There is no more characteristic spot in Oxford than the
quadrangle of the schools. Doubtless in the times when the
University held and exercised the privileges of infang-thief and
outfang-thief, and other such old-world rights, there must have
been a place somewhere within the liberties devoted to
examinations even more exciting than the great-go. But since
_alma mater_ has ceased to take cognizance of "treasons,
insurrections, felonies, and mayhem," it is here, in that fateful
and inexorable quadrangle, and the buildings which surround it,
that she exercises her most potent spells over the spirits of her
children. I suppose that a man being tried for his life must be
more uncomfortable than an undergraduate being examined for his
degree, and that to be hung--perhaps even to be pilloried--must
be worse than to be plucked. But after all, the feeling in both
cases must be essentially the same, only more intense in the
former; and an institution which can examine a man (_in literis
humanitoribus_, in humanities, so called) once a year for two or
three days at a time, has nothing to complain of, though it has
no longer the power of hanging him at once out of hand.
The schools' quadrangle is for the most part a lonely place. Men
pass through the melancholy iron-gates by which that quadrangle
is entered on three sides--from Broad street, from the Ratcliff,
and from New College-Lane--when necessity leads them that way,
with alert step and silently. No nursemaids or children play
about it. Nobody lives in it. Only when the examinations are
going on you may see a few hooded figures who walk as though
conscious of the powers of academic life and death which they
wield, and a good deal of shuddering undergraduate life flitting
about the place--luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who
are undergoing the _peine forte et dure_ with different degrees
of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them.
You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so
minded, for the _viva voce_ schools are open to the public. But
one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very
hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, behind which sit
Minos, Rhadamanthus & Co., full-robed, stern of face, soft of
speech, seizing their victim in turn, now letting him run a
little way as a cat does a mouse, then drawing him back, with
claw of wily question, probing him on this side and that, turning
him inside out,--the row of victims opposite, pale or flushed, of
anxious or careless mien, according to temperament, but one and
all on the rack as they bend over the allotted paper, or read
from the well-thumbed book--the scarcely-less-to-be-pitied row
behind of future victims, "sitting for the schools" as it is
called, ruthlessly brought hither by statutes, to watch the
sufferings they must hereafter undergo--should fill the friend of
suffering humanity with thoughts too deep for tears. Through the
long day till four o'clock, or later, the torture lasts. Then the
last victim is dismissed; the men who are "sitting for the
schools" fly all ways to their colleges, silently, in search of
relief to their over-wrought feelings--probably also of beer, the
undergraduate's universal specific. The beadles close those
ruthless doors for a mysterious half-hour on the examiners.
Outside in the quadrangle collect by twos and threes the friends
of the victims, waiting for the reopening of the door, and the
distribution of the "testamurs." The testamurs, lady readers will
be pleased to understand, are certificates under the hands of the
examiners that your sons, brothers, husbands, perhaps, have
successfully undergone the torture. But, if husbands, oh, go not
yourselves, and send not your sons to wait for the testamur of
the head of your house; for Oxford has seldom seen a sight over
which she would more willingly draw the veil, with averted face,
than that of the youth rushing wildly, dissolved in tears from
the schools' quadrangle, and shouting, "Mamma! papa's plucked!
papa's plucked!"
The examination is nearly over which is to decide the academical
fate of some of our characters; the paper-work of the candidates
for honors has been going on for the last week. Every morning our
three St. Ambrose acquaintances have mustered with the rest for
the anxious day's work, after such breakfasts as they have been
able to eat under the circumstances. They take their work in very
different ways. Grey rushes nervously back to his rooms whenever
he is out of the schools for ten minutes, to look up dates and
dodges. He worries himself sadly over every blunder which he
discovers himself to have made, and sits up nearly all night
cramming, always hoping for a better to-morrow. Blake keeps up
his affected carelessness to the last, quizzing the examiners,
laughing over the shots he has been making in the last paper. His
shots, it must be said, turn out well for the most part; in the
taste paper particularly, as they compare notes, he seems to have
almost struck the bull's-eye in his answers to one or two
questions which Hardy and Grey have passed over altogether. When
he is wide of the mark, he passes it off with some jesting
remark; "that a fool can ask in five minutes more questions than
a wise man can answer in a week," or wish "that the examiners
would play fair, and change sides of the table for an hour with
the candidates for a finish." But he, too, though he does it on
the sly, is cramming with his coach at every available spare
moment. Hardy had finished his reading a full thirty-six hours
before the first day of paper-work, and had braced himself for
the actual struggle by two good nights' rest and a long day on
the river with Tom. He had worked hard from the first, and so had
really mastered his books. And now, feeling that he had fairly
and honestly done his best, and that if he fails it will be
either from bad luck or natural incapacity, and not from his own
fault, he manages to keep a cooler head than any of his
companions in trouble.
The week's paper-work passed off uneventfully; then comes the
_viva voce_ work for the candidates for honors. They go in, in
alphabetical order, four a day, for one more day's work, the
hardest of all, and then there is nothing more to do but wait
patiently for the class list. On these days there is a good
attendance in the enclosed space to which the public are
admitted. The front seats are often occupied by the private
tutors of the candidates, who are there, like Newmarket trainers,
to see the performance of their stables, marking how each colt
bears pressing, and comports himself when the pinch comes. They
watch the examiners, too, carefully to see what line they take,
whether science or history, or scholarship is likely to tell
most, that they may handle the rest of their starts accordingly.
Behind them, for the most part on the hindermost benches of the
flight of raised steps, anxious younger brothers and friends sit,
for a few minutes at a time, flitting in and out in much unrest,
and making the objects of their solicitude more nervous than ever
by their sympathy.
It is now the afternoon of the second day of the _viva voce_
examinations in honors. Blake is one of the men in. His tutor,
Hardy, Grey, Tom, and other St. Ambrose men, have all been in the
schools more or less during his examination, and now Hardy and
Tom are waiting outside the doors for the issuing of the
testamurs.
The group is small enough. It is so much of course that a
class-man should get his testamur that there is no excitement
about it; generally the man himself stops to receive it.
The only anxious faces in the group are Tom's and Hardy's. They
have not exchanged a word for the last few minutes in their short
walk before the door. Now the examiners come out and walk away
towards their colleges, and the next minute the door again opens
and the clerk of the schools appears with a slip of paper in his
hand.
"Now you'll see if I am not right," said Hardy, as they gathered
to the door with the rest. "I tell you there isn't the least
chance for him."
[Illustration: 0318]
The clerk read out the names inscribed on the testamurs which he
held, and handed them to the owners.
"Haven't you one for Mr. Blake of St. Ambrose?" said Tom
desperately as the clerk was closing the door.
"No, sir; none but those I have just given out," answered the
clerk, shaking his head. The door closed, and they turned away in
silence for the first minute.
"I told you how it would be," said Hardy, as they passed out of
the south gate into the Ratcliff Quadrangle.
"But he seemed to be doing so well when I was in."
"You were not there at the time. I thought at first they would
have sent him out of the schools at once."
"In his divinity, wasn't it?"
"Yes; he was asked to repeat one of the Articles, and didn't know
three words of it. From that moment I saw it was all over. The
examiner and he both lost their tempers, and it went from bad to
worse, till the examiner remarked that he could have answered one
of the questions he was asking when he was ten years old, and
Blake replied, so could he. They gave him a paper in divinity
afterwards, but you could see there was no chance for him."
"Poor fellow! what will he do, do you think? How will he take
it?"
"I can' tell. But I'm afraid it will be a very serious matter for
him. He was the ablest man in our year too. What a pity."
They got into St. Ambrose just as the bell for afternoon chapel
was going down, and went in. Blake was there, and one look showed
him what had happened. In fact he had expected nothing else all
day since his breakdown in the Articles. Tom couldn't help
watching him during chapel; and afterwards, on that evening,
acknowledged to a friend that whatever else you might think of
Blake, there was no doubt about his gameness.
After chapel he loitered outside the door in the quadrangle,
talking just as usual, and before hall he loitered on the steps
in well-feigned carelessness. Everybody else was thinking of his
breakdown; some with real sorrow and sympathy; others as of any
other nine days' wonder--pretty much as if the favourite for the
Derby had broken down; others with ill-concealed triumph, for
Blake had many enemies amongst the men. He himself was conscious
enough of what they were thinking, but maintained his easy, gay
manner through it all, though the effort it cost him was
tremendous. The only allusion he made to what had happened which
Tom heard was when he asked him to wine.
"Are you engaged to-night, Brown?" he said. Tom answered in the
negative. "Come to me, then" he went on. "You won't get another
chance in St. Ambrose. I have a few bottles of old wine left; we
may as well floor them; they won't bear moving to a hall with
their master."
And then he turned to some other men and asked them, everyone in
fact who he came across, especially the dominant fast set with
whom he had chiefly lived. These young gentlemen (of whom we had
a glimpse at the outset, but whose company we have carefully
avoided ever since, seeing that their sayings and doings were of
a kind of which the less said the better) had been steadily going
on in their way, getting more and more idle, reckless and
insolent. Their doings had been already so scandalous on several
occasions as to call for solemn meetings of the college
authorities; but, no vigorous measures having followed, such
deliberations had only made matters worse, and given the men a
notion that they could do what they pleased with impunity. This
night the climax had come; it was as though the flood of misrule
had at last broken banks and overflowed the whole college.
For two hours the wine party in Blake's large ground-floor rooms
was kept up with a wild, reckless mirth, in keeping with the
host's temper. Blake was on his mettle. He had asked every man
with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, as if he wished to face
out his disaster at once to the whole world. Many of the men came
feeling uncomfortable, and would sooner have stayed away and
treated the pluck as real misfortune. But after all Blake was the
best judge of how he liked to be treated, and, if he had a fancy
for giving a great wine on the occasion, the civilest thing to do
was to go to it. And so they went, and wondered as much as he
could desire at the brilliant coolness of their host, speculating
and doubting nevertheless in their own secret hearts whether it
wasn't acting after all. Acting it was, no doubt, and not worth
the doing; no acting is. But one must make allowances. No two men
take a thing just alike, and very few can sit down quietly when
they have lost a fall in life's wrestle, and say: "Well, here I
am, beaten no doubt this time. But my own fault, too. Now, take a
good look at me, my good friends, as I know you all want to do,
and say your say out, for I mean getting up again directly and
having another turn at it."
Blake drank freely himself, and urged his guests to drink, which
was a superfluous courtesy for the most part. Many of the men
left his room considerably excited. They had dispersed for an
hour or so to billiards, or a stroll in the town, and at ten
o'clock reassembled at supper parties, of which there were
several in college this evening, especially a monster one at
Chanter's rooms--a "champagne supper," as he had carefully and
ostentatiously announced on the cards of invitation.
This flaunting the champagne in their faces had been resented by
Drysdale and others, who drank his champagne in tumblers, and
then abused it and clamored for beer in the middle of the supper.
Chanter, whose prodigality in some ways was only exceeded by his
general meanness, had lost his temper at this demand, and
insisted that, if they wanted beer, they might send for it
themselves, for he wouldn't pay for it. This protest was treated
with uproarious contempt, and gallons of ale soon made their
appearance in college jugs and tankards. The tables were cleared,
and songs (most of them of more than doubtful character), cigars,
and all sorts of compounded drinks, from claret cup to egg flip,
succeeded. The company, recruited constantly as men came into the
college, was getting more and more excited every minute. The
scouts cleared away and carried off the relics of the supper, and
then left; still the revel went on, till, by midnight, the men
were ripe for any mischief or folly which those among them who
retained any brains at all could suggest. The signal for breaking
up was given by the host's falling from his seat.
Some of the men rose with a shout to put him to bed, which they
accomplished with difficulty, after dropping him several times,
and left him to snore off the effects of his debauch with one of
his boots on. Others took to doing what mischief occurred to them
in his rooms. One man mounted on a chair with a cigar in his
mouth which had gone out, was employed in pouring the contents of
a champagne bottle with unsteady hand into the clock on the
mantel-piece. Chanter was a particular man in this sort of
furniture, and his clock was rather a specialty. It was a large
bronze figure of Atlas, supporting the globe in the shape of a
time-piece. Unluckily, the maker, not anticipating the sort of
test to which his work would be subjected, had ingeniously left
the hole for winding up in the top of the clock, so that unusual
facilities existed for drowning the world-carrier, and he was
already almost at his last tick. One or two men were morally
aiding and abetting, and physically supporting the experimenter
on clocks, who found it difficult to stand to his work by
himself. Another knot of young gentlemen stuck to the tables, and
so continued to shout out scraps of song, sometimes standing on
their chairs, and sometimes tumbling off them. Another set were
employed on the amiable work of pouring beer and sugar into three
new pairs of polished leather dress boots, with colored tops to
them, which they discovered in the dressing-room. Certainly, as
they remarked, Chanter could have no possible use for so many
dress boots at once, and it was a pity the beer should be wasted;
but on the whole, perhaps, the materials were never meant for
combination, and had better have been kept apart. Others had gone
away to break into the kitchen, headed by one who had just come
into college and vowed he would have some supper; and others, to
screw up an unpopular tutor, or to break into the rooms of some
inoffensive freshman. The remainder mustered on the grass in the
quadrangle, and began playing leap-frog and larking one another.
Amongst these last was our hero, who had been at Blake's wine and
one of the quieter supper parties; and, though not so far gone as
most of his companions, was by no means in a state in which he
would have cared to meet the Dean. He lent his hearty aid
accordingly to swell the noise and tumult, which was becoming
something out of the way even for St. Ambrose's. As the leap-frog
was flagging, Drysdale suddenly appeared carrying some silver
plates which were used on solemn occasions in the common room,
and allowed to be issued on special application for
gentlemen-commoners' parties. A rush was made towards him.
"Halloa, here's Drysdale with lots of swag," shouted one.
"What are you going to do with it?" cried another.
Drysdale paused a moment with the peculiarly sapient look of a
tipsy man who has suddenly lost the thread of his ideas, and then
suddenly broke out with--
"Hang it! I forgot. But let's play at quoits with them."
The proposal was received with applause, and the game began, but
Drysdale soon left it. He had evidently some notion in his head
which would not suffer him to turn to anything else till he had
carried it out. He went off accordingly to Chanter's rooms, while
the quoits went on in the front quadrangle.
About this time, however, the Dean and bursar, and the tutors who
lived in college, began to be conscious that something unusual
was going on. They were quite used to distant choruses, and great
noises in the men's rooms, and to a fair amount of shouting and
skylarking in the quadrangle, and were long-suffering men, not
given to interfering, but there must be an end to all endurance,
and the state of things which had arrived could no longer be met
by a turn in bed and a growl at the uproars and follies of
undergraduates.
Presently some of the rioters on the grass caught sight of a
figure gliding along the side quadrangle towards the Dean's
staircase. A shout arose that the enemy was up, but little heed
was paid to it by the greater number. Then another figure passed
from the Dean's staircase to the porter's lodge. Those of the men
who had any sense left saw that it was time to quit, and, after
warning the rest, went off towards their rooms. Tom, on his way
to his staircase, caught sight of a figure seated in a remote
corner of the inner quadrangle, and made for it, impelled by
natural curiosity. He found Drysdale seated on the ground with
several silver tankards by his side, employed to the best of his
powers in digging a hole with one of the college carving-knives.
"Halloa, Drysdale! what are you up to?" he shouted, laying his
hand on his shoulder.
"Providing for posterity," replied Drysdale, gravely, without
looking up.
"What the deuce do you mean? Don't be such an ass. The Dean will
be out in a minute. Get up and come along."
"I tell you, old fellow," said Drysdale, somewhat inarticulately,
and driving his knife into the ground again, "the dons are going
to spout the college plate. So I am burying these articles for
poshterity--"
"Hang posterity," said Tom; "come along directly, or you'll be
caught and rusticated."
"Go to bed, Brown--you're drunk, Brown," replied Drysdale,
continuing his work, and striking the carving-knife into the
ground so close to his own thigh that it made Tom shudder.
"Here they are then," he cried the next moment, seizing Drysdale
by the arm, as a rush of men came through the passage into the
quadrangle, shouting and tumbling along, and making in small
groups for the different stair-cases. The Dean and two of the
tutors followed, and the porter bearing a lantern. There was no
time to be lost; so Tom, after one more struggle to pull Drysdale
up and hurry him off, gave it up, and leaving him to his fate,
ran across to his own staircase.
For the next half-hour the Dean and his party patrolled the
college, and succeeded at the last in restoring order, though not
without some undignified and disagreeable passages. The lights on
the staircases, which generally burnt all night, were of course
put out as they approached. On the first staircase which they
stormed, the porter's lantern was knocked out of his hand by an
unseen adversary, and the light put out on the bottom stairs. On
the first landing the bursar trod on a small terrier belonging to
a fast freshman, and the dog naturally thereupon bit the bursar's
leg; while his master and other _enfants perdus_, taking
advantage of the diversion, rushed down the dark stairs, past the
party of order, and into the quadrangle, where they scattered
amidst a shout of laughter. While the porter was gone for a
light, the Dean and his party rashly ventured on a second ascent.
Here an unexpected catastrophy awaited them. On the top landing
lived one of the steadiest men in college, whose door had been
tried shortly before. He had been roused out of his first sleep,
and, vowing vengeance on the next comers, stood behind his oak,
holding his brown George, or huge earthenware receptacle, half
full of dirty water, in which his bed-maker had been washing up
his tea-things. Hearing stealthy steps and whisperings on the
stairs below, he suddenly threw open his oak, discharging the
whole contents of his brown George on the approaching
authorities, with a shout of, "Take that for your skulking."
The exasperated Dean and tutors rushing on, seized their
astonished and innocent assailant, and after receiving
explanations, and the offer of clean towels, hurried off again
after the real enemy. And now the porter appeared again with a
light, and, continuing their rounds, they apprehended and
disarmed Drysdale, collected the college plate, marked down
others of the rioters, visited Chanter's rooms, held a parley
with the one of their number who was screwed up in his rooms, and
discovered that the bars had been wrenched out of the kitchen
window. After which they retired to sleep on their indignation,
and quiet settled down again on the ancient and venerable
college.
The next morning at chapel many of the revellers met; in fact,
there was a fuller attendance than usual, for every one felt that
something serious must be impending. After such a night the dons
must make a stand, or give up altogether. The most reckless only
of the fast set were absent. St. Cloud was there, dressed even
more precisely than usual, and looking as if he were in the habit
of going to bed at ten, and had never heard of milk punch. Tom
turned out not much the worse himself, but in his heart feeling
not a little ashamed of the whole business; of the party, the
men, but, above all, of himself. He thrust the shame back,
however, as well as he could, and put a cool face on it. Probably
most of the men were in much the same state of mind. Even in St.
Ambrose's, reckless and vicious as the college had become, by far
the greater part of the undergraduates would gladly have seen a
change in the direction of order and decency, and were sick of
the wretched license of doing right in their own eyes and wrong
in every other person's.
As the men trooped out of chapel, they formed in corners of the
quadrangle, except the reading set, who went off quietly to their
rooms. There was a pause of a minute or two. Neither principal,
dean, tutor, nor fellow followed as on ordinary occasions.
"They're hatching something in the outer chapel," said one.
"It'll be a coarse time for Chanter, I take it," said another.
"Was your name sent to the buttery for his supper?"
"No, I took d-d good care of that," said St. Cloud, who was
addressed.
"Drysdale was caught, wasn't he?"
"So I hear, and nearly frightened the Dean and the porter out of
their wits by staggering after them with a carving-knife."
"He'll be sacked, of course."
"Much he'll care for that."
"Here they come, then; by Jove, how black they look!"
The authorities now came out of the antechapel door, and walked
slowly across towards the Principal's house in a body. At this
moment, as ill-luck would have it, Jack trotted into the front
quadrangle, dragging after him the light steel chain, with which
he was usually fastened up in Drysdale's scout's room at night.
He came innocently towards one and another of the groups, and
retired from each much astonished at the low growl with which his
acquaintance was repudiated on all sides.
"Porter, whose dog is that?" said the Dean catching sight of him.
"Mr. Drysdale's dog, sir, I think, sir," answered the porter.
"Probably the animal who bit me last night," said the bursar. His
knowledge of dogs was small; if Jack had fastened on him, he
would probably have been in bed from the effects.
"Turn the dog out of college," said the Dean.
"Please, sir he's a very savage dog, sir," said the porter, whose
respect for Jack was unbounded.
"Turn him out immediately," replied the Dean.
The wretched porter, arming himself with a broom, approached
Jack, and after some coaxing, managed to catch hold of the end of
his chain, and began to lead him towards the gates, carefully
holding out the broom towards Jack's nose with his other hand to
protect himself. Jack at first hauled away at his chain, and then
began circling round the porter at the full extent of it,
evidently meditating an attack. Notwithstanding the seriousness
of the situation, the ludicrous alarm of the porter set the men
laughing.
"Come along, or Jack will be pinning the wretched Copas," said
Jervis; and he and Tom stepped up to the terrified little man,
and, releasing him, led Jack, who knew them both well, out of
college.
"Were you at that supper party?" said Jervis, as they deposited
Jack with an ostler, who was lounging outside the gates, to be
taken to Drysdale's stables.
"No," said Tom.
"I'm glad to hear it; there will be a pretty clean sweep after
last night's doings."
"But I was in the quadrangle when they came out."
"Not caught, eh?" said Jervis.
"No, luckily, I got to my own rooms at once."
"Were any of the crew caught?"
"Not that I know of."
"Well, we shall hear enough of it before lecture time."
Jervis was right. There was a meeting in the common room directly
after breakfast. Drysdale, anticipating his fate, took his name
off before they sent for him. Chanter and three or four others
were rusticated for a year, and Blake was ordered to go down at
once. He was a scholar, and what was to be done in his case would
be settled at the meeting at the end of the term.
For twenty-four hours it was supposed that St. Cloud had escaped
altogether; but at the end of that time he was summoned before a
meeting in the common room. The tutor whose door had been so
effectually screwed up that he had been obliged to get out of his
window by a ladder to attend morning chapel, proved wholly unable
to appreciate the joke, and set himself to work to discover the
perpetrators of it. The door was fastened with long gimlets,
which had been screwed firmly in, and when driven well home,
their heads knocked off. The tutor collected the shafts of the
gimlets from the carpenter, who came to effect an entry for him;
and, after careful examination discovered the trade mark, So,
putting them into his pocket, he walked off into the town, and
soon came back with the information he required, which resulted
in the rustication of St. Cloud, an event which was borne by the
college with the greatest equanimity.
Shortly afterwards, Tom attended in the schools' quadrangle
again, to be present at the posting of the class list. This time
there were plenty of anxious faces; the quadrangle was full of
them. He felt almost as nervous himself as if he were waiting for
the third gun. He thrust himself forward, and was amongst the
first who caught sight of the document. One look was enough for
him, and the next moment he was off at full speed for St.
Ambrose, and, rushing headlong into Hardy's rooms, seized him by
the hand and shook it vehemently.
"It's all right, old fellow," he cried, as soon as he could catch
his breath; "it's all right. Four firsts; you're one of them;
well done!"
"And Grey, where's he; is he all right?"
"Bless me, I forgot to look," said Tom; "I only read the firsts,
and then came off as hard as I could."
"Then he is not a first."
"No; I'm sure of that."
"I must go and see him; he deserved it far more than I."
"No, by Jove, old boy," said Tom, seizing him again by the hand,
"that he didn't; nor any man that ever went into the schools."
"Thank you, Brown," said Hardy, returning his warm grip. "You do
one good. Now to see poor Grey, and to write to my dear old
father before hall. Fancy him opening the letter at breakfast the
day after to-morrow! I hope it won't hurt him."
"Never, fear. I don't believe in people dying of joy, and
anything short of sudden death he won't mind at the price."
Hardy hurried off, and Tom went to his own rooms, and smoked a
cigar to allay his excitement, and thought about his friend, and
all they had felt together, and laughed and mourned over in the
short months of their friendship. A pleasant, dreamy half-hour he
spent thus, till the hall bell roused him, and he made his
toilette and went to his dinner.
It was with very mixed feelings that Hardy walked by the
servitors' table and took his seat with the bachelors, an equal
at last amongst equals. No man who is worth his salt can leave a
place where he has gone through hard and searching discipline,
and been tried in the very depths of his heart, without regret,
however much he may have winced under the discipline. It is no
light thing to fold up and lay by forever a portion of one's life
even when it can be laid by with honor and in thankfulness.
But it was with no mixed feelings, but with a sense of entire
triumph and joy, that Tom watched his friend taking his new
place, and the dons, one after another, coming up and
congratulating him, and treating him as the man who had done
honor to them and his college.