George A. Lawrence - Guy Livingstone;

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GUY LIVINGSTONE;

OR,

"THOROUGH."

BY

GEORGE A. LAWRENCE.

ICH HABE GELEBT UND GELIEBT.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1868.

GUY LIVINGSTONE.

CHAPTER I.

"Neque imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilae columbam."

It is not a pleasant epoch in one's life, the first forty-eight hours at
a large public school. I have known strong-minded men of mature age
confess that they never thought of it without a shiver. I don't count
the home-sickness, which perhaps only affects seriously the most
innocent of _debutants_, but there are other thousand and one little
annoyances which make up a great trouble. If there were nothing else,
for instance, the unceasing query, "What's your name?" makes you feel
the possession of a cognomen at all a serious burden and bar to
advancement in life.

A dull afternoon toward the end of October; the sky a neutral tint of
ashy gray; a bitter northeast wind tearing down the yellow leaves from
the old elms that girdle the school-close of ----; a foul, clinging
paste of mud and trampled grass-blades under foot, that chilled you to
the marrow; a mob of two hundred lower boys, vicious with cold and the
enforcement of keeping goal through the first football match of the
season--in the midst, I, who speak to you, feeling myself in an
eminently false position--there's the _mise en scene_.

My small persecutors had surrounded me, but had hardly time to settle
well to their work, when one of the players came by, and stopped for an
instant to see what was going on. The match had not yet begun.

There was nothing which interested him much apparently, for he was
passing on, when my despondent answer to the everlasting question caught
his ear. He turned round then--

"Any relation to Hammond of Holt?"

I replied, meekly but rather more cheerfully, that he was my uncle.

"I know him very well," the new-comer said. "Don't bully him more than
you can help, you fellows; I'll wait for you after calling over,
Hammond. I should like to ask you about the squire."

He had no time to say more, for just then the ball was kicked off, and
the battle began. I saw him afterward often during that afternoon,
always in the front of the rush or the thick of the scrimmage, and I
saw, too, more than one player limp out of his path disconsolately,
trying vainly to dissemble the pain of a vicious "hack."

I'll try to sketch Guy Livingstone as he appeared to me then, at our
first meeting.

He was about fifteen, but looked fully a year older, not only from his
height, but from a disproportionate length of limb and development of
muscle, which ripened later into the rarest union of activity and
strength that I have ever known. His features were very dark and pale,
too strongly marked to be called handsome; about the lips and lower jaw
especially there was a set sternness that one seldom sees before the
beard is grown. The eyes were very dark gray, nearly black, and so
deeply set under the thick eyebrows that they looked smaller than they
really were; and I remember, even at that early age, their expression,
when angered, was any thing but pleasant to meet. His dress was well
adapted for displaying his deep square chest and sinewy arms--a
close-fitting jersey, and white trowsers girt by a broad black belt; the
cap, orange velvet, fronted with a silver Maltese cross.

The few words he had spoken worked an immediate change in my favor. I
heard one of my tormentors say, not without awe, "The Count knows his
people at home;" and they not only left me in peace, but, a little
later, some of them began to tell me of a recent exploit of Guy's, which
had raised him high in their simple hero-worship, and which, I dare say,
is still enumerated among the feats of the brave days of old by the fags
over their evening small-beer.

To appreciate it, you must understand that the highest form in the
school--the sixth--were regarded by the fags and other subordinate
classes with an inexpressible reverence and terror. They were considered
as exempt from the common frailties of schoolboy nature: no one ventured
to fix a limit to their power. Like the gods of the Lotus-eater, they
lay beside their nectar, rarely communing with ordinary mortals except
to give an order or set a punishment. On the form immediately below them
part of their glory was reflected; these were a sort of hemitheoi,
awaiting their translation into the higher Olympus of perfected
omnipotence.

In this intermediate state flourished, at the time I speak of, one
Joseph Baines, a fat, small-eyed youth, with immense pendent pallid
cheeks, rejoicing in the _sobriquet_ of "Buttons," his father being
eminent in that line in the Midland Metropolis. The son was Brummagem to
the back-bone. He was intensely stupid; but, having been a fixture at
---- beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant, he had slowly
gravitated on into his present position, on the old Ring principle,
"weight must tell." I believe he had been bullied continuously for many
years, and now, with a dull, pertinacious malignity, was biding his
time, intending, on his accession to power, to inflict full reprisals on
those below him; or, in his own expressive language, "to take it out of
'em, like smoke." He was keeping his hand in by the perpetration of
small tyrannies on all whom he was not afraid to meddle with; but
hitherto, from a lingering suspicion, perhaps, that it was not quite
safe, he had never annoyed Livingstone.

It was on a Saturday night, the hebdomadal Saturnalia, when the week's
work was over, and no one had any thing to do; the heart of Joseph was
jocund with pork chops and mulled beer, and, his evil genius tempting
him, he proposed to three of his intimates "to go and give the Count a
turn." Nearly every one had a nickname, and this had been given to Guy,
partly, I think, from his haughty demeanor, partly from a prevalent idea
that this German dignity was dormant somewhere in his family. When the
_quartette_ entered, Guy knew perfectly what they came for, but he sat
quite still and silent, while two of them held him down by the arms in
his chair.

"I think you'd look very well with a cross on, Count," Baines said, "so
keep steady while we decorate you."

As he spoke he was mixing up a paste with tallow and candle-snuff, and,
when it was ready, came near to daub the cross on Livingstone's
forehead.

The two who held him had been quite deceived by his unexpected
tranquillity, and had somewhat relaxed their gripe as they leaned
forward to witness the operation; but the fourth, standing idle, saw all
at once the pupils of his eyes contract, and his lips set so ominously,
that the words were in his mouth, "Hold him fast!" when Guy, exerting
the full force of his arms, shook himself clear, and grasping a
brass-candlestick within his reach, struck the executioner straight
between the eyes. The effort of freeing himself to some extent broke the
force of the blow, or the great Baines dynasty might have ended there
and then; as it was, Buttons fell like a log, and, rolling once over on
his face, lay there bleeding and motionless.

While the assistants were too much astounded to detain him, Guy walked
out without a glance at his prostrate enemy; and going straight to the
head of the house, told him what had happened. The character of the
aggressor was so well known, that, when they found he was not seriously
hurt, they let Guy off easy with "two books of the _Iliad_ to write out
in Greek." Buttons kept the sick-room for ten days, and came out looking
more pasty than ever, with his pleasant propensities decidedly checked
for the time.

In his parish church at Birmingham, two tons of marble weighing him
down, the old button-maker sleeps with his father (to pluralize his
ancestors would be a grave historical error), and Joseph II. reigns in
his stead, exercising, I doubt not, over his factory-people the same
ingenuity of torture which in old times nearly drove the fags to
rebellion. He is a Demosthenes, they say, at vestries, and a Draco at
the Board of Guardians; but in the centre of his broad face, marring the
platitude of its smooth-shaven respectability, still burns angrily a
dark red scar--Guy's sign-manual--which he will carry to his grave.

The exultation of the lower school over this exploit was boundless.
Fifty energetic admirers contended for the honor of writing out the
punishment inflicted on the avenger; and one sentimentalist, just in
Herodotus, preserved the fatal candlestick as an inestimable relic,
wreathing its stem with laurel and myrtle, in imitation of the honors
paid by Athens to the sword that slew the Pisistratid.

CHAPTER II.

"My only books
Were woman's looks,
And folly all they taught me."

The Count bore his honors very calmly, though every week some fresh feat
of bodily strength or daring kept adding to his popularity. It was no
slight temptation to his vanity; for, as some one has said truly, no
successful adventurer in after-life ever wins such undivided admiration
and hearty partisans as a school hero. The _prestige_ of the liberator
among the Irish peasantry comes nearest to it, I think; or the feeling
of a clan, a hundred years ago, toward their chief. It must be very
pleasant to be quoted so incessantly and believed in so implicitly, and
to know that your decisions are so absolutely without appeal. From that
first day when he interfered in my favor, Guy never ceased to accord me
the aegis of his protection, and it served me well; for, then as now, I
was strong neither in body nor nerve. Yet our tastes, save in one
respect, were as dissimilar as can be imagined. The solitary conformity
was, that we were both, in a desultory way, fond of reading, and our
favorite books were the same. Neither would do more school-work than was
absolutely necessary, but at light literature of a certain class we read
hard.

I don't think Guy's was what is usually called a poetical temperament,
for his taste in this line was quite one-sided. He was no admirer of
the picturesque, certainly. I have heard him say that his idea of a
country to live in was where there was no hill steep enough to wind a
horse in good condition, and no wood that hounds could not run through
in fifteen minutes; therein following the fancy of that eminent French
philosopher, who, being invited to climb Ben Lomond to enjoy the most
magnificent of views, responded meekly, "_Aimez-vous les beautes de la
Nature? Pour moi, je les abhorre_." Can you not fancy the strident
emphasis on the last syllable, revealing how often the poor materialist
had been victimized before he made a stand at last?

All through Livingstone's life the real was to predominate over the
ideal; and so it was at this period of it. He had a great dislike to
purely sentimental or descriptive poetry, preferring to all others those
battle-ballads, like the _Lays of Rome_, which stir the blood like a
trumpet, or those love-songs which heat it like rough strong wine.

He was very fond of Homer, too. He liked the diapason of those sonorous
hexameters, that roll on, sinking and swelling with the ebb and flow of
a stormy sea. I hear his voice--deep-toned and powerful even at that
early age--finishing the story of Poseidon and his beautiful
prize--their bridal-bed laid in the hollow of a curling wave--

_"Porphureon d' ara kuma peristathe, ourei ison,
Kurtothen, krupsen de Theon thneten te gunaika."_

And yet they say that the glorious old Sciote was a myth, and the
Odyssey a magazine worked out by clever contributors. They might as well
assert that all his marshals would have made up one Napoleon.

I remember how we used to pass in review the beauties of old time, for
whom "many drew swords and died," whose charms convulsed kingdoms and
ruined cities, who called the stars after their own names.

Ah! Gyneth and Ida, peerless queens of beauty, it was exciting,
doubtless, to gaze down from your velveted gallery on the mad tilting
below, to see ever and anon through the yellow dust a kind, handsome
face looking up at you, pale but scarcely reproachful, just before the
horse-hoofs trod it down; ah! fairest Ninons and Dianas--prizes that,
like the Whip at Newmarket, were always to be challenged for--you were
proud when your reckless lover came to woo, with the blood of last
night's favorite not dry on his blade; but what were your fatal honors
compared to those of a reigning toast in the rough, ancient days? The
demigods and heroes that were suitors did not stand upon trifles, and
the contest often ended in the extermination of all the lady's male
relatives to the third and fourth generation. People then took it quite
as a matter of course--rather a credit to the family than otherwise.

Guy and I discussed, often and gravely, the relative merits of Evadne
the violet-haired, Helen, Cleopatra, and a hundred others, just as, on
the steps of White's, or in the smoking-room at the "Rag," men compare
the points of the _debutantes_ of the season.

His knowledge of feminine psychology--it _must_ have been theoretical,
for he was not seventeen--implied a study and depth of research that was
quite surprising; but I am bound to state that his estimate of the
strength of character and principle inherent in the weaker sex was any
thing but high; nearly, indeed, identical with that formed by the
learned lady who, to the question, "Did she think the virtue of any
single one of her sisterhood impregnable?" replied "_C'est selon_." He
often used to astonish my weak mind by his observations on this head. I
did not know till afterward that Sir Henry Fallowfield, the Bassompierre
of his day, came for the Christmas pheasant-shooting every year into
Guy's neighborhood, and that he had already imbibed lessons of
questionable morality, sitting at the gouty feet of that evil Gamaliel.

He spoke of and to women of every class readily whenever he got the
chance, always with perfect _aplomb_ and self-possession; and I have
heard older men remark since, that in him it did not appear the
precocity of "the rising generation," but rather the confidence of one
who knew his subject well. Perhaps the fact of his father having died
when he was an infant, and his having always been suzerain among his
women at home, may have had something to do with this. An absurd
instance of what I have been saying happened just before Guy left.

By time-honored custom, four or five of the Sixth were invited every
week to dine with the head master. They were not, strictly speaking,
convivial, those solemn banquets; where the host was condescendingly
affable, and his guests cheerful, as it were, under protest; resembling
somewhat the entertainments in the captain's cabin, where the chief is
unpopular.

Our Archididascalus was a kind-hearted, honest man, albeit, by virtue
of his office, somewhat strict and stern. You could read the
_Categories_ in the wrinkles of his colorless face, and contested
passages of Thucydides in the crows'-feet round his eyes. The
everlasting grind at the educational tread-mill had worn away all he
might once have had of imagination; he translated with precisely the
same intonations the Tusculan _Disputations_ and--_Eros anikate machan._

He had lately taken to himself a wife, his junior by a score of years.
The academic atmosphere had not had time then to freeze her into the
dignity befitting her position; when I met her ten years later, she was
steady and staid enough, poor thing, to have been the wife of Grotius.

Guy sat next to her that evening, and before the first course was over a
decided flirtation was established. The pretty hostess, albeit wife of a
doctor and daughter of a dean, had evidently a strong coquettish element
in her composition, and a very slight spark was sufficient to relight
the _veteris vestigia flammae._

For some time her husband did not seem to realize the position; but
gradually his sentences grew rare and curt; he opened his mouth, no
longer to let fall the pearls of his wisdom, but to stop it with savory
meat; finally this last resource failed, and he sat, looking wrathfully
but helplessly on the proceedings at the other end of the table--a
lamentable instance of prostrated ecclesiastical dignity. His disgust,
however, was far exceeded by the horror of one of the party, a meek,
cadaverous-looking boy, whose parents lived in the town, and who was
wont to regard the head master as the vicegerent of all powers, civil
and sacerdotal--I am not sure he did not include military as well. I
caught him looking several times at the door and the ceiling with a
pale, guilty face, as if he expected some immediate visitation to punish
the sacrilege. However, heaven, which did not interrupt the feast of
Atreus or of Tereus (till the dessert), allowed us to finish our dinner
in peace. During the interval when we sat alone over his claret, our
host revived a little; but utterly relapsed in the drawing-room, where
things went on worse than ever. Guy leaned over the fair Penelope (such
was her classical and not inappropriate name) while she was singing, and
over her sofa afterward, evidently considering himself her legitimate
proprietor for the time, and regarding the husband, as he hovered round
them, in the light of an unauthorized intruder. The latter would have
given any thing, once or twice, to have interfered, I am sure; but,
apart from, the extreme ridicule of the thing, he was in his own house,
and as hospitable as Saladin.

It was a great scene, when, at parting, she gave Guy the camellia that
she wore at her breast; the doctor gasped thrice convulsively and said
no word; but I wonder how she accounted afterward for the smile and
blush which answered some whispered thanks? There are certain limits
that even the historian dares not transgress; a veil falls between the
profane and the thalamus of an LL.D.; but I rather imagine she had a
hard time of it that night, the poor little woman! Let us hope, in
charity, that she held her own.

When the Count was questioned as to the conversation that had passed,
he declined to give any particulars, merely remarking that "he had to
thank Dr. ---- for for a very pleasant evening, and he hoped everyone
had enjoyed themselves very much"--which was philanthropic, to say the
least of it.

I don't know if it was our imagination, but we fancied that when the
head master called up Livingstone in form after this, he did so with an
air of grave defiance, such as a duelist of the Old Regime may have worn
when, doffing his plumed hat, he said to his adversary, "_En garde!_"

There was little time to make observations, for shortly afterward Guy
went up to Oxford, whither, six months later, I followed him.

CHAPTER III.

"Through many an hour of summer suns,
By many pleasant ways,
Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
The shadow of my days."

When I came up, I found Guy quite established and at home. He was a
general favorite with all the men he knew at college, though intimate
with but very few. There was but one individual who hated him
thoroughly, and I think the feeling was mutual--the senior tutor, a
flaccid being, with a hand that felt like a fish two days out of water,
a large nose, and a perpetual cold in his head. He consistently and
impartially disbelieved every one on their word, requiring material
proof of each assertion; an original mode of acquiring the confidence of
his pupils, and precluding any thing like an attempt at deception on
their part. I remember well a discussion on his merits that took place
in the porter's lodge one night just after twelve. When several had
given their opinions more or less strongly, some one asked the gate-ward
what he thought of the individual in question, to which that eminent
functionary thus replied: "Why, you see, sir, I'm only a servant, and,
as such, can't speak freely, but I wish he was dead, I do."

As I have said, Livingstone disliked Selkirk heartily, and did not take
the trouble to conceal it. He used to look at him sometimes with a
curious expression in his eyes, which made the tutor twirl and writhe
uncomfortably in his chair. The latter annoyed him as much as he
possibly could, but Guy held on the even tenor of his way, seldom
contravening the statutes except in hunting three days a week, which he
persisted in doing, all lectures and regulations notwithstanding. He
rode little under fourteen stone even then; but the three horses he kept
were well up to his weight, and he stood A 1 in Jem Hill's estimation as
"the best heavy-weight that had come out of Oxford for many a day;" for
he not only went straight as a die, but rode _to_ hounds instead of
_over_ them. I suppose this latter practice is inherent in University
sportsmen. I know, in my time, the way in which they pressed on hounds,
for the first two fields out of cover or after a check, used to make the
gray hairs, which were the brave old huntsman's crown of glory, stand on
end with indignation and terror, so that he prayed devoutly for a big
fence which, like the broken bridge at Leipsic, might prove a stopper to
the pursuing army. There was the making of a good rider in many of them,
too; they only wanted ballast, for they knew no more of fear than Nelson
did, and would grind over the Vale of the Evenlode and the Marsh Gibbon
double timber as gayly and undauntedly as over the accommodating
Bullingdon hurdles. And what screws they rode! ancient animals bearing
as many scars as a _vieux de la vieille_, that were considered short of
work if they did not come out five days a fortnight. This was Guy's
favorite pursuit; but he threw off the superfluity of his animal
energies in all sorts of athletics: in sparring especially he attained a
rare excellence; so well-known was it, indeed, that he passed his first
year without striking a blow in anger, through default of an antagonist,
except a chance one or two exchanged in the _melee_ which is imperative
on the 5th of November.

I did not hunt much myself, for my health was far from strong, and, I
confess, my University recollections are not lively.

After the first flush of novelty had worn off, they bored one
intensely--those large wines and suppers where, night by night, a score
of Nephelegeretae sat shrouded in smoke, chanting the same equivocal
ditties, drinking the same fiery liquors miscalled the juice of the
grape, villainous enough to make the patriarch that planted the vine
stir remorsefully in his grave under Ararat--each man all the while
talking "shop," _a l'outrance_. The skeleton of ennui sat at these
dreary feasts; and it was not even crowned with roses. I often used to
wonder what the majority of my contemporaries conversed about, when in
the bosom of their families, during the "long." They couldn't _always_
have been inflicting Oxford on their miserable relatives; the weakest of
human natures would have revolted against such tyranny; and yet the
horizon of their ideas seemed as utterly bounded by Bagley and
Headington Hill as if the great ocean-stream had flowed outside those
limits. Some adventurous spirits, it is true, stretched away as far as
Woodstock and Abingdon, but I doubt if they returned much improved by
the grand tour.

One of their most remarkable characteristics was the invincible terror
and repugnance that they appeared to entertain to the society of women
of their own class. When the visitation was inevitable, it is
impossible to describe the great horror that fell on these unfortunate
boys. The feeling of Zanoni's pupil, as the Watcher on the Threshold
came floating and creeping toward him, was nothing to it.

For example, at Commemoration--to which festival "lions" from all
quarters of the earth resorted in vast droves--when one of this class
was hard hit by the charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of
expressing his admiration otherwise than by piteous looks, directed at
her from an immense distance, out of shot for an opera-glass; when in
her immediate vicinity his motto was that of the Breton baron--_mourir
muet_. Claret-cup flowed and Champagne sparkled, powerless to raise him
to the audacity of an avowal. Under the woods of Nuneham, in the gardens
of Blenheim, amid the crowd of the Commemoration ball, the same deep
river of diffidence flowed between him and his happiness. My own idea is
that, after all was over, the silent ones, like Jacques' stricken deer,
used to "go weep" over chances lost and opportunities neglected. With
waitresses at wayside inns, _et id genus omne_, they were tolerably
self-possessed and reliant; though even there "a thousand might well be
stopped by three," and I would have backed an intelligent barmaid
against the field at odds; indeed, I think I have seen a security nearly
allied to contempt on the fine features of a certain "lone _star_" as
she parried--so easily!--the compliments and repartees of a dozen
assailants at once, accounted, in their own quadrangles, Millamours of
the darkest dye.

Guy accounted for this unfortunate peculiarity by saying that a cigar
in the mouth was the normal state of many of these men; so that, when
circumstances debarred them from the Havana courage, they lost all
presence of mind, and, being unable to retreat under cover of the smoke,
lapsed instantly into a sullen despair, suffering themselves to be shot
down unresistingly. Perhaps some future philosopher will favor us with a
better solution to this important problem in physics; I know of none.

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