
and that first classes, etc., are my stock in trade. You don't suppose I
work to please the Rector? And I know, and he knows, and you know, that
I don't know a tenth part so much as you do. If they had held on at you,
Theo, they might have got a great scholar out of you. But that's not what
they want. They want so many firsts, and the Hertford, and the Ireland,
and all the rest of it. It's all pot-hunting," Mr. Brunson said. But this
did not lessen the effect of the disenchantment, the first disappointment
of life. Poor Theo became prone to suspect everybody after that first
proof that no one was above suspicion,--not even the greatly respected
head of one of the first colleges in the world.
After that dreadful fiasco in the schools, Warrender continued to keep
his terms very quietly; seeing very few people, making very few friends,
reading after his own fashion with an obstinate indifference to all
systems of study, and shutting his eyes persistently to the near approach
of the final ordeal. Things were in this condition when he received a
sudden telegram calling him home. "Come at once, or you will be too
late," was the message. The Rector, to whom he rushed at once, looked
at it coldly. He was not fond of giving an undergraduate leave in the
middle of the term. "The college could have wished for a more definite
message," he said. "Too late for what, Mr. Warrender?" "Too late to see
my father alive, sir!" cried the young man; and as this had all the
definiteness that the college required he was allowed to go. This was
how his studies were broken up just as they approached their conclusion,
although, as he had been so capricious and self-willed, nobody expected
that in any circumstances it could have been a very satisfactory close.