A SPIDER'S DINNER-PARTY.
Now was the happy time when Oxford, ever old, yet ever fresh with the
gay triennial crown of youth, was preparing itself for that sweet
leisure for which it is seldom ill prepared. Being the paramount
castle and strongest feudal hold of stout "idlesse," this fair city
has not much to do to get itself into prime condition for the noblest
efforts and most arduous feats of invincible laziness. The first and
most essential step is to summon all her students, and send them to
chapel to pay their vows. After this there need be no misgiving or
fear of industry. With one accord they issue forth, all pledged to do
nothing for the day, week, or month; each intellectual brow is stamped
with the strongest resolve not to open a book; and
"Games are the spur which the clear spirit doth raise,
To scorn the Dons, and live luxurious days."
This being so, whether winter shatters the Isid wave against Folly
bridge, or spring's arrival rustles in the wavering leaves of
Magdalen, or autumn strews the chastened fragrance of many brewers on
ripe air--how much more when beauteous summer fosters the coy down on
the lip of the junior sophist like thistle-seed, and casts the
freshman's shadow hotly on the flags of High Street--now or never is
the proper period not to overwork one's self, and the hour for taking
it easy.
But against each sacred rite and hallowed custom of the place, against
each good old-fashioned smoothness, and fine-fed sequacity, a rapid
stir was now arising, and a strong desire to give a shove. There were
some few people who really thought that the little world in which they
lay was one they ought to move in; that perfect life was not to be had
without some attempt at breathing; and that a fire (though beautifully
laid) gives little warmth till kindled.
However, these were young fellows mostly, clever in their way, but not
quite sound; and the heads of houses, generally speaking, abode on the
house-top, and did not come down. Still they kept their sagacious eyes
on the movement gathering down below, and made up their minds to crush
it as soon as they could be quite certain of being too late. But these
things ride not upon the cart of Cripps--though Cripps is a
theologian, when you beat his charges down.
After the Easter vacation was over, with too few fattening festivals,
the most popular tutor in Brasenose (being the only one who ever tried
to teach) came back to his rooms and his college work with a very fine
appetite for doing good;--according, at least, to his own ideas of
good, and duty, and usefulness; all of which were fundamentally wrong
in the opinion of the other tutors. But Hardenow, while he avoided
carefully all disputes with his colleagues, strictly kept to his own
course, and doing more work than the other five (all put together)
attempted, was permitted to have his own way, because of the trouble
there might be in stopping him.
The college met for the idle term, on Saturday morning, as usual. On
Saturday afternoon Hardenow led off his old "squad" with two new
recruits, for their fifteen miles of hard walking. Athletics and
training were as yet unknown (except with the "eight" for Henley), and
this Tractarian movement may have earned its name, ere the birth of
No. 90, from the tract of road traversed, in a toe-and-heel track, by
the fine young fellows who were up to it. At any rate that was what
the country people said, and these are more often right than wrong,
and the same opinion still abides with them.
Hardenow only took this long tramp for the sake of collecting his
forces. Saturday was not their proper day for this very admirable
coat-tail chase. Neither did they swallow hill and plain in this
manner on a Sunday. Lectures were needful to fetch them up to the
proper pitch for striding so. Wherefore on the morrow Mr. Hardenow was
free for a cruise on his own account, after morning sermon at St.
Mary's; and not having heard of his old friend Russel for several
weeks, he resolved to go and hunt him up in his own home.
It was not a possible thing for this very active and spare-bodied man
to lounge upon his road. Whatever it was that he undertook, he carried
on the action with such a swing and emphasis, that he seemed to be
doing nothing else. He wore a short spencer, and a long-tailed coat,
"typical"--to use the pet word of that age--both of his curt brevity
and his ankle-reaching gravity. His jacket stuck into him, and his
coat struck away with the power of an adverse wind, while the boys
turned back and stared at him; but he was so accustomed to that sort
of thing that he never thought of looking round. He might have been
tail-piped for seven leagues without troubling his head about it.
This was a man of great power of mind, and led up to a lofty standard;
pure, unselfish, good, and grand (so far as any grandeur can be in the
human compound), watchful over himself at almost every corner of his
ways, kind of heart, and fond of children; loving all simplicity,
quick to catch and glance the meaning of minds very different from his
own; subtle also, and deep to reason, but never much inclined to
argue. He had a shy and very peculiar manner of turning his eyes away
from even an undergraduate, when his words did not command assent; as
sometimes happened with freshmen full of conceit from some great
public school.
The manner of his mind was never to assert itself, or enter into
controversy. He felt that no arguments would stir himself when he had
solidly cast his thoughts; and he had of all courtesies the rarest (at
any rate with Englishmen), the courtesy of hoping that another could
reason as well as himself.
In this honest and strenuous nature there was one deficiency. The Rev.
Thomas Hardenow, copious of mind and active, clear of memory, and keen
at every knot of scholarship, patient and candid too, and not at all
intolerant, yet never could reach the highest rank, through want of
native humour. His view of things was nearly always anxious and
earnest. His standing-point was so fixed and stable, that every
subject might be said to revolve on its own axis during its revolution
round him; and the side that never presented itself was the ludicrous
or lightsome one.
As he strode up the hill, with the back of his leg-line concave at the
calf, instead of convex (whenever his fluttering skirt allowed a
glimpse of what he never thought about), it was brought home suddenly
to his ranging mind that he might be within view of Beckley. At a bend
of the rising road he turned, and endwise down a plait of hills, and
between soft pillowy folds of trees, the simple old church of Beckley
stood, for his thoughts to make the most of it. And, to guide them,
the chime of the gentle bells, foretelling of the service at three
o'clock, came on the tremulous conveyance of the wind, murmuring the
burden he knew so well--"old men and ancient dames, married folk and
children, bachelors and maidens, all come to church!"
Hardenow thought of the months he had spent, some few years back, in
that quiet place; of the long, laborious, lonesome days, the solid
hours divided well, the space allotted for each hard drill; then (when
the pages grew dim and dark, and the bat flitted over the lattice, or
the white owl sailed to the rickyard), the glory of sallying into the
air, inhaling grander volumes than ever from mortal breath proceeded,
and plunging into leaves that speak of one great Author only. And well
he remembered in all that toil the pure delight of the Sunday; the
precious balm of kicking out both legs, and turning on the pillow
until eight o'clock; the leisurely breakfast with the Saturday papers,
instead of Aristotle; the instructive and amusing walk to church,
where everybody admired him, and he set the fashion for at least ten
years; the dread of the parson that a man who was known as the best of
his year at Oxford should pick out the fallacies of his old logic; and
then the culminating triumph of Sabbatic jubilee--the dinner, the
dinner, wherewith the whole week had been privily gestating; up to
that crowning moment when Cripps, in a coat of no mean broadcloth,
entered with a dish of Crippsic size, with the "trimmings" coming
after him in a tray, and lifting the cover with a pant and flourish,
said, "Well, sir, now, what do 'ee plaize to think of that?"
Nor in this pleasant retrospect of kindness and simplicity was the
element of rustic grace and beauty wholly absent--the slight young
figure that flitted in and out, with quick desire to please him; the
soft pretty smile with which his improvements of Beckley dialect were
received; and the sweet gray eyes that filled with tears so, the day
before his college met. Hardenow had feared, humble-minded as he was,
that the young girl might be falling into liking him too well; and he
knew that there might be on his own part too much reciprocity.
Therefore (much as he loved Cripps, and fully as he allowed for all
that was to be said upon every side), he had felt himself bound to
take no more than a distant view of Beckley.
Even now, after three years and a half, there was some resolve in him
to that effect, or the residue of a resolution. He turned from the
gentle invitation of the distant bells, and went on with his face set
towards the house of his old friend, Overshute. When he came to the
lodge (which was like a great beehive stuck at the end of a row of
trees), it caused him a little surprise to find the gate wide open,
and nobody there. But he thought that, as it was Sunday, perhaps the
lodge-people were gone for a holiday; and so he trudged onward, and
met no one to throw any light upon anything.
In this way he came to the door at last, with the fine old porch of
Purbeck stone heavily overhanging it, and the long wings of the house
stretched out, with empty windows either way. Hardenow rang and
knocked, and then set to and knocked and rang again; and then sat down
on a stone balustrade; and then jumped up with just vigour renewed,
and pushed and pulled, and in every way worked to the utmost degree of
capacity everything that had ever been gifted with any power of
conducting sound.
Nobody answered. The sound of his energy went into places far away,
and echoed there, and then from stony corners came back to him. He
traced the whole range of the windows and caught no sign of any life
inside them. At last, he pushed the great door, and lo! there was
nothing to resist his thrust, except its sullen weight.
When Hardenow stood in the old-fashioned hall, which was not at all
"baronial," he found himself getting into such a fright that he had a
great mind to go away again. If there had only been anybody with
him--however inferior in "mental power"--he might have been able to
refresh himself by demonstrating something, and then have marched on
to the practical proof. But now he was all by himself, in strange and
unaccountable loneliness. The sense of his condition perhaps induced
him to set to and shout. The silence was so oppressive, that the sound
of his own voice almost alarmed him by its audacity. So, after
shouting "Russel!" thrice, he stopped, and listened, and heard nothing
except that cold and shuddering ring, as of hardware in frosty
weather, which stone and plaster and timber give when deserted by
their lords--mankind.
Knowing pretty well all the chief rooms of the house, Hardenow
resolved to go and see if they were locked; and grasping his black
holly-stick for self-defence, he made for the dining-room. The door
was wide open; the cloth on the table, with knives and forks and
glasses placed, as if for a small dinner-party; but the only guest
visible was a long-legged spider, with a sound and healthy appetite,
who had come down to dine from the oak beams overhead, and was sitting
in his web between a claret bottle and a cruet-stand, ready to receive
with a cordial clasp any eligible visitor.
Hardenow tasted the water in a jug, and found it quite stale and
nasty; then he opened a napkin, and the bread inside it was dry and
hard as biscuit. Then he saw with still further surprise that the
windows were open to their utmost extent, and the basket of plate was
on the sideboard.
"My old friend Russel, my dear old fellow!" he cried with his hand on
his heart where lurked disease as yet unsuspected, "what strange
misfortune has befallen you? No wonder my letter was left unanswered.
Perhaps the dear fellow is now being buried, and every one gone to his
funeral. But no; if it were so, these things would not be thus. The
funeral feast is a grand institution. Everything would be fresh and
lively, and five leaves put into the dinner-table." With this true
reflection, he left the room to seek the solution elsewhere.
He failed, however, to find it in any of the downstair sitting-rooms.
Then he went even into the kitchen, thinking the liberty allowable
under such conditions. The grate was cold and the table bare; on the
one lay a drift of soot, on the other a level deposit of dust, with a
few grimy implements to distribute it.
Hardenow made up his mind for the worst. He was not addicted to
fiction (as haply was indicated by his good degree), but he could not
help recalling certain eastern and even classic tales; and if he had
come upon all the household sitting in native marble, or from the
waistband downward turned into fish, or logs, or dragons, he might
have been partly surprised, but must have been wholly thankful for the
explanation. Failing however to discover this, and being resolved to
go through with the matter, the tutor of Brasenose mounted the black
oak staircase of this enchanted house. At the head of the stairs was a
wide, low passage, leading right and left from a balustraded gallery.
The young man chose first the passage to the right, and tightening his
grip of the stick, strode on.