Oh let the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet.
TENNYSON’S _Maud_.
Tim’s career at Eton, after it became more prosperous, offers nothing of
much interest to the general public, his relations with the various good
people who befriended him having nothing to do with this story, which is
the history of his friendship for Carol, and for no one else. We must
not suppose, however, that he had no other friends. He was not of the
very successful type, but he made several very fast and true ones at
this period of his life. His tutor was very fond of him, and more than
one boy among his schoolfellows asked him to visit him in the holidays,
which is the highest mark of esteem that young gentlemen at that age can
confer. His father would have liked him to go, but Tim would accept none
of these invitations, feeling how unlike the homes his friends described
to him--abodes of mothers and sisters and ponies, and such good
things--were to the lonely old manor-house, and not caring to invite
their inspection of his own interior in return. Still he felt the
kindness of the intention, and was as placidly contented as he could be
in a place where Carol had been, and was not; for in spite of new ties
and interests, above and below all other friendships or affections, his
life-devotion held its undiminished sway. He corresponded regularly with
Carol, according to his promise, telling him all the gossip of the old
place, so interesting to those who have grown up in that queer nursery,
so inscrutably dull to all besides. Many a detail of cricket or fives
news was mastered by the indefatigable Tim, though he took but a
slender concern in such matters on his own account, because he knew they
would be of interest to Carol, who on his side declared our hero the
best of correspondents, and supplied him in return with descriptions of
Cambridge, or, if at Darley, with constant bulletins of the health of
Bess.
‘Bess is renewing her youth,’ he would write; ‘there is not a rabbit but
goes in fear for his life in all Stoke Ashton parish. Mrs. Quitchett
seems to have borrowed the other old lady’s receipt, not for
rabbit-hunting, but for looking young. In your absence, she hails me
with pleasure, as some one to whom to talk of you.’
Or from Cambridge: ‘Do you want to know what I am about? I walk a great
deal--to stretch my legs, which you may think do not require it--not to
see the country, which a fellow here, who never said anything else good
that I know of, said one could do by putting on a pair of high-heeled
boots. I read a fairish amount, and play lots of tennis. Do you know
what a bisque is? or that half thirty is not the same as fifteen? In the
evenings I have taken violently to whist, and have once or twice
ventured on more exciting games, but don’t feel inclined to become a
professional gambler yet awhile. Next winter I think I shall keep a
horse. It isn’t half a bad life, and there are lots of awfully jolly
fellows; but I miss the old school more than I can say, and am still
more than half inclined to blub when I think of it. What shall I do next
half without Upper Club? I don’t believe playing for the University will
at all console me.’
Not very deep perhaps, but frank, boyish, jolly letters, with a
sensation as of fresh air blowing through them. I have a pile of them
from which I could quote, all much in the same style. Years afterwards
they were found, oh! how carefully preserved, and tied together in
little bundles, with now only the date of their receipt, now some tender
comment carefully affixed in Tim’s youthful scrawl. The neatness of
their arrangement had something specially touching about it, tidiness
not being as a general rule by any means a distinguishing characteristic
of their recipient.
As may readily be imagined, Tim’s persistence in his intimacy with Carol
did not tend to increase the comfort of his relations with his father.
Mr. Ebbesley was not a man of many words; but neither was it difficult
to see of what he disapproved, and in the present case, without parading
his sentiments, he took no pains to conceal them. During the autumn and
winter that followed the conversation recorded in the last chapter he
confined himself to little sneers and sarcasms when Carol’s name
happened to be mentioned in his presence, which Tim took care should be
as seldom as possible. But the very carefulness of this avoidance was in
itself a cause of constraint. How could the boy be at ease with his
father when all his most sacred feelings clustered round an object of
which he felt it better never to speak to him? To live in tacit defiance
of an unexpressed desire of one’s nearest relative does not conduce to a
comfortable state of things.
It was in the first Easter holidays after the August day when Fate, in
the shape of Miss Markham Willis, had first crossed the path of the two
friends, that, Carol having gone back to Cambridge before Tim’s return
to Eton, the latter was one day diligently scribbling his budget of home
news in the old manor library where he had lain asleep the day his
father’s letter had come to Mrs. Quitchett. (What the news was I am not
in a position to tell you, because, you see, though I can refer to every
line Carol wrote to Tim, I have not the same advantage as regards Tim’s
answers.) So immersed was he in his writing, and in the mental effort of
omitting nothing Carol would like to be told, that he did not hear the
door open, nor observe that any one had come in, till he was startled
by a shadow falling on the paper, and looking up, was somewhat alarmed
to find his father standing before him with an expression which was
anything rather than amiable. Mr. Ebbesley had been vexed about
something, and was in a mood for finding fault.
‘Always scribbling,’ he began; ‘it’s really a sin not to be out this
lovely day.’
He was not as a rule keenly susceptible to the beauty of the weather,
and his remark therefore rather surprised his son.
‘I was out all the morning,’ he said.
‘Where?’ asked his father.
‘Oh! up above Beech Farm, in the Court woods,’ and Tim blushed a little
as he spoke. The fact was he had been making one of his pilgrimages to
the sacred spot where his dinner with the squirrel had been interrupted
so many years before.
‘In the Court woods,’ repeated Mr. Ebbesley crossly; ‘really I’m ashamed
of you. Not content with dangling eternally about after that
turnip-eating young embryo squire the whole time he’s here, you must
needs make yourself ridiculous by hanging about his house and grounds
like a sentimental girl when he’s away.’
‘You shan’t call Carol names,’ Tim answered hotly, the faint blood in
his cheeks suddenly crimsoning them all over; ‘he’s the best and----
There, I beg your pardon; I know I oughtn’t to speak so to you, but I
couldn’t help it. Say what you like about me, but please don’t sneer at
him.’
‘I am sure he would be delighted if he knew what a champion he had in
you; don’t you see that the fellow doesn’t want you? You _must_ bore
him.’
‘You’ve no right to say he doesn’t want me,’ the boy flashed out again;
‘it’s not true; and--and--I think he’s the best judge of whether he
wants me or not.’
He was quivering all over, but his father took no more notice of this
outbreak than of the former one.
‘I’ve no doubt,’ he went on, motioning slightly towards the unfinished
letter, ‘that it’s to him you’ve been writing all this trash. It seems
to me that you waste a good deal of your time and my paper in supplying
pipe-lighters for unknown undergraduates.’
‘What is it you want me to do?’ asked Tim hopelessly.
‘You know quite well what my wishes are: that I disapprove of violent
intimacies and long letter-writing. Why can’t you be friends with this
very commonplace young man as other people are friends, without all this
foolish fuss? I don’t want you to waste all your time in writing
sentimental letters; it is enervating; and Heaven knows you don’t
require _that_.’
Tim stood white and uncertain, biting his pen. ‘You want me to give
Carol up,’ he said.
‘That is so like you,’ said Mr. Ebbesley; ‘you make such a tragedy of
everything; who talks of giving up? I only ask you for once to show a
little common sense, and not eternally to go on being a baby. Why can
you never be like other boys about anything, I wonder?’
Tim wondered that too; he also wondered whether it would be worth while
to try and make his father understand that his letters were not
‘sentimental,’ as he called them. For a minute he half felt inclined to
ask him to read the one on the table between them, but he recollected
all sorts of little simple sayings and phrases that he would not for the
world submit to the sarcastic perusal of his father’s double eyeglass.
_He_ knew perfectly well that to continue on terms of cool acquaintance
with Carol, always guarding every word and action for fear it was too
intimate, and not writing to him after promising to do so, was simply
impossible; but he knew too that it was hopeless to make his father see
this as he saw it. No. What he meant him to do was simply to give up his
friend, and he felt a dull feeling of anger and defiance at what he
considered his disingenuous way of putting himself more or less in the
right by all this talk about ‘common sense’ and ‘ordinary friendship.’
He determined to call things by their right names, and since his father
did not like his speaking of what he required of him as ‘giving up
Carol,’ he would do it again.
‘I am sorry I cannot obey you,’ he said slowly; ‘I think one should
never give up a friend unless for his own good.’
‘Oh! in that case you think you should?’ inquired his father, with an
ironical appearance of interest.
‘Yes; if one loved a person truly, one would do anything for him; even
give him up,’ answered Tim quite simply.
Mr. Ebbesley fairly lost patience. ‘Don’t you know I could _make_ you do
this if I chose?’ he said almost fiercely; perhaps the words ‘if one
loved a person truly’ had galled his wound a little. But he relapsed
into his manner of carefully assumed indifference to add, ‘I prefer,
however, to leave you free to find out that I am right by experience; I
have warned you, and you will not be warned; you know my wishes, but
since you refuse to be guided by them you shall please yourself.’ And he
turned and left the room.
Tim stood with the unfinished letter in his hand staring blankly after
him. Why was the only thing his father had ever asked of him the only
thing he could not do? He sank back into his chair and covered his face
with the letter. ‘Oh! Carol,’ he moaned, ‘will you cast me off some day
after this?’
It would be hard to say whether father or son suffered more keenly after
this interview. Tim, to be sure, had carried his point, but his laurels
were dear bought, and some victories, as we know, are almost more
disastrous than defeats; and then Mr. Ebbesley had the pleasant
certainty that he was right, which was his consolation in many of the
hard knocks of life. He sincerely believed himself actuated by none but
the very highest motives, and, moreover, considered that he had
displayed remarkable temper and moderation under very trying
circumstances. None the less he had been defied and bested, refused what
he had almost stooped to ask, and had flat disobedience and revolt
opposed to his expressed wishes. He had imprudently risked a trial of
strength with Carol, and been thrown. Not only had he less hold on his
son’s affections, but actually less power over his actions than this
youth who cared, he was convinced, so little for either one or the
other. He felt sore and injured, and Tim supremely miserable, for some
time; days during which they met and lived together as usual, and tried
with very poor success to behave as though nothing had happened. Tim
continued to write to Carol, but he did so henceforth in his room, and
carried his letters to the post himself, not from a desire to conceal
the fact from his father, but only to avoid a recurrence of the painful
scene in the library; and indeed it had no successors. Mr. Ebbesley had
delivered himself of his views, and thereafter the grave was not more
silent; the subject of Carol was no more mentioned between him and his
son. And Tim wrote no word of what had happened to Carol. In the first
place, he would have died a thousand deaths sooner than say a word that
could distress him, and in the second, he was far too proud to let even
his best friend into the secret of his disagreement with his father. His
letters flowed on in their usual channel, and if they were a little
lacking in spirit, their recipient was by no means an observant critic,
and least of all just then, being, as we shall see, much preoccupied
with affairs of his own.
For, if Tim’s letters were unchanged, Carol’s certainly were not. There
crept into them about this time a quite new and strange tone, which did
not pass unnoticed by his young correspondent. It would be difficult to
describe exactly what it was; but chance remarks scattered up and down,
together with a certain abstract and speculative turn of sentence quite
foreign to the young man’s usual style, would have indicated pretty
clearly to any one but a baby what was the matter with the writer. ‘I
feel,’ he wrote, ‘that I am approaching a turning-point in my life,
which will make me either very happy or very miserable; and I feel too
that it is for life.’ And elsewhere he congratulated Tim on being ‘still
of an age when he was not likely to know what it was to care more for
one person than for all the rest of the world,’ at which his friend
smiled a little sadly, thinking that he did. There are no notes on these
letters in Tim’s handwriting, only the date; probably they puzzled the
boy not a little.
That Carol was not quite himself seemed pretty clear; then it dawned
upon him that his state of mind indicated strong affection for some one,
and almost simultaneously he arrived at the chilling conviction that
that some one was certainly not himself. He hardly knew how to reply to
these strange unfamiliar letters; no doubt he thought he was expected
to make some sign of sympathy or interest, but with the vague and
fragmentary knowledge he possessed, he felt it impossible to do so. In
one way he was undoubtedly the gainer by this mystery. At no previous
time had Carol ever written, not only so regularly, but so often; hardly
a week passed without his hearing from him, and usually at some length.
Still he felt uneasily that something was wrong; and when at the end of
the Cambridge May term his friend wrote that he was coming down to Eton
for a day or two, he was glad not only with the joy of meeting again,
but almost more so at the opportunity thus afforded to him of judging if
his voice, look, or manner were in keeping with the strangeness of his
epistolary style. And yet he half feared to see in him the probable
confirmation of his suspicions of something being wrong.
When Carol did come, his behaviour was even stranger than his writing.
Instead of launching himself out on to the pavement over the closed
door of his fly the moment it drew up in front of tutor’s, and sending a
flying glance up the house-front for any friends who might be on the
look-out, as was his usual custom, followed by a tremendous shout if his
eye caught a familiar face, Tim, who was watching from his window, was
amazed to see him sit meekly while the driver descended from his box and
opened the door, and then inquire what he owed him, as though he had
just taken the drive from Slough Station to Eton for the first time in
his life. And having paid the man, who had driven him any time these
seven years, and was too much astonished even to overcharge him, he
walked into the house without once looking up. Tim sat down and stared.
What did it all mean? Nor had he less cause to wonder when Carol came up
to visit him; he greeted him with more than ordinary cordiality, and
then laughed a little, and then seemed to forget his existence, becoming
absorbed in a minute inspection of everything in the room, as if he had
never seen it before.
‘Holker isn’t going to play in the next match,’ began Tim, producing the
cricket shop he had been carefully storing himself with for Carol’s
arrival. ‘He missed three catches on Tuesday, and as all his chance was
for his fielding, Jones has told Tuttiett he’ll try him. They say
Holker’s furious, and swears if he don’t get his eleven, it’ll be
because Jones hates him, and will be sure to spite him if he can.’
‘Who’s Jones?’ inquired Carol dreamily.
Now Jones had been in his own eleven, and they had played together in
all the matches only one short year before, not to mention that they had
been, as Tim knew, in close correspondence ever since, the ex-captain
giving his successor the benefit of his greater experience in all
matters relating to the government of the cricket world.
‘Who’s Jones!’ echoed Tim in such unfeigned surprise that Carol pulled
himself together, laughed again, and said he wasn’t thinking.
They talked about the eleven for a little, but it was obvious that the
old boy’s heart was not as heretofore in the talk, and presently he
wandered to the window, and began pitilessly pulling to pieces one of
Tim’s best fancy geraniums. Tim’s flower-box was his especial pride and
glory; he loved and tended his flowers as no other boy in the house did,
and it is on record that on one occasion, when he was watering them, and
some of the water had gone on the head of the big boy in the room below,
who happened to be talking out of the window to a friend, that hero,
having come up breathing vengeance, had been so struck with the beauty
of the little garden that he had sat down to talk about it, the wooden
spoon he had brought with him lying idly in his lap. Ordinarily, Carol
would not for the world have injured one of these treasures, as much
from dislike of giving pain as from his own feeling towards them, the
result of Miss Kate’s early training. Tim could stand it no longer.
‘Carol,’ he said, laying a timid hand on the strong arm that was working
havoc among his pelargoniums, ‘please forgive me for being curious, but
isn’t there something up? You don’t seem like yourself; and your letters
have been so rum lately. Is anything wrong? Can I do anything? Won’t you
tell me what’s the matter?’
Carol turned and looked at him; then he took his hand and said gently--
‘By Jove, Tim, what a clever little soul you are! fancy your noticing
like that. Shall I tell you? After all, I’d sooner tell you than any
one; you’ve always been the best and truest friend a fellow ever had,
though there’s so much difference in our ages.’
Tim was gratified. ‘You’ve always been so good to me, Carol,’ he said,
‘and I don’t care much for many people.’
‘Can you keep a secret?’ asked his friend; ‘for it _is_ a secret at
present.’
The tortures of the Inquisition, Tim protested, should not draw a word
from him, when Carol had bid him be silent; and then out it all came.
‘Why shouldn’t he tell him? He might think it odd of him to do so, but
tell some one he must, and the fact was, to cut a long story short, he
was in love. He remembered Miss Markham Willis--Violet?’ (Yes, Tim
remembered her, and with her a whole train of old apprehensions.) ‘Well,
she was the girl he was in love with, and she was the loveliest girl in
all England, and the kindest to her little brothers and sisters, and, in
fact, the most peerless in all the relations of life; and he knew every
one would say they were too young, but he knew what love was, and he saw
now that he had loved her ever since they first met, and he should never
feel the same for any one else, and Tim wasn’t to say a word about it.’
Standing there opposite to him, holding his hands, his honest blue eyes
wet with emotion, and his voice that Tim had heard always firm, and
sometimes loud, trembling as he made the confession of his young love,
there was something beautiful and touching in the great strong boy; he
seemed to have lost all his masterfulness, and to be quite meek and
uncertain of himself for the first time in his life. And Tim, part
frightened, and part regretful, and part gratified at having been
selected as confidant on so important an occasion, promised
silence,--would have promised anything, in fact, that Carol had
demanded,--and Carol, the floodgates of his silence being burst at last,
and the tide of his feelings finding free vent, went on and said much
more.
Violet and her mother had been staying at Cambridge for the May week
with some Head of a college who was their kinsman, and Carol had been
bound, in common politeness, to do the honours of his University to his
country neighbours; so that was how matters had come to a crisis with
him, and the conviction had been borne in upon him in the intervals of
boat-races, flower-shows, and dancing that for him there was and would
always be but one woman in the world.
‘And does she--does she--?’ inquired Tim discreetly.
‘Ah! there’s where it is,’ cried the other; ‘I think, I really think she
likes me, but I didn’t dare speak; it seemed as if it couldn’t be
possible such a girl should really care for me.’
‘Not care for _you_!’ exclaimed Tim almost angrily, and then he stopped,
much embarrassed.
‘Oh, you are such a staunch little friend!’ said Carol; ‘you think much
too well of me, don’t you know.’
But for all that he was cheered by his friend’s enthusiasm; and the mere
fact of having unburthened himself to patient and sympathetic ears sent
him off more nearly restored to his normal frame of mind, to discuss the
new choices with Jones, quite like a sane mortal.
So Carol and Violet fell in love; for it was not many weeks after this
that he found the courage he had lacked at Cambridge, and his modest
‘thinking she liked him’ was converted into triumphant certainty. They
were absurdly young of course. Violet was only seventeen and Carol not
yet twenty when they first discovered they were made for one another,
and mutually imparted this intelligence, as, I am told, is the manner of
young people. Of course, too, the old people, as is _their_ manner,
scouted the notion, and said, ‘Nonsense; boy and girl; too young to
think of such things.’ But the tendency of boys and girls being to get
their way in matters of this sort, in spite of much more severe elders
than Mr. and Mrs. Markham Willis, or the dear old Darleys, a compromise
was at last effected. In two years, when Carol left the University, if
he and Violet were still of the same mind the thing should be; but in
the meanwhile they were not to be considered engaged, and not to
correspond,--a very wise decision, as it seems to me, and one that
reflected credit on all concerned. So these two were to wait, as so many
others have done, and as they could well afford to do at their age,
having life before them, and youth, and good looks, and high spirits to
cheer them through their waiting.
Tim was installed as prime confidant, and to him Carol told or wrote all
his hopes and fears. When the compromise was extracted from the old
people, he came radiant to the manor-house, and finding Tim alone in the
garden, poured out all his golden dream to him.
‘Two years were quite a short time to wait; many people had to wait half
their lives. He would serve for Violet as long as Jacob had for Rachel,
if need were; and wasn’t it grand of her to promise to wait for him?
though of course he could not accept such a promise, and had quite
refused to bind her.’
Tim listened to it all, now and then squeezing his friend’s hand in
token of sympathy and attention; luckily he was not expected to say
much, for he would have been rather at a loss what to say. His mind was
travelling one year back to the day when he had gone up to the Court and
found Violet installed in the drawing-room there; all the thoughts so
vague and unintelligible to him then had taken form and substance; now
he understood what the shadow was that had fallen across his path that
day; that thing he had dimly guessed at had come upon him, and it was to
him that Carol looked for rejoicing in his joy. Of course he _did_
rejoice, and felt delighted that this new experience of his idol seemed
only to bring them nearer together instead of separating them; but was
it really so? It is true, he saw more of him than he had ever done
before, and when he went away again, heard from him oftener; but the
talks and the letters were full of Violet, and of Violet only; she was
the cause of it all. If Carol desired his society, it was that to him
better than any one he could discourse of her perfections; if he wrote
nearly every day, it was that he was not allowed to write to her, and
the next best thing was writing about her. Tim was useful only as the
safety-valve which allowed him to let off some of the enthusiasm with
which he was overflowing. He would have liked to cry the name of his
beloved to all the winds; failing that, it was a comfort to hold forth
on the subject either with tongue or pen. And Tim saw all this quite
plainly, and somehow was not as grateful at being selected for the part
he was playing as he felt he should be. ‘Would he like it after all,’ he
asked himself, ‘since this thing was to be’ (and he bowed before the
inevitable), ‘had Carol selected any one else to whom to lay open his
heart?’ He took himself to task for not feeling happier in his friend’s
happiness. This was not the devotion he had vowed to him in his own
heart, this selfishness that put himself before the object of his
affection, which refused to dance at the dear one’s piping. Somehow he
felt it would be easier to lament at his mourning; and for this too he
had by and by the opportunity, as we shall see.