Tom Brown at Oxford

CHAPTER XX

THE RECONCILIATION

Tom rose in the morning with a presentiment that all would be over now before long, and to make his presentiment come true, resolved, before night, to go himself to Hardy and give in. All he reserved to himself was the liberty to do it in the manner which would be least painful to himself. He was greatly annoyed, therefore, when Hardy did not appear at morning chapel; for he had fixed on the leaving chapel as the least unpleasant time in which to begin his confession, and was going to catch Hardy then, and follow him to his rooms. All the morning, too, in answer to his inquiries by his scout Wiggins, Hardy's scout replied that his master was out, or busy. He did not come to the boats, he did not appear in hall; so that, after hall, when Tom went back to his own rooms, as he did at once, instead of sauntering out of college, or going to a wine party, he was quite out of heart at his bad luck, and began to be afraid that he would have to sleep on his unhealed wound another night.

He sat down in an arm-chair, and fell to musing, and thought how wonderfully his life had been changed in these few short weeks. He could hardly get back across the gulf which separated him from the self who had come back into those rooms after Easter, full of anticipations of the pleasures and delights of the coming summer term and vacation. To his own surprise he didn't seem much to regret the loss of his chateaux en Espange, and felt a sort of grim satisfaction in their utter overthrow.

While occupied with these thoughts, he heard talking on his stairs, accompanied by a strange lumbering tread. These came nearer; and at last stopped just outside his door, which opened in another moment, and Wiggins announced —

"Capting Hardy, sir."

Tom jumped to his legs, and felt himself colour painfully.

"Here, Wiggins," said he, "wheel round that arm-chair for Captain Hardy. I am so very glad to see you, sir," and he hastened round himself to meet the old gentleman, holding out his hand, which the visitor took very cordially, as soon as he had passed his heavy stick to his left hand, and balanced himself safely upon it.

"Thank you, sir; thank you," said the old man after a few moments' pause, "I find your companion ladders rather steep;" and then he sat down with some difficulty.

Tom took the Captain's stick and undress cap, and put them reverentially on his sideboard; and then, to get rid of some little nervousness which he couldn't help feeling, bustled to his cupboard, and helped Wiggins to place glasses and biscuits on the table. "Now, sir, what will you take? I have port, sherry and whisky here, and can get you anything else. Wiggins, run to Hinton's and get some dessert."

"No dessert, thank you, for me," said the Captain; "I'll take a cup of coffee, or a glass of grog, or anything you have ready. Don't open wine for me, pray, sir."

"Oh, it is all the better for being opened," said Tom, working away at a bottle of sherry with his corkscrew, "and Wiggins, get some coffee and anchovy toast in a quarter of an hour; and just put out some tumblers and toddy ladles, and bring up boiling water with the coffee."

While making his hospitable preparations, Tom managed to get many side glances at the old man, who sat looking steadily and abstractly before him into the fireplace, and was much struck and touched by the picture. The sailor wore a well-preserved old undress uniform coat and waistcoat, and white drill trousers; he was a man of middle height, but gaunt and massive, and Tom recognized the framework of the long arms and grand shoulders and chest which he had so often admired in the son. His right leg was quite stiff from an old wound on the knee cap; the left eye was sightless, and the scar of a cutlass travelled down the drooping lid and on to the weather-beaten cheek below. His head was high and broad, his hair and whiskers silver white, while the shaggy eyebrows were scarcely grizzled. His face was deeply lined, and the long, clean-cut lower jaw, and drawn look about the mouth, gave a grim expression to the face at the first glance, which wore off as you looked, leaving, however, on most men who thought about it, the impression which fastened on our hero, "An awkward man to have met at the head of boarders towards the end of the great war."

In a minute or two, Tom, having completed his duties, faced the old sailor, much reassured by his covert inspection; and, pouring himself out a glass of sherry, pushed the decanter across, and drank to his guest.

"Your health, sir," he said, "and thank you very much for coming up to see me."

"Thank you, sir," said the Captain, rousing himself and filling, "I drink to you, sir. The fact is, I took a great liberty in coming up to your rooms in this off-hand way, without calling or sending up, but you'll excuse it in an old sailor." Here the Captain took to his glass, and seemed a little embarrassed. Tom felt embarrassed also, feeling that something was coming, and could only think of asking how the Captain liked the sherry. The Captain liked the sherry very much. Then, suddenly clearing his throat, he went on. "I felt, sir, that you would excuse me, for I have a favor to ask of you." He paused again, while Tom muttered something about "great pleasure," and then went on.

"You know my son, Mr. Brown?"

"Yes, sir; he has been my best friend up here; I owe more to him than to any man in Oxford."

The Captain's eye gleamed with pleasure as he replied, "Jack is a noble fellow, Mr. Brown, though I say it who am his father. I've often promised myself a cruise to Oxford since he has been here. I came here at last yesterday, and have been having a long yarn with him. I found there was something on his mind. He can't keep anything from his old father; and so I drew out of him that he loves you as David loved Jonathan. He made my old eye very dim while he was talking of you, Mr. Brown. And then I found that you two are not as you used to be. Some coldness sprung up between you; but what about I couldn't get at. Young men are often hasty-I know I was, forty years ago-Jack says he has been hasty with you. Now, that boy is all I have in the world, Mr. Brown. I know my boy's friend will like to send an old man home with a light heart. So I made up my mind to come over to you and ask you to make it up with Jack. I gave him the slip after dinner and here I am."

"Oh, sir, did he really ask you to come to me?"

"No, sir," said the Captain, "he did not-I am sorry for it-I think Jack must be in the wrong, for he said he had been too hasty, and yet he wouldn't ask me to come to you and make it up. But he is young, sir; young and proud. He said he couldn't move in it, his mind was made up; he was wretched enough over it, but the move must come from you. And so that's the favor I have to ask, that you will make it up with Jack. It isn't often a young man can do such a favor to an old one – to an old father with one son. You'll not feel the worse for having done it, if it's ever so hard to do, when you come to be my age." And the old man looked wistfully across the table, the muscles about his mouth quivering as he ended.

Tom sprang from his chair, and grasped the old sailor's hand, as he felt the load pass out of his heart. "Favour, sir!" he said, "I have been a mad fool enough already in this business – I should have been a double-dyed scoundrel, like enough, by this time but for your son, and I've quarrelled with him for stopping me at the pit's mouth. Favor! If God will, I'll prove somehow where the favor lies, and what I owe to him; and to you, sir, for coming to me tonight. Stop here two minutes, sir, and I'll run down and bring him over."

Tom tore away to Hardy's door and knocked. There was no pausing in the passage now. "Come in." He opened the door but did not enter, and for a moment or two could not speak. The rush of associations which the sight of the well-known old rickety furniture, and the figure which was seated, book in hand, with its back to the door and its feet against one side of the mantel-piece, called up, choked him.

"May I come in?" he said at last.

He saw the figure give a start, and the book trembled a little, but then came the answer, slow but firm —

"I have not changed my opinion."

"No; dear old boy, but I have," and Tom rushed across to his friend, dearer than ever to him now, and threw his arm round his neck; and, if the un-English truth must out had three parts of a mind to kiss the rough face which was now working with strong emotion.

"Thank God!" said Hardy, as he grasped the hand which hung over his shoulder.

"And now come over to my room; your father is there waiting for us."

"What, the dear old governor? That's what he has been after, is it? I couldn't think where he could have 'hove to,' as he would say."

Hardy put on his cap, and the two hurried back to Tom's rooms, the lightest hearts in the University of Oxford.

CHAPTER XXI

CAPTAIN HARDY ENTERTAINED BY ST. AMBROSE

There are moments in the life of the most self-contained and sober of us all, when we fairly bubble over, like a full bottle of champagne with the cork out; and this was one of them for our hero who however, be it remarked, was neither self-contained nor sober by nature. When they got back to his rooms, he really hardly knew what to do to give vent to his lightness of heart; and Hardy, though self-contained and sober enough in general, was on this occasion almost as bad as his friend. They rattled on, talked out the thing which came uppermost, whatever the subject might chance to be; but whether grave or gay, it always ended after a minute or two in jokes not always good, and chaff, and laughter. The poor captain was a little puzzled at first, and made one or two endeavours to turn the talk into improving channels. But very soon he saw that Jack was thoroughly happy, and that was always enough for him. So he listened to one and the other, joining cheerily in the laugh whenever he could; and when he couldn't catch the joke, looking like a benevolent old lion, and making as much belief that he had understood it all as the simplicity and truthfulness of his character would allow.

The spirits of the two friends seemed inexhaustible. They lasted out the bottle of sherry which Tom had uncorked, and the remains of a bottle of his famous port. He had tried hard to be allowed to open a fresh bottle, but the Captain had made such a point of his not doing so, that he had given in for hospitality's sake. They lasted out the coffee and anchovy toast; after which the Captain made a little effort at moving, which was supplicatingly stopped by Tom.

"Oh, pray don't go, Captain Hardy. I haven't been so happy for months. Besides, I must brew you a glass of grog. I pride myself on my brew. Your son there will tell you that I am a dead hand at it. Here, Wiggins, a lemon!" shouted Tom.

"Well, for once in a way, I suppose, eh, Jack?" said the Captain, looking at his son.

"Oh yes, father. You mayn't know it, Brown, but, if there is one thing harder to do than another, it is to get an old sailor like my father to take a glass of grog at night."

The Captain laughed a little laugh, and shook his thick stick at his son, who went on.

"And as for asking him to take a pipe with it – "

"Dear me," said Tom, "I quite forgot. I really beg your pardon, Captain Hardy; and he put down the lemon he was squeezing, and produced a box of cigars.

"It's all Jack's nonsense, sir," said the Captain, holding out his hand, nevertheless, for the box.

"Now, father, don't be absurd," interrupted Hardy, snatching the box away from him. "You might as well give him a glass of absinthe. He is church-warden at home and can't smoke anything but a long clay."

"I'm very sorry I haven't one here, but I can send out in a minute." And Tom was making for the door to shout for Wiggins.

"No, don't call. I'll fetch some from my rooms."

When Hardy left the room, Tom squeezed away at his lemon, and was preparing himself for a speech to Captain Hardy full of confession and gratitude. But the Captain was before him, and led the conversation into a most unexpected channel.

"I suppose, now, Mr. Brown," he began, "you don't find any difficulty in construing your Thucydides?"

"Indeed, I do, sir," said Tom, laughing. "I find him a very tough old customer, except in the simplest narrative."

"For my part," said the Captain, "I can't get on at all, I find, without a translation. But you see, sir, I had none of the advantages which you young men have up here. In fact, Mr. Brown, I didn't begin Greek till Jack was nearly ten years old." The Captain in his secret heart was prouder of his partial victory over the Greek tongue in his old age, than of his undisputed triumphs over the French in his youth, and was not averse to talking of it.

"I wonder that you ever began it at all, sir," said Tom.

"You wouldn't wonder if you knew how an uneducated man like me feels, when he comes to a place like Oxford."

"Uneducated, sir!" said Tom. "Why your education has been worth twice as much, I'm sure, as any we get here."

"No, sir; we never learnt anything in the navy when I was a youngster, except a little rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn't got any regular place to stow away what he gets into his brains, and so it lies tumbling about in the hold, and he loses it, or it gets damaged and is never ready for use. You see what I mean, Mr. Brown?"

"Yes, sir. But I'm afraid we don't all of us get much method up here. Do you really enjoy reading Thucydides now, Captain Hardy?"

"Indeed I do, sir, very much," said the captain. "There's a great deal in his history to interest an old sailor, you know. I dare say, now, that I enjoy those parts about the sea-fights more than you do." The Captain looked at Tom as if he had made an audacious remark.

"I am sure you do, sir," said Tom, smiling.

"Because you see, Mr. Brown," said the Captain, "when one has been in that sort of thing oneself, one likes to read how people in other times managed, and to think what one would have done in their place. I don't believe that the Greeks just at that time were very resolute fighters, though. Nelson or Collingwood would have finished that war in a year or two."

"Not with triremes, do you think, sir?" said Tom.

"Yes, sir, with any vessels which were to be had," said the Captain. "But you are right about triremes. It has always been a great puzzle to me how those triremes could have been worked. How do you understand the three banks of oars, Mr. Brown?"

"Well, sir, I suppose they must have been one above the other somehow."

"But the upper bank must have had oars twenty feet long, and more, in that case," said the Captain. "You must allow for leverage, you see."

"Of course, sir. When one comes to think of it, it isn't easy to see how they were manned and worked," said Tom.

"Now my notion about triremes – " began the Captain, holding the head of his stick with both hands, and looking across at Tom.

"Why, father!" cried Hardy, returning at the moment with the pipes, and catching the Captain's last word, "on one of your hobby horses already! You're not safe! – I can't leave you for two minutes. Here's a long pipe for you. How in the world did he get on triremes?"

"I hardly know," said Tom; "but I want to hear what Captain Hardy thinks about them. You were saying, sir, that the upper oars must have been twenty feet long at least."

"My notion is – " said the Captain, taking the pipe and tobacco-pouch from his son's hand.

"Stop one moment," said Hardy; "I found Blake at my rooms, and asked him to come over here. You don't object?"

"Object, my dear fellow! I'm much obliged to you. Now, Hardy, would you like to have anyone else? I can send in a minute."

"No one, thank you."

"You won't stand on ceremony now, will you, with me?" said Tom.

"You see I haven't."

"And you never will again?"

"No, never. Now, father, you can heave ahead about those oars."

The Captain went on charging his pipe, and proceeded: "You see, Mr. Brown, they must have been at least twenty feet long, because, if you allow the lowest bank of oars to have been three feet above the water-line, which even Jack thinks they must have been – "

"Certainly. That height at least to do any good," said Hardy.

"Not that I think Jack's opinion worth much on the point," went on his father.

"It's very ungrateful of you, then, to say so, father," said Hardy, "after all the time I've wasted trying to make it all clear to you."

"I don't say that Jack's is not a good opinion on most things, Mr. Brown," said the Captain; "but he is all at sea about triremes. He believes that the men of the uppermost bank rowed somehow like lightermen on the Thames, walking up and down."

"I object to your statement of my faith, father," said Hardy.

"Now you know, Jack, you have said so, often."

"I have said they must have stood up to row, and so – "

"You would have had awful confusion, Jack. You must have order between decks when you're going into action. Besides, the rowers had cushions."

"That old heresy of yours again."

"Well, but Jack, they had cushions. Didn't the rowers who were marched across the Isthmus to man the ships which were to surprise the Piraeus, carry their oars, thongs and cushions?"

"If they did, your conclusion doesn't follow, father, that they sat on them to row."

"You hear, Mr. Brown," said the Captain; "he admits my point about the cushions."

"Oh, father, I hope you used to fight the French more fairly," said Hardy.

"But didn't he? Didn't Jack admit my point?"

"Implicitly, sir, I think," said Tom, catching Hardy's eye, which was dancing with fun.

"Of course he did. You hear that, Jack. Now my notion about triremes – "

A knock at the door interrupted the Captain again, and Blake came in and was introduced.

"Mr. Blake is almost our best scholar, father; you should appeal to him about the cushions."

"I am very proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said the Captain; "I have heard my son speak of you often."

"We were talking about triremes," said Tom; "Captain Hardy thinks the oars must have been twenty feet long."

"Not easy to come forward well with that sort of oar," said Blake; "they must have pulled a slow stroke."

"Our torpid would have bumped the best of them," said Hardy.

"I don't think they could have made more than six knots," said the Captain; "but yet they used to sink one another, and a light boat going only six knots couldn't break another in two amid-ships. It's a puzzling subject, Mr. Blake."

"It is, sir," said Mr. Blake; "if we only had some of their fo'castle songs we should know more about it. I'm afraid they had no Dibdin."

"I wish you would turn one of my father's favorite songs into anapaests for him," said Hardy.

"What are they?" said Blake.

"'Tom Bowling,' or 'The wind that blows, and the ship that goes, and the lass that loves a sailor.'"

"By the way, why shouldn't we have a song?" said Tom.

"What do you say, Captain Hardy?"

The Captain winced a little as he saw his chance of expounding his notion as to triremes slipping away, but answered:

"By all means, sir; Jack must sing for me though. Did you ever hear him sing 'Tom Bowling!'"

"No, never, sir. Why, Hardy, you never told me you could sing."

"You never asked me," said Hardy, laughing; "but if I sing for my father, he must spin us a yarn."

"Oh yes; will you, sir!"

"I'll do my best, Mr. Brown; but I don't know that you'll care to listen to my old yarns. Jack thinks everybody must like them as well as he, who used to hear them when he was a child."

"Thank you, sir; that's famous. Now Hardy, strike up."

"After you. You must set the example in your own rooms."

So Tom sang his song. And the noise brought Drysdale and another man up, who were loitering in quad on the lookout for something to do. Drysdale and the Captain recognised one another, and were friends at once. And then Hardy sang "Tom Bowling," in a style which astonished the rest not a little, and as usual nearly made his father cry; and Blake sang, and Drysdale and the other man. And then the Captain was called on for his yarn; and, the general voice being for "something that had happened to him," "the strangest thing that had ever happened to him at sea," the old gentleman laid down his pipe and sat up in his chair with his hands on his stick and began.

THE CAPTAIN'S STORY

It will be forty years ago next month since the ship I was then in came home from the West Indies station, and was paid off. I had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very glad to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth, asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from an old sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of the fleet. He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old sailor – what you young men would call "an old salt" – and couldn't live out of sight of the blue sea and the shipping. It is a disease that a good many of us take who have spent our best years on the sea. I have it myself – a sort of feeling that we want to be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and see a hill on this side and a hill on that. It's wonderful to see the trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn't come so home to an old sailor. I know that we're all just as much under the Lord's hand on shore as at sea; but you can't read in a book you haven't been used to, and they that go down to the sea in ships, they see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. It isn't their fault if they don't see his wonders on the land so easily as other people.

But, for all that, there's no man enjoys a cruise in the country more than a sailor. It's forty years ago since I started for Plymouth, but I haven't forgotten the road a bit or how beautiful it was; all through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and then by the mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me three days to get to Plymouth, for we didn't get about so quick in those days.

The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went about with him to the ships in the bay, and through the dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old Commodore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set his whole heart upon. He was an old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to live with him, and was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some one who would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl's, but brave as a lion and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat together; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about the great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had been on.

Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from the Commodore, to help things on. After a month or two I was appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the Commodore and he got his boy a midshipman's berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth himself a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The old gentleman came on board to see the boy's hammock slung, and went below into the cockpit to make sure that all was right. He only left us by the pilot boat when we were well out in the Channel. He was very low at parting with his boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised to write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a chance.