“That’s enough, Nanny,” I whispered. “Put the candle back.”
“But I did not tell all my dream,” he resumed; “not quite all. As I passed over into heaven, I thought I looked down here again. I could see the places in the world; I could see this same Oxford city. I saw the men here in it, sir, at their cards and their dice and their drink; at all their thoughtless folly. Spending their days and nights without a care for the end, without as much as thinking whether they need a Saviour or not. And oh, their condition troubled me! I seemed to understand all things plainly then, sir. And I thought if they would but once lift up their hearts to Him, even in the midst of their sin, He would take care of them even then, and save them from it in the end—for He was tempted Himself once, and knows how sore their temptations are. In my distress, I tried to call out and tell them this, and it awoke me.”
“Do you think he ought to talk, sir?” whispered Nanny. But nothing more could harm him now.
My time was up, and I ought to be going. Poor Charley spoke so imploringly—almost as though the thought of it startled him.
“Not yet, sir; not yet! Stay a bit longer with me. It is for the last time.”
And I stayed: in spite of my word passed to Dr. Applerigg. It seems to me a solemn thing to cross the wishes of the dying.
So the clock went ticking on. Mrs. Cann stole in and out, and a lodger from below came in and looked at him. Before twelve all was over.
I went hastening home, not much caring whether the proctor met me again, or whether he didn’t, for in any case I must go to Dr. Applerigg in the morning, and tell him I had broken my promise to him, and why. Close at the gates some one overtook and passed me.
It was Tod. Tod with a white face, and his hair damp with running. He had come from Sophie Chalk’s.
“What is it, Tod?”
I laid my hand upon his arm in speaking. He threw it off with a word that was very like an imprecation.
“What is the matter?”
“The devil’s the matter. Mind your own business, Johnny.”
“Have you been quarrelling with Everty?”
“Everty be hanged! The man has betaken himself off.”
“How much have you lost to-night?”
“Cleaned-out, lad. That’s all.”
We got to our room in silence. Tod turned over some cards that lay on the table, and trimmed the candle from a thief.
“Tasson’s dead, Tod.”
“A good thing if some of us were dead,” was the answer. And he turned into his chamber and bolted the door.
III
Lunch-time at Oxford, and a sunny day. Instead of college and our usual fare, bread-and-cheese from the buttery, we were looking on the High Street from Mrs. Everty’s rooms, and about to sit down to a snow-white damasked table with no end of good things upon it. Madam Sophie had invited four or five of us to lunch with her.
The term had gone on, and Easter was not far off. Tod had not worked much: just enough to keep him out of hot-water. His mind ran on Sophie Chalk more than it did on lectures and chapel. He and the other fellows who were caught by her fascinations mostly spent their spare time there. Sophie dispersed her smiles pretty equally, but Tod contrived to get the largest share. The difference was this: they had lost their heads to her and Tod his heart. The evening card-playing did not flag, and the stakes played for were high. Tod and Gaiton were the general losers: a run of ill-luck had set in from the first for both of them. Gaiton might afford this, but Tod could not.
Tod had his moments of reflection. He’d sit sometimes for an hour together, his head bent down, whistling softly to himself some slow dolorous strain, and pulling at his dark whiskers; no doubt pondering the question of what was to be the upshot of it all. For my part, I devoutly wished Sophie Chalk had been caught up into the moon before an ill-wind had wafted her to Oxford. It was an awful shame of her husband to let her stay on there, turning the under-graduates’ brains. Perhaps he could not help it.
We sat down to table: Sophie at its head in a fresh-looking pink gown and bracelets and nicknacks. Lord Gaiton and Tod sat on either side of her; Richardson was at the foot, and Fred Temple and I faced each other. What fit of politeness had taken Sophie to invite me, I could not imagine. Possibly she thought I should be sure to refuse; but I did not.
“So kind of you all to honour my poor little table!” said Sophie, as we sat down. “Being in lodgings, I cannot treat you as I should wish. It is all cold: chickens, meat-patties, lobster-salad, and bread-and-cheese. Lord Gaiton, this is sherry by you, I think. Mr. Richardson, you like porter, I know: there is some on the chiffonier.”
We plunged into the dishes without ceremony, each one according to his taste, and the lunch progressed. I may as well mention one thing—that there was nothing in Mrs. Everty’s manners at any time to take exception to: never a word was heard from her, never a look seen, that could offend even an old dowager. She made the most of her charms and her general fascinations, and flirted quietly; but all in a lady-like way.
“Thank you, yes; I think I will take a little more salad, Mr. Richardson,” she said to him with a beaming smile. “It is my dinner, you know. I have not a hall to dine in to-night, as you gentlemen have. I am sorry to trouble you, Mr. Johnny.”
I was holding her plate for Richardson. There happened at that moment to be a lull in the talking, and we heard a carriage of some kind stop at the door, and a loud peal at the house-bell.
“It’s that brother of mine,” said Fred Temple. “He bothered me to drive out to some confounded place with him, but I told him I wouldn’t. What’s he bumping up the stairs in that fashion for?”
The room-door was flung open, and Fred Temple put on a savage face, for his brother looked after him more than he liked; when, instead of Temple major, there appeared a shining big brown satin bonnet, and an old lady’s face under it, who stood there with a walking-stick.
“Yes, you see I was right, grandmamma; I said she was not gone,” piped a shrill voice behind; and Mabel Smith, in an old-fashioned black silk frock and tippet, came into view. They had driven up to look after Sophie.
Sophie was equal to the occasion. She rose gracefully and held out both her hands, as though they had been welcome as is the sun in harvest. The old lady leaned on her stick, and stared around: the many faces seemed to confuse her.
“Dear me! I did not know you had a luncheon-party, ma’am.”
“Just two or three friends who have dropped in, Mrs. Golding,” said Sophie, airily. “Let me take your stick.”
The old lady, who looked like a very amiable old lady, sat down in the nearest chair, but kept the stick in her hand. Mabel Smith was regarding everything with her shrewd eyes and compressing her thin lips.
“This is Johnny Ludlow, grandmamma; you have heard me speak of him: I don’t know the others.”
“How do you do, sir,” said the old lady, politely nodding her brown bonnet at me. “I hope you are in good health, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” For she put it as a question, and seemed to await an answer. Tod and the rest, who had risen, began to sit down again.
“I’m sure I am sorry to disturb you at luncheon, ma’am,” said the old lady to Mrs. Everty. “We came in to see whether you had gone home or not. I said you of course had gone; that you wouldn’t stay away from your husband so long as this; and also because we had not heard of you for a month past. But Mabel thought you were here still.”
“I am intending to return shortly,” said Sophie.
“That’s well: for I want to send up Mabel. And I brought in a letter that came to my house this morning, addressed to you,” continued the old lady, lugging out of her pocket a small collection of articles before she found the letter. “Mabel says it is your husband’s handwriting, ma’am; if so, he must be thinking you are staying with me.”
“Thanks,” said Sophie, slipping the letter away unopened.
“Had you not better see what it says?” suggested Mrs. Golding to her.
“Not at all: it can wait. May I offer you some luncheon?”
“Much obleeged, ma’am, but I and Mabel took an early dinner before setting out. And on which day, Mrs. Everty, do you purpose going?”
“I’ll let you know,” said Sophie.
“What can have kept you so long here?” continued the old lady, wonderingly. “Mabel said you did not know any of the inhabitants.”
“I have found it of service to my health,” replied Sophie with charming simplicity. “Will you take a glass of sherry, Mrs. Golding?”
“I don’t mind if I do. Just half a glass. Thank you, sir; not much more than half”—to me, as I went forward with the glass and decanter. “I’m sure, sir, it is good of you to be attentive to an old lady like me. If you had a mind for a brisk walk at any time, of three miles, or so, and would come over to my house, I’d make you welcome. Mabel, write down the address.”
“And I wish you had come while I was there, Johnny Ludlow,” said the girl, giving me the paper. “I like you. You don’t say smiling words to people with your lips and mock at them in your heart, as some do.”
I remembered that she had not been asked to take any wine, and I offered it.
“No, thank you,” she said with emphasis. “None for me.” And it struck me that she refused because the wine belonged to Sophie.
The old lady, after nodding a farewell around and shaking hands with Mrs. Everty, stood leaning on her stick between the doorway and the stairs. “My servant’s not here,” she said, looking back, “and these stairs are steep: would any one be good enough to help me down?”
Tod went forward to give her his arm; and we heard the fly drive away with her and Mabel. Somehow the interlude had damped the free go of the banquet, and we soon prepared to depart also. Sophie made no attempt to hinder it, but said she should expect us in to take some tea with her in the evening: and the lot of us filed out together, some going one way, some another. I and Fred Temple kept together.
There was a good-natured fellow at Oxford that term, who had come up from Wales to take his degree, and had brought his wife with him, a nice kind of young girl who put me in mind of Anna Whitney. They had become acquainted with Sophie Chalk, and liked her; she fascinated both. She meant to do it too: for the companionship of staid irreproachable people like Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns, reflected credit on herself in the eyes of Oxford.
“I thought we should have met the Ap-Jenkynses, at lunch,” remarked Temple. “What a droll old party that was with the stick! She puts me in mind of—I say, here’s another old party!” he broke off. “Seems to be a friend of yours.”
It was Mrs. Cann. She had stopped, evidently wanting to speak to me.
“I have just been to put little Nanny Tasson in the train for London, sir,” she said; “I thought you might like to know it. Her eldest brother, the one that’s settled there, has taken to her. His wife wrote a nice letter and sent the fare.”
“All right, Mrs. Cann. I hope they’ll take good care of her. Good-afternoon.”
“Who the wonder is Nanny Tasson?” cried Temple as we went on.
“Only a little friendless child. Her brother was our scout when we first came, and he died.”
“Oh, by Jove, Ludlow! Look there!”
I turned at Temple’s words. A gig was dashing by as large as life; Tod in it, driving Sophie Chalk. Behind it dashed another gig, containing Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns. Fred Temple laughed.
“Mrs. Everty’s unmistakably charming,” said he, “and we don’t know any real harm of her, but if I were Ap-Jenkyns I should not let my wife be quite her bosom companion. As to Todhetley, I think he’s a gone calf.”
Whitney came to our room as I got in. He had been invited to the luncheon by Mrs. Everty, but excused himself, and she asked Fred Temple in his place.
“Well, Johnny, how did it go off?”
“Oh, pretty well. Lobster-salad and other good things. Why did not you go?”
“Where’s Tod?” he rejoined, not answering the question.
“Out on a driving-party. Sophie Chalk and the Ap-Jenkynses.”
Whitney whistled through the verse of an old song: “Froggy would a-wooing go.” “I say, Johnny,” he said presently, “you had better give Tod a hint to take care of himself. That thing will go too far if he does not look out.”
“As if Tod would mind me! Give him the hint yourself, Bill.”
“I said half a word to him this morning after chapel: he turned on me and accused me of being jealous.”
We both laughed.
“I had a letter from home yesterday,” Bill went on, “ordering me to keep clear of Madam Sophie.”
“No! Who from?”
“The mother. And Miss Deveen, who is staying with them, put in a postscript.”
“How did they know Sophie Chalk was here?”
“Through me. One wet afternoon I wrote a long epistle to Harry, telling him, amidst other items, that Sophie Chalk was here, turning some of our heads, especially Todhetley’s. Harry, like a flat, let Helen get hold of the letter, and she read it aloud, pro bono publico. There was nothing in it that I might not have written to Helen herself; but Mr. Harry won’t get another from me in a hurry. Sophie seems to have fallen to a discount with the mother and Miss Deveen.”
Bill Whitney did not know what I knew—the true story of the emeralds.
“And that’s why I did not go to the lunch to-day, Johnny. Who’s this?”
It was the scout. He came in to bring in a small parcel, daintily done up in white paper.
“Something for you, sir,” he said to me. “A boy has just left it.”
“It can’t be for me—that I know of. It looks like wedding-cake.”
“Open it,” said Bill. “Perhaps one of the grads has gone and got married.”
We opened it together, laughing. A tiny paste-board box loomed out with a jeweller’s name on it; inside it was a chased gold cross, attached to a slight gold chain.
“It’s a mistake, Bill. I’ll do it up again.”
Tod came back in time for dinner. Seeing the little parcel on the mantelshelf, he asked what it was. So I told him—something that the jeweller’s shop must have sent to our room by mistake. Upon that, he tore the paper open; called the shop people hard names for sending it into college, and put the box in his pocket. Which showed that it was for him.
I went to Sophie’s in the evening, having promised her, but not as soon as Tod, for I stayed to finish some Greek. Whitney went with me, in spite of his orders from home. The luncheon-party had all assembled there with the addition of Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns. Sophie sat behind the tea-tray, dispensing tea; Gaiton handed the plum-cake. She wore a silken robe of opal tints; white lace fell over her wrists and bracelets; in her hair, brushed off her face, fluttered a butterfly with silver wings; and on her neck was the chased gold cross that had come to our rooms a few hours before.
“Tod’s just a fool, Johnny,” said Whitney in my ear. “Upon my word, I think he is. And she’s a syren!—and it was at our house he met her first!”
After Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns left, for she was tired, they began cards. Sophie was engrossing Gaiton, and Tod sat down to écarté. He refused at first, but Richardson drew him on.
“I’ll show Tod the letter I had from home,” said Whitney to me as we went out. “What can possess him to go and buy gold crosses for her? She’s married.”
“Gaiton and Richardson buy her things also, Bill.”
“They don’t know how to spend their money fast enough. I wouldn’t: I know that.”
Tod and Gaiton came in together soon after I got in. Gaiton just looked in to say good-night, and proposed that we should breakfast with him on the morrow, saying he’d ask Whitney also: and then he went up to his own rooms.
Tod fell into one of his thinking fits. He had work to do, but he sat staring at the fire, his legs stretched out. With all his carelessness he had a conscience and some forethought. I told him Bill Whitney had had a lecture from home, touching Sophie Chalk, and I conclude he heard. But he made no sign.
“I wish to goodness you wouldn’t keep up that tinkling, Johnny,” he said by-and-by, in a tone of irritation.
The “tinkling” was a bit of quiet harmony. However, I shut down the piano, and went and sat by the fire, opposite to him. His brow looked troubled; he was running his hands through his hair.
“I wonder whether I could raise some money, Johnny,” he began, after a bit.
“How much money?”
“A hundred, or so.”
“You’d have to pay a hundred and fifty for doing it.”
“Confound it, yes! And besides–”
“Besides what?”
“Nothing.”
“Look here, Tod: we should have gone on as straightly and steadily as need be but for her. As it is, you are wasting your time and getting out of the way of work. What’s going to be the end of it?”
“Don’t know myself, Johnny.”
“Do you ever ask yourself?”
“Where’s the use of asking?” he returned, after a pause. “If I ask it of myself at night, I forget it by the morning.”
“Pull up at once, Tod. You’d be in time.”
“Yes, now: don’t know that I shall be much longer,” said Tod candidly. He was in a soft mood that night; an unusual thing with him. “Some awful complication may come of it: a few writs or something.”
“Sophie Chalk can’t do you any good, Tod.”
“She has not done me any harm.”
“Yes she has. She has unsettled you from the work that you came to Oxford to do; and the play in her rooms has caused you to run into debt that you don’t know how to get out of: it’s nearly as much harm as she can do you.”
“Is it?”
“As much as she can do any honest fellow. Tod, if you were to lapse into crooked paths, you’d break the good old pater’s heart. There’s nobody in the world he cares for as he cares for you.”
Tod sat twitching his whiskers. I could not understand his mood: all the carelessness and the fierceness had quite gone out of him.
“It’s the thought of the father that pulls me up, lad. What a cross-grained world it is! Why should a bit of pleasure be hedged in with thorns?”
“If we don’t go to bed we shall not be up for chapel.”
“You can go to bed.”
“Why do you drive her out, Tod?”
“Why does the sun shine?” was the lucid answer.
“I saw you with her in that gig to-day.”
“We only went four miles. Four out and four in.”
“You may be driving her rather too far some day—fourteen, or so.”
“I don’t think she’d be driven. With all her simplicity, she knows how to take care of herself.”
Simplicity! I looked at him; and saw he spoke the word in good faith. He was simple.
“She has a husband, Tod.”
“Well?”
“Do you suppose he would like to see you driving her abroad?—and all you fellows in her rooms to the last minute any of you dare stop out?”
“That’s not my affair. It’s his.”
“Any way, Everty might come down upon the lot of you some of these fine days, and say things you’d not like. She’s to blame. Why, you heard what that old lady in the brown bonnet said—that her husband must think Sophie was staying with her.”
“The fire’s low, and I’m cold,” said Tod. “Good-night, Johnny.”
He went into his room, and I to mine.
A few years ago, there appeared a short poem called “Amor Mundi.”1 While reading it, I involuntarily recalled this past experience at Oxford, for it described a young fellow’s setting-out on the downward path, as Tod did. Two of life’s wayfarers start on their long life journey: the woman first; the man sees and joins her; then speaks to her.
“Oh, where are you going, with your love-locks flowing,
And the west wind blowing along the narrow track?”
“This downward path is easy, come with me, an it please ye;
We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back.”
So they two went together in the sunny August weather;
The honey-blooming heather lay to the left and right:
And dear she was to dote on, her small feet seemed to float on
The air, like soft twin-pigeons too sportive to alight.
And so they go forth, these two, on their journey, revelling in the summer sunshine and giving no heed to their sliding progress; until he sees something in the path that startles him. But the syren accounts for it in some plausible way; it lulls his fear, and onward they go again. In time he sees something worse, halts, and asks her again:
“Oh, what’s that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?”
“Oh, that’s a thin dead body that waits the Eternal term.”
The answer effectually arouses him, and he pulls up in terror, asking her to turn. She answers again, and he knows his fate.
“Turn again, oh my sweetest! Turn again, false and fleetest!
This way, whereof thou weetest, is surely Hell’s own track!”
“Nay, too late for cost counting, nay too steep for hill-mounting,
This downward path is easy, but there’s no turning back.”
Shakespeare tells us that there is a tide in the affairs of man, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: omitted, all the voyage of the after life is spent in shoals and miseries. That will apply to other things besides fortune. I fully believe that after a young fellow has set out on the downward path, in almost all cases there’s a chance given him of pulling up again, if he only is sufficiently wise and firm to seize upon it. The opportunity was to come for Tod. He had started; there was no doubt of that; but he had not got down very far yet and could go backward almost as easily as forward. Left alone, he would probably make a sliding run of it, and descend into the shoals. But the chance for him was at hand.
Our commons and Whitney’s went up to Gaiton’s room in the morning, and we breakfasted there. Lecture that day was at eleven, but I had work to do beforehand. So had Tod, for the matter of that; plenty of it. I went down to mine, but Tod stayed up with the two others.
Bursting into our room, as a fellow does when he is late for anything, I saw at the open window somebody that I thought must be Mr. Brandon’s ghost. It took me aback, and for a moment I stood staring.
“Have you no greeting for me, Johnny Ludlow?”
“I was lost in surprise, sir. I am very glad to see you.”
“I dare say you are!” he returned, as if he doubted my word. “It’s a good half-hour that I have waited here. You’ve been at a breakfast-party!”
He must have got that from the scout. “Not at a party, sir. Gaiton asked us to take our commons up, and breakfast with him in his room.”
“Who is Gaiton?”
“He is Lord Gaiton. One of the students at Christchurch.”
“Never mind his being a lord. Is he any good?”
I could not say Gaiton was particularly good, so passed the question over, and asked Mr. Brandon when he came to Oxford.
“I got here at mid-day yesterday. How are you getting on?”
“Oh, very well, sir.”
“Been in any rows?”
“No, sir.”
“And Todhetley? How is he getting on?”
I should have said very well to this; it would never have done to say very ill, but Tod and Bill Whitney interrupted the answer. They looked just as much surprised as I had been. After talking a bit, Mr. Brandon left, saying he should expect us all three at the Mitre in the evening when dinner in Hall was over.
“What the deuce brings him at Oxford?” cried Tod.
Whitney laughed. “I’ll lay a crown he has come to look after Johnny and his morals.”
“After the lot of us,” added Tod, pushing his books about. “Look here, you two. I’m not obliged to go bothering to that Mitre in the evening, and I shan’t. You’ll be enough without me.”
“It won’t do, Tod,” I said. “He expects you.”
“What if he does? I have an engagement elsewhere.”
“Break it.”
“I shall not do anything of the kind. There! Hold your tongue, Johnny, and push the ink this way.”
Tod held to that. So when I and Whitney reached the Mitre after dinner, we said he was unable to get off a previous engagement, putting the excuse as politely as we could.
“Oh,” said old Brandon, twitching his yellow silk handkerchief off his head, for he had been asleep before the fire. “Engaged elsewhere, is he! With the lady I saw him driving out yesterday, I suppose: a person with blue feathers on her head.”
This struck us dumb. Bill said nothing, neither did I.
“It was Miss Sophie Chalk, I presume,” went on old Brandon, ringing the bell. “Sit down, boys; we’ll have tea up.”
The tea and coffee must have been ordered beforehand, for they came in at once. Mr. Brandon drank four cups of tea, and ate a plate of bread-and-butter and some watercress.
“Tea is my best meal in the day,” he said. “You young fellows all like coffee best. Don’t spare it. What’s that by you, William Whitney?—anchovy toast? Cut that pound-cake, Johnny.”
Nobody could say, with all his strict notions, that Mr. Brandon was not hospitable. He’d have ordered up the Mitre’s whole larder had he thought we could eat it. And never another word did he say about Tod until the things had gone away.
Then he began, quietly at first: he sitting on one side the fire, I and Bill on the other. Touching gently on this, alluding to that, our eyes opened in more senses than one; for we found that he knew all about Sophie Chalk’s sojourn in the town, the attention she received from the undergraduates, and Tod’s infatuation.
“What’s Todhetley’s object in going there?” he asked.
“Amusement, I think, sir,” hazarded Bill.
“Does he gamble there for amusement too?”
Where on earth had old Brandon got hold of all this?
“How much has Todhetley lost already?” he continued. “He is in debt, I know. Not for the first time from the same cause.”
Bill stared. He knew nothing of that old episode in London with the Clement-Pells. I felt my face flush.
“Tod does not care for playing really, sir. But the cards are there, and he sees others play and gets drawn in to join.”
“Well, what amount has he lost this time, Johnny?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“But you know that he is in debt?”
“I—yes, sir. Perhaps he is a little.”
“Look here, boys,” said old Brandon. “Believing that matters were not running in a satisfactory groove with some of you, I came down to Oxford yesterday to look about me a bit—for I don’t intend that Johnny Ludlow shall lapse into bad ways, if I can keep him out of them. Todhetley may have made up his mind to go to the deuce, but he shall not take Johnny with him. I hear no good report of Todhetley; he neglects his studies for the sake of a witch, and is in debt over his head and shoulders.”
“Who could have told you that, sir?”
“Never you mind, Johnny Ludlow; I dare say you know it’s pretty true. Now look here—as I said just now. I mean to see what I can do towards saving Todhetley, for the sake of my good old friend, the Squire, and for his dead mother’s sake; and I appeal to you both to aid me. You can answer my questions if you will; and you are not children, that you should make an evasive pretence of ignorance. If I find matters are too hard for me to cope with, I shall send for the Squire and Sir John Whitney; their influence may effect what mine cannot. If I can deal with the affair successfully, and save Todhetley from himself, I’ll do so, and say nothing about it anywhere. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. To begin with, what amount of debt has Todhetley got into?”
It seemed to be a choice of evils: but the least of them was to speak. Bill honestly said he would tell in a minute if he knew. I knew little more than he; only that Tod had been saying the night before he wished he could raise a hundred pounds.
“A hundred pounds!” repeated old Brandon, nodding his head like a Chinese mandarin. “Pretty well, that, for a first term at Oxford. Well, we’ll leave that for the present, and go to other questions. What snare and delusion is drawing him on to make visits to this person, this Sophie Chalk? What does he purpose? Is it marriage?”
Marriage! Bill and I both looked up at him.
“She is married already, sir. Did you not know it?”
“Married already! Who says so?”
So I told him all about it—as much as I knew—and that her husband, Mr. Everty, had been to Oxford once or twice to see her.
“Well, that’s a relief,” cried Mr. Brandon, drawing a deep breath, as though a fear of some kind had been lifted from his mind. And then he fell into a reverie, his head nodding incessantly, and his yellow handkerchief in his hand keeping time to it.
“If it’s better in one sense, it’s worse in another,” he squeaked. “Todhetley’s in love with her, I suppose!”
“Something like it, sir,” said Bill.
“What brainless fools some of you young men can be!”
But it was then on the stroke of nine, when Old Tom would peal out. Mr. Brandon hurried us away: he seemed to understand the notions of University life as well as we did: ordering us to say nothing to Tod, as he intended to speak to him on the morrow.
And we concluded that he did. Tod came stalking in during the afternoon in a white rage with somebody, and I thought it might be with old Brandon.
The time passed. Mr Brandon stayed on at the Mitre as though he meant to make it his home for good, and was evidently watching. Tod seemed to be conscious of it, and to exist in a chronic state of irritation. Sophie Chalk stayed on also, and Tod was there more than ever. The affair had got wind somehow—I mean Tod’s infatuation for her—and was talked of in the colleges. Richardson fell ill about that time: at least, he met with an accident which confined him to his bed: and the play at Mrs. Everty’s was not much to speak of: I did not go, Mr. Brandon had interdicted it. Thus the time went on, and Passion Week was coming in.
“Are you running for a wager, Johnny Ludlow?”
I was running down to the river and had nearly run over Mr. Brandon, who was strolling along with his hands under his coat-tails. It was Saturday afternoon, and some of us were going out rowing. Mr. Brandon came down to see us embark.
As we all stood there, who should loom into sight but Sophie Chalk. She was leading a little mouse-coloured dog by a piece of red tape, one that Fred Temple had given her; and her shining hair was a sight to be seen in the sunlight; Tod walked by her with his arms folded. They halted to talk with some of us for a minute, and then went on, Madam Sophie giving old Brandon a saucy stare from her wide-open blue eyes. He had stood as still as a post, giving never a word to either of them.
That same night, when Tod and I were in our room alone, Mr. Brandon walked in. It was pretty late, but Tod was about to depart on his visit to High Street. As if the entrance of Mr. Brandon had been the signal for him to bolt, he put on his trencher and turned to the door. Quick as thought, Mr. Brandon interposed himself.