Saint Bede's is, as I said, a minor college, rarely numbering more than
fifty gownsmen at a time, and maintaining, both as to sports and
honors, a mild mediocrity. For years it had not sent any first-rate man
either to boat-race, or cricket-ground, or senate-house. Lately,
however, it had boasted one, quite an Admirable Crichton in his way,
who, had his moral equaled his mental qualities, would have carried all
before him. As it was, being discovered in offenses not merely against
University authority, but obnoxious to society at large, he had been
rusticated. Though the matter was kept as private as possible, its
details being known only to the master, dean and tutor, still it made a
nine-day's talk, not only in the college, but in the town--until the
remorseless wave of daily life, which so quickly closes over the head of
either ill-doer or well-doer, closed completely over that of Edwin
Uniacke.
Recovering from the shock of his turpitude, the college now reposed in
peace upon its slender list of well-conducted and harmless
undergraduates, its two or three tutors, and its dozen or so of gray old
fellows, who dozed away their evenings in combination-room. Even
such an event as the master's second marriage had scarcely power to
stir Saint Bede's from its sleepy equanimity.
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