Works of Ellen Wood, page 1263
“I’ll go in for the boating and fishing and driving, Johnny; and you can go in for the books.”
“All right, Tod.” I knew what he meant. It was not that he did not intend to take a fair amount of work: but to exist without a good share of out-of-door life also, would have been hard lines for Tod.
The Sunday services were beautiful. The first Sunday of term was a high day, and the cathedral was filled. Orders of admission to the public were not necessary that day, and a general congregation mixed with the students. Sir John and the Squire were staying at the Mitre until Monday. After service we went to promenade in the Broad Walk — and it seemed that everybody else went.
“Look there!” cried the Squire, “at this tall clergyman coming along. I am sure he is one of the canons of Worcester.”
It was Mr. Fortescue — Honourable and Reverend. He halted for a minute to exchange greetings with Sir John Whitney, whom he knew, and then passed on his way.
“There’s some pretty girls about, too,” resumed the Squire, gazing around. “Not that I’d advise you boys to look much at them. Wonder if they often walk here?”
Before a week had gone by, we were quite at home; had shaken down into our new life as passengers shake down in their places in an omnibus; and made lots of friends. Some I liked; some I did not like. There was one fellow always coming in — a tall dark man with crisp hair; his name Richardson. He had plenty of money and kept dogs and horses, and seemed to go in for every kind of fast life the place afforded. Of work he did none; and report ran that he was being watched by the proctor, with whom he was generally in hot water. Altogether he was not in good odour: and he had a way of mocking at religion as though he were an atheist.
“I heard a bit about Richardson just now,” cried Whitney, one morning that he had brought his commons in to breakfast with us — and the fields outside were white with snow. “Mayhew says he’s a scamp.”
“Don’t think he’s much else, myself,” said Tod. “I say, just taste this butter! It’s shockingly strong. Wonder what it is made of?”
“Mayhew says he’s a liar as well as a villain. There’s no speaking after him. Last term a miserable affair occurred in the town; the authorities could not trace it home to Richardson though they suspected he was the black sheep. Lots of fellows knew he was: but he denied it out-and-out. I think we had better not have much to do with him.”
“He entertains jolly well,” said Tod. “Johnny, you’ve boiled these eggs too hard. And his funds seem to spring from some perpetual gold mine — —”
The door opened, and two bull-dogs burst in, leaping and howling. Richardson — they were his — followed, with little Ford; the latter a quiet, inoffensive man, who stuck to his work.
“Be quiet, you two devils!” cried Richardson, kicking his dogs. “Lie down, will you? I say, I’ve a wine-coach on to-night in my rooms, after Hall. Shall be glad to see you all at it.”
Considering the conversation he had broken in upon, none of us had a very ready answer at hand.
“I have heaps of letters to answer to-night, and must do it,” said Whitney. “Thank you all the same.”
Richardson might have read coolness in the tone; I don’t know; but he turned the back of his chair on Bill to face Tod.
“You have not letters to write, I suppose, Todhetley?”
“Not I. I leave letters to Ludlow.”
“You’ll come, then?”
“Can’t,” said Tod candidly. “Don’t mean to go in for wine-parties.”
“Oh,” said Richardson. “You’ll tell another tale when you’ve been here a bit longer. Will you be still, you brutes?”
“Hope I shan’t,” said Tod. “Wine plays the very mischief with work. Should never get any done if I went in for it.”
“Do you intend to go up for honours?” went on Richardson.
“’Twould be a signal failure if I did. I leave all that to Ludlow — as I said by the letters. See to the dogs, Richardson.”
The animals had struck up a fight. Richardson secured the one and sent the other out with a kick. Our scout was coming in, and the dog flew at him. No damage; but a great row.
“Charley,” cried Tod, “this butter’s not fit to eat.”
“Is it not, sir? What’s the matter with it?”
“The matter with it? — everything’s the matter with it.”
“Is that your scout?” asked Richardson, when the man had gone again, holding his dog between his knees as he sat.
“Yes,” said Tod. “And your dogs all but made mincemeat of him. You should teach them better manners.”
“Serve him right if they had. His name’s Tasson.”
“Tasson, is it? We call him Charley here.”
“I know. He’s a queer one.”
“How is he queer?”
“He’s pious.”
“He’s what?”
“Pious,” repeated Richardson, twisting his mouth. “A saint; a cant; a sneak.”
“Good gracious!” cried Bill Whitney.
“You think I’m jesting! Ask Ford here. Tell it, Ford.”
“Oh, it’s true,” said Ford: “true that he goes in for piety. Last term there was a freshman here named Carstairs. He was young; rather soft; no experience, you know, and he began to go the pace. One night this Charley, his scout, fell on his knees, and besought him with tears not to go to the bad; to pull up in time and remember what the end must be; and — and so on.”
“What did Carstairs do?”
“Do! why turned him out,” put in Richardson. “Carstairs, by the way, has taken his name off the books, or had to take it off.”
“Charley is civil and obliging to us,” said Whitney. “Never presumes.”
How much of the tale was gospel we knew not; but for my own part, I liked Charley. There was something about him quite different from scouts and servants in general — and by the way, I don’t think Charley was a scout, only a scout’s help — but in appearance and diction and manner he was really superior. A slim, slight young fellow of twenty, with straight fine light hair and blue eyes, and a round spot of scarlet on his thin cheeks.
“I say, Charley, they say you are pious,” began Bill Whitney that same day after lecture, when the man was bringing in the bread-and-cheese from the buttery.
He coloured to the roots of his light hair, and did not answer. Bill never minded what he said to any one.
“You were scout to Mr. Carstairs. Did you take his morals under your special protection?”
“Be quiet, Whitney,” said Tod in an undertone.
“And constitute yourself his guardian-angel-in-ordinary? Didn’t you go down on your knees to him with tears and sobs, and beseech him not to go to the bad?” went on Bill.
“There’s not a word of truth in it, sir. One evening when Mr. Carstairs was lying on his sofa, tired and ill — for he was beginning to lead a life that had no rest in it, hardly, day or night, a folded slip of paper was brought in from Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Carstairs bade me read it to him. It was to remind him of some appointment for the night. Mr. Carstairs was silent for a minute, and then burst out with a kind of sharp cry, painful to hear. ‘By Heaven, if this goes on, they’ll ruin me, body and soul! I’ve a great mind not to go.’ I did speak then, sir; I told him he was ill, and had better stay at home; and I said that it was easy enough for him to pull up then, but that when one got too far on the down-hill path it was more difficult.”
“Was that all?” cried Whitney.
“Every word, sir. I should not have spoken at all but that I had known Mr. Carstairs before we came here. Mr. Richardson made a great deal of it, and gave it quite a different colouring.”
“Did Mr. Carstairs turn you away for that?” I asked of Charley; when he came back for the things, and the other two had gone out.
“Three or four days after it happened, sir, Mr. Carstairs stopped my waiting on him again. I think it was through Mr. Richardson. Mr. Carstairs had refused to go out with him the evening it occurred.”
“You knew Mr. Carstairs before he came to Oxford. Where was it?”
“It was — —” he hesitated, and then went on. “It was at the school he was at in London, sir. I was a junior master there.”
Letting a plate fall — for I was helping to pack them, wanting the table — I stared at the fellow. “A master there and — —” and a servant here, I all but said, but I stopped the words.
“Only one of the outer masters, attending daily,” he went on quietly. “I taught writing and arithmetic, and English to the juniors.”
“But how comes it that you are here in this post, Charley?”
“I had reasons for wishing to come to live at Oxford, sir.”
“But why not have sought out something better than this?”
“I did seek, sir. But nothing of the kind was to be had, and this place offered. There’s many a one, sir, falls into the wrong post in life, and can never afterwards get into the right one.”
“But — do you — like this?”
“Like it, sir; no! But I make a living at it. One thing I shall be always grateful to Mr. Carstairs for: that he did not mention where he had known me. I should not like it to be talked of in the college, especially by Mr. Richardson.”
He disappeared with his tray as he spoke. It sounded quite mysterious. But I took the hint, and said nothing.
The matter passed. Charley did not put on any mentorship to us, and the more we saw of him the more we liked him. But an impression gradually dawned upon us that he was not strong enough for his place. Carrying a heavy tray upstairs would set him panting like an old man, and he could not run far or fast.
One day I was hard at work, Tod and Whitney being off somewhere, driving tandem, when a queer, ugly-sounding cough kept annoying me from outside: but whether it came from dog or man I could not tell. Opening the door at last, there sat Charley on the stairs, his head resting against the wall, and his cheeks brighter than a red leaf in autumn.
“What, is it you, Charley? Where did you pick up that cough?”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, starting up. “I thought your rooms were empty.”
“Come in till the fit’s over. You are in a regular draught there. Come along,” for he hesitated— “I want to shut the door.”
He came in, coughing finely, and I gave him the chair by the fire. It was nothing, he said, and would soon be gone. He had caught it a day or two back in the bleak east wind: the college was draughty, and he had to be on the run out-of-doors in all sorts of weather.
“Well, you know, Charley, putting east winds and draughts aside, you don’t seem to be quite up to your work here in point of strength.”
“I was up to it, sir, when I took it. It’s a failing in some of our family, sir, to have weak lungs. I shall be all right again, soon.”
The coughing was over, and he got up to go away, evidently not liking to intrude. There was a degree of sensitiveness about him that, of itself, might have shown he was superior to his position.
“Take a good jorum of treacle-posset, Charley, at bed-time.”
* * * * * *
Spring weather came in with February. The biting cold and snow of January disappeared, and genial sunshine warmed the earth again. The first Sunday in this same February month, from my place at morning service, looking out on the townsfolk who had come in with orders, I saw a lady, very little and pretty, staring fixedly at me from afar. The face — where had I seen her face? It seemed familiar, but I could not tell how or where I had known it. A small slight face of almost an ivory white, and wide-open light blue eyes that had plenty of confidence in them.
Sophie Chalk! I should have recognized her at the first moment but for the different mode in which her hair was dressed. Wonderful hair! A vast amount of it, and made the most of. She wore it its natural colour to-day, brown, and the red tinge on it shone like burnished gold. She knew me; that was certain; and I could not help watching her. Her eyes went roving away presently, possibly in search of Tod. I stole a glance at him; but he did not appear to see her. What brought her to Oxford?
We got out of church. I took care to hold my tongue. Tod had cared for Sophie Chalk — there could be little doubt of it — as one never cares for anybody again in life: and it might be just as well — in spite of the exposé of mademoiselle’s false ways and misdoings — that they did not meet. Syrens are syrens all the world over.
The day went on to a bright moonlight night. Tod and I, out for a stroll, were standing within the shade of the fine old Magdalen Tower, talking to a fellow of Trinity, when there came up a lady of delicate presence, the flowers in her bonnet exhaling a faint odour of perfume.
“I think I am not mistaken — I am sure — yes, I am sure it is Mr. Ludlow. And — surely that cannot be Mr. Todhetley?”
Tod wheeled round at the soft, false voice. The daintily gloved hand was held out to him; the fair, false face was bent close: and his own face turned red and white with emotion. I saw it even in the shade of the moonlight. Had she been strolling about to look for us? Most likely. A few moments more, and we were all three walking onwards together.
“Only fancy my position!” she gaily said. “Here am I, all forlorn, set down alone in this great town, and must take care of myself as I best can. The formidable gowns and caps frighten me.”
“The gowns and caps will do you no harm — Miss Chalk,” cried Tod — and he only just saved himself from saying “Sophie.”
“Do you think not,” she returned, touching the sleeve of her velvet jacket, as if to brush off a fly. “But I beg you will accord me my due style and title, Mr. Todhetley, and honour me accordingly. I am no longer Miss Chalk. I am Mrs. Everty.”
So she had married Mr. Everty after all! She minced along between us in her silk gown, her hands in her ermine muff that looked made for a doll. At the private door of a shop in High Street she halted, rang the bell, and threw the door open.
“You will walk up and take a cup of tea with me. Nay, but you must — or I shall think you want to hold yourselves above poor little me, now you are grand Oxford men.”
She went along the passage and up the stairs: there seemed no resource but to follow. In the sitting-room, which was very well furnished and looked out upon the street, a fire burned brightly; and a lamp and tea-things stood on the table.
“Where have you been? — keeping me waiting for my tea in this way! You never think of any one but yourself: never.”
The querulous complaint, and thin, shrill voice came from a small dark girl who sat at the window, peering out into the lighted street. I had not forgotten the sharp-featured sallow face and the deep-set eyes. It was Mabel Smith, the poor little lame and deformed girl I had seen in Torriana Square. She really did not look much older or bigger, and she spoke as abruptly as ever.
“I remember you, Johnny Ludlow.”
Mrs. Everty made the tea. Her dress, white one way, green the other, gleamed like silver in the lamplight. It had a quantity of white lace upon it: light green ribbons were twisted in her hair. “I should think it would be better to have those curtains drawn, Mabel. Your tea’s ready: if you will come to it.”
“But I choose to have the curtains open and I’ll take my tea here,” answered Mabel. “You may be going out again for hours, and what company should I have but the street? I don’t like to be shut up in a strange room: I might see ghosts. Johnny Ludlow, that’s a little coffee-table by the wall: if you’ll put it here it will hold my cup and saucer.”
I put it near her with her tea and plate of bread-and-butter.
“Won’t you sit by me? I am very lonely. Those other two can talk to one another.”
So I carried my cup and sat down by Mabel. The “other two,” as Mabel put it, were talking and laughing. Tod was taking a lesson in tea-making from her, and she called him awkward.
“Are you living here?” I asked of Mabel under cover of the noise.
“Living here! no,” she replied in her old abrupt fashion. “Do you think papa would let me be living over a shop in Oxford? My grandmamma lives near the town, and she invited me down on a visit to her. There was no one to bring me, and she said she would” — indicating Sophie— “and we came yesterday. Well, would you believe it? Grandmamma had meant next Saturday, and she could not take us in, having visitors already. I wanted to go back home; but she said she liked the look of Oxford, and she took these rooms for a week. Two guineas without fires and other extras: I call it dear. How came she to find you out, Johnny?”
“We met just now. She tells us she is Mrs. Everty now.”
“Oh yes, they are married. And a nice bargain Mr. Everty has in her! Her dresses must cost twenty pounds apiece. Some of them thirty pounds! Look at the lace on that one. Mrs. Smith, papa’s wife, gives her a good talking-to sometimes, telling her Mr. Everty’s income won’t stand it. I should think it would not! — though I fancy he has a small share in papa’s business now.”
“Do they live in London?”
“Oh yes, they live in London. Close to us, too! In one of the small houses in Torriana Street. She wanted to take a large house in the square like ours, but Mr. Everty was too wise.”
Talking to this girl, my thoughts back in the past, I wondered whether Sophie’s people had heard of the abstraction of Miss Deveen’s emeralds. But it was not likely. To look at her now: watching her fascinating ease, listening to her innocent reminiscences of the time we had all spent together at Lady Whitney’s, I might have supposed she had taken a dose of the waters of Lethe, and that Sophie Chalk had always been guileless as a child; an angel without wings.
