“If he does not mind, he will get nothing but a pass,” the Rector said, bending his brows. The learned society shrank, as if a sentence of death had been pronounced.
“Oh no, not so bad as that!” they cried, with one voice.
“What do you call so bad as that? Is not a third worse than that? Is not a second quite as bad?” said the majestic presiding voice. “In the gulf there are no names mentioned. We are not credited with a mistake. It will be better, if he does not stick to his books, that he should drop.”
Young Warrender’s special tutor made frantic efforts to arrest this doom. He pointed out to the young man the evil of his ways. “In one sense all my sympathies are with you,” he said; “but, my dear fellow, if you don’t read your books you may be as learned as ⸻, and as clear-sighted as ⸻” (the historian, being unlearned, does not know what names were here inserted), “but you will never get to the head of the lists, where we have hoped to see you.”
“What does it matter?” said Warrender, in boyish splendour. “The lists are merely symbols. You know one’s capabilities without that; and as for the opinion of the common mass, of what consequence is it to me?”
A cold perspiration came out on the tutor’s brow. “It is of great consequence to—the college,” he said. “My dear fellow, so long as we are merely mortal we can’t despise symbols; and the Rector has set his heart on having so many first classes. He doesn’t like to be disappointed. Come, after it’s all over you will have plenty of time to read as you like.”
“But why shouldn’t I read as I like now?” said Warrender. He was very self-willed. He was apt to start off at a tangent if anybody interfered with him—a youth full of fads and ways of his own, scorning the common path, caring nothing for results. And by what except by results is a college to be known and assert itself? The tutor whose hopes had been so high was in a state of depression for some time after. He even made an appeal to the school tutor, the enthusiast who had sent up this troublesome original with so many fine prognostications: who replied to the appeal, and descended one day upon the youth in his room, quite unexpectedly.
“Well, Theo, my fine fellow, how are you getting on? I hope you are keeping your eyes on the examination, and not neglecting your books.”
“I am delighted to see you, sir,” said the lad. “I was just thinking I should like to consult you upon”—and here he entered into a fine question of scholarship—a most delicate question, which probably would be beyond the majority of readers, as it is of the writer. The face of the public-school man was a wonder to see. It was lighted up with pleasure, for he was an excellent scholar, yet clouded with alarm, for he knew the penalties of such behaviour in a “man” with an examination before him.
“My dear boy,” he said, “in which of your books do you find any reference to that?”
“In none of them, I suppose,” said the young scholar. “But, you don’t think there is any sanctity in a set of prescribed books?”
“Oh no, no sanctity: but use,” said the alarmed master. “Come, Theo, there’s a good fellow, don’t despise the tools we all must work with. It’s your duty to the old place, you know, which all these newspaper fellows are throwing stones at whenever they have a chance: and it’s your duty to your college. I know what you are worth, of course: but how can work be tested to the public eye except by the lists?”
“Why should I care for the public eye?” said the magnanimous young man. “We know that the lists don’t mean everything. A headache might make the best scholar that ever was lose his place. A fellow that knows nothing might carry the day by a fluke. Don’t you remember, sir, that time when Daws got the Lincoln because of that old examiner, who gave us all his own old fads in the papers? Every fellow that was any good was out of it, and Daws got the scholarship. I am sure you can’t have forgotten that.”
“Oh no, I have not forgotten it,” said the master ruefully. “But that was only once in a way. Come, Theo, be reasonable. As long as you are in training, you know, you must keep in the beaten way. Think, my boy, of your school—and of me, if you care for my credit as a tutor.”
“You know, sir, I care for you, and to please you,” said Warrender, with feeling. “But as for your credit as a tutor, who can touch that? And even I am not unknown here,” he added, with a little boyish pride. “Everybody who is of any importance knows that the Rector himself has always treated me quite as a friend. I don’t think”—this with the ineffable simple self-assurance of youth, so happy in the discrimination of those who approve of it that the gratification scarcely feels like vanity—“that I shall be misunderstood here.”
“Oh, the young ass!” said the master to himself, as he went away. “Oh, the young idiot! Poor dear Theo, what will be his feelings when he finds out that all they care for is the credit of the college?” But he was not so barbarous as to say this, and Warrender was left to find out by himself, by the lessening number of the breakfasts, by the absence of his name on the lists of the Rector’s dinner-parties, by the gradual cooling of the incubating warmth, what had been the foundation of all the affection shown him. It was not for some time that he perceived the change which made itself slowly apparent, the gradual loss of
