CHAPTER 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.”
CHAPTER 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.”