PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 99.
October 25, 1890.
MR. PUNCH'S PRIZE NOVELS.
NO. IV.--BOB SILLIMERE.
(_BY MRS._ HUMPHRY JOHN WARD PREACHER, _AUTHOR OF "MASTER
SISTERSON."_)
[On the paper in which the MS. of this novel was wrapped, the
following note was written in a bold feminine hand:--"This
is a highly religious story. GEORGE ELIOT was unable to write
properly about religion. The novel is certain to be well
reviewed. It is calculated to adorn the study-table of a
Bishop. The £1000 prize must be handed over at once to the
Institute which is to be founded to encourage new religions in
the alleys of St. Pancras.--H.J.W.P."]
CHAPTER I.
It was evening--evening in Oxford. There are evenings in other places
occasionally. Cambridge sometimes puts forward weak imitations. But,
on the whole, there are no evenings which have so much of the true,
inward, mystic spirit as Oxford evenings. A solemn hush broods over
the grey quadrangles, and this, too, in spite of the happy laughter of
the undergraduates playing touch last on the grass-plots, and leaping,
like a merry army of marsh-dwellers, each over the back of the other,
on their way to the deeply impressive services of their respective
college chapels. Inside, the organs were pealing majestically, in
response to the deft fingers of many highly respectable musicians,
and all the proud traditions, the legendary struggles, the well-loved
examinations, the affectionate memories of generations of proctorial
officers, the innocent rustications, the warning appeals of
authoritative Deans--all these seemed gathered together into one last
loud trumpet-call, as a tall, impressionable youth, carrying with him
a spasm of feeling, a Celtic temperament, a moved, flashing look,
and a surplice many sizes too large for him, dashed with a kind of
quivering, breathless sigh, into the chapel of St. Boniface's just as
the porter was about to close the door. This was ROBERT, or, as his
friends lovingly called him, BOB SILLIMERE. His mother had been an
Irish lady, full of the best Irish humour; after a short trial, she
was, however, found to be a superfluous character, and as she began to
develop differences with CATHERINE, she caught an acute inflammation
of the lungs, and died after a few days, in the eleventh chapter.
[Illustration]
BOB sat still awhile, his agitation soothed by the comforting sense
of the oaken seat beneath him. At school he had been called by his
school-fellows "the Knitting-needle," a remarkable example of the
well-known fondness of boys for sharp, short nicknames; but this did
not trouble him now. He and his eagerness, his boundless curiosity,
and his lovable mistakes, were now part and parcel of the new life
of Oxford--new to him, but old as the ages, that, with their rhythmic
recurrent flow, like the pulse of--[_Two pages of fancy writing are
here omitted._ ED.] BRIGHAM and BLACK were in chapel, too. They were
Dons, older than BOB, but his intimate friends. They had but little
belief, but BLACK often preached, and BRIGHAM held undecided views on
life and matrimony, having been brought up in the cramped atmosphere
of a middle-class parlour. At Oxford, the two took pupils, and helped
to shape BOB's life. Once BRIGHAM had pretended, as an act or pure
benevolence, to be a Pro-Proctor, but as he had a sardonic scorn, and
a face which could become a marble mask, the Vice-Chancellor called
upon him to resign his position, and he never afterwards repeated the
experiment.