Tom Brown at Oxford Part 76

Questions which had before now puzzled him gained a new significance every minute, and became real to him. Why a few men should be rich, and all the rest poor; above all, why he should be one of the few? Why the mere possession of property should give a man power over all his neighbors? Why poor men who were ready and willing to work should only be allowed to work as a sort of favor, and should after all get the merest t.i.the of what their labor produced, and be tossed aside as soon as their work was done, or no longer required? These, and other such problems, rose up before him, crude and sharp, asking to be solved. Feeling himself quite unable to give any but one answer to them--viz.

that he was getting out of his depth, and that the whole business was in a muddle--he had recourse to his old method when in difficulties, and putting on his cap, started off to Hardy's rooms to talk the matter over, and see whether he could not get some light on it from that quarter.

He returned in an hour or so, somewhat less troubled in his mind inasmuch as he had found his friend in pretty much the same state of mind on such topics as himself. But one step he had gained.

Under his arm he carried certain books from Hardy's scanty library, the perusal of which he hoped, at least, might enable him sooner or later to feel that he had got on to some sort of firm ground, At any rate, Hardy had advised him to read them; so, without more ado, he drew his chair to the table and began to look into them.

This glimpse of the manner in which Tom spent the first evening of his second year at Oxford, will enable intelligent readers to understand why, though he took to reading far more kindly and honestly than he had ever done before, he made no great advance in the proper studies of the place. Not that he wholly neglected these, for Hardy kept him pretty well up to the collar, and he pa.s.sed his little go creditably, and was fairly placed at the college examinations. In some of the books which he had to get up for lectures he was genuinely interested. The politics of Athens, the struggle between the Roman plebs and patricians, Mons Sacer and the Agrarian laws--these began to have a new meaning to him, but chiefly because they bore more or less on the great Harry Winburn problem; which problem, indeed, for him had now fairly swelled into the condition-of-England problem, and was becoming every day more and more urgent and importunate, shaking many old beliefs, and leading him whither he knew not.

This very matter of leading was a sore trial to him. The further he got on his new road, the more he felt the want of guidance--the guidance of some man; for that of books he soon found to be bewildering. His college tutor, whom he consulted, only deprecated the waste of tune; but on finding it impossible to dissuade him, at last recommended the economic works of that day as the proper well springs of truth on such matters. To them Tom accordingly went, and read with the docility and faith of youth, bent on learning and feeling itself in the presence of men who had, or a.s.sumed, the right of speaking with authority.

And they spoke to him with authority, and he read on, believing much and hoping more; but somehow they did not really satisfy him, though they silenced him for the time. It was not the fault of the books, most of which laid down clearly enough, that what they professed to teach was the science of man's material interests, and the laws of the making and employment of capital.

But this escaped him in his eagerness, and he wandered up and down their pages in search of quite another science, and of laws with which they did not meddle. Nevertheless, here and there they seemed to touch upon what he was in search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived on for some time in a dreary uncomfortable state, fearing for the future of his country, and with little hope about his own. But, when he came to take stock of his newly acquired knowledge, to weigh it and measure it, and found it to consist of a sort of hazy conviction that society would be all right and ready for the millennium, when every man could do what he liked, and n.o.body could interfere with him, and there should be a law against marriage, the result was more than he could stand. He roused himself and shook himself, and began to think, "Well, these my present teachers are very clever men, and well-meaning men, too. I see all that; but, if their teaching is only to land me here, why it was scarcely worth while going through so much to get so little."

Casting about still for guidance, Grey occurred to him. Grey was in residence as a bachelor, attending divinity lectures, and preparing for ordination. He was still working hard at the night-school, and Tom had been there once or twice to help him when the curate was away. In short he was in very good books with Grey, who had got the better of his shyness with him. He saw that Tom was changed and sobered, and in his heart hoped some day to wean him from the pursuits of the body, to which he was still fearfully addicted, and to bring him into the fold. This hope was not altogether unfounded; for, notwithstanding the strong bias against them which Tom had brought with him from school, he was now at times much attracted by many of the High Church doctrines, and the men who professed them. Such men as Grey, he saw, did really believe something, and were in earnest about carrying their beliefs into action. The party might and did comprise many others of the weakest sort, who believed and were in earnest about nothing, but who liked to be peculiar. Nevertheless, while he saw it laying hold of many of the best men of his time, it is not to be wondered at that he was drawn towards it. Some help might lie in these men if he could only get at it!

So he propounded his doubts and studies, and their results to Grey. But it was a failure. Grey felt no difficulty or very little, in the whole matter; but Tom found that it was because he believed the world to belong to the devil. "_Laissez faire_,"

"buying cheap and selling dear," Grey held might be good enough for laws for the world--very probably were. The laws of the Church were "self-sacrifice," and "bearing one another's burdens"

her children should come out from the regions where the world's laws were acknowledged.

Tom listened, was dazzled at first, and thought he was getting on the right track. But very soon he found that Grey's specific was not of the least use to him. It was no good to tell him of the rules of a society to which he felt that he neither belonged, nor wished to belong, for clearly it could not be the Church of England. He was an outsider! Grey would probably admit it to be so, if he asked him! He had no longing to be anything else, _if_ the Church meant an exclusive body, which took no care of any but its own people, and had nothing to say to the great world in which he and most people had to live, and buying and selling, and hiring and working, had to go on. The close corporation might have very good laws, but they were nothing to him. What he wanted to know about was the law which this great world--the devil's world, as Grey called it--was ruled by, or rather ought to be ruled by. Perhaps, after all, Bentham and the others, whose books he had been reading, might be right! At any rate, it was clear that they had had in their thoughts the same world that he had--the world which included himself and Harry Winburn, and all labourers and squires, and farmers. So he turned to them again, not hopefully, but more inclined to listen to them than he had been before he had spoken to Grey.

Hardy was so fully occupied with college lectures and private pupils, that Tom had scruples about taking up much of his spare time in the evenings. Nevertheless, as Grey had broken down, and there was n.o.body else on whose judgment he could rely who would listen to him, whenever he had a chance he would propound some of his puzzles to his old friend. In some respects he got little help, for Hardy was almost as much at sea as he himself on such subjects as "value," and "wages," and the "laws of supply and demand." But there was an indomitable belief in him that all men's intercourse with one another, and not merely that of Churchmen, must be founded on the princ.i.p.al of "doing as they would be done by," and not on "buying cheap and selling dear,"

and that these never would or could be reconciled with one another, or mean the same thing, twist them how you would. This faith of his friend's comforted Tom greatly, and he was never tired of bringing it out; but at times he had his doubts whether Grey might not be right--whether, after all, that and the like maxims and principles were meant to be the laws of the kingdoms of this world. He wanted some corroborative evidence on the subject from an impartial and competent witness, and at last hit upon what he wanted. For, one evening, on entering Hardy's rooms, he found him on the last pages of a book, which he shut up with an air of triumph on recognizing his visitor. Taking it up, he thrust it into Tom's hands, and slapping him on the shoulder, said, "There, my boy, that's what we want, or pretty near it at any rate. Now, don't say a word, but go back to your rooms, and swallow it whole and digest it, and then come back and tell me what you think of it."

"But I want to talk to you."

"I can't talk. I have spent the better part of two days over that book, and have no end of papers to look over. There; get back to your rooms, and do what I tell you, or sit down here and hold your tongue."

So Tom sat down and held his tongue, and was soon deep in Carlyle's "Past and Present." How he did revel in it--in the humor, the power, the pathos, but, above all, in the root and branch denunciations of many of the doctrines in which he had been so lately voluntarily and wearily chaining himself! The chains went snapping off one after another, and, in his exultation, he kept spouting out pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage in a song of triumph, "Enlightened egoism never so luminous is not the rule by which man's life can be led--_laissez-faire_, supply and demand, cash payment for the sole nexus, and so forth, were not, are not, and never will be, a practical law of union for a society of men," &c., &c., until Hardy fairly got up and turned him out, and he retired with his new-found treasure to his own rooms.

He had scarcely ever in his life been so moved by a book before.

He laughed over it, and cried over it, and began half a dozen letters to the author to thank him, which he fortunately tore up.

He almost forgot Mary for several hours during his first enthusiasm. He had no notion how he had been mastered and oppressed before. He felt as the crew of a small fishing-smack, who are being towed away by an enemy's cruiser, might feel on seeing a frigate with the Union Jack flying, bearing down and opening fire on their captor; or as a small boy at school, who is being f.a.gged against rules by the right of the strongest, feels when he sees his big brother coming around the corner. The help which he had found was just what he wanted. There was no narrowing of the ground here--no appeal to men as members of any exclusive body whatever to separate themselves and come out of the devil's world; but to men as men, to every man as a man--to the weakest and meanest, as well as to the strongest and most n.o.ble--telling them that the world is G.o.d's world, that everyone of them has a work in it, and bidding them find their work and set about it.

The strong tinge of sadness which ran through the whole book, and its unsparing denunciations of the established order of things, suited his own unsettled and restless frame of mind. So he gave himself up to his new bondage, and rejoiced in it, as though he had found at last what he was seeking for; and, by the time that long vacation came round again, to which we are compelled to hurry him, he was filled full of a set of contradictory notions and beliefs, which were destined to astonish and perplex the mind of that worthy J. P. for the county of Berks, Brown the elder, whatever other effect they might have on society at large.

Readers must not suppose, however, that our hero had given up his old pursuits; on the contrary, he continued to boat, and cricket, and spar, with as much vigor as ever. His perplexities only made him a little more silent at his pastimes than he used to be. But, as we have already seen him thus employed, and know the ways of the animal in such matters, it is needless to repeat. What we want to do is to follow him into new fields of thought and action, and mark, if it may be, how he develops, and gets himself educated in one way and another; and this plunge into the great sea of social, political, and economical questions is the noticeable fact (so far as any is noticeable) of his second year's residence.

During the year he had only very meagre accounts of matters at Englebourn. Katie, indeed, had come round sufficiently to write to him; but she scarcely alluded to her cousin. He only knew that Mary had come out in London, and was much admired; and that the Porters had not taken Barton again, but were going abroad for the autumn and winter. The accounts of Harry were bad; he was still living at Daddy Collins's, n.o.body knew how, and working gang-work occasionally with the outlaws of the heath.

The only fact of importance in the neighborhood had been the death of Squire Wurley, which happened suddenly in the spring. A distant cousin had succeeded him, a young man of Tom's own age.

He was also in residence at Oxford, and Tom knew him. They were not very congenial; so he was much astonished when young Wurley, on his return to College, after his relative's funeral, rather sought him out, and seemed to wish to know more of him. The end of it was an invitation to Tom to come to the Grange, and spend a week or so at the beginning of the long vacation. There was to be a party of Oxford men there, and n.o.body else; and they meant to enjoy themselves thoroughly, Wurley said.

Tom felt much embarra.s.sed how to act, and, after some hesitation, told his inviter of his last visit to the mansion in question, thinking that a knowledge of the circ.u.mstances might change his mind. But he found that young Wurley knew the facts already; and, in fact, he couldn't help suspecting that his quarrel with the late owner had something to say to his present invitation.

However, it did not lie in his mouth to be curious on the subject; and so he accepted the invitation gladly, much delighted at the notion of beginning his vacation so near Englebourn, and having the run of the Grange fishing, which was justly celebrated.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

THE RIVER SIDE

So, from Henley, Tom went home just to see his father and mother and pick up his fishing-gear, and then started for the Grange. On his road thither, he more than once almost made up his mind to go round by Englebourn, get his first interview with Katie over, and find out how the world was really going with Harry and his sweetheart, of whom he had such meagre intelligence of late. But, for some reason or another, when it came to taking the turn to Englebourn, he pa.s.sed it by, and, contenting himself for the time with a distant view of the village and the Hawk's Lynch, drove straight to the Grange.

He had not expected to feel very comfortable at first in the house which he had left the previous autumn in so strange a manner, and he was not disappointed. The rooms reminded him unpleasantly of his pa.s.sage of arms with the late master, and the grave and portly butler was somewhat embarra.s.sed in his reception of him; while the footman, who carried off his portmanteau, did it with a grin which put him out. The set of men whom he found there were not of his sort. They were young Londoners, and he a thorough countryman. But the sight of the stream by which he took a hearty stroll before dinner made up for everything, and filled him with pleasurable antic.i.p.ations. He thought he had never seen a sweeter bit of water.

The dinner to which the party of young gentlemen sat down was most undeniable. The host talked a little too much, perhaps; under all the circ.u.mstances, of _my_ wine, _my_ plate, _my_ mutton, &c., provoking the thought of how long they had been his.

But he was bent on hospitality after his fashion, and his guests were not disposed to criticize much.

The old butler did not condescend to wait, but brought in a magnum of claret after dinner, carefully nursing it as if it were a baby, and placing it patronizingly before his young master.

Before they adjourned to the billiard-room they had disposed of several of the same; but the followers were brought in by a footman, the butler being employed in discussing a bottle of an older vintage with the steward in the still-room. Then came pool, pool, pool, soda-water and brandy, and cigars, into the short hours; but Tom stole away early, having an eye to his morning's fishing, and not feeling much at home with his companions.

He was out soon after sunrise the next morning. He never wanted to be called when there was a trout-stream within reach; and his fishing instinct told him that, in these sultry dog-days, there would be little chance of sport when the sun was well up. So he let himself gently out of the hall door--paused a moment on the steps to fill his chest with the fresh morning air, as he glanced at the weatherc.o.c.k over the stables--and then set to work to put his tackle together on the lawn, humming a tune to himself as he selected an insinuating red hackle and alder fly from his well-worn book, and tied them on to his cast. Then he slung his creel over his shoulder, picked up his rod, and started for the water.

As he pa.s.sed the gates of the stable-yard, the keeper came out--a st.u.r.dy bullet-headed fellow, in a velveteen coat, and cord breeches and gaiters--and touched his hat. Tom returned the salute, and wished him good morning.

"Mornin', sir; you be about early."

"Yes; I reckon it's the best time for sport at the end of June."

"'Tis so, Sir. Shall I fetch a net, and come along!"

"No, thank you, I'll manage the ladle myself. But which do you call the best water?"

"They be both middling good. They ain't much odds atwixt 'em. But I see most fish movin' o' mornin's in the deep water down below."

"I don't know; the night was too hot," said Tom, who had examined the water the day before, and made up his mind where he was going. "I'm for deep water on cold days; I shall begin with the stickles up above. There's a good head of water on, I suppose?"

"Plenty down this last week, sir."

"Come along, then; we'll walk together, if you're going that way." So Tom stepped off, brushing through the steaming long gra.s.s, gemmed with wild flowers, followed by the keeper; and, as the gra.s.shoppers bounded chirruping out of his way, and the insect life hummed and murmured, and the lark rose and sang above his head, he felt happier than he had done for many a long month.

So his heart opened towards his companion, who kept a little behind him.

"What size do you take 'em out, keeper?"

"Anything over nine inches, sir. But there's a smartish few fish of three pounds, for them as can catch 'em."

"Well, that's good; but they ain't easy caught, eh?"

"I don't rightly know, sir; but there's gents comes as stands close by the water, and flogs down stream with the sun in their backs, and uses all manner o' vlies, wi' long names; and then they gwoes away, and says, 'tain't no use flying here, 'cas there's so much cadis bait and that like."

"Ah, very likely," said Tom, with a chuckle.

"The chaps as catches the big fishes, sir," went on the keeper, getting confidential, "is thay cussed night-line poachers.

There's one o' thay as has come here this last spring-tide--the artfullest chap as ever I come across, and down to every move on the board. He don't use no shove-nets, nor such-like tackle; not he; I s'pose he don't call that sport. Besides, I got master to stake the whole water, and set old knives and razors about in the holes, but that don't answer; and this joker all'us goes alone--which, in course, he couldn't do with nets. Now, I knows within five or six yards where that chap sets his lines, and I finds 'em, now and again, set the artfullest you ever see. But 'twould take a man's life to look arter him, and I knows he gets, maybe, a dozen big fish a week, do all as I knows."

"How is it you can't catch him, keeper?" said Tom, much amused.