He came straight to Oxford from his American home, Parnassus City, a
town in the Western State of Indiana.
The first time Foley saw him was one wet October evening, when,
splashing across the quadrangle towards his rooms, he noticed a large
umbrella moving through the dripping twilight--an umbrella which, from
its undecided motion, must belong, he had told himself, to some tourist,
who, in spite of the rain and darkness, was finishing a day of
sight-seeing at St. Mary's. But when the umbrella collapsed in front of
his own staircase, and Foley saw the spectacles and pale face of a young
man who turned to enter there, he decided that it must be an agent, come
to collect money for missions or something of the kind. And as he
followed upstairs, in the wet footprints of the feet he could still hear
mounting above him, he asked himself with vague annoyance what right
they had--people like that--to push themselves into the rooms of Oxford
men.
The melancholy footsteps went on till they reached the top; nor did
Foley hear them again descend. Soon after he was told that an American
had come into College, and was living above him; and when he went to
call, he recognized, in the person who awkwardly rose to receive him,
the young man he had taken for a mission agent in the rain that evening.
A thin, small young man, in a long, black broadcloth coat of provincial
cut, he seemed at first sight nothing but the traditional Western
American Foley had read of in books, or seen in the theatre sometimes--a
student who looked curiously out of place in that old panelled room.
The young Englishman talked to him as best he could, asking the
questions always asked of a new-comer; questions which this one answered
with the usual shyness, but in a very unusual voice and accent.
He had just come from America; he had left there on the sixth. He had
come to study under Dr. Joseph at the new Methodist College. Dr. Joseph
had arranged for him to come to St. Mary's; their own College wasn't
built yet. Foley asked if he thought he would like Oxford. "Yes, sir,"
the other replied, drawing a large handkerchief from his coat-tails, "I
guess I will; though," he added cautiously after a moment, "it does
seem kind of old and mouldy."
Foley thought he had done his duty in calling, and meant for the future
to see as little as possible of his new neighbour. And yet there had
been something pleasant and sensitive in his face, he remembered
afterwards; and at times he was haunted by the thought of this stranger
sitting as he had found him, alone and lonely in the room upstairs, with
two or three books in the empty shelves, a few photographs of home that
made the mantelpiece and bare walls look all the more homeless and
unfriendly. Now and then he would hear footsteps above moving vaguely
about, or he would meet the American on the stairs, or see him walking
out alone, and at last, out of kindness, he went again to call.
Before long he began to take a certain liking to Sutton, and would
often go up in the evenings with a cigarette to his rooms. To the young
Englishman the American was certainly a curious and amusing study. How
curious were the views and impressions of Oxford, that, breaking through
his shy reserve, he would once in a while express, in his prim
middle-aged way! He was a good deal shocked by the wine-drinking,
card-playing, and Sabbath-breaking that seemed so prevalent there; what
religion there was, (well, he didn't guess there was much,) he thought
mechanical and dead. Of course there was a great deal of culture in
Oxford; but in other things, like telephones and electric lights, why
England was behind the Mississippi Valley!