XV. A STORM BREWS AND BREAKS
Certainly Drysdale's character came out well that night. He did not seem the least jealous of the success which had been achieved through his dismissal. On the contrary, there was no man in the college who showed more interest in the race, or joy at the result, then he. Perhaps the pleasure of being out of it himself may have reckoned for something with him. In any case, there he was at the door with Jack, to meet the crew as they landed after the race, with a large pewter, foaming with shandygaff, in each hand, for their recreation. Draco himself could not have forbidden them to drink at that moment; so, amidst shaking of hands and clapping on the back, the pewters travelled round from stroke to bow, and then the crew went off to their dressing-room, accompanied by Drysdale and others.
"Bravo! it was the finest race that has been seen on the river this six years; everybody says so. You fellows have deserved well of your country. I've sent up to college to have supper in my room, and you must all come. Hang training! there are only two more nights, and you're safe to keep your place. What do you say Captain? eh, Miller? Now be good-natured for once."
"Well, we don't get head of the river every night," said Miller. "I don't object if you'll all turn out and go to bed at eleven."
"That's all right," said Drysdale; "and now let's go to the old 'Choughs' and have a glass of ale while supper is getting ready. Eh, Brown?" and he hooked his arm into Tom's and led the way into the town.
"I'm so sorry you were not in it for the finish," said Tom, who was quite touched by his friend's good-humour.
"Are you?" said Drysdale; "it's more than I am, then, I can tell you. If you could have seen yourself under the willows, you wouldn't have thought yourself much of an object of envy. Jack and I were quite satisfied with our share of work and glory on the bank. Weren't we, old fellow?" at which salutation Jack reared himself on his hind legs and licked his master's hand.
"Well, you're a real good fellow for taking it as you do. I don't think I could have come near the river if I had been you."
"I take everything as it comes," said Drysdale. "The next race is on Derby day, and I couldn't have gone if I hadn't been turned out of the boat; that's a compensation, you see. Here we are. I wonder if Miss Patty has heard of the victory?"
They turned down the little passage entrance of "The Choughs" as he spoke, followed by most of the crew, and by a tail of younger St. Ambrosians, their admirers, and the bar was crowded the next moment. Patty was there, of course, and her services were in great requisition; for though each of the crew only took a small glass of the old ale, they made as much fuss about it with the pretty barmaid as if they were drinking hogsheads. In fact, it had become clearly the correct thing with the St. Ambrosians to make much of Patty; and, considering the circumstances, it was only a wonder that she was not more spoiled than seemed to be the case. Indeed, as Hardy stood up in the corner opposite to the landlady's chair, a silent onlooker at the scene, he couldn't help admitting to himself that the girl held her own well, without doing or saying anything unbecoming a modest woman. And it was a hard thing for him to be fair to her, for what he saw now in a few minutes confirmed the impression which his former visit had left on his mind--that his friend was safe in her toils; how deeply, of course he could not judge, but that there was more between them than he could approve was now clear enough to him, and he stood silent, leaning against the wall in that farthest corner, in the shadow of a projecting cupboard, much distressed in mind, and pondering over what it behove him to do under the circumstances. With the exception of a civil sentence or two to the old landlady who sat opposite him knitting, and casting rather uneasy looks from time to time towards the front of the bar, he spoke to no one. In fact, nobody came near that end of the room, and their existence seemed to have been forgotten by the rest.
Tom had been a little uncomfortable for the first minute; but after seeing Hardy take his glass of ale, and then missing him, he forgot all about him, and was too busy with his own affairs to trouble himself further. He had become a sort of drawer, or barman, at "The Cloughs," and presided, under Patty, over the distribution of the ale, giving an eye to his chief to see that she was not put upon.
Drysdale and Jack left after a short stay, to see that the supper was being properly prepared. Soon afterwards Patty went off out of the bar in answer to some bell which called her to another part of the house; and the St. Ambrosians voted that it was time to go off to college to supper, and cleared out into the street.
Tom went out with the last batch of them, but lingered a moment in the passage outside. He knew the house and its ways well enough by this time. The next moment Patty appeared from a side door, which led to another part of the house.
"So you're not going to stay and play a game with aunt," she said; "what makes you in such a hurry?"
"I must go up to college; there's a supper to celebrate our getting head of the river." Patty looked down and pouted a little. Tom took her hand, and said sentimentally, "Don't be cross, now; you know that I would sooner stay here, don't you?"
She tossed her head, and pulled away her hand, and then changing the subject, said, "Who's that ugly old fellow who was here again to-night?"
"There was no one older than Miller, and he is rather an admirer of yours. I shall tell him you called him ugly."
"Oh, I don't mean Mr. Miller; you know that well enough," she answered. "I mean him in the old rough coat, who don't talk to anyone."
"Ugly old fellow, Patty? Why, you mean Hardy. He's a great friend of mine, and you must like him for my sake."
"I'm sure I won't. I don't like him a bit; he looks so cross at me."
"It's all your fancy. There now, good-night."
"You shan't go, however, till you've given me that handkerchief. You promised it me if you got head of the river."
"Oh! you little story-teller. Why, they are my college colors. I wouldn't part with them for worlds. I'll give you a lock of my hair, and the prettiest handkerchief you can find in Oxford; but not this."
"But I will have it and you did promise me it," she said, and put up her hands suddenly, and untied the bow of Tom's neck-handkerchief. He caught her wrists in his hands, and looked down into her eyes, in which, if he saw a little pique at his going, he saw other things which stirred in him strange feelings of triumph and tenderness.
"Well, then you shall pay for it, anyhow," he said.--Why, need I tell what followed?--There was a little struggle; a "Go along, do, Mr. Brown;" and the next minute Tom minus his handkerchief, was hurrying after his companions; and Patty was watching him from the door, and setting her cap to rights. Then she turned and went back into the bar, and started, and turned red, as she saw Hardy there, still standing in the further corner, opposite her aunt. He finished his glass of ale as she came in, and then passed out wishing them "Good-night."
"Why aunt" she said, "I thought they were all gone. Who was that sour-looking man?"
"He seems a nice quiet gentleman, my dear," said the old lady, looking up. "I'm sure he's much better than those ones as make so much racket in the bar. But where have you been, Patty?"
"Oh, to the commercial room, aunt. Won't you have a game at cribbage?" and Patty took up the cards and set the board out, the old lady looking at her doubtfully all the time through her spectacles. She was beginning to wish that the college gentlemen wouldn't come so much to the house, though they were very good customers.
Tom, minus his handkerchief, hurried after his comrades, and caught them up before they got to college. They were all there but Hardy, whose absence vexed our hero for a moment; he had hoped that Hardy, now that he was in the boat, would have shaken off all his reserve towards the other men, and blamed him because he had not done so at once. There could be no reason for it but his own oddness he thought, for everyone was full of his praises as they strolled on talking of the race. Miller praised his style, and time, and pluck. "Didn't you feel how the boat sprung when I called on you at the Cherwell?" he said to the Captain. "Drysdale was always dead beat at the Gut, and just like a log in the boat, pretty much like some of the rest of you."
"He's in such good training, too," said Diogenes; "I shall find out how he diets himself."
"We've pretty well done with that, I should hope," said No. 6. "There are only two more nights, and nothing can touch us now."
"Don't be too sure of that," said Miller. "Mind now, all of you, don't let us have any nonsense till the races are over and we are all safe."
And so they talked on till they reached college, and then dispersed to their rooms to wash and dress and met again in Drysdale's rooms, where supper was awaiting them.
Again Hardy did not appear. Drysdale sent a scout to his rooms, who brought back word that he could not find him; so Drysdale set to work to do the honors of his table and enjoyed the pleasure of tempting the crew with all sorts of forbidden hot liquors, which he and the rest of the non professionals imbibed freely. But with Miller's eye on them, and the example of Diogenes and the Captain before them, the rest of the crew exercised an abstemiousness which would have been admirable, had it not been in a great measure compulsory.
It was a great success, this supper at Drysdale's, although knocked up at an hour's notice. The triumph of their boat, had, for the time, the effect of warming up and drawing out the feeling of fellowship, which is the soul of college life. Though only a few men besides the crew sat down to supper, long before it was cleared away men of every set in the college came in, in the highest spirits, and the room was crowded. For Drysdale sent round to every man in the college with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, and they flocked in and sat where they could, and men talked and laughed with neighbors, with whom, perhaps, they had never exchanged a word since the time when they were freshmen together.
Of course there were speeches, cheered to the echo, and songs, of which the choruses might have been heard in the High-street. At a little before eleven, nevertheless, despite the protestations of Drysdale, and the passive resistance of several of their number, Miller carried off the crew, and many of the other guests went at the same time, leaving their host and a small circle to make a night of it.
Tom went to his room in high spirits, humming the air of one of the songs he had just heard; but he had scarcely thrown his gown on a chair when a thought struck him, and he ran down stairs again and across to Hardy's rooms.
Hardy was sitting with some cold tea poured out, but untasted, before him, and no books open--a very unusual thing with him at night. But Tom either did not or would not notice that there was anything unusual.
He seated himself and began gossiping away as fast as he could, without looking much at the other. He began by recounting all the complimentary things which had been said by Miller and others of Hardy's pulling. Then he went on to the supper party; what a jolly evening they had had; he did not remember anything so pleasant since he had been up, and he retailed the speeches, and named the best songs. "You really ought to have been there. Why didn't you come? Drysdale sent over for you. I'm sure every one wished you had been there. Didn't you get his message?"
"I didn't feel up to going," said Hardy.
"There's nothing the matter, eh?" said Tom, as the thought crossed his mind that perhaps Hardy had hurt himself in the race, as he had not been regularly training.
"No, nothing," answered the other.
Tom tried to make play again, but soon came to an end of his talk. It was impossible to make head against that cold silence. At last he stopped, looked at Hardy for a minute, who was staring abstractedly at the sword over his mantel-piece, and then said,--
"There is something the matter, though. Don't sit glowering as if you had swallowed a furze bush. Why you haven't been smoking, old boy?" he added, getting up and putting his hand on the others shoulder. "I see that's it. Here, take one of my weeds, they're mild. Miller allows two of these a day."
"No, thank'ee," said Hardy, rousing himself; "Miller hasn't interfered with my smoking, and I will have a pipe, for I think I want it."
"Well, I don't see that it does you any good," said Tom, after watching him fill and light, and smoke for some minutes without saying a word. "Here, I've managed the one thing I had at heart. You are in the crew, and we are head of the river, and everybody is praising your rowing up to the skies, and saying that the bump was all your doing. And here I come to tell you, and not a word can I get out of you. Ain't you pleased? Do you think we shall keep our place?" He paused a moment.
"Hang it all, I say," he added, losing all patience; "swear a little if you can't do anything else. Let's hear your voice; it isn't such a tender one that you need keep it all shut up."
"Well," said Hardy, making a great effort; "the real fact is I have something, and something very serious to say to you."
"Then I'm not going to listen to it," broke in Tom; "I'm not serious, and I won't be serious, and no one shall make me serious to-night. It's no use, so don't look glum. But isn't the ale at 'The Choughs' good? and isn't it a dear little place?"
"It's that place I want to talk to you about," said Hardy, turning his chair suddenly so as to front his visitor. "Now, Brown, we haven't known one another long, but I think I understand you, and I know I like you, and I hope you like me."
"Well, well, well," broke in Tom, "of course I like you, old fellow, or else I shouldn't come poking after you, and wasting so much of your time, and sitting on your cursed hard chairs in the middle of the races. What has liking to do with 'The Choughs,' or 'The Choughs' with long faces? You ought to have had another glass of ale there."
"I wish you had never had a glass of ale there," said Hardy, bolting out his words as if they were red hot. "Brown you have no right to go to that place."
"Why?" said Tom, sitting up in his chair and beginning to be nettled.
"You know why," said Hardy, looking him full in the face, and puffing out huge volumes of smoke. In spite of the bluntness of the attack, there was a yearning look which spread over the rugged brow, and shone out of the deep set eyes of the speaker, which almost conquered Tom. But first pride, and then the consciousness of what was coming next, which began to dawn on him, rose in his heart. It was all he could do to meet that look full, but he managed it, though he flushed to the roots of his hair, as he simply repeated through his set teeth, "Why?"
"I say again," said Hardy, "you know why."
"I see what you mean," said Tom, slowly; "as you say, we have not known one another long; long enough, though, I should have thought, for you to have been more charitable. Why am I not to go to 'The Cloughs'? Because there happens to be a pretty bar maid there? All our crew go, and twenty other men besides."
"Yes; but do any of them go in the sort of way you do? Does she look at anyone of them as she does at you?"
"How do I know?"
"That's not fair, or true, or like you, Brown," said Hardy, getting up and beginning to walk up and down the room. "You do know that that girl doesn't care a straw for the other men who go there. You do know that she is beginning to care for you."
"You seem to know a great deal about it," said Tom; "I don't believe you were ever there before two days ago."
"No, I never was."
"Then I think you needn't be quite so quick at finding fault. If there were anything I didn't wish you to see, do you think I should have taken you there? I tell you she is quite able to take care of herself."
"So I believe," said Hardy; "if she were a mere giddy, light girl, setting her cap at every man who came in, it wouldn't matter so much--for her at any rate. She can take care of herself well enough so far as the rest are concerned, but you know it isn't so with you. You know it now, Brown; tell the truth; anyone with half an eye can see it."
"You seem to have made pretty good use of your eyes in these two nights, anyhow," said Tom.
"I don't mind your sneers, Brown," said Hardy as he tramped up and down with his arms locked behind him; "I have taken on myself to speak to you about this; I should be no true friend if I shirked it. I'm four years older than you, and have seen more of the world and of this place than you. You sha'n't go on with this folly, this sin, for want of warning."
"So it seems," said Tom doggedly. "Now I think I've had warning enough; suppose we drop the subject."
Hardy stopped his walk, and turned on Tom with a look of anger. "Not yet," he said, firmly; "you know best how and why you have done it, but you know that somehow or other you have made that girl like you."
"Suppose I have, what then; whose business is that but mine and hers?"
"It's the business of everyone who won't stand by and see the devil's game played under his nose if he can hinder it."
"What right have you to talk about the devil's game to me?" said Tom. "I'll tell you what; if you and I are to keep friends we had better drop this subject."
"If we are to keep friends we must go to the bottom of it. There are only two endings to this sort of business and you know it as well as I."
"A right and wrong one, eh? and because you call me your friend you assume that my end will be the wrong one."
"I do call you my friend, and I say the end must be the wrong one here. There's no right end. Think of your family. You don't mean to say--you dare not tell me, that you will marry her?"
"I dare not tell you!" said Tom, starting up in his turn; "I dare tell you or any man anything I please. But I won't tell you or any man anything on compulsion."
"I repeat," went on Hardy, "you dare not say you mean to marry her. You don't mean it--and, as you don't, to kiss her as you did to-night--"
"So you were sneaking behind to watch me!" burst out Tom, chafing with rage, and glad to find any handle for a quarrel. The two men stood fronting one another, the younger writhing with the sense of shame and outraged pride, and longing for a fierce answer--a blow--anything, to give vent to the furies which were tearing him.
But at the end of a few seconds the elder answered, calmly and slowly,--
"I will not take those words from any man; you had better leave my rooms."
"If I do, I shall not come back till you have altered your opinions."
"You need not come back till you have altered yours."
The next moment Tom was in the passage; the next, striding up and down the side of the inner quadrangle in the pale moonlight.
Poor fellow! it was no pleasant walking ground for him. Is it worth our while to follow him up and down in his tramp? We have most of us walked the like marches at one time or another of our lives. The memory of them is by no means one which we can dwell on with pleasure. Times they were of blinding and driving storm, and howling winds, out of which voices as of evil spirits spoke close in our ears--tauntingly, temptingly, whispering to the mischievous wild beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts, now, "Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing?" now, "Rise, kill and eat--it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way, and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to brave them--to brave all things in earth, or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength and be a man!"
Then did not the wild beast within us shake itself, and feel its power, sweeping away all the "Thou shalt not's" which the law wrote up before us in letters of fire, with the "I will" of hardy, godless, self-assertion? And all the while--which alone made the storm really dreadful to us--was there not the still small voice--never to be altogether silenced by the roarings of the tempest of passion, by the evil voices, by our own violent attempts to stifle it--the still small voice appealing to the man, the true man, within us, which is made in the image of God--calling on him to assert his dominion over the wild beast--to obey, and conquer, and live? Ay! and though we may have followed the other voices, have we not, while following them, confessed in our hearts, that all true strength, and nobleness, and manliness, was to be found in the other path? Do I say that most of us have had to tread this path, and fight this battle? Surely I might have said all of us; all, at least, who have passed the bright days of their boyhood. The clear and keen intellect no less than the dull and heavy; the weak, the cold, the nervous, no less than the strong and passionate of body. The arms and the field have been divers; can have been the same, I suppose, to no two men, but the battle must have been the same to all. One here and there may have had a foretaste of it as a boy; but it is the young man's battle, and not the boy's, thank God for it! That most hateful and fearful of all realities, call it by what name we will--self, the natural man, the old Adam--must have risen up before each of us in early manhood, if not sooner, challenging the true man within us to which the Spirit of God is speaking, to a struggle for life or death.
Gird yourself, then, for the fight, my young brother, and take up the pledge which was made for you when you were a helpless child. This world, and all others, time and eternity, for you hang upon the issue. This enemy must be met and vanquished--not finally, for no man while on earth I suppose, can say that he is slain; but, when once known and recognized, met and vanquished he must be, by God's help in this and that encounter, before you can be truly called a man; before you can really enjoy any one even of this world's good things.
This strife was no light one for our hero on the night in his life at which we have arrived. The quiet sky overhead, the quiet solemn old buildings, under the shadow of which he stood, brought him no peace. He fled from them into his own rooms; he lighted his candles and tried to read, and force the whole matter from his thoughts; but it was useless; back it came again and again. The more impatient of its presence he became, the less could he shake it off. Some decision he must make; what should it be? He could have no peace till it was taken. The veil had been drawn aside thoroughly, and once for all. Twice he was on the point of returning to Hardy's rooms to thank him, confess, and consult; but the tide rolled back again. As the truth of the warning sank deeper and deeper into him, the irritation against him who had uttered it grew also. He could not and would not be fair yet. It is no easy thing for anyone of us to put the whole burden of any folly or sin on our own backs all at once. "If he had done it in any other way," thought Tom, "I might have thanked him."
Another effort to shake off the whole question. Down into the quadrangle again; lights in Drysdale's rooms. He goes up, and finds the remains of the supper, tankards full of egg-flip and cardinal, and a party playing at vingt-un. He drinks freely, careless of training or boat-racing, anxious only to drown thought. He sits down to play. The boisterous talk of some, the eager keen looks of others, jar on him equally. One minute he is absent, the next boisterous, then irritable, then moody. A college card-party is no place to-night for him. He loses his money, is disgusted at last, and gets to his own rooms by midnight; goes to bed feverish, dissatisfied with himself, with all the world. The inexorable question pursues him even into the strange helpless land of dreams, demanding a decision, when he has no longer power of will to choose either good or evil.
But how fared it all this time with the physician? Alas! little better than with his patient. His was the deeper and more sensitive nature. Keenly conscious of his own position, he had always avoided any but the most formal intercourse with the men in his college whom he would have liked most to live with. This was the first friendship he had made amongst them, and he valued it accordingly; and now it seemed to lie at his feet in hopeless fragments, and cast down too by his own hand. Bitterly he blamed himself over and over again, as he recalled every word that had passed--not for having spoken--that he felt had been a sacred duty--but for the harshness and suddenness with which he seemed to himself to have done it.
"One touch of gentleness or sympathy, and I might have won him. As it was, how could he have met me otherwise than he did--hard word for hard word, hasty answer for proud reproof? Can I go to him and recall it all? No! I can't trust myself; I shall only make matters worse. Besides, he may think that the servitor--Ah! am I there again? The old sore, self, self, self! I nurse my own pride; I value it more than my friend; and yet--no, no! I cannot go, though I think I could die for him. The sin, if sin there must be, be on my head. Would to God I could bear the sting of it! But there will be none--how can I fear? he is too true, too manly. Rough and brutal as my words have been, they have shown him the gulf. He will, he must escape it. But will he ever come back to me? I care not, so he escape."
How can my poor words follow the strong loving man in the wrestlings of his spirit, till far on in the quiet night he laid the whole before the Lord and slept! Yes, my brother, even so: the old, old story; but start not at the phrase, though you may never have found its meaning--He laid the whole before the Lord in prayer, for his friend, for himself, for the whole world.
And you, too, if ever you are tried as he was--as every man must be in one way or another--must learn to do the like with every burthen on your soul, if you would not have it hanging round you heavily, and ever more heavily, and dragging you down lower and lower till your dying day.
XVI. THE STORM RAGES
Hardy was early in the chapel the next morning. It was his week for pricking in. Every man who entered--from the early men who strolled in quietly while the bell was still ringing, to the hurrying, half-dressed loiterers who crushed in as the porter was closing the doors, and disturbed the congregation in the middle of the confession--gave him a turn (as the expressive phrase is), and every turn only ended in disappointment. He put by his list at last, when the doors were fairly shut, with a sigh. He had half expected to see Tom come into morning chapel with a face from which he might have gathered hope that his friend had taken the right path. But Tom did not come at all, and Hardy felt it was a bad sign.
They did not meet till the evening, at the river, when the boat went down for a steady pull, and then Hardy saw at once that all was going wrong. Neither spoke to or looked at the other. Hardy expected some one to remark it, but nobody did. After the pull they walked up, and Tom as usual led the way, as if nothing had happened, into "The Choughs." Hardy paused for a moment, and then went in too, and stayed till the rest of the crew left. Tom deliberately stayed after them all. Hardy turned for a moment as he was leaving the bar, and saw him settling himself down in his chair with an air of defiance, meant evidently for him, which would have made most men angry. He was irritated for a moment, and then was filled with ruth for the poor wrong-headed youngster who was heaping up coals of fire for his own head. In his momentary anger Hardy said to himself, "Well, I have done what I can; now he must go his own way;" but such a thought was soon kicked in disgrace from his noble and well-disciplined mind. He resolved, that, let it cost what it might in the shape of loss of time and trial of temper, he would leave no stone unturned, and spare no pains, to deliver his friend of yesterday from the slough into which he was plunging. How he might best work for this end occupied his thoughts as he walked towards college.
Tom sat on at "The Choughs," glorifying himself in the thought that now, at any rate, he had shown Hardy that he wasn't to be dragooned into doing or not doing anything. He had had a bad time of it all day, and his good angel had fought hard for victory; but self-will was too strong for the time. When he stayed behind the rest, it was more out of bravado than from any defined purpose of pursuing what he tried to persuade himself was an innocent flirtation. When he left the house some hours after he was deeper in the toils than ever, and dark clouds were gathering over his heart. From that time he was an altered man, and altering as rapidly for the worse in body as in mind. Hardy saw the change in both, and groaned over it in secret. Miller's quick eye detected the bodily change. After the next race he drew Tom aside, and said,--
"Why, Brown, what's the matter? What have you been about? You're breaking down. Hold on, man; there's only one more night."
"Never fear," said Tom, proudly, "I shall last it out."
And in the last race he did his work again, though it cost him more than all the preceding ones put together, and when he got out of the boat he could scarcely walk or see. He felt a fierce kind of joy in his own distress, and wished that there were more races to come. But Miller, as he walked up arm-in-arm with the Captain, took a different view of the subject.
"Well, it's all right, you see," said the Captain; "but we're not a boat's length better than Oriel over the course after all. How was it we bumped them? If anything, they drew a-little on us to-night."
"Ay, half a boat's length, I should say," answered Miller. "I'm uncommonly glad it's over; Brown is going all to pieces; he wouldn't stand another race, and we haven't a man to put in his place."
"It's odd, too," said the Captain; "I put him down as a laster, and he has trained well. Perhaps he has overdone it a little. However, it don't matter now."
So the races were over; and that night a great supper was held in St. Ambrose Hall, to which were bidden, and came, the crews of all the boats from Exeter upwards. The Dean, with many misgivings and cautions, had allowed the hall to be used, on pressure from Miller and Jervis. Miller was a bachelor and had taken a good degree, and Jervis bore a high character and was expected to do well in the schools. So the poor Dean gave in to them, extracting many promises in exchange for his permission, and flitted uneasily about all the evening in his cap and gown, instead of working on at his edition of the Fathers, which occupied every minute of his leisure, and was making an old man of him before his time.
From eight to eleven the fine old pointed windows of St. Ambrose Hall blazed with light, and the choruses of songs, and the cheers which followed the short intervals of silence which the speeches made, rang out over the quadrangles, and made the poor Dean amble about in a state of nervous bewilderment. Inside there was hearty feasting, such as had not been seen there, for aught I know, since the day when the king came back to "enjoy his own again." The one old cup, relic of the Middle Ages, which had survived the civil wars,--St. Ambrose's had been a right loyal college, and the plate had gone without a murmur into Charles the First's war-chest,--went round and round; and rival crews pledged one another out of it, and the massive tankards of a later day, in all good faith and good fellowship. Mailed knights, grave bishops, royal persons of either sex, and "other our benefactors," looked down on the scene from their heavy gilded frames, and, let us hope, not unkindly. All passed off well and quietly; the out-college men were gone, the lights were out, and the butler had locked the hall door by a quarter past eleven, and the Dean returned in peace to his own rooms.
Had Tom been told a week before that he would not have enjoyed that night, that it would not have been amongst the happiest and proudest of his life, he would have set his informer down as a madman. As it was, he never once rose to the spirit of the feast, and wished it all over a dozen times. He deserved not to enjoy it; but not so Hardy, who was nevertheless almost as much out of tune as Tom; though the University coxswain had singled him out, named him in his speech, sat by him and talked to him for a quarter of an hour, and asked him to go to the Henley and Thames regattas in the Oxford crew.
The next evening, as usual, Tom found himself at "The Choughs" with half a dozen others. Patty was in the bar by herself, looking prettier than ever. One by one the rest of the men dropped off, the last saying, "Are you coming, Brown?" and being answered in the negative.
He sat still, watching Patty as she flitted about, washing up the ale glasses and putting them on their shelves, and getting out her work basket; and then she came and sat down in her aunt's chair opposite him, and began stitching away demurely at an apron she was making. Then he broke silence,--
"Where's your aunt to-night, Patty?"
"Oh, she has gone away for a few days, for a visit to some friends."
"You and I will keep house, then, together; you shall teach me all the tricks of the trade. I shall make a famous barman, don't you think?"
"You must learn to behave better, then. But I promised aunt to shut up at nine; so you must go when it strikes. Now promise me you will go."
"Go at nine! what, in half an hour? The first evening I have ever had a chance of spending alone with you; do you think it likely?" and he looked into her eyes. She turned away with a slight shiver, and a deep blush.
His nervous system had been so unusually excited in the last few days, that he seemed to know everything that was passing in her mind. He took her hand. "Why, Patty, you're not afraid of me, surely?" he said, gently.
"No, not when you're like you are now. But you frightened me just this minute. I never saw you look so before. Has anything happened to you?"
"No, nothing. Now then, we're going to have a jolly evening, and play Darby and Joan together," he said, turning away, and going to the bar window; "shall I shut up, Patty?"
"No, it isn't nine yet; somebody may come in."
"That's just why I mean to put the shutters up; I don't want anybody."
"Yes, but I do, though. Now I declare, Mr. Brown, if you go on shutting up, I'll run into the kitchen and sit with Dick."
"Why will you call me 'Mr. Brown'?"
"Why, what should I call you?"
"Tom, of course."
"Oh, I never! one would think you was my brother," said Patty, looking up with a pretty pertness which she had a most bewitching way of putting on. Tom's rejoinder, and the little squabble which they had afterward about where her work-table should stand, and other such matters, may be passed over. At last he was brought to reason, and to anchor opposite his enchantress, the work-table between them; and he sat leaning back in his chair and watching her, as she stitched away without ever lifting her eyes. He was in no hurry to break the silence. The position was particularly fascinating to him, for he had scarcely ever yet had a good look at her before, without fear of attracting attention, or being interrupted. At last he roused himself.
"Any of our men been here to-day, Patty?" he said, sitting up.
"There now, I've won," she laughed; "I said to myself I wouldn't speak first, and I haven't. What a time you were. I thought you would never begin."
"You're a little goose! Now I begin then; who've been here to-day?"
"Of your college? let me see;" and she looked away across to the bar window, pricking her needle into the table. "There was Mr. Drysdale and some others called for a glass of ale as they passed, going out driving. Then there was Mr. Smith and them from the boats about four, and that ugly one--I can't mind his name--"
"What, Hardy?"
"Yes, that's it; he was here about half-past six, and--"
"What, Hardy here after hall?" interrupted Tom, utterly astonished.
"Yes, after your dinner up at college. He's been here two or three times lately."
"The deuce he has!"
"Yes, and he talks so pleasant to aunt, too. I'm sure he is a very nice gentleman, after all. He sat and talked tonight for half an hour, I should think."
"What did he talk about?" said Tom, with a sneer.
"Oh, he asked me whether I had a mother, and where I came from, and all about my bringing up, and made me feel quite pleasant. He is so nice and quiet and respectful, not like most of you. I'm going to like him very much, as you told me."
"I don't tell you so now."
"But you did say he was your great friend."
"Well, he isn't that now."
"What, have you quarreled?"
"Yes."
"Dear; dear; how odd you gentlemen are!"
"Why, it isn't a very odd thing for men to quarrel, is it?"
"No, not in the public room. They're always quarreling there, over their drink and the bagatelle-board; and Dick has to turn them out. But gentlemen ought to know better."
"They don't, you see, Patty."
"But what did you quarrel about?"
"Guess."
"How can I guess? What was it about?"
"About you."
"About me!" she said, looking up from her work in wonder. "How could you quarrel about me?"
"Well, I'll tell you; he said I had no right to come here. You won't like him after that, will you Patty?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," said Patty, going on with her work, and looking troubled.
They sat still for some minutes. Evil thoughts crowded into Tom's head. He was in the humor for thinking evil thoughts, and, putting the worst construction on Hardy's visits, fancied he came there as his rival. He did not trust himself to speak till he had mastered his precious discovery, and put it away in the back of his heart, and weighed it down there with a good covering of hatred and revenge, to be brought out as occasion should serve. He was plunging down rapidly enough now; but he had new motives for making the most of his time, and never played his cards better or made more progress. When a man sits down to such a game, the devil will take good care he sha'n't want cunning or strength. It was ten o'clock instead of nine before he left, which he did with a feeling of triumph. Poor Patty remained behind, and shut up the bar, her heart in a flutter, and her hands shaking, while Dick was locking the front door. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry; she felt the change which had come over him, and was half fascinated and half repelled by it.
Tom walked quickly back to college, in a mood which I do not care to describe. The only one of his thoughts which my readers need be troubled with, put itself into some such words as these in his head:--"So, it's Abingdon fair next Thursday, and she has half-promised to go with me. I know I can make it certain. Who'll be going besides? Drysdale, I'll be bound. I'll go and see him."
On entering college he went straight to Drysdale's rooms, and drank deeply, and played high into the short hours of the night, but found no opportunity of speaking.
Deeper and deeper yet for the next few days, downwards and ever faster downwards he plunged, the light getting fainter and ever fainter above his head. Little good can come of dwelling on those days. He left off pulling, shunned his old friends, and lived with the very worst men he knew in college, who were ready enough to let him share all their brutal orgies.
Drysdale, who was often present, wondered at the change, which he saw plainly enough. He was sorry for it in his way, but it was no business of his. He began to think that Brown was a good enough fellow before, but would make a devilish disagreeable one if he was going to turn fast man.
At "The Choughs" all went on as if the downward path knew how to make itself smooth. Now that the races were over, and so many other attractions were going on in Oxford, very few men came in to interfere with him. He was scarcely ever away from Patty's side, in the evenings while her aunt was absent, and gained more and more power over her. He might have had some compassion, but that he was spurred on by hearing how Hardy haunted the place now, at times when he could not be there. He felt that there was an influence struggling with his in the girl's mind; he laid it to Hardy's door, and imputed it still more and more to motives as base as his own. But Abingdon fair was coming on Thursday. When he left "The Choughs" on Tuesday night, he had extracted a promise from Patty to accompany him there, and had arranged their place of meeting.
All that remained to be done was to see if Drysdale was going. Somehow he felt a disinclination to go alone with Patty. Drysdale was the only man of those he was now living with to whom he felt the least attraction. In a vague way he clung to him; and though he never faced the thought of what he was about fairly, yet it passed through his mind that even in Drysdale's company he would be safer than if alone. It was all pitiless, blind, wild work, without rudder or compass; the wish that nothing very bad might come out of it all, however, came up in spite of him now and again, and he looked to Drysdale, and longed to become even as he.
Drysdale was going. He was very reserved on the subject, but at last confessed that he was not going alone. Tom persisted. Drysdale was too lazy and careless to keep anything from a man who was bent on knowing it. In the end it was arranged that he should drive Tom out the next afternoon. He did so. They stopped at a small public house some two miles out of Oxford. The cart was put up, and after carefully scanning the neighborhood they walked quickly to the door of a pretty retired cottage. As they entered, Drysdale said,
"By Jove, I thought I caught a glimpse of your friend Hardy at that turn."
"Friend! he's no friend of mine."
"But didn't you see him?"
"No."
They reached college again between ten and eleven, and parted, each to his own rooms.
To his surprise, Tom found a candle burning on his table. Round the candle was tied a piece of string, at the end of which hung a note. Who ever had put it there had clearly been anxious that he should in no case miss it when he came in. He took it up and saw that it was in Hardy's hand. He paused, and trembled as he stood. Then with an effort he broke the seal and read:--
"I must speak once more. To-morrow it may be too late. If you go to Abingdon fair with her in the company of Drysdale and his mistress, or, I believe, in any company, you will return a scoundrel, and she--; in the name of the honor of your mother and sister, in the name of God, I warn you. May He help you through it.
"JOHN HARDY."
Here we will drop the curtain for the next hour. At the end of that time, Tom staggered out of his room, down the staircase, across the quadrangle, up Drysdale's staircase. He paused at the door to gather some strength, ran his hands through his hair, and arranged his coat; notwithstanding, when he entered, Drysdale started to his feet, upsetting Jack from his comfortable coil on the sofa.
"Why, Brown, you're ill; have some brandy," he said, and went to his cupboard for the bottle.
Tom leant his arm on the fireplace; his head on it. The other hung down by his side, and Jack licked it, and he loved the dog as he felt the caress. Then Drysdale came to his side with a glass of brandy, which he took and tossed off as though it had been water. "Thank you," he said, and as Drysdale went back with the bottle, reached a large armchair and sat down in it.
"Drysdale, I sha'n't go with you to Abingdon fair to-morrow."
"Hullo! what, has the lovely Patty thrown you over?" said Drysdale, turning from the cupboard, and resuming his lounge on the sofa.
"No." he sank back into the chair, on the arms of which his elbows rested, and put his hands up before his face, pressing them against his burning temples. Drysdale looked at him hard, but said nothing; and there was a dead silence of a minute or so, broken only by Tom's heavy breathing, which he labored in vain to control.
"No," he repeated at last, and the remaining words came out slowly as they were trying to steady themselves, "but, by God, Drysdale I can't take her with you, and that--" a dead pause.
"The young lady you met to-night, eh?"
Tom nodded, but said nothing.
"Well, old fellow," said Drysdale, "now you've made up your mind, I tell you, I'm devilish glad of it. I'm no saint, as you know, but I think it would have been a d--d shame if you had taken her with us."
"Thank you," said Tom, and pressed his fingers tighter on his forehead; and he did feel thankful for the words, though coming from such a man, they went into him like coals of fire.
Again there was a long pause, Tom sitting as before.
Drysdale got up and strolled up and down his room, with his hands in the pockets of his silk-lined lounging coat, taking at each turn a steady look at the other. Presently he stopped, and took his cigar out of his mouth. "I say, Brown," he said, after another minute's contemplation of the figure before him, which bore such an unmistakable impress of wretchedness, that it made him quite uncomfortable, "why don't you cut that concern?"
"How do you mean?" said Tom.
"Why that 'Choughs' business--I'll be hanged if it won't kill you, or make a devil of you before long, if you go on with it."
"It's not far from that now."
"So I see--and I'll tell you what, you're not the sort of fellow to go in for this kind of thing. You'd better leave it to cold-blooded brutes, like some we know--I needn't mention names."
"I'm awfully wretched, Drysdale; I've been a brute my self to you and everybody of late."
"Well, I own I don't like the new side of you. Now make up your mind to cut the whole concern, old fellow," he said, coming up goodnaturedly, and putting his hand on Tom's shoulder, "it's hard to do, I dare say, but you had better make a plunge and get it over. There's wickedness enough going about without your helping to shove another one into it."
Tom groaned as he listened, but he felt that the man was trying to help him in his own way, and according to his light, as Drysdale went on expounding his own curious code of morality. When it was ended, he shook Drysdale's hand, and, wishing him good night, went back to his own rooms. The first step upwards towards the light had been made,--for he felt thoroughly humbled before the man on whom he had expended in his own mind so much patronizing pity for the last half year--whom he had been fancying he was influencing for good.
During the long hours of the night the scenes of the last few hours, of the last few days, came back to him and burnt into his soul. The gulf yawned before him now plain enough, open at his feet--black, ghastly. He shuddered at it, wondering if he should even yet fall in, felt wildly about for strength to stand firm, to retrace his steps; but found it not. He found not yet the strength he was in search of, but in the grey morning he wrote a short note:--
"I shall not be able to take you to Abingdon fair to-day. You will not see me perhaps for some days. I am not well.
"I am very sorry. Don't think that I am changed. Don't be unhappy, or I don't know what I may do." There was no address and no signature to the note.
When the gates opened he hurried out of the college and, having left it and a shilling with Dick (whom he found cleaning the yard, and much astonished at his appearance, and who promised to deliver it to Patty with his own hands before eight o'clock), he got back again to his own rooms, went to bed, worn out in mind and body, and slept till mid-day.
XVII. NEW GROUND
My readers have now been steadily at Oxford for six months without moving. Most people find such a spell of the place without a change quite as much as they care to take; perhaps too, it may do our hero good to let him alone for a little, that he may have time to look steadily into the pit which he has been so near falling down, which is still yawning awkwardly in his path; moreover, the exigencies of a story teller must lead him away from home now and then. Like the rest of us, his family must have change of air, or he has to go off to see a friend properly married, or a connexion buried; to wear white or black gloves with or for some one, carrying such sympathy as he can with him, so that he may come back from every journey, however short, with a wider horizon. Yes; to come back home after every stage of life's journeying with a wider horizon--more in sympathy with men and nature, knowing ever more of the righteous and eternal laws which govern them, and of the righteous and loving will which is above all, and around all, and beneath all--this must be the end and aim of all of us, or we shall be wandering about blindfold, and spending time and labor and journey-money on that which profiteth nothing. So now I must ask my readers to forget the old buildings and quadrangles of the fairest of England's cities, the caps and the gowns, the reading and rowing for a short space, and take a flight with me to other scenes and pastures new.
The nights are pleasant in May, short and pleasant for travel. We will leave the ancient city asleep, and do our flight in the night to save time. Trust yourself then to the story-teller's aerial machine. It is but a rough affair, I own, rough and humble, unfitted for high or great flights, with no gilded panels or dainty cushions, or C-springs--not that we shall care about springs, by the way, until we alight on terra firma again--still, there is much to be learned in a third-class carriage if we will only not look while in it for cushions and fine panels, and forty miles an hour traveling, and will not be shocked at our fellow passengers for being weak in their h's and smelling of fustian. Mount in it, then, you who will, after this warning; the fares are holiday fares, the tickets return tickets. Take with you nothing but the poet's luggage,
"A smile for Hope, a tear for Pain, A breath to swell the voice of Prayer."
and may you have a pleasant journey, for it is time that the stoker should be looking to his going gear.
So now we rise slowly in the moonlight from St. Ambrose's quadrangle, and, when we are clear of the clock-tower, steer away southwards, over Oxford city and all its sleeping wisdom and folly, over street and past spire, over Christ Church and the canons' houses, and the fountain in Tom quad; over St. Aldate's and the river, along which the moonbeams lie in a pathway of twinkling silver, over the railway sheds--no, there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and footpaths of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate, the hills beyond, and Bagley Wood, were there then as now; and over hills and wood we rise, catching the purr of the night-jar, the trill of the nightingale, and the first crow of the earliest cock-pheasant, as he stretches his jewelled wings, conscious of his strength and his beauty, heedless of the fellows of St. John's, who slumber within sight of his perch, on whose hospitable board he shall one day lie, prone on his back, with fair larded breast turned upwards for the carving-knife, having crowed his last crow. He knows it not; what matters it to him? If he knew it, could a Bagley Wood cock-pheasant desire a better ending?
We pass over the vale beyond; hall and hamlet, church, and meadow, and copse, folded in mist and shadow below us, each hamlet holding in its bosom the material of three volumed novels by the dozen, if we could only pull off the roofs of the houses and look steadily into the interiors; but our destination is farther yet. The faint white streak behind the distant Chilterns reminds us that we have no time for gossip by the way; May nights are short, and the sun will be up by four. No matter; our journey will now be soon over, for the broad vale is crossed, and the chalk hills and downs beyond. Larks quiver up by us, "higher, ever higher," hastening up to get a first glimpse of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steadily plodding rooks labour along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie on the wooded dells which slope away southwards.
Here let us bring to, over the village of Englebourn, and try to get acquainted with the outside of the place before the good folk are about, and we have to go down among them and their sayings and doings.
The village lies on the southern slopes of the Berkshire hills, on the opposite side to that under which our hero was born. Another soil altogether is here, we remark in the first place. This is no chalk; this high knoll which rises above--one may almost say hangs over--the village, crowned with Scotch firs, its sides tufted with gorse and heather. It is the Hawk's Lynch, the favorite resort of Englebourn folk, who come up for the view, for the air, because their fathers and mothers came up before them, because they came up themselves as children--from an instinct which moves them all in leisure hours and Sunday evenings, when the sun shines and the birds sing, whether they care for view or air or not. Something guides all their feet hitherward; the children, to play hide-and-seek and look for nests in the gorse-bushes; young men and maidens, to saunter and look and talk, as they will till the world's end--or as long, at any rate, as the Hawk's Lynch and Englebourn last--and to cut their initials, enclosed in a true lover's knot, on the short rabbit's turf; steady married couples, to plod along together consulting on hard times and growing families; even old tottering men, who love to sit at the feet of the firs, with chins leaning on their sticks, prattling of days long past, to anyone who will listen, or looking silently with dim eyes into the summer air, feeling perhaps in their spirits after a wider and more peaceful view which will soon open for them. A common knoll, open to all, up in the silent air, well away from every-day Englebourn life, with the Hampshire range and the distant Beacon Hill lying soft on the horizon, and nothing higher between you and the southern sea, what a blessing the Hawk's Lynch is to the village folk, one and all! May Heaven and a thankless soil long preserve it and them from an enclosure under the Act!
There is much temptation lying about, though, for the enclosers of the world. The rough common land stretches over the whole of the knoll, and down to its base, and away along the hills behind, of which the Hawk's Lynch is an outlying spur. Rough common land, broken only by pine woods of a few acres each in extent, an occasional woodman's or squatter's cottage and little patch of attempted garden. But immediately below, and on each flank of the spur, and half-way up the slopes, come small farm enclosures, breaking here and there the belt of woodlands, which generally lies between the rough wild upland, and the cultivated country below. As you stand on the knoll you can see common land just below you at its foot narrow into a mere road, with a border of waste on each side which runs into Englebourn street. At the end of the straggling village stands the church with its square tower, a lofty grey stone building, with bits of fine decorated architecture about it, but much of churchwarden Gothic supervening. The churchyard is large, and the graves, as you can see plainly even from this distance, are all crowded on the southern side. The rector's sheep are feeding in the northern part, nearest to us, and a small gate at one corner opens into his garden. The Rectory looks large and comfortable, and its grounds well cared for and extensive, with a rookery of elms at the lawn's end. It is the chief house of the place, for there is no resident squire. The principal street contains a few shops, some dozen, perhaps, in all; and several farm houses lie a little back from it, with gardens in front, and yards and barns and orchards behind; and there are two public-houses. The other dwellings are mere cottages, and very bad ones for the most part, with floors below the level of the street. Almost every house in the village is thatched, which adds to the beauty though not to the comfort of the place. The rest of the population who do not live in the street are dotted about the neighboring lanes, chiefly towards the west, on our right as we look down from the Hawk's Lynch. On this side the country is more open, and here most of the farmers live, as we may see by the number of homesteads. And there is a small brook on that side too, which with careful damming is made to turn a mill, there where you see the clump of poplars. On our left as we look down, the country to the east of the village is thickly wooded; but we can see that there is a village green on that side, and a few scattered cottages, the farthest of which stands looking out like a little white eye, from the end of a dense copse.
Beyond it there is no sign of habitation for some two miles; then you can see the tall chimneys of a great house, and a well timbered park round it. The Grange is not in Englebourn parish--happily for that parish, one is sorry to remark. It must be a very bad squire who does not do more good than harm by living in a country village. But there are very bad squires, and the owner of the Grange is one of them. He is, however, for the most part, an absentee, so that we are little concerned with him, and in fact, have only to notice this one of his bad habits, that he keeps that long belt of woodlands, which runs into Englebourn parish, and comes almost up to the village, full of hares and pheasants. He has only succeeded to the property some three or four years, and yet the head of game on the estate, and above all in the woods, has trebled or quadrupled. Pheasants by hundreds are reared under hens, from eggs bought in London, and run about the keepers' houses as tame as barn door fowls all the summer. When the first party comes down for the first battue early in October, it is often as much as the beaters can do to persuade these pampered fowls that they are wild game, whose duty it is to get up and fly away, and be shot at. However, they soon learn more of the world--such of them, at least, as are not slain--and are unmistakable wild birds in a few days. Then they take to roosting farther from their old haunts, more in the outskirts of the woods, and the time comes for others besides the squire's guests to take their education in hand, and teach pheasants at least that they are no native British birds. These are a wild set, living scattered about the wild country; turf-cutters, broom-makers, squatters, with indefinite occupations, and nameless habits, a race hated of keepers and constables. These have increased and flourished of late years; and, notwithstanding the imprisonments and transportations which deprive them periodically of the most enterprising members of their community, one and all give thanks for the day when the owner of the Grange took to pheasant breeding. If the demoralization stopped with them, little harm might come of it, as they would steal fowls in the homesteads if there were no pheasants in the woods--which latter are less dangerous to get, and worth more when gotten. But, unhappily, this method of earning a livelihood has strong attractions, and is catching; and the cases of farm labourers who get into trouble about game are more frequent season by season in the neighbouring parishes, and Englebourn is no better than the rest. And the men are not likely to be much discouraged from these practices, or taught better by the fanners; for, if there is one thing more than another that drives that sturdy set of men, the Englebourn yeomen, into a frenzy, it is talk of the game in the Grange covers. Not that they dislike sport; they like it too well, and, moreover, have been used to their fair share of it. For the late squire left the game entirely in their hands. "You know best how much game your land will carry without serious damage to the crops," he used to say. "I like to show my friends a fair day's sport when they are with me, and have enough game to supply the house and make a few presents. Beyond that, it is no affair of mine. You can course whenever you like; and let me know when you want a day's shooting, and you shall have it." Under this system the yeomen became keen sportsmen; they and all their labourers took a keen interest in preserving, and the whole district would have risen on a poacher. The keeper's place became a sinecure, and the squire had as much game as he wanted without expense, and was, moreover, the most popular man in the county. Even after the new man came, and all was changed, the mere revocation of their sporting liberties, and the increase of game, unpopular as these things were, would not alone have made the farmers so bitter, and have raised that sense of outraged justice in them. But with these changes came in a custom new in the country--the custom of selling the game. At first the report was not believed; but soon it became notorious that no head of game from the Grange estates was ever given away, that not only did the tenants never get a brace of birds or a hare, or the labourers a rabbit, but not one of the gentlemen who helped to kill the game ever found any of the bag in his dog-cart after the day's shooting. Nay, so shameless had the system become, and so highly was the art of turning the game to account cultivated at the Grange, that the keepers sold powder and shot to any of the guests who had emptied their own belts or flasks at something over the market retail price. The light cart drove to the market-town twice a week in the season, loaded heavily with game, but more heavily with the hatred and scorn of the farmers; and, if deep and bitter curses could break patent axles or necks, the new squire and his game-cart would not long have vexed the countryside. As it was, not a man but his own tenants would salute him in the market-place; and these repaid themselves for the unwilling courtesy by bitter reflections on a squire who was mean enough to pay his butcher's and poulterer's bills out of their pockets.
Alas that the manly instinct of sport which is so strong in all of us Englishmen--which sends Oswells single handed against the mightiest beasts that walk the earth, and takes the poor cockney journeyman out a ten miles' walk almost before daylight, on the rare summer holiday mornings, to angle with rude tackle in reservoir or canal--should be dragged through such mire as this in many an English shire in our day. If English landlords want to go on shooting game much longer, they must give up selling it. For if selling game becomes the rule, and not the exception (as it seems likely to do before long), good-bye to sport in England. Every man who loves his country more than his pleasure or his pocket--and, thank God, that includes the great majority of us yet, however much we may delight in gun and rod, let any demagogue in the land say what he pleases--will cry, "Down with it," and lend a hand to put it down for ever.
But to return to our perch on the Hawk's Lynch above Englebourn village. The rector is the fourth of his race who holds the family living--a kind, easy-going, gentlemanly old man, a Doctor of Divinity, as becomes his position, though he only went into orders because there was the living ready for him. In his day he had been a good magistrate and neighbour, living with and much in the same way as the squires round about. But his contemporaries had dropped off one by one; his own health had long been failing; his wife was dead; and the young generation did not seek him. His work and the parish had no real hold on him; so he had nothing to fall back on, and had become a confirmed invalid, seldom leaving the house and garden even to go to church, and thinking more of his dinner and his health than of all other things in earth or heaven.
The only child who remained at home with him was a daughter, a girl of nineteen or thereabouts, whose acquaintance we shall make presently, and who was doing all that a good heart and sound head prompted in nursing an old hypochondriac, and filling his place in the parish. But though the old man was weak and selfish, he was kind in his way, and ready to give freely or do anything that his daughter suggested for the good of his people, provided the trouble were taken off his shoulders. In the year before our tale opens, he had allowed some thirty acres of his glebe to be parcelled out in allotments amongst the poor; and his daughter spent almost what she pleased in clothing-clubs, and sick-clubs, and the school, without a word from him. Whenever he did remonstrate, she managed to get what she wanted out of the house-money, or her own allowance.
We must make acquaintance with such other of the inhabitants as it concerns us to know in the course of the story; for it is broad daylight, and the villagers will be astir directly. Folk who go to bed before nine, after a hard day's work, get into the habit of turning out soon after the sun calls them. So now, descending from the Hawk's Lynch, we will alight at the east end of Englebourn, opposite the little white cottage which looks out at the end of the great wood, near the village green.
Soon after five on that bright Sunday morning, Harry Winburn unbolted the door of his mother's cottage, and stepped out in his shirt-sleeves on to the little walk in front, paved with pebbles. Perhaps some of my readers will recognize the name of an old acquaintance, and wonder how he got here; so let us explain at once. Soon after our hero went to school, Harry's father had died of a fever. He had been a journeyman blacksmith, and in the receipt, consequently, of rather better wages than generally fall to the lot of the peasantry, but not enough to leave much of a margin over current expenditure. Moreover, the Winburns had always been open-handed with whatever money they had; so that all he left for his widow and child, of worldly goods, was their "few sticks" of furniture, L5 in the savings bank, and the money from his burial-club which was not more than enough to give him a creditable funeral--that object of honorable ambition to all the independent poor. He left, however, another inheritance to them, which is in price above rubies, neither shall silver be named in comparison thereof,--the inheritance of an honest name, of which his widow was proud, and which was not likely to suffer in her hands.
After the funeral, she removed to Englebourn, her own native village, and kept her old father's house till his death. He was one of the woodmen to the Grange, and lived in the cottage at the corner of the wood in which his work lay. When he, too, died, hard times came on Widow Winburn. The steward allowed her to keep on the cottage. The rent was a sore burden to her, but she would sooner have starved than leave it. Parish relief was out of the question for her father's child and her husband's widow; so she turned her hand to every odd job which offered, and went to work in the fields when nothing else could be had. Whenever there was sickness in the place, she was an untiring nurse; and, at one time, for some nine months, she took the office of postman, and walked daily some nine miles through a severe winter. The fatigue and exposure had broken down her health, and made her an old woman before her time. At last, in a lucky hour, the Doctor came to hear of her praiseworthy struggles, and gave her the Rectory washing, which had made her life a comparatively easy one again.
During all this time her poor neighbors had stood by her as the poor do stand by one another, helping her in numberless small ways, so that she had been able to realize the great object of her life, and keep Harry at school till he was nearly fourteen. By this time he had learned all that the village pedagogue could teach, and had in fact become an object of mingled pride and jealousy to that worthy man, who had his misgivings lest Harry's fame as a scholar should eclipse his own before many years were over.
Mrs. Winburn's character was so good, that no sooner was her son ready for a place than a place was ready for him; he stepped at once into the dignity of carter's boy, and his earnings, when added to his mother's, made them comfortable enough. Of course she was wrapped up in him, and believed that there was no such boy in the parish. And indeed she was nearer the truth than most mothers, for he soon grew into a famous specimen of a countryman; tall and lithe, full of nervous strength, and not yet bowed down or stiffened by the constant toil of a labourer's daily life. In these matters, however, he had rivals in the village; but in intellectual accomplishments he was unrivalled. He was full of learning according to the village standard, could write and cipher well, was fond of reading such books as came in his way, and spoke his native English almost without an accent. He is one-and-twenty at the time when our story takes him up; a thoroughly skilled labourer, the best hedger and ditcher in the parish; and, when his blood is up, he can shear twenty sheep in a day, without razing the skin, or mow for sixteen hours at a stretch, with rests of half an hour for meals twice in the day.
Harry shaded his eyes with his hand for a minute, as he stood outside the cottage drinking in the fresh, pure air, laden with the scent of the honeysuckle which he had trained over the porch, and listening to the chorus of linnets and finches from the copse at the back of the house; he then set about the household duties, which he always made it a point of honour to attend to himself on Sundays. First he unshuttered the little lattice-window of the room on the ground floor; a simple enough operation, for the shutter was a mere wooden flap, which was closed over the window at night and bolted with a wooden bolt on the outside, and thrown back against the wall in the daytime. Any one who would could have opened it at any moment of the night; but the poor sleep sound without bolts. Then he took the one old bucket of the establishment, and strode away to the well on the village green, and filled it with clear, cold water, doing the same kind office for the vessels of two or three rosy little damsels and boys, of ages varying from ten to fourteen, who were already astir, and to whom the winding-up of the parish chain and bucket would have been a work of difficulty. Returning to the cottage, he proceeded to fill his mother's kettle, sweep the hearth, strike a light, and make up the fire with a faggot from the little stack in the corner of the garden. Then he hauled the three-legged round table before the fire, and dusted it carefully over, and laid out the black Japan tea-tray with two delf cups and saucers of gorgeous pattern, and diminutive plates to match, and placed the sugar and slop basins, the big loaf and small piece of salt butter, in their accustomed places, and the little black teapot on the hob to get properly warm. There was little more to be done indoors, for the furniture was scanty enough; but everything in turn received its fair share of attention, and the little room, with its sunken tiled floor and yellow-washed walls, looked cheerful and homely. Then Harry turned his attention to the shed of his own contriving, which stood beside the faggot-stack, and from which expostulatory and plaintive grunts had been issuing ever since his first appearance at the door, telling of a faithful and useful friend who was sharp set on Sunday mornings, and desired his poor breakfast, and to be dismissed for the day to pick up the rest of his livelihood with his brethren porkers of the village on the green and in the lanes. Harry served out to the porker the poor mess which the wash of the cottage and the odds and ends of the little garden afforded; which that virtuous animal forthwith began to discuss with both fore-feet in the trough--by way, probably, of adding to the flavor--while his master scratched him gently between the ears and on the back with a short stick till the repast was concluded. Then he opened the door of the stye, and the grateful animal rushed out into the lane, and away to the green with a joyful squeal and flirt of his hind-quarters in the air; and Harry, after picking a bunch of wall-flowers, and pansies, and hyacinths, a line of which flowers skirted the narrow garden walk, and putting them in a long-necked glass which he took from the mantel-piece, proceeded to his morning ablutions, ample materials for which remained at the bottom of the family bucket, which he had put down on a little bench by the side of the porch. These finished, he retired indoors to shave and dress himself.
XVIII. ENGLEBOURNE VILLAGE
Dame Winburn was not long after her son, and they sat down together to breakfast in their best Sunday clothes--she, in a plain large white cap which covered all but a line of grey hair, a black stuff gown reaching to neck and wrists, and small silk neckkerchief put on like a shawl; a thin, almost gaunt old woman, whom the years had not used tenderly, and who showed marks of their usage--but a resolute, high-couraged soul, who had met hard times in the face, and could meet them again if need were. She spoke in broad Berkshire, and was otherwise a homely body, but self-possessed and without a shade of real vulgarity in her composition.
The widow looked with some anxiety at Harry as he took his seat. Although something of a rustic dandy, of late he had not been so careful in the matter of dress as usual; but, in consequence of her reproaches, on this Sunday there was nothing to complain of. His black velveteen shooting coat, and cotton plush waistcoat, his brown corduroy knee-breeches and gaiters, sat on him well, and gave the world assurance of a well-to-do man, for few of the Englebourn labourers rose above smock-frocks and fustian trousers. He wore a blue bird's-eye handkerchief round his neck, and his shirt, though coarse in texture, was as white as the sun and the best laundress in Englebourn could manage to bleach it. There was nothing to find fault with in his dress, therefore, but still his mother did not feel quite comfortable as she took stealthy glances at him. Harry was naturally a reserved fellow, and did not make much conversation himself, and his mother felt a little embarrassed on this particular morning.
It was not, therefore, until Dame Winburn had finished her first slice of bread and butter, and had sipped the greater part of her second dish of tea out of her saucer, that she broke silence.
"I minded thy business last night, Harry, when I wur up at the Rectory about the washin'. It's my belief as thou'lt get t'other 'lotment next quarter-day. The Doctor spoke very kind about it, and said as how he heer'd as high a character o' thee, young as thee bist, as of are' a man in the parish, and as how he wur set on lettin' the lots to thaay as'd do best by 'em; only he said as the farmers went agin givin' more nor an acre to any man as worked for them; and the Doctor, you see, he don't like to go altogether agin the vestry folk."
"What business is it o' theirs," said Harry, "so long as they get their own work done? There's scarce one on 'em as hasn't more land already nor he can keep as should be, and for all that they want to snap up every bit as falls vacant, so as no poor man shall get it."
"'Tis mostly so with them as has," said his mother, with a half puzzled look; "Scriptur says as to them shall be given, and they shall have more abundant," Dame Winburn spoke hesitatingly, and looked doubtfully at Harry, as a person who has shot with a strange gun, and knows not what effect the bolt may have. Harry was brought up all standing by this unexpected quotation of his mother's; but, after thinking for a few moments while he cut himself a slice of bread, replied:--
"It don't say as those shall have more that can't use what they've got already. 'Tis a deal more like Naboth's vineyard for aught as I can see. But 'tis little odds to me which way it goes."
"How canst talk so, Harry?" said his mother reproachfully; "thou know'st thou wast set on it last fall, like a wasp on sugar. Why scarce a day past but thou wast up to the Rectory, to see the Doctor about it; and now thou'rt like to get th'lotment thou'lt not go anyst 'un."
Harry looked out at the open door, without answering. It was quite true that, in the last autumn, he had been very anxious to get as large an allotment as he could into his own hands, and that he had been for ever up towards the Rectory, but perhaps not always on the allotment business. He was naturally a self-reliant, shrewd fellow, and felt that if he could put his hand on three or four acres of land, he could soon make himself independent of the farmers. He knew that at harvest-times, and whenever there was a pinch for good labourers, they would be glad enough to have him; while at other times, with a few acres of his own, he would be his own master and could do much better for himself. So he had put his name down first on the Doctor's list, taken the largest lot he could get, and worked it so well that his crops, amongst others, had been a sort of village show last harvest-time. Many of the neighboring allotments stood out in sad contrast to those of Harry and the more energetic of the peasantry, and lay by the side of these latter only half worked and full of weeds, and the rent was never ready. It was worse than useless to let matters go on thus, and the question arose, what was to be done with the neglected lots. Harry, and all the men like him, applied at once for them; and their eagerness to get them had roused some natural jealousy amongst the farmers, who began to foresee that the new system might shortly leave them with none but the worst labourers. So the vestry had pressed on the Doctor, as Dame Winburn said, not to let any man have more than an acre, or an acre and a half; and the well-meaning, easy-going invalid old man couldn't make up his mind what to do. So here was May again, and the neglected lots were still in the nominal occupation of the idlers. The Doctor got no rent, and was annoyed at the partial failure of a scheme which he had not indeed originated, but for which he had taken much credit to himself. The negligent occupiers grumbled that they were not allowed a drawback for manure, and that no pigstyes were put up for them. "'Twas allers understood so," they maintained, "and they'd never ha' took to the lots but for that." The good men grumbled that it would be too late now for them to do more than clean the lots of weeds this year. The farmers grumbled that it was always understood that no man should have more than one lot. The poor rector had led his flock into a miry place with a vengeance. People who cannot make up their minds breed trouble in other places besides country villages. However quiet and out of the way the place may be, there is always some quasi public topic, which stands, to the rural Englishman, in the place of treaty, or budget, or reform-bill. So the great allotment question, for the time, was that which exercised the minds of the inhabitants of Englebourn; and until lately no one had taken a keener interest in it than Harry Winburn. But that interest had now much abated, and so Harry looked through the cottage door, instead of answering his mother.
"'Tis my belief as you med amost hev it for the axin'." Dame Winburn began again when she found that he would not re-open the subject himself. "The young missus said as much to me herself last night. Ah! to be sure, things'd go better if she had the guidin' on 'em."
"I'm not going after it any more, mother. We can keep the bits o' sticks here together without it while you be alive; and if anything was to happen to you, I don't think I should stay in these parts. But it don't matter what becomes o' me; I can earn a livelihood anywhere."
Dame Winburn paused a moment before answering to subdue her vexation, and then said, "How can 'ee let hankerin' arter a lass take the heart out o' thee so? Hold up thy head, and act a bit measterful. The more thow makest o' thyself, the more like thou art to win."
"Did you hear aught of her last night, mother?" replied Harry, taking advantage of this ungracious opening to speak of the subject which was uppermost in his mind.
"I heer'd she wur goin' on well," said his mother.
"No likelihood of her comin' home?"
"Not as I could make out. Why, she hevn't been gone not four months. Now, do 'ee pluck up a bit, Harry; and be more like thyself."
"Why, mother, I've not missed a day's work since Christmas; so there ain't much to find fault with."
"Nay, Harry, 'tisn't thy work. Thou wert always good at thy work, praise God. Thou'rt thy father's own son for that. But thou dostn't keep about like, and take thy place wi' the lave on 'em since Christmas. Thou look'st hagged at times, and folk'll see't, and talk about thee afore long."
"Let 'em talk. I mind their talk no more than last year's wind," said Harry, abruptly.
"But thy old mother does," she said, looking at him with eyes full of pride and love; and so Harry, who was a right good son, began to inquire what it was that was specially weighing on his mother's mind, determined to do anything in reason to re-place her on the little harmless social pinnacle from which she was wont to look down on all the other mothers and sons of the parish. He soon found out that her present grievance arose from his having neglected his place as ringer of the heavy bell in the village peal on the two preceding Sundays; and, as this post was, in some sort the corresponding one to stroke of the boat at Oxford, her anxiety was reasonable enough. So Harry promised to go to ringing in good time that morning, and then set about little odds and ends of jobs till it would be time to start. Dame Winburn went to her cooking and other household duties, which were pretty well got under when her son took his hat and started for the belfry. She stood at the door with a half-peeled potato in one hand, shading her eyes with the other, as she watched him striding along the raised footpath under the elms, when the sound of light footsteps and pleasant voices, coming up from the other direction, made her turn round and drop a curtsey as the rector's daughter and another young lady stopped at her door.
"Good morning, Betty," said the former; "here's a bright Sunday morning at last, isn't it?"
"'Tis indeed, miss; but where hev'ee been to?"
"Oh, we've only been for a little walk before school-time. This is my cousin, Betty. She hasn't been at Englebourn since she was quite a child; so I've been taking her to the Hawk's Lynch to see our view."
"And you can't think how I have enjoyed it," said her cousin; "it is so still and beautiful."
"I've heer'd say as there ain't no such a place for thretty mile round," said Betty, proudly, "But do'ee come in, tho', and sit'ee down a bit," she added, bustling inside her door, and beginning to rub down a chair with her apron; "'tis a smart step for gentlefolk to walk afore church." Betty's notions of the walking powers of gentlefolk were very limited.
"No, thank you, we must be getting on," said Miss Winter; "but how lovely your flowers are! Look, Mary, did you ever see such double pansies? We've nothing like them at the Rectory."
"Do'ee take some," said Betty, emerging again, and beginning to pluck a handful of her finest flowers; "'tis all our Harry's doing; he's 'mazing partickler about seeds."
"He seems to make everything thrive, Betty. There, that's plenty, thank you. We won't take many, for fear they should fade before church is over."
"Oh, dwont'ee be afeard, there's plenty more; and you be as welcom' as the day."
Betty never said a truer word; she was one of the real open-handed sort, who are found mostly amongst those who have the least to give. They or anyone else were welcome to the best she had.
So the young ladies took the flowers, thanked her again, and passed on towards the Sunday-school.
The rector's daughter might have been a year or so older than her companion; she looked more. Her position in the village had been one of much anxiety, and she was fast getting an old head on young shoulders. The other young lady was a slip of a girl just coming out; in fact, this was the first visit which she had ever paid out of leading strings. She had lived in a happy home, where she had always been trusted and loved, and perhaps a thought too much petted.
There are some natures which attract petting; you can't help doing your best to spoil them in this way, and it is satisfactory, therefore, to know (as the fact is) that they are just the ones which cannot be so spoilt.
Miss Mary was one of these. Trustful, for she had never been tricked; fearless, for she had never been cowed; pure and bright as the Englebourn brook at fifty yards from its parent spring in the chalk, for she had a pure and bright nature, and had come in contact as yet with nothing which could soil or cast a shadow. What wonder that her life gave forth light and music as it glided on, and that every one who knew her was eager to have her with them, to warm themselves in the light and rejoice in the music!
Besides all her other attractions, or in consequence of them for anything I know, she was one of the merriest young women in the world, always ready to bubble over and break out into clear laughter on the slightest provocation. And provocation had not been wanting during the last two days which she had spent with her cousin. As usual she had brought sunshine with her, and the old doctor had half forgotten his numerous complaints and grievances for the time. So the cloud which generally hung over the house had been partially lifted, and Mary, knowing and suspecting nothing of the dark side of life at Englebourn Rectory, rallied her cousin on her gravity, and laughed till she cried at the queer ways and talk of the people about the place.
As soon as they were out of hearing of Dame Winburn, Mary began--
"Well, Katie, I can't say that you have mended your case at all."
"Surely you can't deny that there is a great deal of character in Betty's face?" said Miss Winter.
"Oh, plenty of character; all your people, as soon as they begin to stiffen a little and get wrinkles, seem to be full of character, and I enjoy it much more than beauty; but we were talking about beauty, you know."
"Betty's son is the handsomest young man in the parish," said Miss Winter; "and I must say I don't think you could find a better-looking one anywhere."
"Then I can't have seen him."
"Indeed you have; I pointed him out to you at the post office yesterday. Don't you remember? He was waiting for a letter."
"Oh, yes! now I remember. Well, he was better than most. But the faces of your young people in general are not interesting--I don't mean the children, but the young men and women--and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears in the world."
"They will all be quaint enough as they get older. You must remember the sort of life they lead. They get their notions very slowly, and they must have notions in their heads before they can show them on their faces."
"Well, your Betty's son looked as if he had a notion of hanging himself yesterday."
"It's no laughing matter, Mary. I hear that he is desperately in love."
"Poor fellow! that makes a difference, of course. I hope he won't carry out his notion. Who is it, do you know? Do tell me all about it."
"Our gardener's daughter, I believe. Of course, I never meddle with these matters; but one can't help hearing the servant's gossip. I think it likely to be true, for he was about our premises at all sorts of times until lately, and I never see him now that she is away."
"Is she pretty?" said Mary, who was getting interested.
"Yes, she is our belle. In fact, they are the two beauties of the parish."
"Fancy that cross-grained old Simon having a pretty daughter. Oh, Katie, look here! who is this figure of fun?"
The figure of fun was a middle-aged man of small stature, and very bandy-legged, dressed in a blue coat and brass buttons, and carrying a great bass-viol bigger than himself, in a rough baize cover. He came out of a footpath into the road just before them, and, on seeing them, touched his hat to Miss Winter, and then fidgeted along with his load, and jerked his head in a deprecatory manner away from them as he walked on, with the sort of look and action which a favorite terrier uses when his master holds out a lighted cigar to his nose. He was the village tailor and constable, also the principal performer in the church-music which obtained in Englebourn. In the latter capacity he had of late come into collision with Miss Winter.
For this was another of the questions which divided the parish--The great church music question. From time immemorial, at least ever since the gallery at the west end had been built, the village psalmody had been in the hands of the occupiers of that Protestant structure. In the middle of the front row sat the musicians, three in number, who played respectively a bass-viol, a fiddle, and a clarionet. On one side of them were two or three young women, who sang treble--shrill, ear-piercing treble--with a strong nasal Berkshire drawl in it. On the other side of the musicians sat the blacksmith, the wheelwright, and other tradesmen of the place. Tradesmen means in that part of the country what we mean by artisan, and these were naturally allied with the laborers, and consorted with them. So far as church-going was concerned, they formed a sort of independent opposition, sitting in the gallery, instead of in the nave, where the farmers and the two or three principal shopkeepers--the great landed and commercial interests--regularly sat and slept, and where the two publicans occupied pews, but seldom made even the pretence of worshipping.
The rest of the gallery was filled by the able-bodied male peasantry. The old worn-out men generally sat below in the free seats; the women also, and some few boys. But the hearts of these latter were in the gallery--a seat on the back benches of which was a sign that they had indued the toga virilis, and were thenceforth free from maternal and pastoral tutelage in the matter of church-going. The gallery thus constituted had gradually usurped the psalmody as their particular and special portion of the service; they left the clerk and the school children, aided by such of the aristocracy below as cared to join, to do the responses; but, when singing time came, they reigned supreme. The slate on which the Psalms were announced was hung out from before the centre of the gallery, and the clerk, leaving his place under the reading-desk, marched up there to give them out. He took this method of preserving his constitutional connection with the singing, knowing that otherwise he could not have maintained the rightful position of his office in this matter. So matters had stood until shortly before the time of our story.
The present curate, however, backed by Miss Winter, had tried a reform. He was a quiet man, with a wife and several children, and small means. He had served in the diocese ever since he had been ordained, in a hum-drum sort of way, going where he was sent for, and performing his routine duties reasonably well, but without showing any great aptitude for his work. He had little interest, and had almost given up expecting promotion, which he certainly had done nothing particular to merit. But there was one point on which he was always ready to go out of his way, and take a little trouble. He was a good musician, and had formed choirs at all his former curacies.
Soon after his arrival, therefore, he, in concert with Miss Winter, had begun to train the children in church-music. A small organ, which had stood in a passage in the Rectory for many years, had been repaired, and appeared first at the schoolroom, and at length under the gallery of the church; and it was announced one week to the party in possession, that, on the next Sunday, the constituted authorities would take the church-music into their own hands. Then arose a strife, the end of which had nearly been to send the gallery off, in a body, headed by the offended bass-viol, to the small red-brick little Bethel at the other end of the village. Fortunately the curate had too much good sense to drive matters to extremities, and so alienate the parish constable, and a large part of his flock, though he had not tact or energy enough to bring them round to his own views. So a compromise was come to; and the curate's choir were allowed to chant the Psalms and Canticles, which had always been read before, while the gallery remained triumphant masters of the regular Psalms.
My readers will now understand why Miss Winter's salutation to the musical constable was not so cordial as it was to the other villagers whom they had come across previously.
Indeed, Miss Winter, though she acknowledged the constable's salutation, did not seem inclined to encourage him to accompany them, and talk his mind out, although he was going the same way with them; and, instead of drawing him out, as was her wont in such cases, went on talking herself to her cousin.
The little man walked out in the road, evidently in trouble of mind. He did not like to drop behind or go ahead without some further remark from Miss Winter, and yet could not screw up his courage to the point of opening the conversation himself. So he ambled on alongside the footpath on which they were walking, showing his discomfort by a twist of his neck every few seconds, and perpetual shiftings of his bass-viol, and hunching up of one shoulder.
The conversation of the young ladies under these circumstances was of course forced; and Miss Mary, though infinitely delighted at the meeting, soon began to pity their involuntary companion. She was full of the sensitive instinct which the best sort of women have to such a marvellous extent, and which tells them at once and infallibly if any one in their company has even a creased rose-leaf next their moral skin.
Before they had walked a hundred yards she was interceding for the rebellious constable.
"Katie," she said softly in French, "do speak to him. The poor man is frightfully uncomfortable."
"It serves him right," answered Miss Winter in the same language; "you don't know how impertinent he was the other day to Mr. Walker. And he won't give way on the least point, and leads the rest of the old singers, and makes them as stubborn as himself."
"But look how he is winking and jerking his head at you. You really mustn't be so cruel to him, Katie. I shall have to begin talking to him if you don't."
Thus urged, Miss Winter opened the conversation by asking after his wife, and when she had ascertained "that his missus wur pretty middlin," made some other commonplace remark, and relapsed into silence. By the help of Mary, however, a sort of disjointed dialogue was kept up till they came to the gate which led up to the school, into which the children were trooping by twos and threes. Here the ladies turned in, and were going up the walk towards the school door, when the constable summoned up courage to speak on the matter which was troubling him, and, resting the bass-viol carefully on his right foot, calling out after them,
"Oh, please marm! Miss Winter!"
"Well," she said quietly, turning round, "what do you wish to say?"
"Why, please mann, I hopes as you don't think I be any ways unked 'bout this here quire singin', as they calls it--I'm sartin you knows as there ain't amost nothing I wouldn't do to please ee."
"Well, you know how to do it very easily," she said when he paused. "I don't ask you even to give up your music and try to work with us, though I think you might have done that. I only ask you to use some psalms and tunes which are fit to be used in a church."
"To be sure us ool. 'Taint we as wants no new-fangled tunes; them as we sings be aal owld ones as ha' been used in our church ever since I can mind. But you only choose thaay as you likes out o' the book? and we be ready to kep to thaay."
"I think Mr. Walker made a selection for you some weeks ago," said Miss Winter; "did he not?"
"'Ees, but 'tis narra mossel o' use for we to try his 'goriums and sich like. I hopes you wun't be offended wi' me, miss, for I be telling nought but truth." He spoke louder as they got nearer to the school door, and, as they were opening it, shouted his last shot after them, "'Tis na good to try thaay tunes o' his'n, miss. When us praises God, us likes to praise un joyful."
"There, you hear that, Mary," said Miss Winter. "You'll soon begin to see why I look grave. There never was such a hard parish to manage. Nobody will do what they ought. I never can get them to do anything. Perhaps we may manage to teach the children better, that's my only comfort."
"But, Katie dear, what do the poor things sing? Psalms, I hope."
"Oh yes, but they choose all the odd ones on purpose, I believe. Which class will you take?"
And so the young ladies settled to their teaching, and the children in her class all fell in love with Mary before church-time.
The bass-viol proceeded to the church and did the usual rehearsals, and gossiped with the sexton, to whom he confided the fact that the young missus was "terrible vexed." The bells soon began to ring, and Widow Winburn's heart was glad as she listened to the full peal, and thought to herself that it was her Harry who was making so much noise in the world, and speaking to all the neighborhood. Then the peal ceased as church-time drew near, and the single bell began, and the congregation came flocking in from all sides. The farmers, letting their wives and children enter, gathered round the church porch and compared notes in a ponderous manner on crops and markets. The labourers collected near the door by which the gallery was reached. All the men of the parish seemed to like standing about before church, until they had seen the clergyman safely inside. He came up with the school children and the young ladies, and in due course the bell stopped and the service began. There was a very good congregation still at Englebourn; the adult generation had been bred up in times when every decent person in the parish went to church, and the custom was still strong, notwithstanding the rector's bad example. He scarcely ever came to church himself in the mornings, though his wheelchair might be seen going up and down on the gravel before his house or on the lawn on warm days, and this was one of his daughter's greatest troubles.
The little choir of children sang admirably, led by the schoolmistress, and Miss Winter and the curate exchanged approving glances. They performed the liveliest chant in their collection, that the opposition might have no cause to complain of their want of joyfulness. And in turn Miss Winter was in hopes that, out of deference to her, the usual rule of selection in the gallery might have been modified. It was with no small annoyance, therefore, that, after the Litany was over, and the tuning finished, she heard the clerk give out that they would praise God by singing part of the ninety-first Psalm. Mary, who was on the tiptoe of expectation as to what was coming, saw the curate give a slight shrug with his shoulders and lift of his eyebrows as he left the reading-desk, and in another minute it became a painful effort for her to keep from laughing as she slyly watched her cousin's face; while the gallery sang with vigour worthy of any cause or occasion--
"On the old lion He shall go, The adder fell and long; On the young lion tread also, With dragons stout and strong."
The trebles took up the last line, and repeated--
"With dragons stout and strong;"
and then the whole strength of the gallery chorused again--
"With dra-gons stout and strong;"
and the bass-viol seemed to her to prolong the notes and to gloat over them as he droned them out, looking triumphantly at the distant curate. Mary was thankful to kneel down to compose her face. The first trial was the severe one, and she got through the second psalm much better; and by the time Mr. Walker had plunged fairly into his sermon she was a model of propriety and sedateness again. But it was to be a Sunday of adventures. The sermon had scarcely begun when there was a stir down by the door at the west end, and people began to look round and whisper. Presently a man came softly up and said something to the clerk; the clerk jumped up and whispered to the curate, who paused for a moment with a puzzled look, and, instead of finishing his sentence, said in a loud voice, "Farmer Groves' house is on fire!"
The curate probably anticipated the effect of his words; in a minute he was the only person left in the church except the clerk and one or two very infirm old folk. He shut up and pocketed his sermon, and followed his flock.
It proved luckily to be only Farmer Groves' chimney and not his house which was on fire. The farmhouse was only two fields from the village, and the congregation rushed across there, Harry Winburn and two or three of the most active young men and boys leading. As they entered the yard, the flames were rushing out of the chimney, and any moment the thatch might take fire. Here was the real danger. A ladder had just been raised against the chimney, and, while a frightened farm-girl and a carter-boy held it at the bottom, a man was going up it carrying a bucket of water. It shook with his weight, and the top was slipping gradually along the face of the chimney, and in another moment would rest against nothing. Harry and his companions saw the danger at a glance, and shouted to the man to stand still till they could get to the ladder. They rushed towards him with the rush which men can only make under strong excitement. The foremost of them caught a spoke with one hand, but before he could steady it, the top slipped clear of the chimney, and, ladder, man, and bucket came heavily to the ground.
Then came a scene of bewildering confusion, as women and children trooped into the yard--"Who was it?"
"Was he dead?"
"The fire was catching the thatch."
"The stables were on fire."
"Who did it?"--all sorts of cries and all sorts of acts except the right ones. Fortunately two or three of the men, with heads on their shoulders, soon organized a line for handling buckets; the flue was stopped below, and Harry Winburn standing nearly at the top of the ladder, which was now safely planted, was deluging the thatch round the chimney from the buckets handed up to him. In a few minutes he was able to pour water down the chimney itself, and soon afterwards the whole affair was at an end. The farmer's dinner was spoilt, but otherwise no damage had been done, except to the clothes of the foremost men; and the only accident was that first fall from the ladder.
The man had been carried out of the yard while the fire was still burning; so that it was hardly known who it was.
Now, in answer to their inquiries, it proved to be old Simon, the rector's gardener and head man, who had seen the fire, and sent the news to the church, while he himself went to the spot, with such result as we have seen.
The surgeon had not yet seen him. Some declared he was dead; others, that he was sitting up at home, and quite well. Little by little the crowd dispersed to Sunday's dinners; when they met again before the afternoon's service, it was ascertained that Simon was certainly not dead, but all else was still nothing more than rumor. Public opinion was much divided, some holding that it would go hard with a man of his age and heft; but the common belief seemed to be that he was of that sort "as'd take a deal o' killin'," and that he would be none the worse for such a fall as that.
The two young ladies had been much shocked at the accident, and had accompanied the hurdle on which old Simon was carried to his cottage door; after afternoon service they went round by the cottage to inquire. The two girls knocked at the door, which was opened by his wife, who dropped a curtsey and smoothed down her Sunday apron when she found who were her visitors.
She seemed at first a little unwilling to let them in; but Miss Winter pressed so kindly to see her husband, and Mary made such sympathizing eyes at her, that the old woman gave in, and conducted them through the front room into that beyond, where the patient lay.
"I hope as you'll excuse it, miss, for I knows the place do smell terrible bad of baccer; only my old man he said as how-"
"Oh, never mind, we don't care at all about the smell. Poor Simon! I'm sure if it does him any good, or soothes the pain, I shall be glad to buy him some tobacco myself."
The old man was lying on the bed, with his coat and boots off, and a worsted nightcap of his wife's knitting pulled on to his head. She had tried hard to get him to go to bed at once, and take some physic, and his present costume and position was the compromise. His back was turned to them as they entered, and he was evidently in pain, for he drew his breath heavily and with difficulty, and gave a sort of groan at every respiration. He did not seem to notice their entrance; so his wife touched him on the shoulder, and said, "Simon, here's the young ladies come to see how you be."
Simon turned himself round, and winced and groaned as he pulled off his nightcap in token of respect.
"We didn't like to go home without coming to see how you were, Simon. Has the doctor been?"
"Oh, yes, thank'ee, miss. He've a been and feel'd un all over, and listened at the chest on un," said his wife.
"And what did he say?"
"He zem'd to zay as there wur no bwones bruk--ugh, ugh," put in Simon, who spoke his native tongue with a buzz, imported from farther west, "but a couldn't zay wether or no there warn't som infarnal injury-"
"Etarnal, Simon, etarnal!" interrupted his wife; "how canst use such words afore the young ladies?"
"I tell'ee wife, as 'twur infarnal--ugh, ugh," retorted the gardener.
"Internal injury?" suggested Miss Winter. "I'm very sorry to hear it."
"Zummut inside o' me like, as wur got out o' place," explained Simon; "and I thenks a must be near about the mark, for I feels mortal bad here when I tries to move;" and he put his hand on his side. "Hows'm'ever, as there's no bwones bruk, I hopes to be about to-morrow mornin', please the Lord--ugh, ugh."
"You mustn't think of it, Simon," said Miss Winter. "You must be quite quiet for a week, at least, till you get rid of this pain."
"So I tells un, Miss Winter," put in the wife. "You hear what the young missus says, Simon?"
"And wut's to happen to Tiny?" said the contumacious Simon, scornfully. "Her'll cast her calf, and me not by. Her's calving maybe this minut. Tiny's time were up, miss, two days back, and her's never no gurt while arter her time."
"She will do very well, I dare say," said Miss Winter, "One of the men can look after her."
The notion of anyone else attending Tiny in her interesting situation seemed to excite Simon beyond bearing, for he raised himself on one elbow, and was about to make a demonstration with his other hand, when the pain seized him again, and he sank back groaning.
"There, you see, Simon, you can't move without pain. You must be quiet till you have seen the doctor again."
"There's the red spider out along the south wall--ugh, ugh," persisted Simon, without seeming to hear her; "and your new g'raniums a'most covered wi' blight. I wur a tacklin' one of 'em just afore you cum in."
Following the direction indicated by his nod, the girls became aware of a plant by his bedside, which he had been fumigating, for his pipe was leaning against the flower-pot in which it stood.
"He wouldn't lie still nohow, miss," explained his wife, "till I went and fetched un in a pipe and one o' thaay plants from the greenhouse."
"It was very thoughtful of you, Simon," said Miss Winter; "you know how much I prize these new plants; but we will manage them; and you mustn't think of these things now. You have had a wonderful escape to-day for a man of your age. I hope we shall find that there is nothing much the matter with you after a few days, but you might have been killed you know. You ought to be very thankful to God that you were not killed in that fall."
"So I be, miss, werry thankful to un--ugh, ugh;--and if it please the Lord to spare my life till to-morrow mornin',--ugh, ugh,--we'll smoke them cussed insects."
This last retort of the incorrigible Simon on her cousin's attempt, as the rector's daughter, to improve the occasion, was too much for Miss Mary, and she slipped out of the room, lest she should bring disgrace on herself by an explosion of laughter. She was joined by her cousin in another minute, and the two walked together toward the Rectory.
"I hope you were not faint, dear, with that close room, smelling of smoke?"
"Oh, dear, no; to tell you the truth, I was only afraid of laughing at your quaint old patient. What a rugged old dear he is. I hope he isn't much hurt."
"I hope not, indeed; for he is the most honest, faithful old servant in the world, but so obstinate. He never will go to church on Sunday mornings; and, when I speak to him about it, he says papa doesn't go, which is very wrong and impertinent of him."
XIX. A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER
All dwellers in and about London are, alas! too well acquainted with the never-to-be-enough-hated change which we have to undergo once, at least, in every spring. As each succeeding winter wears away, the same thing happens to us.
For some time we do not trust the fair lengthening days, and cannot believe that the dirty pair of sparrows who live opposite our window are really making love and going to build, notwithstanding all their twittering. But morning after morning rises fresh and gentle; there is no longer any vice in the air; we drop our over-coats; we rejoice in the green shoots which the privet hedge is making in the square garden, and hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the plane-trees as friends; we go out of our way to walk through Covent Garden Market to see the ever-brightening show of flowers from the happy country.
This state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only, sometimes for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for this spring at any rate. Don't we wish we may get it! Sooner or later, but sure--sure as Christmas bills or the income-tax, or anything, if there be anything, surer than these--comes the morning when we are suddenly conscious as soon as we rise that there is something the matter. We do not feel comfortable in our clothes; nothing tastes quite as it should at breakfast; though the day looks bright enough, there is a fierce dusty taste about it as we look out through windows, which no instinct now prompts us to throw open, as it has done every day for the last month.
But it is only when we open our doors and issue into the street, that the hateful reality comes right home to us. All moisture, and softness, and pleasantness has gone clean out of the air since last night; we seem to inhale yards of horse hair instead of satin; our skins dry up; our eyes, and hair, and whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with loathsome dust, and our nostrils with the reek of the great city. We glance at the weather-cock on the nearest steeple, and see that it points N.E. And so long as the change lasts, we carry about with us a feeling of anger and impatience, as though we personally were being ill-treated. We could have borne with it well enough in November; it would have been natural, and all in the days work in March; but now, when Rotten Row is beginning to be crowded, when long lines of pleasure vans are leaving town on Monday mornings for Hampton Court or the poor remains of dear Epping Forest, when the exhibitions are open, or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on its way up, for May meetings, when the Thames is already sending up faint warnings of what we may expect as soon as his dirty old life's blood shall have been thoroughly warmed up, and the "Ship", and "Trafalgar", and the "Star and Garter" are in full swing at the antagonistic poles of the cockney system, we do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything is an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who can be made particularly responsible for it, we are justified in going about in general disgust, and ready to quarrel with anybody we may meet on the smallest pretext.
This sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical analogy for that mental one in which our hero now found himself. The real crises was over; he had managed to pass through the eye of the storm, and drift for the present at least into the skirts of it, where he lay rolling under bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The storm might break over him again at any minute, and would find him almost as helpless as ever.
For he could not follow Drysdale's advice at once, and break off his visits to "The Choughs" altogether. He went back again after a day or two, but only for short visits; he never stayed behind now after the other men left the bar, and avoided interviews with Patty alone as diligently as he had sought them before. She was puzzled at his change of manner, and not being able to account for it, was piqued, and ready to revenge herself, and pay him out in the hundred little ways which the least practiced of her sex know how to employ for the discipline of any of the inferior or trousered half of the creation. If she had been really in love with him, it would have been a different matter; but she was not. In the last six weeks she had certainly often had visions of the pleasures of being a lady and keeping servants, and riding in a carriage like the squires' and rectors' wives and daughters about her home. She had a liking, even a sentiment for him, which might very well have grown into something dangerous before long; but as yet it was not more than skin deep. Of late, indeed, she had been much more frightened than attracted by the conduct of her admirer, and really felt it a relief, notwithstanding her pique, when he retired into the elder brother sort of state. But she would have been more than woman if she had not resented the change; and so very soon the pangs of jealousy were added to his other troubles. Other men were beginning to frequent "The Choughs" regularly. Drysdale, besides dividing with Tom the prestige of being an original discoverer, was by far the largest customer. St. Cloud came, and brought Chanter with him, to whom Patty was actually civil, not because she liked him at all, but because she saw that it made Tom furious. Though he could not fix on any one man in particular, he felt that mankind in general were gaining on him. In his better moments, indeed, he often wished that she would take the matter into her own hands and throw him over for good and all; but keep away from the place altogether he could not, and often when he fancied himself on the point of doing it, a pretty toss of her head, or a kind look of her eyes would scatter all his good resolutions to the four winds.
And so the days dragged on, and he dragged on through them; hot fits of conceit alternating in him with cold fits of despondency and mawkishness and discontent with everything and everybody, which were all the more intolerable from their entire strangeness. Instead of seeing the bright side of all things, he seemed to be looking at creation through yellow spectacles, and saw faults and blemishes in all his acquaintance, which had been till now invisible.
But the more he was inclined to depreciate all other men, the more he felt there was one to whom he had been grossly unjust. And, as he recalled all that had passed, he began to do justice to the man who had not flinched from warning him and braving him, who he felt had been watching over him, and trying to guide him straight, when he had lost all power or will to keep straight himself.
From this time the dread increased on him lest any of the other men should find out his quarrel with Hardy. Their utter ignorance of it encouraged him in the hope that it might all pass off like a bad dream. While it remained a matter between them alone, he felt that all might come straight, though he could not think how. He began to loiter by the entrance of the passage which led to Hardy's rooms; sometimes he would find something to say to his scout or bed-maker which took him into the back outside Hardy's window, glancing at it sideways as he stood giving his orders. There it was, wide open, generally--he hardly knew whether he hoped to catch a glimpse of the owner, but he did hope that Hardy might hear his voice. He watched him in chapel and hall furtively, but constantly, and was always fancying what he was doing and thinking about. Was it as painful an effort to Hardy, he wondered, as to him to go on speaking, as if nothing had happened, when they met at the boats, as they did now again almost daily (for Diogenes was bent on training some of the torpids for next year), and yet never to look one another in the face; to live together as usual during part of every day, and yet to feel all the time that a great wall had risen between them, more hopelessly dividing them for the time than thousands of miles of ocean or continent?
Amongst other distractions which Tom tried at this crisis of his life, was reading. For three or four days running, he really worked hard--very hard, if we were to reckon by the number of hours he spent in his own rooms over his books with his oak sported--hard, even though we should only reckon by results. For, though scarcely an hour passed that he was not balancing on the hind legs of his chair with a vacant look in his eyes, and thinking of anything but Greek roots or Latin constructions, yet on the whole he managed to get through a good deal, and one evening, for the first time since his quarrel with Hardy, felt a sensation of real comfort--it hardly amounted to pleasure--as he closed his Sophocles some hour or so after hall, having just finished the last of the Greek plays which he meant to take in for his first examination. He leaned back in his chair and sat for a few minutes, letting his thoughts follow their own bent. They soon took to going wrong, and he jumped up in fear lest he should be drifting back into the black stormy sea, in the trough of which he had been laboring so lately, and which he felt he was by no means clear of yet. At first he caught up his cap and gown as though he were going out. There was a wine party at one of his acquaintance's rooms; or he could go and smoke a cigar in the pool room, or at any one of a dozen other places. On second thoughts, however, he threw his academicals back on to the sofa and went to his book-case. The reading had paid so well that evening that he resolved to go on with it. He had no particular object in selecting one book more than another, and so took down carelessly the first that came to hand.
It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its own accord at the "Apology." He glanced at a few lines. What a flood of memories they called up! This was almost the last book he had read at school; and teacher, and friends, and lofty oak-shelved library stood out before him at once. Then the blunders that he himself and others had made rushed through his mind, and he almost burst into a laugh as he wheeled his chair round to the window, and began reading where he had opened, encouraging every thought of the old times when he first read that marvellous defense, and throwing himself back into them with all his might. And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great truth which he had been led to the brink of in those early days rose in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leaned back in his chair, and gave himself up to his thought; and how strangely that thought bore on the struggle which had been raging in him of late; how an answer seemed to be trembling to come out of it to all the cries, now defiant, now plaintive, which had gone up out of his heart in this time of trouble! For his thought was of that spirit, distinct from himself, and yet communing with his inmost soul, always dwelling in him, knowing him better than he knew himself, never misleading him, always leading him to light and truth, of which the old philosopher spoke. "The old heathen, Socrates, did actually believe that--there can be no question about it;" he thought, "Has not the testimony of the best men through these two thousand years borne witness that he was right--that he did not believe a lie? That was what we were told. Surely I don't mistake! Were we not told, too, or did I dream it, that what was true for him was true for every man--for me? That there is a spirit dwelling in me, striving with me, ready to lead me into all truth if I will submit to his guidance?"
"Ay! submit, submit, there's the rub! Give yourself up to his guidance! Throw up the reins, and say you've made a mess of it. Well, why not? Haven't I made a mess of it? Am I fit to hold the reins?"
"Not I"--he got up and began walking about his rooms--"I give it up."
"Give it up!" he went on presently; "yes, but to whom? Not to the daemon spirit, whatever it was, who took up abode in the old Athenian--at least, so he said, and so I believe. No, no! Two thousand years and all that they have seen have not passed over the world to leave us just where he was left. We want no daemons or spirits. And yet the old heathen was guided right, and what can a man want more? and who ever wanted guidance more than I now--here--in this room--at this minute? I give up the reins; who will take them?" And so there came on him one of those seasons when a man's thoughts cannot be followed in words. A sense of awe came on him, and over him, and wrapped him round; awe at a presence of which he was becoming suddenly conscious, into which he seemed to have wandered, and yet which he felt must have been there around him, in his own heart and soul, though he knew it not. There was hope and longing in his heart, mingling with the fear of that presence, but withal the old reckless and daring feeling which he knew so well, still bubbling up untamed, untamable it seemed to him.
The room stifled him now; so he threw on his cap and gown, and hurried down into the quadrangle. It was very quiet; probably there was not a dozen men in college. He walked across to the low, dark entrance of the passage which led to Hardy's rooms, and there paused. Was he there by chance, or was he guided there? Yes, this was the right way for him, he had no doubt now as to that; down the dark passage and into the room he knew so well--and what then? He took a short turn or two before the entrance. How could he be sure that Hardy was alone? And, if not, to go in would be worse than useless. If he were alone, what should he say? After all, must he go in there? was there no way but that?
The college clock struck a quarter to seven. It was his usual time for "The Choughs;" the house would be quiet now; was there not one looking out for him there who would be grieved if he did not come? After all, might not that be his way, for this night at least? He might bring pleasure to one human being by going there at once. That he knew; what else could he be sure of?
At this moment he heard Hardy's door open and a voice saying "Good-night," and the next Grey came out of the passage, and was passing close to him.
"Join yourself to him." The impulse came so strongly into Tom's mind this time, that it was like a voice speaking him. He yielded to it, and, stepping to Grey's side, wished him good-evening. The other returned his salute in his shy way, and was hurrying on, but Tom kept by him.
"Have you been reading with Hardy?"
"Yes."
"How is he? I have not seen anything of him for some time."
"Oh, very well, I think," said Grey, glancing sideways at his questioner, and adding, after a moment, "I have wondered rather not to see you there of late."
"Are you going to your school?" said Tom, breaking away from the subject.
"Yes, and I am rather late; I must make haste on; good night."
"Will you let me go with you to-night? It would be a real kindness. Indeed," he added, as he saw how embarrassing his proposal was to Grey, "I will do whatever you tell me--you don't know how grateful I should be to you. Do let me go--just for to-night. Try me once."
Grey hesitated, turned his head sharply once or twice as they walked on together, and then said with something like a sigh--
"I don't know, I'm sure. Did you ever teach in a night school?"
"No, but I have taught in the Sunday-school at home sometimes. Indeed, I will do whatever you tell me."
"Oh! but this is not at all like a Sunday-school. They are a very rough, wild lot."
"The rougher the better," said Tom; "I shall know how to manage them then."
"But you must not really be rough with them."
"No, I won't; I didn't mean that," said Tom, hastily, for he saw his mistake at once. "I shall take it as a great favor, if you will let me go with you to-night. You won't repent it, I'm sure."
Grey did not seem at all sure of this, but saw no means of getting rid of his companion, and so they walked on together and turned down a long, narrow court in the lowest part of the town. At the doors of the houses laboring men, mostly Irish, lounged or stood about, smoking and talking to one another, or to the women who leant out of the windows, or passed to and fro on their various errands of business or pleasure. A group of half-grown lads were playing at pitch-farthing at the farther end, and all over the court were scattered children of all ages, ragged and noisy little creatures most of them, on whom paternal and maternal admonitions and cuffs were constantly being expended, and to all appearances in vain.
At the sight of Grey a shout arose amongst the smaller boys, of "Here's the teacher!" and they crowded around him and Tom as they went up the court. Several of the men gave him a half-surly half-respectful nod, as he passed along, wishing them good evening. The rest merely stared at him and his companion. They stopped at a door which Grey opened, and led the way into the passage of an old tumble-down cottage, on the ground floor of which were two low rooms which served for the school-rooms.
A hard-featured, middle-aged woman, who kept the house, was waiting, and said to Grey, "Mr. Jones told me to say, sir, he would not be here to night, as he has got a bad fever case--so you was to take only the lower classes, sir, he said; and the policeman would be near to keep out the big boys if you wanted him. Shall I go and tell him to step round, sir?"
Grey looked embarrassed for a moment, and then said, "No, never mind; you can go;" and then turning to Tom, added, "Jones is the curate; he won't be here to-night; and some of the bigger boys are very noisy and troublesome, and only come to make a noise. However, if they come we must do our best."
Meantime, the crowd of small ragged urchins had filled the room, and were swarming on to the benches and squabbling for the copy-books which were laid out on the thin desks. Grey set to work to get them into order, and soon the smallest were draughted off into the inner room with slates and spelling-books, and the bigger ones, some dozen in number, settled to their writing. Tom seconded him so readily, and seemed so much at home, that Grey felt quite relieved.
"You seem to get on capitally," he said; "I will go into the inner room to the little ones, and you stay and take these. There are the class-books when they have done their copies," and so went off into the inner room and closed the door.
Tom set himself to work with a will, and as he bent over one after another of the pupils, and guided the small grubby hands which clutched the inky pens with cramped fingers, and went spluttering and blotching along the lines of the copy-books, felt the yellow scales dropping from his eyes, and more warmth coming back into his heart than he had known there for many a day.
All went on well inside, notwithstanding a few small out-breaks between the scholars, but every now and then mud was thrown against the window, and noises outside and in the passages threatened some interruption. At last, when the writing was finished, the copy-books cleared away, and the class-books distributed, the door opened, and two or three big boys of fifteen or sixteen lounged in, with their hands in their pockets and their caps on. There was an insolent look about them which set Tom's back up at once; however, he kept his temper, made them take their caps off, and, as they said they wanted to read with the rest, let them take their places on the benches.
But now came the tug of war. He could not keep his eyes on the whole lot at once, and, no sooner did he fix his attention on the stammering reader for the time being and try to help him, than anarchy broke out all round him. Small stones and shot were thrown about, and cries arose from the smaller fry, "Please, sir, he's been and poured some ink down my back,"
"He's stole my book, sir,"
"He's gone and stuck a pin in my leg." The evil-doers were so cunning that it was impossible to catch them; but as he was hastily turning in his own mind what to do, a cry arose, and one of the benches went suddenly over backwards on to the floor, carrying with it its whole freight of boys, except two of the bigger ones, who were the evident authors of the mishap.
Tom sprang at the one nearest him, seized him by the collar, hauled him into the passage, and sent him out of the street-door with a sound kick; and then rushing back, caught hold of the second, who went down on his back and clung round Tom's legs, shouting for help to his remaining companions, and struggling and swearing. It was all the work of a moment, and now the door opened, and Grey appeared from the inner room. Tom left off hauling his prize towards the passage, and felt and looked very foolish.
"This fellow, and another whom I have turned out, upset that form with all the little boys on it," he said, apologetically.
"It's a lie, t'wasn't me," roared the captive, to whom Tom administered a sound box on the ear, while the small boys, rubbing different parts of their bodies, chorused, "'twas him, teacher, 'twas him," and heaped further charges of pinching, pin-sticking, and other atrocities on him.
Grey astonished Tom by his firmness. "Don't strike him again," he said. "Now, go out at once, or I will send for your father." The fellow got up, and, after standing a moment and considering his chance of successful resistance to physical force in the person of Tom, and moral in that of Grey, slunk out. "You must go, too, Murphy," went on Grey to another of the intruders.
"Oh, your honor let me bide. I'll be as quiet as a mouse," pleaded the Irish boy; and Tom would have given in, but Grey was unyielding.
"You were turned out last week, and Mr. Jones said you were not to come back for a fortnight."
"Well, good night to your honor," said Murphy, and took himself off.
"The rest may stop," said Grey. "You had better take the inner room now; I will stay here."
"I'm very sorry," said Tom.
"You couldn't help it; no one can manage those two. Murphy is quite different, but I should have spoiled him if I had let him stay now."
The remaining half hour passed off quietly. Tom retired into the inner room, and took up Grey's lesson, which he had been reading to the boys from a large Bible with pictures. Out of consideration for their natural and acquired restlessness, the little fellows, who were all between eight and eleven years old, were only kept sitting at their pothooks and spelling for the first half hour or so, and then were allowed to crowd round the teacher, who read and talked to them, and showed them the pictures. Tom found the Bible open at the story of the prodigal son, and read it out to them as they clustered round his knees. Some of the outside ones fidgeted about a little, but those close round him listened with ears, and eyes, and bated breath; and two little blue-eyed boys, without shoes--their ragged clothes concealed by long pinafores which their widowed mother had put on clean to send them to school--leaned against him and looked up in his face, and his heart warmed to the touch and the look. "Please, teacher, read it again," they said when he finished; so he read it again and sighed when Grey came in and lighted a candle (for the room was getting dark) and said it was time for prayers.
A few collects, and the Lord's Prayer, in which all the young voices joined, drowning for a minute the noises from the court outside, finished the evening's schooling. The children trooped out, and Grey went to speak to the woman who kept the house. Tom, left to himself, felt strangely happy, and, for something to do, took the snuffers and commenced a crusade against a large family of bugs, who, taking advantage of the quiet, came cruising out of a crack in the otherwise neatly papered wall. Some dozen had fallen on his spear when Grey reappeared, and was much horrified at the sight. He called the woman and told her to have the hole carefully fumigated and mended.
"I thought we had killed them all long ago," he said; "but the place is tumbling down."
"It looks well enough," said Tom.
"Yes, we have it kept as tidy as possible. It ought to be at least a little better than what the children see at home." And so they left the school and court and walked up to college.
"Where are you going?" Tom said, as they entered the gate.
"To Hardy's rooms; will you come?"
"No, not to-night," said Tom; "I know that you want to be reading; I should only interrupt."
"Well, good night, then," said Grey, and went on, leaving Tom standing in the porch. On the way up from the school he had almost made up his mind to go to Hardy's rooms that night. He longed and yet feared to do so; and, on the whole, was not sorry for an excuse. Their first meeting must be alone, and it would be a very embarrassing one, for him at any rate. Grey, he hoped, would tell Hardy of his visit to the school, and that would show that he was coming round, and make the meeting easier. His talk with Grey, too, had removed one great cause of uneasiness from his mind. It was now quite clear that he had no suspicion of the quarrel, and, if Hardy had not told him, no one else could know of it.
Altogether, he strolled into the quadrangle a happier and sounder man than he had been since his first visit to "The Choughs", and looked up and answered with his old look and voice when he heard his name called from one of the first-floor windows.
The hailer was Drysdale, who was leaning out in lounging coat and velvet cap, and enjoying a cigar as usual, in the midst of the flowers of his hanging garden.
"You've heard the good news, I suppose?"
"No, what do you mean?"
"Why, Blake has got the Latin verse."
"Hurrah! I'm so glad."
"Come up and have a weed."
Tom ran up the staircase and into Drysdale's rooms, and was leaning out of the window at his side in another minute.
"What does he get by it?" he said, "do you know?"
"No; some books bound in Russia, I dare say, with the Oxford arms, and 'Dominus illuminatio mea,' on the back."
"No money?"
"Not much--perhaps a ten'ner," answered Drysdale, "but no end of [Greek text] kudoz, I suppose."
"It makes it look well for his first, don't you think? But I wish he had got some money for it. I often feel very uncomfortable about that bill, don't you?"
"Not I, what's the good? It's nothing when you are used to it. Besides, it don't fall due for another six weeks."
"But if Blake can't meet it then?" said Tom.
"Well, it will be vacation, and I'll trouble greasy Benjamin to catch me then."
"But you don't mean to say you won't pay it?" said Tom in horror.
"Pay it! You may trust Benjamin for that. He'll pull round his little usuries somehow."
"Only we have promised to pay on a certain day, you know."
"Oh, of course, that's the form. That only means that he can't pinch us sooner."
"I do hope, though, Drysdale, that it will be paid on the day," said Tom, who could not quite swallow the notion of forfeiting his word, even though it were only a promise to pay to a scoundrel.
"All right. You've nothing to do with it, remember. He won't bother you. Besides, you can plead infancy, if the worst comes to the worst. There's such a queer old bird gone to your friend Hardy's rooms."
The mention of Hardy broke the disagreeable train of thought into which Tom was falling, and he listened eagerly as Drysdale went on.
"It was about half an hour ago. I was looking out here, and saw an old fellow come hobbling into quad on two sticks, in a shady blue uniform coat and white trousers. The kind of old boy you read about in books, you know. Commodore Trunnion, or Uncle Toby, or one of that sort. Well, I watched him backing and filling about the quad, and trying one staircase and another; but there was nobody about. So down I trotted and went up to him for fun, and to see what he was after. It was as good as a play, if you could have seen it. I was ass enough to take off my cap and make a low bow as I came up to him, and he pulled off his uniform cap in return, and we stood there bowing to one another. He was a thorough old gentleman, and I felt rather foolish for fear that he should see that I expected a lark when I came out. But I don't think he had an idea of it, and only set my capping him down to the wonderful good manners of the college. So we got quite thick, and I piloted him across to Hardy's staircase in the back quad. I wanted him to come up and quench, but he declined, with many apologies. I'm sure he is a character."
"He must be Hardy's father," said Tom.
"I shouldn't wonder. But is his father in the navy?"
"He is a retired captain."
"Then no doubt you're right. What shall we do? Have a hand at picquet. Some men will be here directly. Only for love."
Tom declined the proffered game, and went off soon after to his own rooms, a happier man than he had been since his first night at "The Choughs."
XX. THE RECONCILIATION
Tom rose in the morning with a presentiment that all would be over now before long, and to make his presentiment come true, resolved, before night, to go himself to Hardy and give in. All he reserved to himself was the liberty to do it in the manner which would be least painful to himself. He was greatly annoyed, therefore, when Hardy did not appear at morning chapel; for he had fixed on the leaving chapel as the least unpleasant time in which to begin his confession, and was going to catch Hardy then, and follow him to his rooms. All the morning, too, in answer to his inquiries by his scout Wiggins, Hardy's scout replied that his master was out, or busy. He did not come to the boats, he did not appear in hall; so that, after hall, when Tom went back to his own rooms, as he did at once, instead of sauntering out of college, or going to a wine party, he was quite out of heart at his bad luck, and began to be afraid that he would have to sleep on his unhealed wound another night.
He sat down in an arm-chair, and fell to musing, and thought how wonderfully his life had been changed in these few short weeks. He could hardly get back across the gulf which separated him from the self who had come back into those rooms after Easter, full of anticipations of the pleasures and delights of the coming summer term and vacation. To his own surprise he didn't seem much to regret the loss of his chateaux en Espange, and felt a sort of grim satisfaction in their utter overthrow.
While occupied with these thoughts, he heard talking on his stairs, accompanied by a strange lumbering tread. These came nearer; and at last stopped just outside his door, which opened in another moment, and Wiggins announced--
"Capting Hardy, sir."
Tom jumped to his legs, and felt himself colour painfully.
"Here, Wiggins," said he, "wheel round that arm-chair for Captain Hardy. I am so very glad to see you, sir," and he hastened round himself to meet the old gentleman, holding out his hand, which the visitor took very cordially, as soon as he had passed his heavy stick to his left hand, and balanced himself safely upon it.
"Thank you, sir; thank you," said the old man after a few moments' pause, "I find your companion ladders rather steep;" and then he sat down with some difficulty.
Tom took the Captain's stick and undress cap, and put them reverentially on his sideboard; and then, to get rid of some little nervousness which he couldn't help feeling, bustled to his cupboard, and helped Wiggins to place glasses and biscuits on the table. "Now, sir, what will you take? I have port, sherry and whisky here, and can get you anything else. Wiggins, run to Hinton's and get some dessert."
"No dessert, thank you, for me," said the Captain; "I'll take a cup of coffee, or a glass of grog, or anything you have ready. Don't open wine for me, pray, sir."
"Oh, it is all the better for being opened," said Tom, working away at a bottle of sherry with his corkscrew, "and Wiggins, get some coffee and anchovy toast in a quarter of an hour; and just put out some tumblers and toddy ladles, and bring up boiling water with the coffee."
While making his hospitable preparations, Tom managed to get many side glances at the old man, who sat looking steadily and abstractly before him into the fireplace, and was much struck and touched by the picture. The sailor wore a well-preserved old undress uniform coat and waistcoat, and white drill trousers; he was a man of middle height, but gaunt and massive, and Tom recognized the framework of the long arms and grand shoulders and chest which he had so often admired in the son. His right leg was quite stiff from an old wound on the knee cap; the left eye was sightless, and the scar of a cutlass travelled down the drooping lid and on to the weather-beaten cheek below. His head was high and broad, his hair and whiskers silver white, while the shaggy eyebrows were scarcely grizzled. His face was deeply lined, and the long, clean-cut lower jaw, and drawn look about the mouth, gave a grim expression to the face at the first glance, which wore off as you looked, leaving, however, on most men who thought about it, the impression which fastened on our hero, "An awkward man to have met at the head of boarders towards the end of the great war."
In a minute or two, Tom, having completed his duties, faced the old sailor, much reassured by his covert inspection; and, pouring himself out a glass of sherry, pushed the decanter across, and drank to his guest.
"Your health, sir," he said, "and thank you very much for coming up to see me."
"Thank you, sir," said the Captain, rousing himself and filling, "I drink to you, sir. The fact is, I took a great liberty in coming up to your rooms in this off-hand way, without calling or sending up, but you'll excuse it in an old sailor." Here the Captain took to his glass, and seemed a little embarrassed. Tom felt embarrassed also, feeling that something was coming, and could only think of asking how the Captain liked the sherry. The Captain liked the sherry very much. Then, suddenly clearing his throat, he went on. "I felt, sir, that you would excuse me, for I have a favor to ask of you." He paused again, while Tom muttered something about "great pleasure," and then went on.
"You know my son, Mr. Brown?"
"Yes, sir; he has been my best friend up here; I owe more to him than to any man in Oxford."
The Captain's eye gleamed with pleasure as he replied, "Jack is a noble fellow, Mr. Brown, though I say it who am his father. I've often promised myself a cruise to Oxford since he has been here. I came here at last yesterday, and have been having a long yarn with him. I found there was something on his mind. He can't keep anything from his old father; and so I drew out of him that he loves you as David loved Jonathan. He made my old eye very dim while he was talking of you, Mr. Brown. And then I found that you two are not as you used to be. Some coldness sprung up between you; but what about I couldn't get at. Young men are often hasty--I know I was, forty years ago--Jack says he has been hasty with you. Now, that boy is all I have in the world, Mr. Brown. I know my boy's friend will like to send an old man home with a light heart. So I made up my mind to come over to you and ask you to make it up with Jack. I gave him the slip after dinner and here I am."
"Oh, sir, did he really ask you to come to me?"
"No, sir," said the Captain, "he did not--I am sorry for it--I think Jack must be in the wrong, for he said he had been too hasty, and yet he wouldn't ask me to come to you and make it up. But he is young, sir; young and proud. He said he couldn't move in it, his mind was made up; he was wretched enough over it, but the move must come from you. And so that's the favor I have to ask, that you will make it up with Jack. It isn't often a young man can do such a favor to an old one--to an old father with one son. You'll not feel the worse for having done it, if it's ever so hard to do, when you come to be my age." And the old man looked wistfully across the table, the muscles about his mouth quivering as he ended.
Tom sprang from his chair, and grasped the old sailor's hand, as he felt the load pass out of his heart. "Favour, sir!" he said, "I have been a mad fool enough already in this business--I should have been a double-dyed scoundrel, like enough, by this time but for your son, and I've quarrelled with him for stopping me at the pit's mouth. Favor! If God will, I'll prove somehow where the favor lies, and what I owe to him; and to you, sir, for coming to me tonight. Stop here two minutes, sir, and I'll run down and bring him over."
Tom tore away to Hardy's door and knocked. There was no pausing in the passage now. "Come in." He opened the door but did not enter, and for a moment or two could not speak. The rush of associations which the sight of the well-known old rickety furniture, and the figure which was seated, book in hand, with its back to the door and its feet against one side of the mantel-piece, called up, choked him.
"May I come in?" he said at last.
He saw the figure give a start, and the book trembled a little, but then came the answer, slow but firm--
"I have not changed my opinion."
"No; dear old boy, but I have," and Tom rushed across to his friend, dearer than ever to him now, and threw his arm round his neck; and, if the un-English truth must out had three parts of a mind to kiss the rough face which was now working with strong emotion.
"Thank God!" said Hardy, as he grasped the hand which hung over his shoulder.
"And now come over to my room; your father is there waiting for us."
"What, the dear old governor? That's what he has been after, is it? I couldn't think where he could have 'hove to,' as he would say."
Hardy put on his cap, and the two hurried back to Tom's rooms, the lightest hearts in the University of Oxford.
XXI. CAPTAIN HARDY ENTERTAINED BY ST. AMBROSE
There are moments in the life of the most self-contained and sober of us all, when we fairly bubble over, like a full bottle of champagne with the cork out; and this was one of them for our hero who however, be it remarked, was neither self-contained nor sober by nature. When they got back to his rooms, he really hardly knew what to do to give vent to his lightness of heart; and Hardy, though self-contained and sober enough in general, was on this occasion almost as bad as his friend. They rattled on, talked out the thing which came uppermost, whatever the subject might chance to be; but whether grave or gay, it always ended after a minute or two in jokes not always good, and chaff, and laughter. The poor captain was a little puzzled at first, and made one or two endeavours to turn the talk into improving channels. But very soon he saw that Jack was thoroughly happy, and that was always enough for him. So he listened to one and the other, joining cheerily in the laugh whenever he could; and when he couldn't catch the joke, looking like a benevolent old lion, and making as much belief that he had understood it all as the simplicity and truthfulness of his character would allow.
The spirits of the two friends seemed inexhaustible. They lasted out the bottle of sherry which Tom had uncorked, and the remains of a bottle of his famous port. He had tried hard to be allowed to open a fresh bottle, but the Captain had made such a point of his not doing so, that he had given in for hospitality's sake. They lasted out the coffee and anchovy toast; after which the Captain made a little effort at moving, which was supplicatingly stopped by Tom.
"Oh, pray don't go, Captain Hardy. I haven't been so happy for months. Besides, I must brew you a glass of grog. I pride myself on my brew. Your son there will tell you that I am a dead hand at it. Here, Wiggins, a lemon!" shouted Tom.
"Well, for once in a way, I suppose, eh, Jack?" said the Captain, looking at his son.
"Oh yes, father. You mayn't know it, Brown, but, if there is one thing harder to do than another, it is to get an old sailor like my father to take a glass of grog at night."
The Captain laughed a little laugh, and shook his thick stick at his son, who went on.
"And as for asking him to take a pipe with it--"
"Dear me," said Tom, "I quite forgot. I really beg your pardon, Captain Hardy; and he put down the lemon he was squeezing, and produced a box of cigars.
"It's all Jack's nonsense, sir," said the Captain, holding out his hand, nevertheless, for the box.
"Now, father, don't be absurd," interrupted Hardy, snatching the box away from him. "You might as well give him a glass of absinthe. He is church-warden at home and can't smoke anything but a long clay."
"I'm very sorry I haven't one here, but I can send out in a minute." And Tom was making for the door to shout for Wiggins.
"No, don't call. I'll fetch some from my rooms."
When Hardy left the room, Tom squeezed away at his lemon, and was preparing himself for a speech to Captain Hardy full of confession and gratitude. But the Captain was before him, and led the conversation into a most unexpected channel.
"I suppose, now, Mr. Brown," he began, "you don't find any difficulty in construing your Thucydides?"
"Indeed, I do, sir," said Tom, laughing. "I find him a very tough old customer, except in the simplest narrative."
"For my part," said the Captain, "I can't get on at all, I find, without a translation. But you see, sir, I had none of the advantages which you young men have up here. In fact, Mr. Brown, I didn't begin Greek till Jack was nearly ten years old." The Captain in his secret heart was prouder of his partial victory over the Greek tongue in his old age, than of his undisputed triumphs over the French in his youth, and was not averse to talking of it.
"I wonder that you ever began it at all, sir," said Tom.
"You wouldn't wonder if you knew how an uneducated man like me feels, when he comes to a place like Oxford."
"Uneducated, sir!" said Tom. "Why your education has been worth twice as much, I'm sure, as any we get here."
"No, sir; we never learnt anything in the navy when I was a youngster, except a little rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn't got any regular place to stow away what he gets into his brains, and so it lies tumbling about in the hold, and he loses it, or it gets damaged and is never ready for use. You see what I mean, Mr. Brown?"
"Yes, sir. But I'm afraid we don't all of us get much method up here. Do you really enjoy reading Thucydides now, Captain Hardy?"
"Indeed I do, sir, very much," said the captain. "There's a great deal in his history to interest an old sailor, you know. I dare say, now, that I enjoy those parts about the sea-fights more than you do." The Captain looked at Tom as if he had made an audacious remark.
"I am sure you do, sir," said Tom, smiling.
"Because you see, Mr. Brown," said the Captain, "when one has been in that sort of thing oneself, one likes to read how people in other times managed, and to think what one would have done in their place. I don't believe that the Greeks just at that time were very resolute fighters, though. Nelson or Collingwood would have finished that war in a year or two."
"Not with triremes, do you think, sir?" said Tom.
"Yes, sir, with any vessels which were to be had," said the Captain. "But you are right about triremes. It has always been a great puzzle to me how those triremes could have been worked. How do you understand the three banks of oars, Mr. Brown?"
"Well, sir, I suppose they must have been one above the other somehow."
"But the upper bank must have had oars twenty feet long, and more, in that case," said the Captain. "You must allow for leverage, you see."
"Of course, sir. When one comes to think of it, it isn't easy to see how they were manned and worked," said Tom.
"Now my notion about triremes--" began the Captain, holding the head of his stick with both hands, and looking across at Tom.
"Why, father!" cried Hardy, returning at the moment with the pipes, and catching the Captain's last word, "on one of your hobby horses already! You're not safe!--I can't leave you for two minutes. Here's a long pipe for you. How in the world did he get on triremes?"
"I hardly know," said Tom; "but I want to hear what Captain Hardy thinks about them. You were saying, sir, that the upper oars must have been twenty feet long at least."
"My notion is--" said the Captain, taking the pipe and tobacco-pouch from his son's hand.
"Stop one moment," said Hardy; "I found Blake at my rooms, and asked him to come over here. You don't object?"
"Object, my dear fellow! I'm much obliged to you. Now, Hardy, would you like to have anyone else? I can send in a minute."
"No one, thank you."
"You won't stand on ceremony now, will you, with me?" said Tom.
"You see I haven't."
"And you never will again?"
"No, never. Now, father, you can heave ahead about those oars."
The Captain went on charging his pipe, and proceeded: "You see, Mr. Brown, they must have been at least twenty feet long, because, if you allow the lowest bank of oars to have been three feet above the water-line, which even Jack thinks they must have been--"
"Certainly. That height at least to do any good," said Hardy.
"Not that I think Jack's opinion worth much on the point," went on his father.
"It's very ungrateful of you, then, to say so, father," said Hardy, "after all the time I've wasted trying to make it all clear to you."
"I don't say that Jack's is not a good opinion on most things, Mr. Brown," said the Captain; "but he is all at sea about triremes. He believes that the men of the uppermost bank rowed somehow like lightermen on the Thames, walking up and down."
"I object to your statement of my faith, father," said Hardy.
"Now you know, Jack, you have said so, often."
"I have said they must have stood up to row, and so--"
"You would have had awful confusion, Jack. You must have order between decks when you're going into action. Besides, the rowers had cushions."
"That old heresy of yours again."
"Well, but Jack, they had cushions. Didn't the rowers who were marched across the Isthmus to man the ships which were to surprise the Piraeus, carry their oars, thongs and cushions?"
"If they did, your conclusion doesn't follow, father, that they sat on them to row."
"You hear, Mr. Brown," said the Captain; "he admits my point about the cushions."
"Oh, father, I hope you used to fight the French more fairly," said Hardy.
"But didn't he? Didn't Jack admit my point?"
"Implicitly, sir, I think," said Tom, catching Hardy's eye, which was dancing with fun.
"Of course he did. You hear that, Jack. Now my notion about triremes--"
A knock at the door interrupted the Captain again, and Blake came in and was introduced.
"Mr. Blake is almost our best scholar, father; you should appeal to him about the cushions."
"I am very proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said the Captain; "I have heard my son speak of you often."
"We were talking about triremes," said Tom; "Captain Hardy thinks the oars must have been twenty feet long."
"Not easy to come forward well with that sort of oar," said Blake; "they must have pulled a slow stroke."
"Our torpid would have bumped the best of them," said Hardy.
"I don't think they could have made more than six knots," said the Captain; "but yet they used to sink one another, and a light boat going only six knots couldn't break another in two amid-ships. It's a puzzling subject, Mr. Blake."
"It is, sir," said Mr. Blake; "if we only had some of their fo'castle songs we should know more about it. I'm afraid they had no Dibdin."
"I wish you would turn one of my father's favorite songs into anapaests for him," said Hardy.
"What are they?" said Blake.
"'Tom Bowling,' or 'The wind that blows, and the ship that goes, and the lass that loves a sailor.'"
"By the way, why shouldn't we have a song?" said Tom.
"What do you say, Captain Hardy?"
The Captain winced a little as he saw his chance of expounding his notion as to triremes slipping away, but answered:
"By all means, sir; Jack must sing for me though. Did you ever hear him sing 'Tom Bowling!'"
"No, never, sir. Why, Hardy, you never told me you could sing."
"You never asked me," said Hardy, laughing; "but if I sing for my father, he must spin us a yarn."
"Oh yes; will you, sir!"
"I'll do my best, Mr. Brown; but I don't know that you'll care to listen to my old yarns. Jack thinks everybody must like them as well as he, who used to hear them when he was a child."
"Thank you, sir; that's famous. Now Hardy, strike up."
"After you. You must set the example in your own rooms."
So Tom sang his song. And the noise brought Drysdale and another man up, who were loitering in quad on the lookout for something to do. Drysdale and the Captain recognised one another, and were friends at once. And then Hardy sang "Tom Bowling," in a style which astonished the rest not a little, and as usual nearly made his father cry; and Blake sang, and Drysdale and the other man. And then the Captain was called on for his yarn; and, the general voice being for "something that had happened to him,"
"the strangest thing that had ever happened to him at sea," the old gentleman laid down his pipe and sat up in his chair with his hands on his stick and began.
THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
It will be forty years ago next month since the ship I was then in came home from the West Indies station, and was paid off. I had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very glad to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth, asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from an old sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of the fleet. He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old sailor--what you young men would call "an old salt"--and couldn't live out of sight of the blue sea and the shipping. It is a disease that a good many of us take who have spent our best years on the sea. I have it myself--a sort of feeling that we want to be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and see a hill on this side and a hill on that. It's wonderful to see the trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn't come so home to an old sailor. I know that we're all just as much under the Lord's hand on shore as at sea; but you can't read in a book you haven't been used to, and they that go down to the sea in ships, they see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. It isn't their fault if they don't see his wonders on the land so easily as other people.
But, for all that, there's no man enjoys a cruise in the country more than a sailor. It's forty years ago since I started for Plymouth, but I haven't forgotten the road a bit or how beautiful it was; all through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and then by the mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me three days to get to Plymouth, for we didn't get about so quick in those days.
The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went about with him to the ships in the bay, and through the dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old Commodore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set his whole heart upon. He was an old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to live with him, and was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some one who would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl's, but brave as a lion and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat together; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about the great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had been on.
Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from the Commodore, to help things on. After a month or two I was appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the Commodore and he got his boy a midshipman's berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth himself a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The old gentleman came on board to see the boy's hammock slung, and went below into the cockpit to make sure that all was right. He only left us by the pilot boat when we were well out in the Channel. He was very low at parting with his boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised to write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a chance.
I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as if he had been my own younger brother; and, for that matter, so were all the crew, from our captain to the cook's boy. He was such a gallant youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business we had, he climbed over the boatswain's shoulder, and was almost first on deck; how he came out of it without a scratch I can't think to this day. But he hadn't a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to anyone who was wounded or down with sickness.
After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise off Malta, on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long business, and the post wasn't so good then as it is now. We were sometimes for months without getting a letter, and knew nothing of what was happening at home, or anywhere else. We had a sick time too on board, and at last he got a fever. He bore up against it like a man, and wouldn't knock off duty for a long time. He was midshipman of my watch; so I used to make him turn in early, and tried to ease things to him as much as I could; but he didn't pick up, and I began to get very anxious about him. I talked to the doctor, and turned matters over in my own mind, and at last I came to think he wouldn't get any better unless he could sleep out of the cockpit. So one night, the 20th of October it was--I remember it well enough, better than I remember any day since; it was a dirty night, blowing half a gale of wind from the southward, and we were under close-reefed top-sails--I had the first watch, and at nine o'clock I sent him down to my cabin to sleep there, where he would be fresher and quieter, and I was to turn into his hammock when my watch was over.
I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and the weather got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by, and the wind sang and hummed through the rigging--it made me melancholy to listen to it. I could think of nothing but the youngster down below, and what I should say to his poor old uncle if anything happened. Well, soon after midnight I went down and turned into his hammock. I didn't go to sleep at once, for I remember very well listening to the creaking of the ship's timbers as she rose to the swell, and watching the lamp, which was slung from the ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other hammocks swinging slowly altogether. At last, however, I dropped off, and I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with a start. For the first moment I didn't see anything but the swinging hammocks and the lamp; but then suddenly I became aware that some one was standing by my hammock, and I saw the figure as plainly as I see any one of you now, for the foot of the hammock was close to the lamp, and the light struck full across on the head and shoulders, which was all that I could see of him. There he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled hair coming out from under a red woolen nightcap, and his shoulders wrapped in an old thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often seen him in. His face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful disappointed look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice, but didn't seem to recognise me; and, just as I was getting back my tongue and going to speak, he said slowly: "Where's Tom? this is his hammock. I can't see Tom;" and then he looked vaguely about and passed away somehow, but how, I couldn't see. In a moment or two I jumped out and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth was fast asleep. I sat down, and wrote down just what I had seen, making a note of the exact time, twenty minutes to two. I didn't turn in again, but sat watching the youngster. When he woke I asked him if he had heard anything of his great uncle by the last mail. Yes, he had heard; the old gentleman was rather feeble, but nothing particular the matter. I kept my own counsel and never told a soul in the ship; and, when the mail came to hand a few days afterwards with a letter from the Commodore to his nephew, dated late in September, saying that he was well, I thought the figure by my hammock must have been all my own fancy.
However, by the next mail came the news of the old Commodore's death. It had been a very sudden break up, his executor said. He had left all his property, which was not much, to his great nephew, who was to get leave to come home as soon as he could.
The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left us and went home. We followed about two years afterwards, and the first thing I did after landing was to find out the Commodore's executor. He was a quiet, dry little Plymouth lawyer, and very civilly answered all my questions about the last days of my old friend. At last I asked him to tell me as near as he could the time of his death; and he put on his spectacles, and got his diary, and turned over the leaves. I was quite nervous till he looked up and said,--"Twenty-five minutes to two, sir, A.M., on the morning of October 21st; or it might be a few minutes later."
"How do you mean, sir?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "it is an odd story. The doctor was sitting with me, watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at twenty-five minutes to two, he got up and said it was all over. We stood together, talking in whispers for, it might be, four or five minutes, when the body seemed to move. He was an odd old man, you know, the Commodore, and we never could get him properly to bed, but he lay in his red nightcap and old dressing-gown, with a blanket over him. It was not a pleasant sight, I can tell you, sir. I don't think one of you gentlemen, who are bred to face all manner of dangers, would have liked it. As I was saying, the body first moved, and then sat up, propping itself behind with its hands. The eyes were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment, and said slowly, 'I've been to the Mediterranean, but I didn't see Tom.' Then the body sank back again, and this time the old Commodore was really dead. But it was not a pleasant thing to happen to one, sir. I do not remember anything like it in my forty years' practice."
XXII. DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED
There was a silence of a few seconds after the Captain had finished his story, all the men sitting with eyes fixed on him, and not a little surprised at the results of their call. Drysdale was the first to break the silence, which he did with a "By George!" and a long respiration; but, as he did not seem prepared with any further remark, Tom took up the running.
"What a strange story," he said; "and that really happened to you, Captain Hardy?"
"To me sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years ago."
"The strangest thing about it is that the old Commodore should have managed to get all the way to the ship, and then not have known where his nephew was," said Blake.
"He only knew his nephew's berth, you see, sir," said the Captain.
"But he might have beat about through the ship till he had found him."
"You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir," said the Captain; "you can't expect a man to have his head clear at such a moment."
"Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost," said Blake.
"Time was everything to him," went on the Captain, without regarding the interruption, "space nothing. But the strangest part of it is that I should have seen the figure at all. It's true I had been thinking of the old uncle, because of the boy's illness; but I can't suppose he was thinking of me, and, as I say, he never recognized me. I have taken a great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I have never met with just such a case as this."
"No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to his nephew well enough," said Tom.
"We can't account for these things, or for a good many other things which ought to be quite as startling, only we see them every day. But now I think it is time for us to be going, eh Jack?" and the Captain and his son rose to go.
Tom saw that it would be no kindness to them to try to prolong the sitting, and so he got up too, to accompany them to the gates. This broke up the party. Before going, Drysdale, after whispering to Tom, went up to Captain Hardy, and said,--
"I want to ask you to do me a favour, sir. Will you and your son breakfast with me to-morrow?"
"We shall be very happy, sir," said the Captain.
"I think, father, you had better breakfast with me, quietly. We are much obliged to Mr. Drysdale, but I can't give up a whole morning. Besides, I have several things to talk to you about."
"Nonsense, Jack," blurted out the old sailor, "leave your books alone for one morning. I'm come up here to enjoy myself, and see your friends."
Hardy gave a slight shrug of his shoulder at the word friends, and Drysdale, who saw it, looked a little confused. He had never asked Hardy to his rooms before. The Captain saw that something was the matter, and hastened in his own way to make all smooth again.
"Never mind Jack, sir," he said, "he shall come. It's a great treat to me to be with young men, especially when they are friends of my boy."
"I hope you'll come as a personal favor to me," said Drysdale, turning to Hardy. "Brown, you'll bring him, won't you?"
"Oh yes, I'm sure he'll come," said Tom.
"That's all right. Good night, then;" and Drysdale went off.
Hardy and Tom accompanied the Captain to the gate. During his passage across the two quadrangles, the old gentleman was full of the praises of the men and of protestations as to the improvement in social manners and customs since his day, when there could have been no such meeting, he declared, without blackguardism and drunkenness, at least among young officers; but then they had less to think of than Oxford men, no proper education. And so the Captain was evidently traveling back into the great trireme question when they reached the gate. As they could go no farther with him, however, he had to carry away his solution of the three-banks-of-oars difficulty in his own bosom to the "Mitre".
"Don't let us go in," said Tom, as the gate closed on the Captain, and they turned back into the quadrangle, "let us take a turn or two;" so they walked up and down the inner quad in the starlight.
Just at first they were a good deal embarrassed and confused; but before long, though not without putting considerable force on himself, Tom got back into something like his old familiar way of unbosoming himself to his re-found friend, and Hardy showed more than his old anxiety to meet him half-way. His ready and undisguised sympathy soon dispersed the remaining clouds which were still hanging between them; and Tom found it almost a pleasure, instead of a dreary task, as he had anticipated, to make a full confession, and state the case clearly and strongly against himself to one who claimed neither by word nor look the least superiority over him, and never seemed to remember that he himself had been ill-treated in the matter.
"He had such a chance of lecturing me, and didn't do it," thought Tom afterwards, when he was considering why he felt so very grateful to Hardy. "It was so cunning of him, too. If he had begun lecturing, I should have begun to defend myself, and never have felt half such a scamp as I did when I was telling it all out to him in my own way."
The result of Hardy's management was that Tom made a clean breast of it, telling everything down to his night at the ragged school; and what an effect his chance-opening of the "Apology" had had on him. Here for the first time Hardy came in with his usual dry, keen voice. "You needn't have gone so far back as Plato for that lesson."
"I don't understand," said Tom.
"Well, there's something about an indwelling spirit which guideth every man, in St. Paul, isn't there?"
"Yes, a great deal," Tom answered, after a pause; "but it isn't the same thing."
"Why not the same thing?"
"Oh, surely you must feel it. It would be almost blasphemy in us to talk as St. Paul talked. It is much easier to face the notion, or the fact, of a daemon or spirit such as Socrates felt to be in him, than to face what St. Paul seems to be meaning."
"Yes, much easier. The only question is whether we will be heathens or not."
"How do you mean?" said Tom.
"Why, a spirit was speaking to Socrates, and guiding him. He obeyed the guidance, but knew not whence it came. A spirit is striving with us too, and trying to guide us--we feel that just as much as he did. Do we know what spirit it is? whence it comes? Will we obey it? If we can't name it--know no more of it then he knew about his daemon, of course, we are in no better position than he--in fact, heathens."
Tom made no answer, and after a slight turn or two more, Hardy said, "Let us go in;" and they went to his rooms. When the candles were lighted, Tom saw the array of books on the table, several of them open, and remembered how near the examinations were.
"I see you want to work," he said. "Well, good-night. I know how fellows like you hate being thanked--there, you needn't wince; I'm not going to try it on. The best way to thank you, I know, is to go straight for the future. I'll do that, please God, this time at any rate. Now what ought I to do, Hardy?"
"Well, it's very hard to say. I've thought about it a great deal this last few days--since I felt you coming round--but I can't make up my mind. How do you feel yourself? What's your own instinct about it?"
"Of course, I must break it all off at once, completely," said Tom, mournfully, and half hoping that Hardy might not agree with him.
"Of course," answered Hardy, "but how?"
"In the way that will pain her least. I would sooner lose my hand or bite my tongue off than that she should feel lowered, or lose any self-respect, you know," said Tom, looking helplessly at his friend.
"Yes, that's all right--you must take all you can on your own shoulders. It must leave a sting though for both of you, manage how you will."
"But I can't bear to let her think I don't care for her--I needn't do that--I can't do that."
"I don't know what to advise. However, I believe I was wrong in thinking she cared for you so much. She will be hurt, of course--she can't help being hurt--but it won't be so bad as I used to think."
Tom made no answer; in spite of all his good resolutions, he was a little piqued at this last speech. Hardy went on presently. "I wish she were well out of Oxford. It's a bad town for a girl to be living in, especially as a barmaid in a place which we haunt. I don't know that she will take much harm now; but it's a very trying thing for a girl of that sort to be thrown every day amongst a dozen young men above her in rank, and not one in ten of whom has any manliness about him."
"How do you mean--no manliness?"
"I mean that a girl in her position isn't safe with us. If we had any manliness in us she would be--"
"You can't expect all men to be blocks of ice, or milksops," said Tom, who was getting nettled.
"Don't think that I meant you," said Hardy; "indeed I didn't. But surely, think a moment; is it a proof of manliness that the pure and weak should fear you and shrink from you? Which is the true--aye, and the brave--man, he who trembles before a woman or he before whom a woman trembles?"
"Neither," said Tom; "but I see what you mean, and when you put it that way it's clear enough."
"But you're wrong in saying 'neither' if you do see what I mean." Tom was silent. "Can there be any true manliness without purity?" went on Hardy. Tom drew a deep breath but said nothing. "And where then can you point to a place where there is so little manliness as here? It makes my blood boil to see what one must see every day. There are a set of men up here, and have been ever since I can remember the place, not one of whom can look at a modest woman without making her shudder."
"There must always be some blackguards," said Tom.
"Yes; but unluckily the blackguards set the fashion, and give the tone to public opinion. I'm sure both of us have seen enough to know perfectly well that up here, amongst us undergraduates, men who are deliberately and avowedly profligates, are rather admired and courted,--are said to know the world, and all that,--while a man who tries to lead a pure life, and makes no secret of it, is openly sneered at by them, looked down on more or less by the great mass of men, and, to use the word you used just now, thought a milksop by almost all."
"I don't think it so bad as that," said Tom. "There are many men who would respect him, though they might not be able to follow him."
"Of course, I never meant that there are not many such, but they don't set the fashion. I am sure I'm right. Let us try it by the best test. Haven't you and I in our secret hearts this cursed feeling, that the sort of man we are talking about is a milksop?"
After a moment's thought, Tom answered, "I am afraid I have, but I really am thoroughly ashamed of it now, Hardy. But you haven't it. If you had it you could never have spoken to me as you have."
"I beg your pardon. No man is more open than I to the bad influences of any place he lives in. God knows I am even as other men, and worse; for I have been taught ever since I could speak, that the crown of all real manliness, of all Christian manliness, is purity."
Neither of the two spoke for some minutes. Then Hardy looked at his watch--
"Past eleven," he said; "I must do some work. Well, Brown, this will be a day to be remembered in my calendar."
Tom wrung his hand, but did not venture to reply.
As he got to the door, however, he turned back, and said,--
"Do you think I ought to write to her?"
"Well, you can try. You'll find it a bitter business, I fear."
"I'll try then. Good night."
Tom went to his own rooms, and set to work to write his letter; and certainly found it as difficult and unpleasant a task as he had ever set himself to work upon. Half a dozen times he tore up sheet after sheet of his attempts; and got up and walked about, and plunged and kicked mentally against the collar and traces in which he had harnessed himself by his friend's help,--trying to convince himself that Hardy was a Puritan, who had lived quite differently from other men, and knew nothing of what a man ought to do in a case like this. That after all very little harm had been done! The world would never go on at all if people were to be so scrupulous! Probably, not another man in the college, except Grey, perhaps, would think anything of what he had done!--Done! why, what had he done? He couldn't be taking it more seriously if he had ruined her!
At this point he managed to bring himself up sharp again more than once. "No thanks to me at any rate, that she isn't ruined. Had I any pity, any scruples? My God, what a mean, selfish rascal I have been!" and then he sat down again, and wrote, and scratched out what he had written, till the other fit came on, and something of the same process had to be gone through again.
We must all recognize the process, and remember many occasions on which we have had to put bridle and bit on, and ride ourselves as if we had been horses or mules without understanding; and what a trying business it was--as bad as getting a young colt past a gipsy encampment in a narrow lane.
At last, after many trials, Tom got himself well in hand, and produced something which seemed to satisfy him; for, after reading it three or four times, he put it in a cover with a small case, which he produced from his desk, sealed it, directed it, and then went to bed.
Next morning, after chapel, he joined Hardy, and walked to his rooms with him, and after a few words on indifferent matters, said--
"Well, I wrote my letter last night."
"Did you satisfy yourself?"
"Yes, I think so. I don't know, though, on second thoughts; it was very tough work."
"I was afraid you would find it so."
"But wouldn't you like to see it?"
"No thank you. I suppose my father will be here directly."
"But I wish you would read it through," said Tom, producing a copy.
"Well, if you wish it, I suppose I must; but I don't see how I can do any good."
Hardy took the letter, and sat down, and Tom drew a chair close to him, and watched his face while he read:--
"It is best for us both that I should not see you any more, at least at present. I feel that I have done you a great wrong. I dare not say much to you, for fear of making that wrong greater. I cannot, I need not tell you how I despise myself now--how I long to make you any amends in my power. If ever I can be of any service to you, I do hope that nothing which has passed will hinder you from applying to me. You will not believe how it pains me to write this; how should you? I don't deserve that you should believe anything I say. I must seem heartless to you; I have been, I am heartless. I hardly know what I am writing. I shall long all my life to hear good news of you. I don't ask you to pardon me, but if you can prevail on yourself not to send back the enclosed, and will keep it as a small remembrance of one who is deeply sorry for the wrong he has done you, but who cannot and will not say he is sorry he ever met you, you will be adding another to the many kindnesses which I have to thank you for, and which I shall never forget."
Hardy read it over several times, as Tom watched impatiently, unable to make out anything from his face.
"What do you think? You don't think there's anything wrong in it, I hope?"
"No, indeed, my dear fellow. I really think it does you credit. I don't know what else you could have said very well, only--"
"Only what?"
"Couldn't you have made it a little shorter?"
"No, I couldn't; but you don't mean that. What did you mean by that 'only'?"
"Why, I don't think this letter will end the business; at least, I'm afraid not."
"But what more could I have said?"
"Nothing more, certainly; but couldn't you have keep a little quieter--it's difficult to get the right word--a little cooler, perhaps. Couldn't you have made the part about not seeing her again a little more decided?"
"But you said I needn't pretend I didn't care for her."
"Did I?"
"Yes. Besides, it would have been a lie."
"I don't want you to tell a lie, certainly. But how about this 'small remembrance' that you speak of? What's that?"
"Oh, nothing; only a little locket I bought for her."
"With some of your hair in it?"
"Well of course. Come now, there's no harm in that."
"No; no harm. Do you think she will wear it?"
"How can I tell?"
"It may make her think it isn't all at an end, I'm afraid. If she always wears your hair--"
"By Jove, you're too bad, Hardy. I wish you had had to write it yourself. It's all very easy to pull my letter to pieces, I dare say, but--"
"I didn't want to read it, remember."
"No more you did. I forgot. But I wish you would just write down now what you would have said."
"Yes, I think I see myself at it. By the way, of course you have sent your letter?"
"Yes, I sent it off before chapel."
"I thought so. In that case I don't think we need trouble ourselves further with the form of the document."
"Oh, that's only shirking. How do you know I may not want it for the next occasion?"
"No, no! Don't let us begin laughing about it. A man never ought to have to write such letters twice in his life. If he has, why, he may get a good enough precedent for the second out of the 'Complete Letter Writer'.
"So you won't correct my copy?"
"No, not I."
At this point in their dialogue, Captain Hardy appeared on the scene, and the party went off to Drysdale's to breakfast.
Captain Hardy's visit to St. Ambrose was a great success. He stayed some four or five days, and saw everything that was to be seen, and enjoyed it all in a sort of reverent way which was almost comic. Tom devoted himself to the work of cicerone, and did his best to do the work thoroughly. Oxford was a sort of Utopia to the Captain, who was resolutely bent on seeing nothing but beauty and learning and wisdom within the precincts of the University. On one or two occasions his faith was tried sorely by the sight of young gentlemen gracefully apparelled, dawdling along two together in low easy pony carriages, or lying on their backs in punts for hours, smoking, with not even a Bell's Life by them to pass the time. Dawdling and doing nothing were the objects of his special abhorrence; but, with this trifling exception, the Captain continued steadily to behold towers and quadrangles, and chapels, and the inhabitants of the colleges, through rose-coloured spectacles. His respect for a "regular education" and for the seat of learning at which it was dispensed was so strong, that he invested not only the tutors, doctors and proctors (of whom he saw little except at a distance), but even the most empty-headed undergraduate whose acquaintance he made, with a sort of fancy halo of scientific knowledge, and often talked to those youths in a way which was curiously bewildering and embarrassing to them. Drysdale was particularly hit by it. He had humour and honesty enough himself to appreciate the Captain, but it was a constant puzzle to him to know what to make of it all.
"He's a regular old brick, is the Captain," he said to Tom, on the last evening of the old gentleman's visit, "but by Jove, I can't help thinking he must be poking fun at us half his time. It is rather too rich to hear him talking on as if we were all as fond of Greek as he seems to be, and as if no man ever got drunk up here."
"I declare I think he believes it," said Tom. "You see we're all careful enough before him."
"That son of his, too, must be a good fellow. Don't you see he can never have peached? His father was telling me last night what a comfort it was to him to see that Jack's poverty had been no drawback to him. He had always told him it would be so amongst English gentlemen, and now he found him living quietly and independently, and yet on equal terms, and friends, with men far above him in rank and fortune 'like you, sir,' the old boy said. By Jove, Brown, I felt devilish foolish. I believe I blushed, and it isn't often I indulge in that sort of luxury. If I weren't ashamed of doing it now, I should try to make friends with Hardy. But I don't know how to face him, and I doubt whether he wouldn't think me too much of a rip to be intimate with."
Tom, at his own special request, attended the Captain's departure, and took his seat opposite to him and his son at the back of the Southampton coach, to accompany him a few miles out of Oxford. For the first mile the Captain was full of the pleasures of his visit, and of invitations to Tom to come and see them in the vacation. If he did not mind homely quarters, he would find a hearty welcome, and there was no finer bathing or boating place on the coast. If he liked to bring his gun, there were plenty of rock-pigeons and sea-otters in the caves at the Point. Tom protested with the greatest sincerity that there was nothing he should enjoy so much. Then the young men got down to walk up Bagley Hill, and when they mounted again, found the Captain with a large leather case in his hand, out of which he took two five-pound notes, and began pressing them on his son, while Tom tried to look as if he did not know what was going on. For some time Hardy steadily refused, and the contention became animated, and it was useless to pretend any longer not to hear.
"Why, Jack, you're not too proud, I hope, to take a present from you own father," the Captain said at last.
"But, my dear father, I don't want the money. You make me a very good allowance already."
"Now, Jack, just listen to me and be reasonable. You know a great many of your friends have been very hospitable to me; I could not return their hospitality myself, but I wish you to do so for me."
"Well, father, I can do that without this money."
"Now, Jack," said the Captain, pushing forward the notes again, "I insist on your taking them. You will pain me very much if you don't take them."
So the son took the notes at last, looking as most men of his age would if they had just lost them, while the father's face was radiant as he replaced his pocket book in the breast pocket inside his coat. His eye caught Tom's in the midst of the operation, and the latter could not help looking a little confused, as if he had been unintentionally obtruding on their privacy. But the Captain at once laid his hand on his knee and said,--
"A young fellow is never the worse for having a ten-pound note to veer and haul on, eh, Mr. Brown?"
"No, indeed, sir. A great deal better I think," said Tom, and was quite comfortable again. The Captain had no new coat that summer, but he always looked like a gentleman.
Soon the coach stopped to take up a parcel at a crossroad, and the young men got down. They stood watching it until it disappeared round a corner of the road, and then turned back towards Oxford, and struck into Bagley Wood, Hardy listening with evident pleasure to his friend's enthusiastic praise of his father. But he was not in a talking humour, and they were soon walking along together in silence.
This was the first time they had been alone together since the morning after their reconciliation; so presently Tom seized the occasion to recur to the subject which was uppermost in his thoughts.
"She has never answered my letter," he began abruptly.
"I am very glad of it," said Hardy.
"But why?"
"Because you know, you want it all broken off completely."
"Yes, but still she might have just acknowledged it. You don't know how hard it is for me to keep away from the place."
"My dear fellow, I know it must be hard work, but you are doing the right thing."
"Yes, I hope so," said Tom, with a sigh. "I haven't been within a hundred yards of 'The Choughs' this five days. The old lady must think it so odd."
Hardy made no reply. What could he say but that no doubt she did?
"Would you mind doing me a great favor?" said Tom, after a minute.
"Anything I can do.--What is it?"
"Why, just to step round on our way back,--I will stay as far off as you like,--and see how things are going on;--how she is."
"Very well. Don't you like this view of Oxford? I always think it is the best of them all."
"No. You don't see anything of half the colleges," said Tom, who was very loath to leave the other subject for the picturesque.
"But you get all the spires and towers so well, and the river in the foreground. Look at that shadow of a cloud skimming over Christchurch Meadow. It's a splendid old place after all."
"It may be from a distance, to an outsider," said Tom; "but I don't know--it's an awfully chilly, deadening kind of place to live in. There's something in the life of the place that sits on me like a weight, and makes me feel dreary."
"How long have you felt that? You're coming out in a new line."
"I wish I were. I want a new line. I don't care a straw for cricket; I hardly like pulling; and as for those wine parties day after day, and suppers night after night, they turn me sick to think of."
"You have the remedy in your own hands, at any rate," said Hardy, smiling.
"How do you mean?"
"Why, you needn't go to them."
"Oh, one can't help going to them. What else is there to do!"
Tom waited for an answer, but his companion only nodded to show that he was listening, as he strolled on down the path, looking at the view.
"I can say what I feel to you, Hardy. I always have been able, and it's such a comfort to me now. It was you who put these sort of thoughts into my head, too, so you ought to sympathize with me."
"I do, my dear fellow. But you'll be all right again in a few days."
"Don't you believe it. It isn't only what you seem to think, Hardy. You don't know me so well as I do you, after all. No, I'm not just love-sick, and hipped because I can't go and see her. That has something to do with it, I dare say, but it's the sort of shut-up selfish life we lead here that I can't stand. A man isn't meant to live only with fellows like himself, with good allowances paid quarterly, and no care but how to amuse themselves. One is old enough for something better than that, I'm sure."
"No doubt," said Hardy with provoking taciturnity.
"And the moment one tries to break through it, one only gets into trouble."
"Yes, there's a good deal of danger of that, certainly," said Hardy.
"Don't you often long to be in contact with some of the realities of life, with men and women who haven't their bread and butter already cut for them? How can a place be a university where no one can come up who hasn't two hundred a year or so to live on?"
"You ought to have been at Oxford four hundred years ago, when there were more thousands here than we have hundreds."
"I don't see that. It must have been ten times as bad then."
"Not at all. But it must have been a very different state of things from ours; they must have been almost all poor scholars, who worked for their living, or lived on next to nothing."
"How do you really suppose they lived, though?"
"Oh, I don't know. But how should you like it now, if we had fifty poor scholars at St. Ambrose, besides us servitors--say ten tailors, ten shoemakers, and so on, who came up from love of learning, and attended all the lectures with us, and worked for the present undergraduates while they were hunting, and cricketing, and boating?"
"Well, I think it would be a very good thing--at any rate, we should save in tailors' bills."
"Even if we didn't get our coats so well built," said Hardy, laughing. "Well, Brown, you have a most catholic taste, and 'a capacity for talking in new truths', all the elements of a good Radical in you."
"I tell you, I hate Radicals," said Tom indignantly.
"Well, here we are in the town. I'll go round by 'The Choughs' and catch you up before you get to High Street."
Tom, left, to himself, walked slowly on for a little way, and then quickly back again in an impatient, restless manner, and was within a few yards of the corner where they had parted, when Hardy appeared again. He saw at a glance that something had happened.
"What is it--she is not ill?" he said quickly.
"No; quite well, her aunt says."
"You didn't see her then?"
"No. The fact is she has gone home."