by Ellen Wood
“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.” 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?”