Tom Brown at Oxford

"Well, I must see him; and I should like to do something for him at once. I'm not very flush of money, but I must give you something for him. You'll take it; I shouldn't like to offer it to him."

"I hardly think he wants money; they are well off now. He earns good wages, and Betty has done her washing up to this week."

"Yes, but he will be fined, I suppose, for this assault; and then, if she should die, there will be the funeral expenses."

"Very well; as you please," she said; and Tom proceeded to hand over to her all his ready money, except a shilling or two. After satisfying his mind thus, he looked at her, and said —

"Do you know, Katie, I don't think I ever saw you so happy and in such spirits?"

"There now! And yet you began talking to me as if I were looking sad enough to turn all the beer in the parish sour."

"Well, so you ought to be, according to Cocker, spending all your time in sick rooms."

"According to who?"

"According to Cocker."

"Who is Cocker?"

"Oh, I don't know; some old fellow who wrote the rules of arithmetic, I believe; it's only a bit of slang. But, I repeat, you have a right to be sad, and it's taking an unfair advantage of your relations to look as pleasant as you do."

Katie laughed. "You ought not to say so, at any rate," she said, "for you look all the pleasanter for your visit to a sick room."

"Did I look very unpleasant before?"

"Well, I don't think you were in a very good humor."

"No, I was in a very bad humor, and talking to you and poor old Betty has set me right, I think. But you said hers was a special case. It must be very sad work in general."

"Only when one sees people in great pain, or when they are wicked, and quarreling, or complaining about nothing; then I do get very low sometimes. But even then it is much better than keeping to one's self. Anything is better than thinking of one's self, and one's own troubles."

"I dare say you are right," said Tom, recalling his morning's meditations, "especially when one's troubles are homemade. Look, here's an old fellow who gave me a lecture on that subject before I saw you this morning, and took me for the apothecary's boy."

They were almost opposite David's door, at which he stood with a piece of work in his hand. He had seen Miss Winter from his look-out window, and had descended from his board in hopes of hearing news.

Katie returned his respectful and anxious salute, and said, "She is no worse, David. We left her quite out of pain and very quiet."

"Ah, 'tis to be hoped as she'll hev a peaceful time on't now, poor soul," said David; "I've a been to Farmer Groves', and I hope as he'll do summat about Harry."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Miss Winter, "and my cousin here, who knew Harry very well when they were little boys together, has promised to help him. This is Harry's best friend," she said to Tom, "who has done more than anyone to keep him right."

David seemed a little embarrassed, and began jerking his head about when his acquaintance of the morning, whom he had scarcely noticed before, was introduced by Miss Winter as "my cousin."

"I wish to do all I can for him," said Tom, "and I'm very glad to have made your acquaintance. You must let me know whenever I can help;" and he took out a card and handed it to David, who looked at it, and then said, —

"And I be to write to you, sir, then, if Harry gets into trouble?"

"Yes; but we must keep him out of trouble, even home-made ones, which don't leave good marks, you know," said Tom.

"And thaay be nine out o' ten o' aal as comes to a man, sir" said David "as I've a told Harry scores o' times."

"That seems to be your text, David," said Tom, laughing.

"Ah, and 'tis a good un too, sir. Ax Miss Winter else. 'Tis a sight better to hev the Lord's troubles while you be about it, for thaay as hasn't makes wus for themselves out o' nothin'. Dwon't 'em, Miss?"

"Yes; you know that I agree with you, David."

"Good-bye, then," said Tom, holding out his hand, "and mind you let me hear from you."

"What a queer old bird, with his whole wisdom of man packed up small for ready use, like a quack doctor," he said, as soon as they were out of hearing.

"Indeed, he isn't the least like a quack doctor. I don't know a better man in the parish, though he is rather obstinate, like all the rest of them."

"I didn't mean to say anything against him, I assure you," said Tom; "on the contrary, I think him a fine old fellow. But I didn't think so this morning, when he showed me the way to Betty's cottage." The fact was that Tom saw all things and persons with quite a different pair of eyes from those which he had been provided with when he arrived in Englebourn that morning. He even made allowances for old Mr. Winter, who was in his usual querulous state at luncheon, though perhaps it would have been difficult in the whole neighborhood to find a more pertinent comment on, and illustration of, the constable's text than the poor old man furnished, with his complaints about his own health, and all he had to do and think of, for everybody about him. It did strike Tom, however, as very wonderful how such a character as Katie's could have grown up under the shade of, and in constant contact with, such a one as her father's. He wished his uncle good-bye soon after luncheon, and he and Katie started again down the village – she to return to her nursing and he on his way home. He led his horse by the bridle and walked by her side down the street. She pointed to the Hawk's Lynch as they walked along, and said, "You should ride up there; it is scarcely out of your way. Mary and I used to walk there every day when she was here, and she was so fond of it."

At the cottage they found Harry Winburn. He came out, and the two young men shook hands, and looked one another over, and exchanged a few shy sentences. Tom managed with difficulty to say the little he had to say, but tried to make up for it by a hearty manner. It was not the time or place for any unnecessary talk; so in a few minutes he was mounted and riding up the slope towards the heath. "I should say he must be half a stone lighter than I," he thought, "and not quite so tall; but he looks as hard as iron, and tough as whipcord. What a No. 7 he'd make in a heavy crew! Poor fellow, he seems dreadfully cut up. I hope I shall be able to be of use to him. Now for this place which Katie showed me from the village street."

He pressed his horse up the steep side of the Hawk's Lynch. The exhilaration of the scramble, and the sense of power, and of some slight risk, which he felt as he helped on the gallant beast with hand and knee and heel, while the loose turf and stones flew from his hoofs and rolled down the hill behind them, made Tom's eyes kindle and his pulse beat quicker as he reached the top and pulled up under the Scotch firs. "This was her favorite walk, then. No wonder. What an air, and what a view!" He jumped off his horse, slipped the bridle over his arm, and let him pick away at the short grass and tufts of heath, as he himself first stood, and then sat, and looked out over the scene which she had so often looked over. She might have sat on the very spot he was sitting on; she must have taken in the same expanse of wood and meadow, village and park, and dreamy, distant hill. Her presence seemed to fill the air round him. A rush of new thoughts and feelings swam through his brain and carried him, a willing piece of drift man, along with them. He gave himself up to the stream and revelled in them. His eye traced back the road along which he had ridden in the morning, and rested on the Barton woods, just visible in the distance, on this side of the point where all outline except that of the horizon began to be lost. The flickering July air seemed to beat in a pulse of purple glory over the spot. The soft wind which blew straight from Barton seemed laden with her name, and whispered it in the firs, over his head. Every nerve in his body was bounding with new life, and he could sit still no longer. He rose, sprang on his horse, and, with a shout of joy, turned from the vale and rushed away on to the heath, northwards towards his home behind the chalk hills. He had ridden into Englebourn in the morning an almost unconscious dabbler by the margin of the great stream; he rode from the Hawk's Lynch in the afternoon over head and ears and twenty, a hundred, ay, unnumbered fathoms below that, deep; consciously, and triumphantly in love.

But at what a pace, and in what a form! Love, at least in his first access, must be as blind a horseman as he is an archer. The heath was rough with peat-cutting and turf-cutting and many a deep-rutted farm road, and tufts of heather and furze. Over them and through them went horse and man – horse rising seven and man twenty off, a well-matched pair in age for a wild ride – headlong towards the north, till a blind rut somewhat deeper than usual put an end to their career, and sent the good horse staggering forward some thirty feet on to his nose and knees, and Tom over his shoulder, on to his back in the heather.

"Well, it's lucky it's no worse," thought our hero, as he picked himself up and anxiously examined the horse, who stood trembling and looking wildly puzzled at the whole proceeding; "I hope he hasn't overreached. What will the governor say? His knees are all right. Poor old boy!" he said, patting him; "no wonder you look astonished. You're not in love. Come along; we won't make fools of ourselves any more. What is it? —

'A true love forsaken a new love may get,
But a neck that's once broken can never be set.'

What stuff! one may get a neck set for anything I know; but a new love – blasphemy!"

The rest of the ride passed off soberly enough, except in Tom's brain, wherein were built up in gorgeous succession castles such as we have all built, I suppose, before now. And with the castles were built up side by side good honest resolves to be worthy of her, and win her and worship her with body, and mind, and soul. And, as a first installment, away to the winds went all the selfish morning thoughts; and he rode down the northern slope of the chalk hills a dutiful and affectionate son, at peace with Mrs. Porter, honoring her for her care of the treasure which he was seeking, and in good time for dinner.

"Well, dear," said Mrs. Brown to her husband when they were alone that night, "did you ever see Tom in such spirits, and so gentle and affectionate? Dear boy; there can be nothing the matter."

"Didn't I tell you so," replied Mr. Brown; "you women have always got some nonsense in your heads as soon as your boys have a hair on their chin or your girls begin to put up their back hair."

"Well, John, say what you will, I'm sure Mary Porter is a very sweet, taking girl, and – "

"I am quite of the same opinion," said Mr. Brown, "and am very glad you have written to ask them here."

And so the worthy couple went happily to bed.

CHAPTER XXXIII

BROWN PATRONUS

On a Saturday afternoon in August, a few weeks after the eventful ride, Tom returned to the Englebourn Rectory to stay over Sunday, and attend Betty Winburn's funeral. He was strangely attracted to Harry by the remembrance of their old boyish rivalry; by the story which he had heard from his cousin, of the unwavering perseverance with which the young peasant clung to and pursued his suit for Simon's daughter; but, more than all, by the feeling of gratitude with which he remembered the effect his visit to Betty's sick room had had on him, on the day of his ride from Barton Manor. On that day he knew that he had ridden into Englebourn in a miserable mental fog, and had ridden out of it in sunshine, which had lasted through the intervening weeks. Somehow or another he had been set straight then and there, turned into the right road and out of the wrong one, at what he very naturally believed to be the most critical moment of his life.

Without stopping to weigh accurately the respective merits of the several persons whom he came in contact with that day, he credited them all with a large amount of gratitude and good-will, and Harry with his mother's share as well as his own. So he had been longing to do something for him ever since. The more he rejoiced in, and gave himself up to his own new sensations, the more did his gratitude become as it were a burden to him; and yet no opportunity offered of letting off some of it in action. The magistrates, taking into consideration the dangerous state of his mother, had let Harry off with a reprimand for his assault; so there was nothing to be done there. He wrote to Katie offering more money for the Winburns; but she declined – adding, however, to her note, by way of postscript, that he might give it to her clothing club or coal club. Then came the news of Betty's death, and an intimation from Katie that she thought Harry would be much gratified if he would attend the funeral. He jumped at the suggestion. All Englebourn, from the Hawk's Lynch to the Rectory, was hallowed ground to him. The idea of getting back there, so much nearer to Barton Manor, filled him with joy, which he tried in vain to repress when he thought of the main object of his visit on the present occasion.

He arrived in time to go and shake hands with Harry before dinner; and, though scarcely a word passed between them, he saw with delight that he had evidently given pleasure to the mourner. Then he had a charming long evening with Katie, walking in the garden with her between dinner and tea, and after tea discoursing in low tones over her work-table, while Mr. Winter benevolently slept in his arm-chair. Their discourse branched into many paths, but managed always somehow to end in the sayings, beliefs, and perfections of the young lady of Barton Manor. Tom wondered how it had happened so when he got to his own room, as he fancied he had not betrayed himself in the least. He had determined to keep resolutely on his guard, and to make a confident of no living soul till he was twenty-one, and, though sorely tempted to break his resolution in favor of Katie, had restrained himself. He might have spared himself all the trouble; but this he did not know, being unversed in the ways of women, and all unaware of the subtlety and quickness of their intuitions in all matters connected with the heart. Poor, dear, stolid, dim-sighted mankind, how they do see through us and walk round us!