Tom Brown at Oxford

"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."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE

On the afternoon of a splendid day in the early part of June, some four or five days after the Sunday on which the morning service at Englebourn was interrupted by the fire at Farmer Groves', David Johnson, tailor and constable of the parish, was sitting at his work in a small erection, half shed, half summer-house, which leaned against the back of his cottage. Not that David had not a regular workshop, with a window looking into the village street, and a regular counter close under it, on which passersby might see him stitching, and from which he could gossip with them easily, as was his wont. But although the constable kept the king's peace and made garments of all kinds for his livelihood – from the curate's frock down to the ploughboy's fustians – he was addicted for his pleasure and solace to the keeping of bees. The constable's bees inhabited a row of hives in the narrow strip of garden which ran away at the back of the cottage. This strip of garden was bordered along the whole of one side by the rector's premises. Now honest David loved gossip well, and considered it a part of his duty as constable to be well up in all events and rumours which happened or arose within his liberties. But he loved his bees better than gossip, and, as he was now in hourly expectation that they would be swarming, was working, as has been said, in his summer-house, that he might be at hand at the critical moment. The rough table on which he was seated commanded a view of the hives; his big scissors and some shreds of velveteen lay near him on the table, also the street-door key and an old shovel, of which the uses will appear presently.