CHAPTER XX — ALMA MATER
“He's a good divine that follows his own instructions; I can
easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of
the twenty to follow my own teaching. The brain may devise
laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree.”
—Merchant of Venice.
TIME, that venerable and much-vituperated individual, who, if he has to answer for some acts savouring of a taste for wanton destruction—if he now and then lunches on some noble old abbey, which had remained a memorial of the deep piety and marvellous skill of our forefathers—if he crops, by way of salad, some wide-spreading beech or hoary patriarchal oak, which had flung its shade over the tombs of countless generations, and, as it stood forming a link between the present and the past, won men's reverence by force of contrast with their own ephemeral existence—yet atones for his delinquencies by softening the bitterness of grief, blunting the sharp edge of pain, and affording to the broken-hearted the rest, and to the slave the freedom, of the grave;—old Time, I say, who should be praised at all events for his perseverance and steadiness, swept onward with his scythe, and cutting his way through the frost and snow of winter, once more beheld the dust of that “brother of the east wind,” March, converted into mud by the showers of April, and the summer was again approaching. It was on a fine morning in May, that, as Oaklands and I were breakfasting together in my rooms at Trinity, we heard a tap at the door, and the redoubtable Shrimp made his appearance. This interesting youth had, under Lawless's able tuition, arrived at such a pitch of knowingness that it was utterly impossible to make him credit anything; he had not the smallest particle of confidence remaining in the integrity of man, woman, or child; and, like many another of the would-be wise in their generation, the only flaw in his scepticism was the bigoted nature of his faith in the false and hateful doctrine of the universal depravity of the human race. He was the bearer of a missive from his master, inviting Oaklands and myself to a wine-party at his rooms that evening.
“I suppose we may as well go,” said Oaklands; “I like a positive engagement somewhere—it saves one the trouble of thinking what one shall do with oneself.”
"You can accept it,” replied I, “but it would be a waste of time which I have no right to allow myself; not only does it make one idle while it lasts, but the next day also, for I defy a man to read to any purpose the morning after one of Lawless's symposia.”
“Call it supper, my dear boy,” returned Oaklands, stretching himself; “why do you take the trouble to use a long word when a short one would do just as well? If I could but get you to economise your labour and take things a little more easily, it would be of the greatest advantage to you;—that everlasting reading too—I tell you what, Frank, you are reading a great deal too hard; you look quite pale and ill. I promised Mrs. Fairlegh I would not let you overwork yourself, and you shall not either. Come, you must and shall go to this party; you want relaxation and amusement, and those fellows will contrive to rouse you up a bit, and do you good.”
“To say the truth,” I replied, “that is one of my chief objections to going. Lawless I like, for the sake of old recollections, and because he is at bottom a well-disposed, good-hearted fellow; but I cannot approve of the set of men one meets there. It is not merely their being what is termed 'fast' that I object to; for though I do not set up for a sporting character myself, I am rather amused than otherwise to mix occasionally with that style of men; but there is a tone of recklessness in the conversation of the set we meet there, a want of reverence for everything human and divine, which, I confess, disgusts me—they seem to consider no object too high or too low to make a jest of.”
“I understand the kind of thing you refer to,” answered Oaklands, “but I think it's only one or two of them who offend in that way; there is one man who is my particular aversion; I declare if I thought he'd be there to-night I would not go.”
“I think I know who you mean,” replied I; “Stephen Wilford, is it not? the man they call 'Butcher,' from some brutal thing he once did to a horse.”
“You're right, Frank; I can scarcely sit quietly by and hear that man talk. I suppose he sees that I dislike him, for there is something in his manner to me which is almost offensive; really at times I fancy he wishes to pick a quarrel with me.”
“Not unlikely,” said I; “he has the reputation of being a dead shot with the pistol, and on the strength of it he presumes to bully every one.”
“He had better not go too far with me,” returned Oaklands, with flashing eyes; “men are not to be frightened like children; such a character as that is a public nuisance.”
“He will not be there to-night, I am glad to say,” replied I, “for I met him yesterday when I was walking with Lawless, and he said he was engaged to Wentworth this evening; but, my dear Harry, for Heaven's sake avoid any quarrel with this man; should you not do so, you will only be hazarding your life unnecessarily, and it can lead to no good result.”
“My dear fellow, do I ever quarrel with anybody? there is nothing worth the trouble of quarrelling about in this world; besides, it would be an immense fatigue to be shot,” observed Harry, smiling.
“I have no great faith in your pacific sensations, for they are nothing more,” rejoined I; “your indolence always fails you where it might be of use in subduing (forgive me for using the term) your fiery temper; besides, in allowing a man of this kind to quarrel with you, you give him just the opportunity he wants; in fact you are completely playing his game.”
“Well, I can't see that exactly; suppose the worst comes to the worst, and you are obliged to fight him, he stands nearly as good a chance of being killed as you do.”
“Excuse me, he does nothing of the kind; going out with a professed duellist is like playing cards with a skilful gambler; the chances are very greatly in his favour: in the first place, nine men out of ten would lose their nerve entirely when stationed opposite the pistol of a dead shot; then again, there are a thousand apparent trifles of which the initiated are aware, and which make the greatest difference, such as securing a proper position with regard to the sun, taking care that your figure is not in a direct line with any upright object, a tree or post for instance, and lots of other things of a like nature which we know nothing about, all of which he is certain to contrive to have arranged favourably for himself, and disadvantageously for his opponent. Then, having as it were trained himself for the occasion, he is perfectly cool and collected, and ready to avail himself of every circumstance he might turn to his advantage—a moment's hesitation in pulling the trigger when the signal is given, and he fires first—many a man has received his death-wound before now ere he had discharged his own pistol.”
“My dear boy,” said Harry, “you really are exciting and alarming yourself very unnecessarily; I am not going to quarrel with Wilford or anybody else; I detest active exertion of every kind, and consider duelling as a fashionable compound of iniquity, containing equal parts of murder and suicide—and we'll go to Lawless's this evening, that I'm determined upon—and—let me see—I've got James's new novel in my pocket. I shall not disturb you if I stay here, shall I? I'm not going to talk.”
Then, without waiting for an answer, he stretched himself' at full length on (and beyond) the sofa, and was soon buried in the pages of that best of followers in the footsteps of the mighty Wizard of the North—Walter Scott—leaving me to the somewhat less agreeable task of reading mathematics.