In the warm June weather young Angleside went up to pass his examination
for entrance at Trinity. There is nothing particularly interesting or
worthy of note in that simple process, though at that time the custom of
imposing an examination had only been recently imported from Oxford. For
one whole day forty or fifty young fellows from all parts of the country
sat at the long dining-tables in the beautiful old hall and wrote as
busily as they could, answering the printed questions before them, and
eyeing each other curiously from time to time. The weather was warm and
sultry, the trees were all in full leaf and Cambridge was deserted. Only
a few hard-reading men, who stayed up during the Long, wandered out with
books at the backs of the colleges or strayed slowly through the empty
courts, objects of considerable interest to the youths who had come up
for the entrance examination--chiefly pale men in rather shabby clothes
with old gowns and battered caps, and a general appearance of being the
worse for wear.
Angleside had been in Cambridge before and consequently lost no time in
returning to Billingsfield when the examination was over. Short was to
spend the summer at the vicarage, reading hard until the term began, when
he was to go up and compete for a minor scholarship; Angleside was to
wait until he heard whether he had passed, and was then going abroad to
meet his father and to rest from the extreme exertion of mastering the
"Apology" and the first books of the "Memorabilia." John drove over to
meet the Honourable Cornelius, who was in a terrible state of anxiety and
left him no peace on the way asking him again and again to repeat the
answers to the questions which had been proposed, reckoning up the ones
he had answered wrong and the ones he thought he might have answered
right, and coming each time to a different conclusion, finally lighting a
huge brierwood pipe and swearing "that it was a beastly shame to subject
human beings to such awful torture." John calmed him by saying he fancied
Cornelius had "got through"; for John's words were a species of gospel to
Cornelius. By the time they reached the vicarage Angleside felt sanguine
of his success.
The vicar was not visible. It was a strange and unheard of thing--there
were visitors in the drawing-room. This doubtless accounted for the fact
that the fly from the Duke's Head was standing on the opposite side of
the road. The two young men went into their study, which was on the
ground floor and opened upon the passage which led to the drawing-room
from the little hall. Angleside remarked that by leaving the door open
they would catch a glimpse of the visitor when he went out. But the
visitor stayed long. The curiosity of the two was wrought up to a high
pitch; it was many months since there had been a real visitor at the
vicarage. Angleside suggested going out and finding old Reynolds--he
always knew everything that was going on.
"If we only wait long enough," said Short philosophically, "they are sure
to come out."
"Perhaps," returned Cornelius rather doubtfully.
"They" did come out. The drawing-room door opened and there was a sound
of voices. It was a woman's voice, and a particularly sweet voice, too.
Still no one came down the passage. The lady seemed to be lingering in
taking her leave. Then there was a sound of small feet and suddenly a
little girl stood before the open door of the study, looking wonderingly
at the two young men. Short thought he had never seen such a beautiful
child. She could not have been more than seven or eight years old, and
was not tall for her age; a delicate little figure, all in black, with
long brown curls upon her shoulders, flowing abundantly from beneath a
round black sailor's hat that was set far back upon her head. The child's
face was rather pale than very fair, of a beautiful transparent paleness,
with the least tinge of colour in the cheeks; her great violet eyes gazed
wonderingly into the study, and her lips parted in childlike uncertainty,
while her little gloved hand rested on the door-post as though to get a
sense of security from something so solid.
It was only for a moment. Both the young fellows smiled at the child
unconsciously. Perhaps she thought they were laughing at her; she turned
and ran away again; then passed a second time, stealing a long glance at
the two strangers, but followed immediately by the lady, who was probably
her mother, and whose voice had been heard for the last few moments. The
lady, too, glanced in as she went by, and John Short lost his heart then
and there; not that the lady was beautiful as the little girl was, but
because there was something in her face, in her figure, in her whole
carriage, that moved the boy suddenly as she looked at him and sent the
blood rushing to his cheeks and forehead.
She seemed young, but he never thought of her age. In reality she was
nine-and-twenty years old but looked younger. She was pale, far paler
than the little girl, but she had those same violet eyes, large, deep and
sorrowful, beneath dark, smooth eyebrows that arched high and rose a
little in the middle. Her mouth was perhaps large for her face but her
full lips curved gently and seemed able to smile, though she was not
smiling. Her nose was perhaps too small--her face was far from
faultless--and it had the slightest tendency to turn up instead of down,
but it was so delicately modelled that an artist would have pardoned it
that deviation from the classic. Thick brown hair waved across her white
forehead and was hidden under the black bonnet and the veil thrown back
over it. She was dressed in black and the close-fitting gown showed off
with unconscious vanity the lines of a perfectly moulded and perfectly
supple figure. But it was especially her eyes which attracted John's
sudden attention at that first glance, her violet eyes, tender, sad,
almost pathetic, seeming to ask sympathy and marvellously able to command
it.
It was but for a moment that she paused. Then came the vicar, following
her from the drawing-room, and all three went on. Presently Short heard
the front door open and Mr. Ambrose shouted to the fly.
"Muggins! Muggins!"
No one had ever been able to say why Abraham Boosey, the publican, had
christened his henchman with an appellation so vulgar, to say the least
of it--so amazingly cacophonous. The man's real name was plain Charles
Bird; but Abraham Boosey had christened him Muggins and Muggins he
remained. Muggins had had some beer and was asleep, for the afternoon was
hot and he had anticipated his "fours."
Short saw his opportunity and darted out of the study to the hall where
the lady and her little girl were waiting while the vicar tried to rouse
the driver of the fly by shouting at him. John blushed again as he passed
close to the woman with the sad eyes; he could not tell why, but the
blood mounted to the very roots of his hair, and for a moment he felt
very foolish.
"I'll wake him up, Mr. Ambrose," he said, running out hatless into the
summer's sun.
"Wake up, you lazy beggar!" he shouted in the ear of the sleeping
Muggins, shaking him violently by the arm as he stood upon the wheel.
Muggins grunted something and smiled rather idiotically. "It was only the
young gentleman's play," he would have said. Bless you! he did not mind
being shaken and screamed at! He slowly turned his horses and brought the
fly up to the door. John walked back and stood waiting.
"Thank you," said the lady in a voice that made his heart jump, as she
came out from under the porch and the vicar helped her to get in. Then it
was the turn of the little girl.
"Good-bye, my dear," said the vicar kindly as he took her hand.
"Good-bye," said the child. Then she hesitated and looked at John, who
was standing beside the clergyman. "Good-bye," she repeated, holding out
her little hand shyly towards him. John took it and grew redder than ever
as he felt that the lady was watching him. Then the little girl blushed
and laughed in her small embarrassment, and climbed into the carriage.
"You will write, then?" asked Mr. Ambrose as he shut the door.
"Yes--and thank you again. You are very, very kind to me," answered the
lady, and John thought that as she spoke there were tears in her voice.
She seemed very unhappy and to John she seemed very beautiful. Muggins
cracked his whip and the fly moved off, leaving the vicar and his pupil
standing together at the iron wicket gate before the house.
"Well? Do you think Angleside got through?" asked Mr. Ambrose, rather
anxiously.
Short said he thought Angleside was safe. He hoped the vicar would say
something about the lady, but to his annoyance, he said nothing at all.
John could not ask questions, seeing it was none of his business and was
fain to content himself with thinking of the lady's face and voice. He
felt very uncomfortable at dinner. He thought the excellent Mrs. Ambrose
eyed him with unusual severity, as though suspecting what he was thinking
about, and he thought the vicar's grey eye twinkled occasionally with the
pleasant sense of possessing a secret he had no intention of imparting.
As a matter of fact Mrs. Ambrose was supremely unconscious of the fact
that John had seen the lady, and looked at him with some curiosity,
observing that he seemed nervous and blushed from time to time and was
more silent than usual. She came to the conclusion that he had been
working too hard, as usual, and that night requested him to take two
little pellets of aconite, and to repeat the dose in the morning. Whether
it was the result of the homoeopathic medicine or of the lapse of a few
hours and a good night's rest, it is impossible to say; John, however,
was himself again the next morning and showed no further signs of
nervousness. But he kept his eyes and ears open, hoping for some news of
the exquisite creature who had made so profound an impression on his
heart.
In due time the joyful news arrived from Cambridge that the Honourable
Cornelius had passed his examination and was at liberty to matriculate at
the beginning of the term. The intelligence was duly telegraphed to his
father, and in a few hours came a despatch in answer, full of
affectionate congratulation and requesting that Cornelius should proceed
at once to Paris, where his father was waiting for him. The young man
took an affectionate leave of the vicar, of Mrs. Ambrose and especially
of John Short, for whom he had conceived an almost superstitious
admiration; old Reynolds was not forgotten in the farewell, and for
several days after Angleside's departure the aged gardener was observed
to walk somewhat unsteadily and to wear a peculiarly thoughtful
expression; while the vicar observed with annoyance that Strawberry, the
old mare, was less carefully groomed than usual. Strangely coincident
with these phenomena was the fact that Simon Gunn's yellow cat seemed to
have entirely repented of her evil practices, renouncing from the day
when Cornelius left for Paris her periodical invasion of the asparagus
beds at the foot of the garden. But the vicar was too practical a man to
waste time in speculating upon the occult relations of seemingly
disconnected facts. He applied himself with diligence to the work of
preparing John Short to compete for the minor scholarship. The labour was
congenial. He had never taken a pupil so far before, and it was a genuine
delight to him to bring his own real powers into play at last. As the
summer wore on, he predicted all manner of success for John Short, and
his predictions were destined before long to be realised, for John did
all he promised to do and more also. To have succeeded in pushing the
Honourable Cornelius through his entrance examination was a triumph
indeed, but an uninteresting one at best, and one which had no further
consequences. But to be the means of turning out the senior classic of
the University was an honour which would not only greatly increase the
good vicar's reputation but would be to him a source of the keenest
satisfaction during the remainder of his life; moreover the prospects
which would be immediately opened to John in case he obtained such a
brilliant success would be a very material benefit to his unlucky father,
whose talents yielded him but a precarious livelihood and whose pitiable
condition had induced his old schoolfellow to undertake the education of
his son.
Much depended upon John's obtaining one or more scholarships during his
career at college. To a man of inferior talents the vicar would have
suggested that it would be wiser to go to a smaller college than Trinity
where he would have less competition to expect; but as soon as he
realised John's powers, he made up his mind that it would be precisely
where competition was hottest that his pupil would have the greatest
success. He would get something--perhaps his father would make a little
more money--the vicar even dreamed of lending John a small sum--something
would turn up; at all events he must go to the largest college and do
everything in the best possible way. Meanwhile he must work as hard as he
could during the few months remaining before the beginning of his first
term.
Whether the lady ever wrote to Mr. Ambrose, John could not ascertain; she
was never mentioned at the vicarage, and it seemed as though the mystery
were never to be solved. But the impression she had made upon the young
man's mind remained and even gained strength by the working of his
imagination; for he thought of her night and day, treasuring up every
memory of her that he could recall, building romances in his mind,
conceiving the most ingenious reasons for the solitary visit she had made
to the vicarage, and inwardly vowing that if ever he should be at liberty
to follow his own inclinations he would go out into the world and search
for her. He was only eighteen then, and of a strongly susceptible
temperament. He had seen nothing of the world, for even when living in
London, in a dingy lodging, with his father, he had been perpetually
occupied with books, reading much and seeing little. Then he had been at
school, but he had seen the dark side of school life--the side which boys
who are known to be very poor generally see; and more than ever he had
resorted to study for comfort and relief from outward ills. Then at last
he had been transferred to a serener state in the vicarage of
Billingsfield and had grown up rapidly from a schoolboy to a young man;
but, as has been said, the feminine element at the vicarage was solely
represented by Mrs. Ambrose and the monotony of her maternal society was
varied only by the occasional visits of the mild young Mrs. Edward
Pewlay. John Short had indeed a powerful and aspiring imagination, but it
would have been impossible even by straining that faculty to its utmost
activity to think in the same breath of romance and of Mrs. Ambrose, for
even in her youth Mrs. Ambrose had not been precisely a romantic
character. John's fancy was not stimulated by his surroundings, but it
fed upon itself and grew fast enough to acquire an influence over
everything he did. It was not surprising that, when at last chance threw
in his way a being who seemed instantly to realise and fulfil his wildest
dreams of beauty and feminine fascination, he should have yielded without
a struggle to the delicious influence, feeling that henceforth his ideal
had taken shape and substance, and had thereby become more than ever the
ideal in which he delighted.
He gave her names, a dozen of them every day, christening her after every
heroine in fiction and history of whom he had ever read. But no name
seemed to suit her well enough; whereupon he wrote a Greek ode and a
Latin epistle to the fair unknown, but omitted to show them to the
Reverend Augustin Ambrose, though he was quite certain that they were the
best he had ever produced. Then he began to write a novel, but suddenly
recollected that a famous author had written one entitled "No Name," and
as that was the only title he could possibly give to the work he
contemplated he of course had no choice but to abandon the work itself.
He wrote more verses, and he dreamed more dreams, and he meanwhile
acquired much learning and in process of time realised that he had but a
few days longer to stay at Billingsfield. The Michaelmas term was about
to open and he must bid farewell to the hospitable roof and the learned
conversation of the good vicar. But when those last days came he realised
that he was leaving the scene of his only dream, and his heart grew sad.
Indeed he loved the old red brick vicarage with its low porch, overgrown
with creepers, its fragrant old flower garden, surrounding it on three
sides, its gabled roof, its south wall whereon the vicar constantly
attempted to train fig trees, maintaining that the climate of England had
grown warmer and that he would prove it--John loved it all, and
especially he loved the little study, lined with the books grown familiar
to him, and the study door, the door through which he had seen that
lovely face which he firmly believed was to inspire him to do great
things and to influence his whole life for ever after. He would leave the
door open and place himself just where he had sat that day, and then he
would look suddenly up with beating heart, almost fancying he could again
see those violet eyes gazing at him from the dusky passage--blushing then
to himself, like any girl, and burying himself in his book till the fancy
was grown too strong and he looked up again. He had attempted to sketch
her face on a bit of paper; but he had no skill and he thrust the drawing
into the paper basket, horrified at having made anything so hideous in
the effort to represent anything so beautiful, and returned to making
odes upon her, and Latin epistles, in which he succeeded much better.
And now the time had come when he must leave all this dreaming, or at
least the scene of it, and go to college and win scholarships and renown.
It was hard to go and he showed his regret so plainly that Mrs. Ambrose
was touched at what she took for his affection for the place and for
herself and for the vicar. John Short was indeed very grateful to her for
all the kindness she had shown him, and to Mr. Ambrose for the learning
he had acquired; for John was a fine fellow and never forgot an
obligation nor undervalued one. But when we are very young our hearts are
far more easily touched to joy and sadness by the chords and discords of
our own dreaming, than by the material doings of the world around us, or
by the strong and benevolent interest our elders are good enough to take
in us. We feel grateful to those same elders if we have any good in us,
but we are far from feeling a similar interest in them. We see in our
imaginations wonderful pictures, and we hear wonderful words, for
everything we dream of partakes of an unknown perfection and completely
throws into the shade the inartistic commonplaces of daily life. As John
Short grew older, he often regretted the society of his old tutor and in
the frequent absence of important buttons from his raiment he bitterly
realised that there was no longer a motherly Mrs. Ambrose to inspect his
linen; but when he took leave of them what hurt him most was to turn his
back upon the beloved old study, upon the very door through which he had
once, and only once, beheld the ideal of his first love dream.
Though the vicar was glad to see the boy started upon what he already
regarded as a career of certain victory, he was sorry to lose him, not
knowing when he should see him again. John intended to read through all
the vacations until he got his degree. He might indeed have come down for
a day or two at Christmas, but with his very slender resources even so
short a pleasure trip was not to be thought of lightly. It was therefore
to be a long separation, so long to look forward to that when John saw
the shabby little box which contained, all his worldly goods put up into
the back of the vicar's dogcart, and stood at last in the hall, saying
good-bye, he felt as though he was being thrust out into the world never
to return again; his heart seemed to rise in his throat, the tears stood
in his eyes and he could hardly speak a word. Even then he thought of
that day when he had waked up the sleepy Muggins to take away the
beautiful unknown lady. He felt he must be quick about his leave-taking,
or he would break down.
"You have been very good to me. I--I shall never forget it," he murmured
as he shook hands with Mrs. Ambrose. "And you, too, sir--" he added
turning to the vicar. But the old clergyman cut him short, being himself
rather uncertain about the throat.
"Good-bye, my lad. God bless you. We shall hear of you soon--showing them
what you can do with your Alcaics--Good-bye."
So John got into the dogcart and was driven off by the ancient
Reynolds--past the "Duke's Head," past the "Feathers," past the
churchyard and the croft--the "croat," they called it in
Billingsfield--and on by the windmill on the heath, a hideous bit of
grassless common euphemistically so named, and so out to the high-road
towards the railway station, feeling very miserable indeed. It is a
curious fact, too, in the history of his psychology that in proportion as
he got farther from the vicarage he thought more and more of his old
tutor and less and less of his unfinished dream, and he realised
painfully that the vicar was nearly the only friend he had in the world.
He would of course find Cornelius Angleside at Cambridge, but he
suspected that Cornelius, turned loose among a merry band of
undergraduates of his own position would be a very different person from
the idle youth he had known at Billingsfield, trembling in the intervals
of his idleness at the awful prospect of the entrance examination, and
frantically attempting to master some bit of stray knowledge which might
possibly be useful to him. Cornelius would hunt, would gamble, would go
to the races and would give wines at college; John was to be a reading
man who must avoid such things as he would avoid the devil himself, not
only because he was too wretchedly poor to have any share whatever in the
amusements of Cornelius and his set, but because every minute was
important, every hour meant not only learning but meant, most
emphatically, money. He thought of his poor father, grinding out the life
of a literary hack in a wretched London lodging, dining Heaven knew where
and generally supping not at all, saving every penny to help his son's
education, hard working, honest, lacking no virtue except the virtue of
all virtues--success. Then he thought how he himself had been favoured by
fortune during these last years, living under the vicar's roof, treated
with the same consideration as the high-born young gentlemen who had been
his companions, living well, sleeping well and getting the best education
in England for nothing or next to nothing, while that same father of his
had never ceased to slave day and night with his pen, honestly doing his
best and yet enjoying none of the good things of life. John thought of
all this and set his teeth boldly to face the world. A few months, he
thought, and he might have earned a scholarship--he might be independent.
Then a little longer--less than three years--and he might, nay, he would,
take high honours in the university and come back crowned with glory,
with the prospect of a fellowship, with every profession open to him,
with the world at his feet and with money in his hand to help his father
out of all his troubles.
That was how John Short went to Trinity. It was a hard struggle at first,
for he found himself much poorer than he had imagined, and it seemed as
though the ends could not possibly meet. There was no question of denying
himself luxuries; that would have been easy enough. In those first months
it was the necessities that he lacked, the coals for his little grate,
the oil for his one small lamp. But he fought bravely through it, having,
like many another young fellow who has weathered the storms of poverty in
pursuit of learning, an iron constitution, and an even stronger will. He
used to say long afterwards that feeling cold was a mere habit and that
when one thoroughly understood the construction of Greek verses, some
stimulus of physical discomfort was necessary to make the imagination
work well; in support of which assertion he said that he had never done
such good things by the comfortable fire in the study at Billingsfield
vicarage as he did afterwards on winter nights by the light of a tallow
candle, high up in Neville's Court. Moreover, if any one argued that it
was better for an extremely poor man not to go to Trinity, but to some
much smaller college, he answered that as far as he himself was concerned
he could not have done better, which was quite true and therefore
perfectly unanswerable. Where the competition was less, he would have
been satisfied with less, he said; where it was greatest a man could only
be contented when he had reached the highest point possible. But before
he attained his end he suffered more than any one knew, especially during
those first months. For when he had got his first scholarship, he
insisted upon sending back the little sums of hard-earned money his
father sent him from time to time, and he consequently had nearly as hard
work as before to keep himself warm and to keep oil in his lamp during
the long winter's evenings. But he succeeded, nevertheless.