Tom Brown at Oxford Part 101

Tom started up almost fiercely, but recovered himself in a moment, and then leant his head down again.

"Don't talk about her, Harry; you don't know her," he said.

"And don't want to know her, Tom, if she is going to throw you over. Well, I shall leave you for an hour or so. Come up to me presently at the Rag, when you feel better."

East started for his club, debating within himself what he could do for his friend--whether calling out the party mightn't do good.

Tom, left to himself, broke down at first sadly; but, as the evening wore on he began to rally, and sat down and wrote a long letter to his father, making a clean breast, and asking his permission to go with East.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE END

My Dear Katie;--I know you will be very much pained when you read this letter. You two have been my only confidantes, and you have always kept me up, and encouraged me to hope that all would come right. And after all that happened last week, Patty's marriage, and your engagement,--the two things upon earth, with one exception, that I most wished for,--I quite felt that my own turn was coming. I can't tell why I had such a strong feeling about it, but somehow all the most important changes in my life for the last four years have been so interwoven with Patty and Harry Winburn's history, that, now they were married, I was sure something would happen to me as soon as I came to London. And I was not wrong. Dear Katie, I can hardly bring myself to write it.

It is all over. I met her in the street to-day; she was riding with her father and the man I told you about. They had to pull up not to ride over me; so I had a good look at her, and there can be no mistake about it. I have often tried to reason myself into the belief that the evil day must come sooner or later, and to prepare myself for it; but I might have spared myself, for it could not have been worse than it is if I had never antic.i.p.ated it. My future is all a blank now. I can't stay in England; so I have written home to ask them to let me go to New Zealand with East, and I am sure they will consent, when they know all.

"I shall wait in town till I get the answer. Perhaps I may be able to get off with East in a few weeks. The sooner the better; but, of course, I shall not go without seeing you and dear old Jack. You mustn't mind me calling him Jack. The only thing that it gives me any pleasure to think about is your engagement. It is so right; and one wants to see something going right, some one getting their due, to keep alive one's belief in justice being done somehow or another in the world. And I do see it, and acknowledge it, when I think over his history and mine since we first met. We have both got our due; and you have got yours, Katie, for you have got the best fellow in England.

"Ah! if I only could think that she has got hers! If I could only believe that the man she has chosen is worthy of her! I will try hard to think better of him. There must be more good in him that I have ever seen, or she would never have engaged herself to him.

But I can't bear to stop here, and see it all going on. The sooner I am out of England the better. I send you a parcel with this; it contains her notes, and some old flowers and other matters which I haven't the heart to burn. You will be the best judge what should be done with them. If you see your way to managing it, I should like her to know that I had sent them all to you, and that, whatever may happen to me hereafter, my love for her has been the mainstay and the guiding-star of my life ever since that happy time when you all came to stay with us in my first long vacation. It found me eaten up with selfishness and conceit, the puppet of my own l.u.s.ts and vanities, and has left me--well never mind what it has left me. At any rate, if I have not gone from worse to worse, it is all owing to her; and she ought to know it. It cannot be wrong to let her know what good she has scattered unknowingly about her path. May G.o.d bless and reward her for it, and you, too, dear cousin, for all your long love and kindness to one who is very unworthy of, but very thankful for them.

"Ever yours, affectionately,

"T. B."

The above letter, and that to his father, asking for leave to emigrate, having been written and sent off, Tom was left, on the afternoon of the day following his upset, making manful, if not very successful, efforts to shake off the load of depression which weighed on him, and to turn his thoughts resolutely forward to a new life in a new country. East was away at the Docks. There was no one moving in the Temple. The men who had business were all at Westminster, or out of sight and hearing in the recesses of their chambers. Those who had none were for the most part away enjoying themselves, in one way or another amongst the mighty whirl of the mighty human sea of London. There was nothing left for him to do; he had written the only two letters he had to write, and had only to sit still and wait for the answers, killing the meantime as well as he could. Reading came hard to him, but it was the best thing to do, perhaps; at any rate he was trying it on, though his studies were constantly interrupted by long fits of absence of mind, during which, though his body remained in the temple, he was again in the well-kept garden of Barton, or in the hazel wood under the lee of the Berkshire hills.

He was roused out of one of these reveries, and brought back to external life and Fig-tree Court, by a single knock at the outer door, and a shout of the newsman's boy for the paper. So he got up, found the paper, which he had forgotten to read, and, as he went to the door, cast his eye on it, and saw that a great match was going on at Lord's. This gave a new turn to his thoughts. He stood looking down stairs after the boy, considering whether he should not start at once for the match.

He would be sure to see a lot of acquaintances there at any rate.

But the idea of seeing and having to talk to mere acquaintances was more distasteful than his present solitude. He was turning to bury himself again in his hole, when he saw a white dog walk quietly up seven or eight stairs at the bottom of the flight, and then turn round, and look for some one to follow.

"How odd!" thought Tom, as he watched him; "as like as two peas.

It can't be. No. Why, yes it is." And then he whistled, and called "Jack," and the dog looked up, and wagged his tail, as much as to say, "All right, I'm coming directly; but I must wait for my master." The next moment Drysdale appeared at the bottom of the stairs, and looking up, said--

"Oh! that's you, is it? I'm all right then. So you knew the old dog?"

"I should rather think so," said Tom. "I hope I never forget a dog or horse I have once known."

In the short minute which Drysdale and Jack took to arrive at his landing, Tom had time for a rush of old college memories, in which the grave and gay, pleasant and bitter, were strangely mingled. The light when he had been first brought to his senses about Patty came up very vividly before him, and the commemoration days, when he had last seen Drysdale. "How strange!" he thought, "is my old life coming back again just now?

Here, on the very day after it is all over, comes back the man with whom I was so intimate up to the day it began, and have never seen since. What does it mean?"

There was a little touch of embarra.s.sment in the manner of both of them as they shook hands at the top of the stairs, and turned into the chambers. Tom motioned to Jack to take his old place at one end of the sofa, and began caressing him there, the dog showing unmistakably, by gesture and whine, that delight at renewing an old friendship for which his race are so n.o.bly distinguished. Drysdale threw himself down in an arm-chair and watched them.

"So you knew the old dog, Brown?" he repeated.

"Knew him?--of course I did. Dear old Jack! How well he wears; he is scarcely altered at all."

"Very little; only steadier. More than I can say for his master.

I'm very glad you knew Jack."

"Come, Drysdale; take the other end of the sofa or it won't look like old times. There, now I can fancy myself back at St.

Ambrose's."

"By Jove, Brown, you're a real good fellow; I always said so, even after that last letter. You pitched it rather strong in that though. I was very near coming back from Norway to quarrel with you."

"Well, I was very angry at being left in the lurch by you and Blake."

"You got the coin all right, I suppose? You never acknowledged it."

"Didn't I? Then I ought to have. Yes, I got it all right about six months afterwards. I ought to have acknowledged it, and I thought I had. I'm sorry I didn't. Now we're all quits, and won't talk any more about that rascally bill."

"I suppose I may light up," said Drysdale, dropping into his old lounging att.i.tude on the sofa, and pulling out his cigar-case.

"Yes, of course. Will you have anything?"

"A cool drink wouldn't be amiss."

"They make a nice tankard with cider and a lump of ice at the 'Rainbow'. What do you say to that?"

"It sounds touching," said Drysdale. So Tom posted off to Fleet Street to order the liquor, and came back followed by a waiter with the tankard. Drysdale took a long pull and smacked his lips.

"That's a wrinkle," he said, handing the tankard to Tom. "I suppose the lawyers teach all the publicans about here a trick or two. Why, one can fancy one's self back in the old quad, looking out on this court. If it weren't such an outlandish out-of-the-way place, I think I should take some chambers here myself. How did you get here?"

"Oh, they belong to a friend of mine who is away. But how did _you_ get here?"

"Why, along the Strand, in a Hansom."

"I mean, how did you know I was here?"

"Grey told me."

"What! Grey, who was at St. Ambrose's with us?"

"Yes. You look puzzled."

"I didn't think you knew Grey."

"No more I do. But a stout old party I met last night--your G.o.dfather, I should think he is--told me where he was, and said I should get your address from him. So I looked him up this morning, in that dog-hole in Westminster where he lives. He didn't know Jack from Adam."

"But what in the world do you mean by my G.o.dfather?"

"I had better tell my story from the beginning, I see. Last night I did what I don't often do, went out to a great drum. There was an awful crush, of course, and you may guess what the heat was in these dog-days, with gas-lights and wax-lights going, and a jam of people in every corner. I was fool enough to get into the rooms, so that my retreat was cut off; and I had to work right through, and got at last into a back room, which was not so full.

The window was in a recess, and there was a balcony outside, looking over a little bit of garden. I got into the balcony, talking with a girl who was sensible enough to like the cool.

Presently I heard a voice I thought I knew inside. Then I heard St. Ambrose, and then your name. Of course I listened; I couldn't help myself. They were just inside the window, in the recess, not five feet from us; so I heard pretty nearly ever word. Give us the tankard; I'm as dry as an ash-heap with talking."

Tom, scarcely able to control his impatience, handed the tankard.