Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ But this evident kindness and consideration on their part, only confirmed him in the resolution of remaining where he was. He met their representations with the graceful reply, that he had an attachment to the college which did not depend upon the rank he held in it, and that he trusted he should not be turned out of two homes at once. Even the heart of the splenetic little vice-principal was moved by this genuine tribute to the venerable walls, which to him, as his mistress's girdle to the poet, encircled all he loved, or hoped, or cared for; and had the date been some century earlier – in those remarkable times when a certain fellow was said to have owed his election into that body to a wondrous knack he had at compounding sherry-posset – it is probable Charles Russell would have stepped into a fellowship by special license at once.

      He had harder work before him, however, and he set stoutly to it. He got permission to lodge out of college – a privilege quite unusual, and apparently without any sufficient object in his case. A day or two after his return, he begged me to go with him to see the rooms he had taken: and I was surprised to find that although small, and not in a good part of the town, they were furnished in a style by no means, I thought, in accordance with the strict economy I knew him to be practising in every other respect. They contained, on a small scale, all the appointments of a lady's drawing-room. It was soon explained. His sister was coming to live with him. "We are but two, now," said Russell in explanation, "and though poor Mary has been offered what might have been a comfortable home elsewhere, which perhaps would have been more prudent, we both thought why should we be separated? As to these little things you see, they are nearly all hers: we offered them to the creditors, but even the lawyers would not touch them: and here Mary and I shall live. Very strange, you think, for her to be here in Oxford with no one to take care of her but me; but she does not mind that, and we shall be together. However, Hawthorne, we shall keep a dragon: there is an old housekeeper who would not be turned off, and she comes down with Mary, and may pass for her aunt, if that's all; so don't, pray, be shocked at us."

      And so the old housekeeper did come down, and Mary with her; and under such guardianship, a brother and an old servant, was that fair girl installed within the perilous precincts of the University of Oxford; perilous in more senses than one, as many a speculative and disappointed mamma can testify, whose daughters, brought to market at the annual "show" at commemoration, have left uncaught those dons of dignity, and heirs-apparent of property, whom they ought to have caught, and caught those well-dressed and good-looking, but undesirable young men, whom they ought not to have caught. Mary Russell, however, was in little peril herself, and, as little as she could help it, an occasion of peril to others. Seldom did she move out from her humble abode, except for an early morning walk with her brother, or sometimes leaning on the arm of her old domestic, so plainly dressed that you might have mistaken her for her daughter, and wondered how those intensely expressive features, and queen-like graces, should have been bestowed by nature on one so humble. Many a thoughtful student, pacing slowly the parks or Christchurch meadow after early chapel, book in hand, cheating himself into the vain idea that he was taking a healthful walk, and roused by the flutter of approaching female dress, and unwillingly looking up to avoid the possible and unwelcome collision with a smirking nurse-maid and an unresisting baby – has met those eyes, and spoilt his reading for the morning; or has paused in the running tour of Headington hill, or Magdalen walk, by which he was endeavouring to cram his whole allotted animal exercise for the day into an hour, as that sweet vision crossed his path, and wondered in his heart by what happy tie of relationship, or still dearer claim, his fellow-undergraduate had secured to himself so lovely a companion; and has tried in vain, over his solitary breakfast, to rid himself of the heterodox notion which would still creep in upon his thoughts, that in the world there might be, after all, things better worth living and working for, prizes more valuable – and perhaps not harder to win – than a first class, and living personations of the beautiful which Aristotle had unaccountably left out. Forgive me, dear reader, if I seem to be somewhat sentimental: I am not, and I honestly believe I never was, in love with Mary Russell; I am not – I fear I never was or shall be – much of a reading man or an early riser; but I will confess, it would have been a great inducement to me to adopt such habits, if I could have ensured such pleasant company in my morning walks.

      To the general world of Oxford, for a long time, I have no doubt the very existence of such a jewel within it was unknown; for at the hours when liberated tutors and idle undergraduates are wont to walk abroad, Mary was sitting, hid within a little ambush of geraniums, either busy at her work, or helping – as she loved to fancy she helped him – her brother at his studies. Few men, I believe, ever worked harder than Russell did in his last year. With the exception of the occasional early walk, and the necessary attendance at chapel and lecture, he read hard nearly the whole day; and I always attributed the fact of his being able to do so with comparatively little effort, and no injury to his health, to his having such a sweet face always present, to turn his eyes upon, when wearied with a page of Greek, and such a kind voice always ready to speak or to be silent.

      It was not for want of access to any other society that Mary Russell spent her time so constantly with her brother. The Principal, with his usual kindheartedness, had insisted – a thing he seldom did – upon his lady making her acquaintance; and though Mrs Meredith, who plumed herself much upon her dignity, had made some show of resistance at first to calling upon a young lady who was living in lodgings by herself in one of the most out-of-the-way streets in Oxford, yet, after her first interview with Miss Russell, so much did her sweetness of manner win upon Mrs Principal's fancy – or perhaps it will be doing that lady but justice to say, so much did her more than orphan unprotectedness and changed fortunes soften the woman's heart that beat beneath that formidable exterior of silk and ceremony, that before the first ten minutes of what had been intended as a very condescending and very formal call, were over, she had been offered a seat in Mrs Meredith's official pew in St Mary's; the pattern of a mysterious bag, which that good lady carried every where about with her, it was believed for no other purpose; and an airing the next day behind the fat old greys, which their affectionate coachman – in commemoration of his master's having purchased them at the time he held that dignity – always called by the name of the "Vice-Chancellors." Possibly an absurd incident, which Mary related with great glee to her brother and myself, had helped to thaw the ice in which "our governess" usually encased herself. When the little girl belonging to the lodgings opened the door to these dignified visitors, upon being informed that Miss Russell was at home, the Principal gave the name simply as "Dr and Mrs Meredith: " which, not appearing to his more pompous half at all calculated to convey a due impression of the honour conveyed by the visit, she corrected him, and in a tone quite audible – as indeed every word of the conversation had been – up the half-dozen steep stairs which led to the little drawing-room, gave out "the Master of – and lady, if you please." The word "master" was quite within the comprehension of the little domestic, and dropping an additional courtesy of respect to an office which reminded her of her catechism and the Sunday school, she selected the appropriate feminine from her own vocabulary, and threw open the door with "the master and mistress of – if you please, Miss." Dr Meredith laughed, as he entered, so heartily, that even Mary could not help smiling, and the "mistress," seeing the odds against her, smiled too. An acquaintance begun in such good humour, could hardly assume a very formal character; and, in fact, had Mary Russell not resolutely declined all society, Mrs Meredith would have felt rather a pleasure in patronising her. But both her straitened means and the painful circumstances of her position – her father already spoken of almost as a criminal – led her to court strict retirement; while she clung with redoubled affection to her brother. He, on his part, seemed to have improved in health and spirits since his change of fortunes; the apparent haughtiness and coldness with which many had charged him before, had quite vanished; he showed no embarrassment, far less any consciousness of degradation, in his conversation with any of his old messmates at the gentlemen-commoners' table; and though his communication with the college was but comparatively slight, nearly all his time being spent in his lodgings, he was becoming quite a popular character.

      Meanwhile, a change of a different kind seemed to be coming over Ormiston. It was remarked, even by those not much given to observation, that his lectures, which were once considered endurable, even by idle men, from his happy talent of remark and illustration, were fast becoming as dull and uninteresting СКАЧАТЬ