As it happened, no one but Alec had come up from Glamerton that year.
He did not know one of his fellow-students. There were very few in the
first class indeed who had had any previous acquaintance with each
other. But before three days were over like had begun to draw to like,
and opposites to their natural opposites. These mutual attractions,
however, were considerably influenced by the social sphere, as
indicated by style of dress, speech, and manners, in which each had
been accustomed to move. Some of the youths were of the lowliest
origin--the sons of ploughmen and small country shopkeepers;
shock-headed lads, with much of the looks and manners of year-old
bullocks, mostly with freckled faces and a certain general
irresponsiveness of feature, soon to vanish as the mental and nervous
motions became more frequent and rapid, working the stiff clay of their
faces into a readier obedience to the indwelling plasticity. Some, on
the other hand, showed themselves at once the aristocracy of the class,
by their carriage and social qualifications or assumptions. These were
not generally the best scholars; but they set the fashion in the cut of
their coats, and especially in the style of their neckerchiefs. Most of
them were of Highland families; some of them jolly, hearty fellows;
others affected and presumptuous, evidently considering it beneath them
to associate with the multitude.
Alec belonged to a middle class. Well-dressed, he yet knew that his
clothes had a country air, and that beside some of the men he cut a
poor figure in more than in this particular. For a certain superiority
of manner distinguished them, indicating that they had been accustomed
to more of the outward refinements of life than he. Now let Alec once
feel that a man was wiser and better than himself, and he was
straightway incapable of envying him any additional superiority
possible--would, in a word, be perfectly willing that he should both
wear a better coat and be a better scholar than himself. But to any one
who did not possess the higher kind of superiority, he foolishly and
enviously grudged the lower kinds of pre-eminence. To understand this
it must be remembered, that as yet he had deduced for himself no
principles of action or feeling: he was only a boy well-made, with
little goodness that he had in any way verified for himself.
On the second day after the commencement of lectures, it was made known
to the first class that the Magistrand (fourth-class) Debating Society
would meet that evening. The meetings of this society, although under
the control of the magistrands, were open, upon equal terms in most
other respects, to the members of the inferior classes. They were held
in the Natural Philosophy class-room, at seven o'clock in the evening;
and to the first meeting of the session Alec went with no little
curiosity and expectation.
It was already dark when he set out from his lodgings in the new town,
for the gateway beneath the tower with that crown of stone which is the
glory of the ancient borough gathered beneath it. Through narrow
crooked streets, with many dark courts on each side, he came to the
open road which connected the two towns. It was a starry night, dusky
rather than dark, and full of the long sound of the distant sea-waves
falling on the shore beyond the _links_. He was striding along
whistling, and thinking about as nearly nothing as might be, when the
figure of a man, whose footsteps he had heard coming through the gloom,
suddenly darkened before him and stopped. It was a little spare,
slouching figure, but what the face was like, he could not see.
"Whustlin'?" said the man, interrogatively.
"Ay; what for no?" answered Alec cheerily.
"Haud yer een aff o' rainbows, or ye'll brak' yer shins upo'
gravestanes," said the man, and went on, with a shuffling gait, his
eyes flashing on Alec, from under projecting brows, as he passed.
Alec concluded him drunk, although drink would not altogether account
for the strangeness of the address, and soon forgot him. The arch
echoed to his feet as he entered the dark quadrangle, across which a
glimmer in the opposite tower guided him to the stairs leading up to
the place of meeting. He found the large room lighted by a chandelier,
and one of the students seated as president in the professor's chair,
while the benches were occupied by about two hundred students, most of
the freshmen or _bejans_ in their red gowns.
Various preliminary matters were discussed with an energy of utterance,
and a fitness of speech, which would have put to shame the general
elocution of both the pulpit and the bar. At length, however, a certain
_semi_ (second-classman, or more popularly _sheep_) stood up to give
his opinion on some subject in dispute, and attempting to speak too
soon after his dinner, for he was one of the more fashionable order,
hemmed and stammered till the weariness of the assembly burst upon him
in a perfect torrent of hisses and other animal exclamations. Among the
loudest in this inarticulate protestation, were some of the red-gowned
bejans, and the speaker kindled with wrath at the presumption of the
yellow-beaks (becs jaunes: bejans), till, indignation bursting open the
barriers of utterance, he poured forth a torrent of sarcastic contempt
on the young clod-hoppers, who, having just come from herding their
fathers' cows, could express their feelings in no more suitable
language than that of the bovine animals which had been their principal
and fit associates. As he sat down, his eyes rested with withering
scorn upon Alec Forbes, who instantly started to his feet amidst a
confusion of plaudits and hisses, but, finding it absolutely impossible
to speak so as to be heard, contented himself with uttering a sonorous
_ba-a-a-a_, and instant dropped into his seat, all the other outcries
dissolving in shouts of laughter. In a moment he received a candle full
in the face; its companions went flying in all directions, and the room
was in utter darkness. A scramble for the door followed; and amidst
struggling, shouting, and swearing, the whole company rolled down the
stair into the quadrangle, most of them without their caps, and some
with their new gowns torn from bottom to top. The night was hideous
with the uproar. In the descent, Alec received a blow on the head which
half stunned him; but he did not imagine that its severity was other
than an accident of the crush. He made the best of his way home, and
went to bed.
After this he was popular; and after this, as often as Patrick
Beauchamp and he passed each other in walking up and down the arcade,
Beauchamp's high curved upper lip would curve yet higher, and Alec
would feel with annoyance that he could not sustain the glance of his
gray eyes.
Beauchamp was no great favourite even in his own set; for there is one
kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the fewer
proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.