Tom Brown at Oxford Part 94

"Don't talk about going down. You haven't been here a week."

"Just a week. One out of three. Three weeks wasted in keeping one's Master's term! Why can't you give a fellow his degree quietly, without making him come and kick his heels here for three weeks?"

"You ungrateful dog! Do you mean to say you haven't enjoyed coming back, and sitting in dignity in the bachelors' seats in chapel, and at the bachelors' table in hall, and thinking how much wiser you are than the undergraduates? Besides, your old friends want to see you, and you ought to want to see them."

"Well, I am very glad to see something of you again, old fellow.

I don't find that a year's absence has made any change in you.

But who else is there that I care to see? My old friends are gone, and the year has made a great gap between me and the youngsters. They look on me as a sort of don."

"Of course they do. Why, you are a sort of don. You will be an M.

A. in a fortnight, and a member of Convocation."

"Very likely; but I don't appreciate the dignity. I can tell you being up here now is anything but enjoyable. You have never broken with the place. And then, you always did you duty, and have done the college credit. You can't enter into the feelings of a fellow whose connexion with Oxford has been quite broken off, and who wasted three parts of his time here, when he comes back to keep his Master's."

"Come, come, Tom. You might have read more certainly, with benefit to yourself and college, and taken a higher degree. But, after all, didn't the place do you a great deal of good? and you didn't do it much harm. I don't like to see you in this sort of gloomy state; it isn't natural to you."

"It is becoming natural. You haven't seen much of me during the last year, or you would have remarked it. And then, as I tell you, Oxford, when one has nothing to do in it but to moon about, thinking over one's past follies and sins, isn't cheerful. It never was a very cheerful place to me at the best of times."

"Not even at pulling times?"

"Well, the river is the part I like best to think of. But even the river makes me rather melancholy now. One feels one has done with it."

"Why, Tom, I believe your melancholy comes from their not having asked you to pull in the boat."

"Perhaps it does. Don't you call it degrading to be pulling in the torpid in one's old age?"

"Mortified vanity, man! They have a capital boat. I wonder how we should have liked to have been turned out for some bachelor just because he had pulled a good oar in his day?"

"Not at all. I don't blame the young ones, and I hope to do my duty in the torpid. By the way, they are an uncommonly nice set of youngsters. Much better behaved in every way than we were, unless it is that they put on their best manners before me."

"No, I don't think they do. The fact is they are really fine young fellows."

"So I think. And I'll tell you what, Jack; since we are sitting and talking our minds to one another at last, like old times, somebody has made the most wonderful change in this college. I rather think it is seeing what St. Ambrose's is now, and thinking what it was in my time, and what an uncommon member of society I should have turned out if I had had the luck to have been here now instead of then, that makes me down in the mouth--more even than having to pull in the torpid instead of the racing boat."

"You do think it is improved, then?"

"Think! Why it is a different place altogether; and, as you are the only new tutor, it must have been your doing. Now I want to know your secret."

"I've no secret, except taking a real interest in all that the men do, and living with them as much as I can. You may fancy it isn't much of a trial to me to steer the boat down or run on the bank and coach the crew."

"Ah! I remember you were beginning that before I left, in your first year. I knew that would answer."

"Yes. The fact is, I find that just what I like best is the very best thing for the men. With very few exceptions they are all glad to be stirred up, and meet me nearly halfway in reading, and three-quarters in everything else. I believe they would make me captain to-morrow."

"And why don't you let them?"

"No; there's a time for everything. I go in in the scratch fours for the pewters, and--more by token--my crew won them two years running. Look at my trophies," and he pointed to two pewter pots, engraved with the college arms, which stood on his side-board.

"Well, I dare say you're right. But what does the president say?"

"Oh, he is a convert. Didn't you see him on the bank when you torpids made your b.u.mp the other night?"

"No, you don't mean it? Well, do you know, a sort of vision of black tights, and a broad-brimmed hat, crossed me, but I never gave it a second thought. And so the president comes out to see the St. Ambrose boat row?"

"Seldom misses two nights running."

"Then, 'carry me out, and bury me decently'. Have you seen old Tom walking around Peckwater lately on his clapper, smoking a cigar with the Dean of Christ Church? Don't be afraid. I am ready for anything you like to tell me. Draw any amount you like on my faith; I shall honor the draft after that."

"The president isn't a bad judge of an oar, when he sets his mind to it."

"Isn't he? But, I say, Jack--no sell--how in the world did it happen?"

"I believe it happened chiefly through his talks with me. When I was first made tutor he sent for me and told me he had heard I encouraged the young men in boating, and he must positively forbid it. I didn't care much about staying up; so I was pretty plain with him, and said, 'if I was not allowed to take the line I thought best in such matters, I must resign at the end of the term.' He a.s.sented, but afterwards thought better of it, and sent for me again, and we had several encounters. I took my ground very civilly but firmly, and he had to give up one objection after another. I think the turning point was when he quoted St.

Paul on me, and said I was teaching boys to wors.h.i.+p physical strength, instead of teaching them to keep under their bodies and bring them into subjection. Of course I countered him there with tremendous effect. The old boy took it very well, only saying he feared it was no use to argue further--in this matter of boat-racing he had come to a conclusion, not without serious thought, many years before. However, he came round quietly. And so he has on other points. In fact, he is a wonderfully open-minded man for his age, if you only put things to him the right way."

"Has he come round about gentlemen-commoners? I see you have only two or three up."

"Yes. We haven't given up taking them altogether. I hope that may come soon. But I and another tutor took to plucking them ruthlessly at matriculation, unless they were quite up to the commoner standard. The consequence was, a row in common room. We stood out, and won. Luckily, as you know, it has always been given out here that all under-graduates, gentlemen-commoners and commoners, have to pa.s.s the same college examinations, and to attend the same course of lectures. You know also what a mere sham and pretence the rule had become. Well, we simply made a reality of it, and in answer to all objectors said, 'Is it our rule or not? If it is, we are bound to act on it. If you want to alter it, there are the regular ways of doing so.' After a little grumbling they let us have our way, and the consequence is, that velvet is getting scarce at St. Ambrose."

"What a blessing! What other miracles have you been performing?"

"The best reform we have carried is throwing the kitchen and cellar open to the undergraduates."

"W-h-e-w! That's just the sort of reform we should have appreciated. Fancy Drysdale's lot with the key of the college cellars, at about ten o'clock on a s.h.i.+ny night."

"You don't quite understand the reform. You remember, when you were an undergraduate you couldn't give a dinner in college, and you had to buy your wine anywhere?"

"Yes. And awful firewater we used to get. The governor supplied me, like a wise man."

"Well, we have placed the college in the relation of benevolent father. Every undergraduate now can give two dinners a term in his own rooms, from the kitchen; or more, if he comes and asks, and has any reason to give. We take care that they have a good dinner at a reasonable rate, and the men are delighted with the arrangement. I don't believe there are three men in the college now who have hotel bills. And we let them have all their wine out of the college cellars."

"That's what I call good common sense. Of course it must answer in every way. And you find they all come to you?"

"Almost all. They can't get anything like the wine we give them at the price, and they know it."

"Do you make them pay ready money?"

"The dinners and wine are charged in their battel bills; so they have to pay once a term, just as they do for their orders at commons."

"It must swell their battel bills awfully."

"Yes, but battel bills always come in at the beginning of term when they are flush of money. Besides, they all know that battel bills must be paid. In a small way it is the best thing that ever was done for St. Ambrose's. You see it cuts so many ways. Keeps men in the college, knocks off the most objectionable bills at inns and pastry-cooks', keeps them from being poisoned, makes them pay their bills regularly, shows them that we like them to be able to live like gentlemen--"

"And lets you dons know what they are all about, and how much they spend in the way of entertaining."

"Yes; and a very good thing for them too. They know that we shall not interfere while they behave like gentlemen."

"Oh, I'm not objecting. And was this your doing, too?"