Tom Brown at Oxford

"Dang un! I knows I should ha' drowed un."

"Drow your grandmother," politely remarked one of the stablemen, an acquaintance of Harry Winburn, who knew his repute as a wrestler.

"I should, I tell 'ee," said the keeper as he stooped to gather up the fish, "and to think as he should ha' gone off. Master 'll be like any wild beast when he hears on't. How s'mever, 'tis Mr. Brown's doin's. 'Tis a queer start for a gen'l'man like he to be goin' off wi' a poacher chap and callin' of un Harry. 'Tis past me altogether. But I s'pose he bain't right in's 'ead;" and, so soliloquizing, he carried off the fish to the kitchen.

Meantime, on their walk to Englebourn, Harry, in answer to Tom's inquiries, explained that in his absence the stable-man, his acquaintance, had come up and begun to talk. The keeper had joined in and accused him point-blank of being the man who had thrown him into the furze bush. The story of the keeper's discomfiture on that occasion being well known, a laugh had been raised in which Harry had joined. This brought on a challenge to try a fall then and there, which Harry had accepted, notwithstanding his long morning's work and the ducking he had had. They laughed over the story, though Harry could not help expressing his fears as to how it might all end. They reached Englebourn in time for breakfast. Tom appeared at the rectory, and soon he and Katie were on their old terms. She was delighted to find that he had had an explanation with Harry Winburn; and that there was some chance of bringing that sturdy offender once more back into decent ways; – more delighted perhaps to hear the way in which he spoke of Patty, to whom after breakfast she paid a visit, and returned in due time with the unfortunate locket.

Tom felt as if another coil of the chain he had tied about himself had fallen off. He went out into the village, consulted again with Harry, and returned again to the rectory, to consider what steps were to be taken to get him work. Katie entered into the matter heartily, though forseeing the difficulties in the case. At luncheon the rector was to be sounded on the subject of the allotments. But in the middle of their plans, they were startled by the news that a magistrate's warrant had arrived in the village for the arrest of Harry as a night poacher.

Tom returned to the Grange furious, and before night had had a worse quarrel with young Wurley than with his uncle before him. Had duelling been in fashion still in England, they would probably have fought in a quiet corner of the park before night. As it was they only said bitter things, and parted, agreeing not to know one another in the future.

Three days afterwards, at petty sessions, where Tom brought upon himself the severe censure of the bench for his conduct on the trial, Harry Winburn was committed to Reading gaol for three months.

Readers who will take the trouble to remember the picture of our hero's mental growth during the past year, attempted to be given in a late chapter, and the state of restless dissatisfaction into which his experiences and thoughts and readings had thrown him by the time long vacation had come around again, will perhaps be prepared for the catastrophe which ensued on the conviction and sentence of Harry Winburn at petty sessions.

Hitherto, notwithstanding the strength of the new and revolutionary forces which were mustering round it, there had always been a citadel holding out in his mind, garrisoned by all that was best in the Toryism in which he had been brought up – by loyalty, reverence for established order and established institutions; by family traditions, and the pride of an inherited good name. But now the walls of that citadel went down with a crash, the garrison being put to the sword, or making away, to hide in an out of the way corner, and wait for a reaction.

It was much easier for a youngster, whose attention was once turned to such subjects as had been occupying Tom, to get hold of wild and violent beliefs and notions in those days than now. The state of Europe generally was far more dead and hopeless. There were no wars, certainly, and no expectations of wars. But there was a dull, beaten-down, pent-up feeling abroad, as if the lid were screwed down on the nations, and the thing which had been, however cruel and heavy and mean, was that which was to remain to the end. England was better off than her neighbours, but yet in bad case. In the south and west particularly, several causes had combined, to spread a very bitter feeling abroad amongst the agricultural poor. First among these stood the new poor law, the provisions of which were vigorously carried out in most districts. The poor had as yet felt the harshness only of the new system. Then the land was in many places in the hands of men on their last legs, the old sporting farmers, who had begun business as young men while the great war was going on, had made their money hand over hand for a few years out of the war prices, and had tried to go on living with greyhounds and yeomanry uniforms – "horse to ride and weapon to wear" – through the hard years which had followed. These were bad masters every way, unthrifty, profligate, needy, and narrow-minded. The younger men who were supplanting them were introducing machinery, threshing machines and winnowing machines, to take the little bread which a poor man was still able to earn out of the mouths of his wife and children – so at least the poor thought and muttered to one another; and the mutterings broke out every now and then in the long nights of the winter months in blazing ricks and broken machines. Game preserving was on the increase. Australia and America had not yet become familiar words in every English village, and the labour market was everywhere overstocked; and, last but not least, the corn laws were still in force, and the bitter and exasperating strife in which they went out was at its height. And while Swing and his myrmidons were abroad in the counties, and could scarcely be kept down by yeomanry and poor law guardians, the great towns were in almost worse case. Here too emigration had not set in to thin the labour market; wages were falling, and prices rising; the corn law struggle was better understood and far keener than in the country; and Chartism was gaining force every day, and rising into a huge threatening giant, waiting to put forth his strength, and eager for the occasion which seemed at hand.

You generation of young Englishmen, who were too young then to be troubled with such matters, and have grown into manhood since, you little know – may you never know! – what it is to be living the citizens of a divided and distracted nation. For the time that danger is past. In a happy home and so far as man can judge, in time, and only just in time, came the repeal of the corn laws, and the great cause of strife and the sense of injustice passed away out of men's minds. The nation was roused by the Irish famine, and the fearful distress in other parts of the country, to begin looking steadily and seriously at some of the sores which were festering in its body, and undermining health and life. And so the tide had turned, and England had already passed the critical point; when 1848 came upon Christendom, and the whole of Europe leapt up into a wild blaze of revolution.

Is anyone still inclined to make light of the danger that threatened England in that year, to sneer at the 10th of April, and the monster petition, and the monster meetings on Kennington and other commons? Well, if there be such persons among my readers, I can only say that they can have known nothing of what was going on around them and below them, at that time, and I earnestly hope that their vision has become clearer since then, and that they are not looking with the same eyes that see nothing, at the signs of today. For that there are questions still to be solved by us in England, in this current half-century, quite as likely to tear the nation to pieces as the corn laws, no man with half an eye in his head can doubt. They may seem little clouds like a man's hand on the horizon just now, but they will darken the whole heaven before long, unless we can find wisdom enough amongst us to take the little clouds in hand in time, and make them descend in soft rain.

But such matters need not be spoken of here. All I want to do is to put my young readers in a position to understand how it was that our hero fell away into beliefs and notions, at which Mrs. Grundy and all decent people could only lift up eyes and hands in pious and respectable horror, and became, soon after the incarceration of his friend for night poaching, little better than a physical force Chartist at the age of twenty-one.

CHAPTER XL

HUE AND CRY

At the end of a gusty wild October afternoon, a man, leading two horses, was marching up and down the little plot of short turf at the top of the Hawk's Lynch. Every now and then he would stop on the brow of the hill to look over the village, and seemed to be waiting for somebody from that quarter. After being well blown, he would turn to his promenade again, or go in under the clump of firs, through which the rising south-west wind, rushing up from the vale below, was beginning to make a moan; and, hitching the horses to some stump or bush, and patting and coaxing them to induce them, if so might be, to stand quiet for a while, would try to settle himself to leeward of one of the larger trees.

But the fates were against all attempts at repose. He had scarcely time to produce a cheroot from his case and light it under many difficulties, when the horses would begin fidgeting, and pulling at their bridles, and shifting round to get their tails to the wind. They clearly did not understand the necessity of the position, and were inclined to be moving stable-wards. So he had to get up again, sling the bridles over his arm, and take to his march up and down the plot of turf; now stopping for a moment or two to try to get his cheroot to burn straight, and pishing and pshawing over its perverseness; now going again and again to the brow, and looking along the road which led to the village, holding his hat on tight with one hand, – for by this time it was blowing half a gale of wind.

Though it was not yet quite the hour for his setting, the sun had disappeared behind a heavy bank of wicked slate-coloured cloud, which looked as though it were rising straight up into the western heavens, while the wind whirled along and twisted into quaint shapes a ragged rift of white vapor, which went hurrying by, almost touching the tops of the moaning firs, – altogether an uncanny evening to be keeping tryst at the top of a wild knoll; and so thought our friend with the horses, and showed it, too, clearly enough, had anyone been there to put a construction on his impatient movements.

There was no one nearer than the village, of which the nearest house was half a mile and more away; so, by way of passing the time, we must exercise our privilege of putting into words what he is half thinking, half muttering to himself: —

"A pleasant night I call this, to be out on a wild goose chase. If ever I saw a screaming storm brewing, there it comes. I'll be hanged if I stop up here to be caught in it for all the crack-brained friends I ever had in the world; and I seem to have a faculty for picking up none but crack-brained ones. I wonder what the plague can keep him so long; he must have been gone an hour. There, steady, steady, old horse. Confound this weed! What rascals these tobacconists are! You never can get a cheroot now worth smoking. Every one of them goes sputtering up the side, or charring up the middle, and tasting like tow soaked in saltpetre and tobacco juice. Well, I suppose I shall get the real thing in India."

"India! In a month from to-day we shall be off. To hear our senior major talk, one might as well be going to the bottomless pit at once. Well, he'll sell out – that's a comfort. Gives us a step, and gets rid of an old ruffian. I don't seem to care much what the place is like if we only get some work; and there will be some work there before long, by all accounts. No more garrison-town life, at any rate. And if I have any luck – a man may get a chance there."

"What the deuce can he be about? This all comes of sentiment, now. Why couldn't I go quietly off to India without bothering up to Oxford to see him? Not but what it's a pleasant place enough. I've enjoyed my three days there uncommonly. Food and drink all that can be wished, and plenty of good fellows and fun. The look of the place, too, makes one feel respectable. But, by George, if their divinity is at all like their politics, they must turn out a queer set of parsons – at least if Brown picked up his precious notions at Oxford. He always was a headstrong beggar. What was it he was holding forth about last night? Let's see. 'The sacred right of insurrection.' Yes, that was it, and he talked as if he believed it all too; and if there should be a row, which don't seem unlikely, by Jove, I think he'd act on it, in the sort of temper he's in. How about the sacred right of getting hung or transported? I shouldn't wonder to hear of that some day. Gad! suppose he should be in for an installment of his sacred right to-night. He's capable of it, and of lugging me in with him. What did he say we were come here for? To get some fellow out of a scrape, he said – some sort of poaching radical foster-brother of his, who had been in gaol, and deserved it too, I'll be bound. And he couldn't go down quietly into the village and put up at the public, where I might have set in the tap, and not run the chance of having my skin blown over my ears, and my teeth down my throat, on this cursed look-out place, because he's too well known there. What does that mean? Upon my soul, it looks bad. They may be lynching a J. P. down there, or making a spread eagle of the parish constable at this minute, for anything I know, and as sure as fate, if they are, I shall get my foot in it."

"It will read sweetly in the naval and military intelligence – 'A court-martial was held this day at Chatham, president, Colonel Smith, of Her Majesty's 101st Regiment, to try Henry East, a lieutenant in the same distinguished corps, who has been under arrest since the 10th ult., for aiding and abetting the escape of a convict, and taking part in a riot in the village of Englebourn, in the county of Berks. The defense of the accused was that he had a sentimental friendship for a certain Thomas Brown, an undergraduate of St. Ambrose College, Oxford, &c. &c.; and the sentence of the Court – '

"Hang it! It's no laughing matter. Many a fellow has been broken for not making half such a fool of himself as I have done, coming out here on this errand. I'll tell T. B. a bit of my mind as sure as —

"Hullo! didn't I hear a shout? Only the wind, I believe. How it does blow! One of these firs will be down, I expect, just now. The storm will burst in a quarter of an hour. Here goes! I shall ride down into the village, let what will come of it. Steady now – steady. Stand still you old fool; can't you?"

"There, now I'm all right. Solomon said something about a beggar on horseback. Was is Solomon, though? Never mind. He couldn't ride. Never had a horse till he was grown up. But he said some uncommon wise things about having to do with such friends as T. B. So, Harry East, if you please, no more tomfoolery after to-day. You've got a whole skin, and a lieutenant's commission to make your way in the world with, and are troubled with no particular crotchets yourself that need ever get you into trouble. So just you keep clear of other people's. And if your friends must be mending the world, and poor men's plastering, and running their heads against stone walls, why, just you let go of their coat tails."

So muttering and meditating, Harry East paused a moment after mounting, to turn up the collar of the rough shooting-coat which he was wearing, and button it up to the chin, before riding down the hill, when, in the hurly-burly of the wind, a shout came spinning past his ears, plain enough this time; he heard the gate at the end of Englebourn lane down below him shut with a clang, and saw two men running at full speed towards him, straight up the hill.

"Oh! here you are at last," he said, as he watched them. "Well, you don't lose your time now. Somebody must be after them. What's he shouting and waving his hand for? Oh, I'm to bring the cavalry supports down the slope, I suppose. Well, here goes; he has brought off his pal the convict I see —

Says he, you've 'scaped from transportation
All upon the briny main;
So never give way to no temptation,
And don't get drunk nor prig again!

There goes the gate again. By Jove, what's that? Dragoons, as I'm a sinner! There's going to be the d – st bear-fight."

Saying which, Harry East dug his heels into his horse's sides, holding him up sharply with the curb at the same time, and in another moment, was at the bottom of the solitary mound on which he had been perched for the last hour, and on the brow of the line of hill out of which it rose so abruptly, just at the point for which the two runners were making. He had only time to glance at the pursuers, and saw that one or two rode straight on the track of the fugitives, while the rest skirted away along a parish road which led up the hill side by an easier ascent, when Tom and his companion were by his side. Tom seized the bridle of the led horse, and was in the saddle with one spring.

"Jump up behind," he shouted; "now, then, come along."

"Who are they?" roared East, – in that wind nothing but a shout could be heard, – pointing over his shoulder with his thumb as they turned to the heath.

"Yeomanry."

"After you?"

Tom nodded, as they broke into a gallop, making straight across the heath towards the Oxford road. They were some quarter of a mile in advance before any of their pursuers showed over the brow of the hill behind them. It was already getting dusk, and the great bank of cloud was by this time all but upon them, making the atmosphere denser and darker every second. Then, first one of the men appeared who had ridden straight up the hill under the Hawk's Lynch, and, pulling up for a moment, caught sight of them and gave chase. Half a minute later, and several of those who had kept to the road were also in sight, some distance away on the left, but still near enough to be unpleasant; and they too after a moment's pause, were in full pursuit. At first the fugitives held their own, and the distance between them and their pursuers was not lessened; but it was clear that this could not last. Anything that horse-flesh is capable of, a real good Oxford hack, such as they rode, will do; but to carry two full-grown men at the end of a pretty long day, away from fresh horses and moderate weights, is too much to expect even of Oxford horse-flesh; and the gallant beast which Tom rode was beginning to show signs of distress when they struck into the road. There was a slight dip in the ground a this place, and a little further on the heath rose suddenly again, and the road ran between high banks for a short distance.

As they reached this point they disappeared for the moment from the yeomanry, and the force of the wind was broken by the banks, so that they could breathe more easily, and hear one another's voices.

Tom looked anxiously round at the lieutenant, who shrugged his shoulders in answer to the look, as he bent forward to ease his own horse, and said —

"Can't last another mile."

"What's to be done?"

East again shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.

"I know, Master Tom," said Harry Winburn.

"What?"

"Pull up a bit, sir."

Tom pulled up, and his horse fell into a walk willingly enough, while East passed on a few strides ahead. Harry Winburn sprang off.

"You ride on now, Master Tom," he said, "I knows the heath well; you let me bide."

"No, no, Harry, not I. I won't leave you now, so let them come, and be hanged."

East had pulled up, and listened to their talk.