CHAPTER XVI
SEEING CHRIST CHURCH
Boreham had been very successful that afternoon. He had managed to secure Mrs. Dashwood without having to be rude to her hostess. He had done it by exchanging Mrs. Potten for the younger lady with a deftness on which he congratulated himself, though it was true that Lady Dashwood had said to May Dashwood, "Go and see over the College with Mr. Boreham."
Miss Scott was, most fortunately, absorbed in playing at shop with Mrs. Harding.
Boreham's course was clear. He calculated with satisfaction that he had a good hour before him alone with Mrs. Dashwood. He could show her every corner of Christ Church and do it slowly; the brief explanation (of a disparaging nature) that he would be obliged to make on the details of that historic building would only serve to help him out at, perhaps, difficult moments. It would be easier for him to talk freely and prepare her mind for a proper appreciation of the future which lay before her, while he walked beside her and pointed out irrelevant things, than it would have been if he had been obliged to sit still in a chair facing her, for example, and stick to his subject. It seemed to him best to begin by speaking quite frankly in praise of himself. Boreham had his doubts whether any man is really humble in his estimation of himself, however much he may pretend to be; and if, indeed, any man were truly humble, then, in Boreham's opinion, that man was a fool.
As soon as they had crossed St. Aldates and had entered the gate under Tom Tower, Boreham introduced the subject of his own merits, by glancing round the great quadrangle and remarking that he was thankful that he had never been subjected to the fossilising routine of a classical education.
"The study of dead languages is a 'cul-de-sac,'" he explained. "You can see the effect it has had in the very atmosphere of Oxford. You can see the effect it has had on Middleton, dear fellow, who got a double First, and the Ireland, and everything else proper and useless, and who is now—what? A conscientious schoolmaster, and nothing more!"
It was necessary to bring Middleton in because May Dashwood might not have had the time or the opportunity of observing all Middleton's limitations. She probably would imagine that he was a man of ideas and originality. She would take for granted (not knowing) that the head of an Oxford College was a weighty person, a successful person. Also Middleton was a good-looking-man, as good-looking as he, Boreham, was himself (only of a more conventional type), and therefore not to be despised from the mere woman's point of view.
Boreham peered eagerly at his companion's profile to see how she took this criticism of Middleton.