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THE COMPETITION.
I could linger with gladness even over this part of my hero's
history. If the school work, was dry it was thorough. If that
academy had no sweetly shadowing trees; if it did stand within a
parallelogram of low stone walls, containing a roughly-gravelled
court; if all the region about suggested hot stones and sand--beyond
still was the sea and the sky; and that court, morning and
afternoon, was filled with the shouts of eager boys, kicking the
football with mad rushings to and fro, and sometimes with wounds and
faintings--fit symbol of the equally resultless ambition with which
many of them would follow the game of life in the years to come.
Shock-headed Highland colts, and rough Lowland steers as many of
them were, out of that group, out of the roughest of them, would
emerge in time a few gentlemen--not of the type of your trim,
self-contained, clerical exquisite--but large-hearted, courteous
gentlemen, for whom a man may thank God. And if the master was stern
and hard, he was true; if the pupils feared him, they yet cared to
please him; if there might be found not a few more widely-read
scholars than he, it would be hard to find a better teacher.
Robert leaned to the collar and laboured, not greatly moved by
ambition, but much by the hope of the bursary and the college life
in the near distance. Not unfrequently he would rush into the thick
of the football game, fight like a maniac for one short burst, and
then retire and look on. He oftener regarded than mingled. He
seldom joined his fellows after school hours, for his work lay both
upon his conscience and his hopes; but if he formed no very deep
friendships amongst them, at least he made no enemies, for he was
not selfish, and in virtue of the Celtic blood in him was invariably
courteous. His habits were in some things altogether irregular. He
never went out for a walk; but sometimes, looking up from his Virgil
or his Latin version, and seeing the blue expanse in the distance
breaking into white under the viewless wing of the summer wind, he
would fling down his dictionary or his pen, rush from his garret,
and fly in a straight line, like a sea-gull weary of lake and river,
down to the waste shore of the great deep. This was all that stood
for the Arabian Nights of moon-blossomed marvel; all the rest was
Aberdeen days of Latin and labour.
Slowly the hours went, and yet the dreaded, hoped-for day came
quickly. The quadrangle of the stone-crowned college grew more
awful in its silence and emptiness every time Robert passed it; and
the professors' houses looked like the sentry-boxes of the angels of
learning, soon to come forth and judge the feeble mortals who dared
present a claim to their recognition. October faded softly by, with
its keen fresh mornings, and cold memorial green-horizoned evenings,
whose stars fell like the stray blossoms of a more heavenly world,
from some ghostly wind of space that had caught them up on its awful
shoreless sweep. November came, 'chill and drear,' with its
heartless, hopeless nothingness; but as if to mock the poor
competitors, rose, after three days of Scotch mist, in a lovely
'halcyon day' of 'St. Martin's summer,' through whose long shadows
anxious young faces gathered in the quadrangle, or under the arcade,
each with his Ainsworth's Dictionary, the sole book allowed, under
his arm. But when the sacrist appeared and unlocked the public
school, and the black-gowned professors walked into the room, and
the door was left open for the candidates to follow, then indeed a
great awe fell upon the assembly, and the lads crept into their
seats as if to a trial for life before a bench of the incorruptible.
They took their places; a portion of Robertson's History of
Scotland was given them to turn into Latin; and soon there was
nothing to be heard in the assembly but the turning of the leaves of
dictionaries, and the scratching of pens constructing the first
rough copy of the Latinized theme.
It was done. Four weary hours, nearly five, one or two of which
passed like minutes, the others as if each minute had been an hour,
went by, and Robert, in a kind of desperation, after a final reading
of the Latin, gave in his paper, and left the room. When he got
home, he asked his landlady to get him some tea. Till it was ready
he would take his violin. But even the violin had grown dull, and
would not speak freely. He returned to the torture--took out his
first copy, and went over it once more. Horror of horrors! a
maxie!--that is a maximus error. Mary Queen of Scots had been left
so far behind in the beginning of the paper, that she forgot the
rights of her sex in the middle of it, and in the accusative of a
future participle passive--I do not know if more modern grammarians
have a different name for the growth--had submitted to be dum, and
her rightful dam was henceforth and for ever debarred.
He rose, rushed out of the house, down through the garden, across
two fields and a wide road, across the links, and so to the moaning
lip of the sea--for it was moaning that night. From the last
bulwark of the sandhills he dropped upon the wet sands, and there he
paced up and down--how long, God only, who was watching him,
knew--with the low limitless form of the murmuring lip lying out and
out into the sinking sky like the life that lay low and hopeless
before him, for the want at most of twenty pounds a year (that was
the highest bursary then) to lift him into a region of possible
well-being. Suddenly a strange phenomenon appeared within him. The
subject hitherto became the object to a new birth of consciousness.
He began to look at himself. 'There's a sair bit in there,' he
said, as if his own bosom had been that of another mortal. 'What's
to be dune wi' 't? I doobt it maun bide it. Weel, the crater had
better bide it quaietly, and no cry oot. Lie doon, an' hand yer
tongue. Soror tua haud meretrix est, ye brute!' He burst out
laughing, after a doubtful and ululant fashion, I dare say; but he
went home, took up his auld wife, and played 'Tullochgorum' some
fifty times over, with extemporized variations.
The next day he had to translate a passage from Tacitus; after
executing which somewhat heartlessly, he did not open a Latin book
for a whole week. The very sight of one was disgusting to him. He
wandered about the New Town, along Union Street, and up and down the
stairs that led to the lower parts, haunted the quay, watched the
vessels, learned their forms, their parts and capacities, made
friends with a certain Dutch captain whom he heard playing the
violin in his cabin, and on the whole, notwithstanding the wretched
prospect before him, contrived to spend the week with considerable
enjoyment. Nor does an occasional episode of lounging hurt a life
with any true claims to the epic form.
The day of decision at length arrived. Again the black-robed powers
assembled, and again the hoping, fearing lads--some of them not
lads, men, and mere boys--gathered to hear their fate. Name after
name was called out;--a twenty pound bursary to the first, one of
seventeen to the next, three or four of fifteen and fourteen, and so
on, for about twenty, and still no Robert Falconer. At last,
lagging wearily in the rear, he heard his name, went up listlessly,
and was awarded five pounds. He crept home, wrote to his
grandmother, and awaited her reply. It was not long in coming; for
although the carrier was generally the medium of communication, Miss
Letty had contrived to send the answer by coach. It was to the
effect that his grandmother was sorry that he had not been more
successful, but that Mr. Innes thought it would be quite worth while
to try again, and he must therefore come home for another year.
This was mortifying enough, though not so bad as it might have been.
Robert began to pack his box. But before he had finished it he
shut the lid and sat upon it. To meet Miss St. John thus disgraced,
was more than he could bear. If he remained, he had a chance of
winning prizes at the end of the session, and that would more than
repair his honour. The five pound bursars were privileged in paying
half fees; and if he could only get some teaching, he could manage.
But who would employ a bejan when a magistrand might be had for
next to nothing? Besides, who would recommend him? The thought of
Dr. Anderson flashed into his mind, and he rushed from the house
without even knowing where he lived.
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