Tutors' Lane Part 1

Tutors' Lane.

by Wilmarth Lewis.

_LORD TOLLOLLER: "... of birth and position I've plenty; I've grammar and spelling for two, And blood and behaviour for twenty."_

IOLANTHE.

Tutors' Lane

A SYLLABUS

Having once, for a few months, had a literary column in a newspaper, I have come to admire those authors who place at the beginning of their books a "word" in which the whole thing is given away. The time that those words saved me in writing my reviews--time which otherwise would have been lost in reading the books--enabled me to write this book; a consummation which may have, in its heart, a significant kernel, and which certainly shows how funny the world is, after all.

Now, as to this book and what it is all about, I frankly am at a loss.

That's the difficulty of being too near it. Whether it is realism, naturalism, or merely restrained romanticism, I simply do not know. It is awkward not knowing, for in the battle of the schools now raging I should like to take sides. I should like either to charge with the romantics, or defend with the realists. It must be good fun being pushed and shoved around, with someone's elbow in your eye and someone else's hatpin in your ear, and everyone crying, in the words of a recent heroine, "I want to be outraged." But, for the present at least, I must be content, like little Oliver Twist, to look hungrily on.

The story which trickles through the book starts out bravely enough. Of this much, at least, I can be moderately sure. For a short time it looks as though something might come of it; but nothing really does. It is all so terribly obvious. There are no obstacles such as one finds in real fiction; there is no love spasm in Chapter XXV. There is no Chapter XXV at all! And so it must be perfectly clear that those who insist upon having their love spasms will be bored to death by _Tutors' Lane_ and should on no account be allowed to look at it. There is love, of course, in an academic community; one frequently sees evidences of it; but it is love under control, properly subordinated to the all important business of uniting youth and learning--and to s.n.a.t.c.hing time for an occasional rejuvenating flutter in the sacred fount itself.

So the syllabus is little more than a nervous shake of the hand and a timid statement of a few negative "points"--a disheartening, if not positively dangerous, affair. That there are lurking beauties, however, peeping shyly out like johnny-jump-ups and wild raspberry blossoms, there appears to be some evidence on the jacket. Meanwhile, the course is open, the bell is ringing to cla.s.s, and the instructor, turning over the text to Chapter I, is prepared to meet whatever scholars G.o.d, in his greater wisdom, has been pleased to set before him.

I

Tom Reynolds, Instructor in English in Woodbridge College, walked along Tutors' Lane in the gathering dusk of a March afternoon. Persons whose knowledge of collegiate dons is limited to the poverty-stricken, b.u.t.terfly-chasing genus created by humorous scenario writers would be surprised to learn that our hero--for such he is to be--was young, sound of wind and limb, and at the present moment comfortably clothed in a c.o.o.n-skin coat. The latter touch might be accounted for by such persons on the basis of an eccentric city cousin generously disposed to casting off his garments when only half worn, but the other two points must convince them of the faithlessness of the whole account, and their acquaintance with the young man will accordingly end with the first paragraph.

Woodbridge College, as a matter of fact, has never been without a few young men of this type in its Faculty. Situated in southern New England, it has roots which extend well back into the Eighteenth Century, and its traditions, keeping pace with its growth, rival in dignity and picturesqueness those of its larger neighbours. Whereas they have expanded from Colleges to Universities, Woodbridge has been content to restrict its enrolment to six hundred; and instead of making entrance easier it has, if anything, made it harder. Accordingly, the College holds its head high, not unconscious that the quality of its instruction and of its graduates is unsurpa.s.sed.

The Founders of the College placed their first building on the crest of a smallish plateau which commands a view of the Blackmoor Valley.

Succeeding generations have scattered its buildings haphazardly about, but, thanks to the generosity of a Woodbridge son, the meadow land which slopes away from the crest down to the Lebanon River, sixty acres in all, was bought and given to the College; and upon this land the future College is to rise. There is a good deal of rather vague talk about this new college--of the quadrangle which is to solve all dormitory and recitation problems, and which is to s.h.i.+ne with beauty. But at present the meadow is sacred to athletics, and the elaborate new boat house, completed last spring, seems to make the quadrangle less of a probability than ever.

Tutors' Lane is the main artery of the place. It pa.s.ses through the college green and on down the hill through a row of faculty houses until it reaches the village of Woodbridge Center, or, as it is usually called, Center. It is a famous street--famous for its elms, which supply, as it has not infrequently been pointed out, the dignity of a nave; famous for the doorways and windows of its colonial houses; and famous for the distinction and propriety of its inhabitants.

It is one of the Woodbridge traditions that these houses are inviolate.

a.s.sistant Professors' wives, upon taking up residence in Tutors' Lane, are tactfully warned that it is not the thing to alter them. There may be an occasional painting, yes; but innovations in the way of building are not to be thought of. People who have to build are advised to do it elsewhere; certain streets are provided for the purpose--High Street, for example--and though of course they are not Tutors' Lane, doubtless they are livable enough. In fact, High Street is distinctly coming into its own, thanks, of course, to the High Street Cemetery. For a mortal existence in Tutors' Lane is followed by an immortal one in the High Street Cemetery, and though perhaps those who spend mortality in the Street can hardly expect to enjoy immortality in the Cemetery, nevertheless, no one can take from them the satisfaction of being the neighbours of the oldest families who are doing so. Property is steadily rising in High Street, accordingly, and now a.s.sistant Professors and their wives do well indeed to settle there.

Tutors' Lane is not particularly wide for such an important thoroughfare. Two vehicles can pa.s.s without difficulty, but it is well for them not to rush by. If they are in a hurry, they had better take either Meadow Street, which skirts the athletic field, or High Street, which is wide and oiled and designed for heavy traffic. Tutors' Lane is not oiled, and heaven forfend that it ever should be, for its foundations go far back into the past, farther perhaps than any one dreams. No less a person than old Mrs. Baxter is authority for the statement that it follows the course of an old Roman road. It is incredible, of course, and opens up a vista of pre-Columbian discovery more astonis.h.i.+ng than any to be found in the Book of Mormon, but Mrs.

Baxter was a noted controversialist in her day and, true or false, she succeeded in handing down the story to the present generation.

People who think of an ordinary row of city houses have no conception of Faculty Row. For one thing, the lots are of widely different sizes.

Some, like the one owned by the Misses Forbes, daughters of the geologist, are modest affairs with forty-foot fronts. Others, like Dean Norris's, cover two acres. Those built before 1800 have their birth-years painted carefully over their doorways, and it is an unwritten law that younger houses may not claim this privilege. Many are sheltered by box hedges, and none but has its garden--in which flowers other than hollyhocks, mignonette, larkspur, stock, and bachelor's b.u.t.tons are considered slightly _nouveaux venus_.

As to the occupants of these houses, volumes many times the size of this one might be written. Suffice it for the present, however, that they are quite superior to the general indifference of the outside world, and that, like the dwellers in Cranford, though some may be poor, all are aristocratic.

To Tom Reynolds, walking along Tutors' Lane in the dusk of a March afternoon, the scene was considerably different from the verdant one just sketched. Instead of peeping out behind their holly hocks and vines, the houses were still defensively wrapped up against the ice which besieged their walls. Storm doors could not yet be dispensed with, and here and there some practical soul--doubtless connected with the Physics Department--had by means of a railing insured himself against the painful mortification of an icy step. Walking is never good in Tutors' Lane during the winter. Cement walks are not laid, and temporary boards smack a little too much of a makes.h.i.+ft. Arctics are the invariable rule, but even so the going is not easy, and it is particularly bad at this time of year, for now it is that arctics, which never seem able to last through a winter, suddenly give out at the heel and fill with mud and slush.

Tom walked on until he came to the Dean's driveway, and then he turned into it. During his college days he had spent a considerable amount of time at the Dean's house, and now, in the first year of his Instructors.h.i.+p, he was there more than ever. His own home in Ephesus, New York, being at the present time occupied by a stepmother for whom he had no particular affection and a father whose interests were in the drygoods rather than the scholastic line, he scarcely thought of himself as having a home other than that made for him by the Dean's wife. It was true that there was an older sister whose husband was a lawyer in Omaha, but she had never approved of his bringing up, and, since she was convinced that he had been spoiled beyond repair, their separation was merciful. At Christmas the family exchanged cheques, and Tom dutifully sent what the Telegraph Company called a "Yule Tide Message," tastefully decorated free of charge. But there family ties ended.

They had really ended sixteen years ago when the nine-year-old Tom had been led up to take a terrified look at his mother's dead face and had then been allowed to escape to the rear of the house for a season of uncontrollable weeping. From that time on until five years later when he came in contact with Mr. Hilton, Instructor in English at the High School, he had led the life of a "queer" boy. Devoted to reading and content, in default of other youth who interested him, to stay by himself, he was a hopeless enigma to his father, whose memories of youth, strengthened by contemporary examination of his "cash boys," were of a radically different sort. But with the attainment of High School and Mr. Hilton the world changed. For the first time since his mother's death Tom met a congenial spirit. Mr. Hilton was gay, he was humorous, he noticed important things which other people were too stupid to notice or to appreciate. He was forever having amusing misadventures; and before long he took Tom off with him for week-end walks, and they had amusing misadventures together. No one else existed for Tom, and anything he suggested became law. In this way Tom came to play baseball sufficiently well to be allowed in his senior year the privilege of standing in the right field of the School team.

Mr. Hilton was a Woodbridge man, and, after earnest discussion with Mr.

Reynolds, he obtained permission for Tom to go to Woodbridge. The financial problem was a simple one, for Tom had awaiting him in trust a comfortable income from his mother's estate, and having him away would be cheaper for Mr. Reynolds. Beginning with Soph.o.m.ore year, therefore, the previously dull curriculum took on a romantic hue, since by means of it Ephesus could be left behind forever. Studying became a "stunt," and he swept through examination after examination as though they were novels or ball games, until at length he found himself at Woodbridge.

Tom's college life after the first year had been as pleasant as college life ever is. At the start, his career was like that of most boys entering Woodbridge from a high school. His "funny" clothes and mildly awkward manners indicated that, as yet, he hardly spoke the same language as his more fortunate cla.s.smates who had been privately prepared for their higher education. He had heard something, of course, as everyone has, of the celebrated democratic tendency that obtains at Woodbridge. It was disconcerting, therefore, to be eyed by these young men as though he were a too strange bird who had somehow wandered into the zoo proper instead of staying, where he belonged, in the aviary. He had been possessed, however, with the desire to "make good," and so avoided the little group of cynics that, in every cla.s.s, leave their alma mater with gall and bitterness in their hearts. As it was, he came to admire the happy, well-dressed majority. There was an easiness of manner about them that charmed him. They were reserved and did not dull their palms with entertainment of each new-hatch'd comrade, but when they did accept one it appeared to be a thoroughgoing performance. They were the _jeunesse doree_; but Tom frankly hoped that he might qualify for something as fine.

Tom had, as a matter of fact, qualified, and in the spring of his Junior year he had been awarded the outward and visible sign of a successful Woodbridge career--an election to Star, one of the two Senior Clubs.

This is not the place for a discussion of these two Clubs. Furthermore, they who know anything at all about Woodbridge know about them. They know well enough, without any reminder here, that an election to either is the first prize in the college social life, and they know, furthermore, that their influence extends over into graduate life, colouring it pleasantly to the end of one's days. The reticence which the members of the Clubs feel in regard to them--a reticence found highly amusing by outsiders--extends to the Woodbridge community, and there is, accordingly, a somewhat formidable atmosphere about them which is vaguely felt by all. But here we must let the affair rest. They are not to play any other part in our story than to shed their benign influence over the hero, and we may dismiss them except for an occasional inevitable reference, with a brief statement. When, in his Soph.o.m.ore year, he had made the baseball team, it had been conceded that Tom's chances of "coming across" were good, and when, later, it was discovered that he read books not prescribed in the college courses, he was "sure." The baseball, however, had come first, for it is true at Woodbridge, as well as in Ephesus, that baseball adds l.u.s.tre to letters.

Why he had chosen Star rather than Grave--for the choice had been given him--is a matter so intimately connected with the outstanding characteristics of the two Clubs that an explanation would promptly lead to the discussion above declined. Let it suffice, therefore, that he "went" Star because of good and sufficient reasons, and we shall have done with this delicate business.

Then the war had come; and now, after two years of service and a year in a graduate school, Tom was back, an infant member of the Faculty.

Tom loitered up the walk to the Dean's house to make the pleasure of his arrival the greater. The Norris house, a somewhat solemn brown-stone structure built in the 'thirties, fascinated him. He found it impossible to stay away for long; and now, as he rang the bell, his pulse quickened with the thought of the rooms about to be opened to him.

II

Tom stepped into the hall and threw his hat, m.u.f.fler, and overcoat upon the hall bench. "Lovely day, isn't it, Norah?" he said to the maid who had let him in, receiving her "Yes, Mr. Reynolds" with a smile and a nod, and pa.s.sing directly into the library.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Tom," said a girl on the sofa facing the fireplace. Before her was a tea wagon and she was at present pouring a cup for a slightly stiff person in knickerbockers.

Tom shook hands with his host, lately Dean of Woodbridge and now, in the absence of the President, acting in his place. He then turned to the first gentleman, who, cup in hand, was making slow backward progress to his seat. "How do you do?" Tom said with a slight bow.

"How are you, Reynolds," the other replied, hardly noticing him.

"Henry and father have just come back from curling and they say it is perfectly rotten," continued the girl on the sofa. "Let's see, Tom, you take one lump, don't you?"

He declined on the grounds of just having had tea and retiring to a table in the rear of the tea group, idly picked up a copy of the _London Times Literary Supplement_ that was lying on it. Henry, who had apparently been interrupted, proceeded with a description of the various characters that had taken part in the curling.

Tom's interest in the _Times_ was not very great, but his interest in Henry Whitman's story was even less, and he frankly allowed his gaze to wander over the books that covered the walls of the room. They were one of the things that fascinated him in the house. They extended from the floor to the ceiling and encircled the entire room, yielding only to the wide, high fireplace and the five windows. A small section encased in gla.s.s housed a few of the Dean's first editions and presentation copies, but Tom rather resented it, breaking as it did the harmony of the whole and pulling the eye to it with its reflecting panes. He had from the first made the mental reservation that, were the house his, he should take away that gla.s.s.

The dark blue velours sofa upon which Mary Norris was sitting, facing the fire, he called "The Bosom of the Norris Family," and when there were no heavy people like Henry Whitman about, he would occasionally throw himself upon it, carefully pointing out each time the pretty significance of his act. Behind the Bosom was a large and weighty desk covered with a mult.i.tude of personal letters, belonging for the most part to Mrs. Norris, a cheque-book open and face down in mute obeisance to the blotter, newspaper clippings, spectacle cases, scissors, and ash trays. In a neighbouring corner stood a table with imperfectly stacked current magazines, a work basket filled with knitting, and a lamp crowned by a broad shade of silk with threads hanging from it, which, when twirled, stood out and looked like a miniature wheat field with the wind running through it. The lamp on the table by which Tom was sitting was an old-fas.h.i.+oned silver affair but recently converted to electricity. Its shade was high and dignified, and it had been discovered that when lifted from its place it could be worn as a turban.

The fireplace carried on its mantel a running commentary upon the changing details of family interest. At present, flanking the little French clock upon its centre was a variety of old gla.s.s, Eighteenth Century rum and whiskey flasks recently collected by Mrs. Norris. There were, additionally, a porcelain image of two farmers, _dos a dos_, one with rosy cheeks and flas.h.i.+ng eye labelled "water," and the other, haggard and ill-favoured, labelled "gin"; also a brace of saturnine china cats. Above the mantel stretched an expanse of oak panelling which supported the portrait of Mrs. Norris's great-great-grandfather in a heavy gilt frame. The old gentleman, who looked amiably out from his starched neckcloth, had been a delegate to the Continental Congress and a jurist of distinction. Beside him on a table were some papers, obviously of the first importance, for they were plastered with seals, a copy of c.o.ke on Lyttleton, and an inkpot with a quill sticking out of it. His arm was lying lightly on the table, his cherubic face smiling back at its observer wherever he stood; and Tom imagined that his next move would be, after the manner of his great-great-granddaughter, to rise with a sweep and tip over the inkpot.

The colour in the room was chiefly contributed by the deep red curtains which hung beside the windows and which brought out and emphasized each object of kindred colour in the room. In this way were made conspicuous the turban-like shade, a lacquered calendar rest upon the desk, a footstool, and even the British Colonies on a globe hiding un.o.btrusively in a corner. The heavy Persian rugs echoed the note so generously that the books with reddish bindings stood out from their fellows and played their part in giving to the whole a richness that made the room remarkable.

Tom gazed at the group before him. Henry Whitman, a.s.sistant Professor of Economics at thirty, a member of Grave, was telling a story of an Italian in Whitmanville who, when he curled, used only the broadest Scotch. When Tom had met Henry in his ingenuous days he threatened to be overwhelmed by the calm indifference of Henry's manner. The Whitman Air, inherited from a line of distinguished forebears, all but swamped him.

It was as perfect and finished as some smooth old bit of jade, and as hard; a "piece" to be carefully handled, admirable only to the initiated. Tom had not yet, in the course of his initiation, come to find it admirable, although he quite appreciated its authenticity.