OXFORD WITH ESCORTS SEEN AND UNSEEN.

Jane Prior and Bennet Gray were, as might have been supposed, charmed with Oxford. They had been there on visits and sight-seeing expeditions before, but the city of Alfred and Wolsey, Wycliffe and Cranmer, does not easily exhaust the admiration of its pilgrims. This visit was paid at the most desirable season. It was close upon the summer glory of Commemoration, but May had not ended, and the men generally--not the freshmen alone--were still up, crowding the streets. With pale scholars in cap and gown? By no means; with sunburnt, ruddy, muscular youths, in every picturesque variety of cricketing and boating costume, taking their pleasure with all their might. The scholarly element was left largely to the dons, whose winged black gowns and trencher hats--relics of the monk’s frock and hood, adapted for tutor and professor--contrasted broadly with the white flannels and striped jerseys and caps showing the colours and badges of the different colleges, worn jauntily by the favoured lads. At them the accumulated learning of centuries was launched, they met and assimilated it, or turned it aside with consummate coolness and carelessness.

The great old trees in St. Giles’s and in the college gardens were in full foliage without having lost the early flush--free from sombreness--of their summer green. The giant wisteria on St. Edmund’s Hall was covered with clusters of delicate lilac blossoms like paler grapes. In other quadrangles and cloisters the grey walls, massive pillars, and deep door-ways were set in green, in vine leaves and Virginian creeper, in budding flowers of clematis and jessamine. Many a quaint or stately mullioned window began to blossom over with roses red and white, with the scarlet and gold and purple and blue of geranium and calceolaria, heliotrope and lobelia, built up in fragrant piles, to do honour to the undergraduates’ festival. Then they welcome their friends from far and near, and old Oxford for a week holds its carnival, and is gay and gallant as Rome taking its fling before the austerities of Lent.

The thrushes, which love Oxford, abide patiently and sing a mellow song, braving the raw, harsh winds of the early spring, had not wholly ceased their note. It was not yet eclipsed by the liquid cadences of the nightingale, buried in the shade of the most retired and exclusive of college gardens, or, with human-like inconsistency, away out by the common high roads, indifferent to the white dust of ordinary traffic lying thick on the hedgerows. In the Broad Walk the huge elms formed an aisle grander than any cathedral on earth can show. The Founder’s Tower of Magdalen looked down on the hoary Grove grown young again, and the deer in the park tossing their new antlers.

The meadows and the river banks had not done with their yellow cowslips and dusky fritillaries when the creamy foam of the hawthorn, rose-red in the parks and gardens, hung over the water. But the meadows and twin rivers were by no means left to the wild flowers--no, nor to what fish had stout enough hearts to abide in the pools, nor to the shy kingfisher lingering by the higher reaches of the Isis and the Cherwell. The favourite resort of the city of students, was alive from morning till night with crews practising for the Eights, solitary men and lads rowing and paddling for their private solace, family parties, and gay gatherings of friends bound for Iffley and Godstowe.

Yet none of these things were the real Oxford. They were pleasant enough touches, but they might be found elsewhere. The very historical memories of burnings and sieges and riots, of martyrs at the stake, of a pale discrowned king, who for many a year bore the title of Martyr, did not truly represent Oxford. Neither did the traditions which cluster round such a place, as parasites cling to forest trees; of the scholar of Queen’s, who, with no better help than an ‘Aristotle,’ slew the wild boar in Shottover Forest; of Amy Robsart ‘slain’ or ‘murdered’ at Cumnor Hall, and buried in state in St. Mary’s Church; of Lady Isabella Thynne tripping along the flagged pathways before she met her own ghost in broad day; of ‘Sarah Marlborough’ driving in from Blenheim after a hot dispute with Sir John, its builder--all these did not make Oxford. Neither did lighter-hearted annals of masks, revels, and royal progresses, Queen Bess in her pride of maidenhood, King George and Queen Charlotte, patterns of conjugal felicity; Queen Victoria and her royal wedded lover. History and legend belonged as freely to other places, and might be found to flourish as abundantly wherever an ancient building reared its moss-grown, ivy-shrouded walls.

But there were special attractions in which Oxford was unique. There scholarship had reigned while Time had been unfolding her long roll. There, among all the dry dust of technical attainments and martinet cleverness; among drowsy sinecureships droning out their existence, constantly opposing all progress, among arrogant flippant trifling with high issues, Oxford had still vindicated her existence by a deep under-current of learning pure and simple. In her noble halls, quiet rooms, and tranquil walks, which men in times ruder and more ringing with strife than our own, provided in munificent reverence for knowledge--knowledge had still had its chance and its day. Leaders of the people in Parliament, at the bar, in the Church, as heads of great schools, as governors of men everywhere, had spent the momentous period between youth and manhood in keeping their terms at Oxford as at her sister Cambridge, and in drinking to their fill of that stream, ever broadening and deepening, of human wit and wisdom, achievement and discovery. Still more was possible. A man could come a raw lad under the shadow of the towers which group themselves amidst the very type of English landscape--in its rich pastures and woodlands--never cease to feel the spell, and die grey-headed to the sound of the mellow bells which are among the glories of Oxford. Such a man would fight the good fight of light against darkness, truth against error, lead a modest and laborious life, heap up fresh stores of thought--the precursor of trustworthy action--or sift the wheat from the chaff of other men’s convictions, and die leaving the world wiser and stronger, better and braver for the scholar’s life.

Jane Prior was carried away by this view of Oxford. She had done her dancing coldly if indefatigably at the ball the night before. But the refined pomp of schools did not so much take her breath away as take her out of herself. She forgot the very object for which she was there. She ceased to consider with irksome pertinacity the hard-headed arguments as to demand and supply, and the good of the many dominating the needs of the few, or the more abstract questions of mind and matter with which her thoughts had been busy lately. She actually lost sight of some womanly considerations which, however insignificantly personal, unacknowledged, and kept in the background, had still served as a stern rule for her conduct since a certain spring day. In her exaltation she failed to remember Mat Crabtree had given the world reason to believe that he and Miss Gray belonged to each other, and ought to be told off to share everything they cared for in common. Engrossed by the influences which had such a strong hold on Jane Prior, she walked between Mat Crabtree and Miss Gray, or sometimes went on before with him, leaving Bennet to follow.

Happily, both of her companions enjoyed exceedingly seeing Jane so enthralled and enthusiastic. They were more or less affected in the same fashion, particularly Mr. Crabtree. He loved Oxford as a son who had spent some of his happiest days and won distinction he could not help continuing to prize, within her bounds. He held up his head and looked about on well-known land-marks with filial pride, and breathed the air with long breaths, as if it was native to him. He grew elated and enthusiastic in his turn. He expatiated eagerly and unweariedly on the lines of study followed and the victories won in this or that college. He would show his companions where Shelley had written his ‘Queen Mab.’ He would take them to Oriel, and let them see where Whately, Arnold, and Keble had sat when they were chums. He, Mat Crabtree, would point out the window from which Bishop Heber looked when he was a lad composing his poem of ‘Palestine,’ to win the Newdegate. The same eager lioniser could carry his friends to Christ Church, to the quarters of two of the ‘Jems,’ who were afterwards, as Marquis of Dalhousie and Earl of Elgin, Governors-General of India. Mat Crabtree was acquainted with what had been Newman’s retreat before he took refuge in a Roman Catholic oratory, and Pusey’s corner when he wrote in the Bodleian. Mat even yearned to have the chance of letting the women see some of the living men worth looking at, for there never had been a day when Oxford was without celebrities of European reputation.

Above all, Mat Crabtree would ask the girls to do him the honour of going with him to his own college, where he had still cronies to whom he must introduce the ladies.

Jane had seen some of Mat Crabtree’s haunts and heroes before, but she was bent on seeing them again, as he was bent on showing them. The two most concerned were as eager to accomplish all that was possible in the long light hours of a summer’s day as if they had been boy and girl visiting Oxford for the first time. To-morrow, the day before the examination, would be time enough to think of work. To-day was for play--to recruit from the fatigues of the journey--to soothe the candidates’ nerves.

And Bennet, standing a little apart, kept smiling benignly to herself and down upon Jane Prior, who was in general so much the more sedate woman of the two, and on Mat Crabtree, old enough to be their father, as if she--Bennet--had been their guardian angel.

So, in accordance with their professions, the little party proceeded to recruit their strength after a three or four hours’ journey, and to refresh their jaded minds after a prolonged course of study, by snatching a hasty lunch at Boffin’s. The new-comers wandered here and there while they discussed by the way academic problems, fragments of ancient misty philosophies, verses full of the wild colossal woes, and the vanished hopes and beliefs, sombre and dim, alternating with the cynical joviality of earlier civilisations. The group regarded the dark front of the old Schools, and entered the great square of the Bodleian with profound satisfaction, not unmingled with awe to this day, when the Latin inscriptions were no longer in a dead language to the readers. They spared a glance to the Sheldonian, still retaining the echoes of speeches and essays and boyish clamour, and to the Radcliffe where demure silence prevailed. They went along picturesque streets and lanes flanked by college walls, where every house differed from its fellow and some bits seemed stolen from Bruges or Ghent. Into halls and chapels innumerable--unable to refrain from straying once more into Wolsey’s princely hall--and hitting the hours of service at those chapels where the most melodious organ and the most exquisitely trained choir piped and chanted evensong. Down to the river which was in a state of ecstatic commotion, where Mat Crabtree, deserting his friends, hailed each barge and boat. He was in danger of forgetting more flagrantly than ever not only the dignity but the weight of his years in order to shout himself hoarse with the most energetic of coaches and run himself lame with the most reckless of freshmen. For had he not coached and been coached, rowed, given bumps and been bumped, and run himself off his legs in his day with the best? Back as far as Wadham’s and St. John’s under the sinking sun, with slowing feet and aching eyes, to watch the long shadows from the wide cedars and tall elms on the velvet turf of two glorious college gardens.

The apartments hired for Jane and Bennet, the same that had been occupied in turn by Mat Crabtree and Jack Prior, after their terms of residence in their colleges were ended, were almost opposite to St. John’s. To Bennet’s gratification they were in just such a yellow house, with gables to the street, cornices to the different storeys, a broad stone canopy to the door, and primitive windows, as might have been found in Holywell. Nearly in front of these was the older portion of St. John’s, where Bishop Juxon had ruled and Laud’s crozier was preserved. Lower down rose the tower of the Martyrs’ Monument, with its effigies, in ruff and gown, of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley--close to Dovorgilla’s tribute to Balliol--the college beloved of Scotch and Yorkshire men. Beyond, half hidden by the elm trees which line the road, the little grey church of St. Mary Magdalen barred farther view. Directly opposite the windows was a salmon-tinted house, with one wing built over a wide entry; beside it a scarred, battered, balustraded house, called attention to its venerable antiquity, and blinked in grim disdain across some intervening buildings at a Queen Anne or earlier Georgian mansion, with its tall pillared gateway, flight of broad easy steps, and long French windows. The judges were wont to occupy that house when the assizes were in Oxford, and vulgar substantial crimes cropped up brutally as topics of the hour among the fine traditions of intellectual subtlety. Another tree-girdled grey church, with its low tower--St. Giles’s--once in the fields, closed the parallel vista. It was all wonderful, esoteric, Oxfordish, pertaining a little on the surface to blue china, peacocks’ feathers, and the French renaissance, but at the core stately and refined.

As Bennet tried to take the prospect in, a party of roving sailors, with their round caps, blue collars, bare throats, and bronzed faces, came swinging in rollicking style up the street, bringing with them a flavour of the salt sea, of the shrill whistling wind in the rigging and shrouds of ships, in foreign harbours, of wastes of water, storms and wrecks, and lives of action and adventure. The group and their associations came with the force of a strong contrast, as far removed from the prevailing tone of Oxford as were the rude figures in the assize calendar. But the very depth and breadth of the contrast only served to bring out in more delicate relief the essential features of the place.

Mat Crabtree went away with a friend to dine in his college, and left the women to well-earned rest. But they could not rest; Jane wandered about the room, staring at bookcase, writing-table, and mantelpiece, which had served generations of undergraduates. In her mind they bore reference to no more than two--her brother Jack, who had been idle and foolish, and failed to take his degree here, and Mat Crabtree, who a quarter of a century before had worked hard and won honour within these walls.

Bennet sat at one of the windows, and looked out till the fleeting crimson of the western sky faded to pale rose, to nankin, to primrose, to faintest green, to full blue. She pursued a train of thought not altogether dissimilar. _His_ rooms, to which his foot had mounted lightly hundreds of times, where he had stored away his bat and fencing foil and skates in winter--where he had Tommy down to visit him. Fancy Tommy perambulating the streets of classic Oxford, seated ruefully, collared and chained, in a porter’s lodge, superciliously sniffed at by fussy young fox-terriers, haughty mastiffs, and dour bull-dogs, and taken down to bathe in the Cherwell! Here Jack had written his letters home to his mother. Here he could not have studied much, she, Bennet, must admit that. But she had no doubt he had thought the better, manlier, higher thoughts which must have come to him, made repentant resolutions--doomed to be broken in the overwhelming tide of temptation, formed in vain some of those good resolutions which pave comfortably many a downward road.

But it was not for her to blame him, or if it was for her she could not do it. She had never done it very effectually. She could do it least of all in the old room where he must have suffered sharp pangs of regret and shame, foreign to his cheery, sanguine temper, when his wasted college course came to an end, and he had to face his failure, his difficulties, his father’s keen disappointment. Yet in spite of it all, she could not have loved him better though he had been as learned as Casaubon and as wise as King Solomon, who had never gone to college and played when he ought to have worked. It might not be the most sternly lofty moral; still, could there be a higher than that of love, open-eyed, not blind, merciful, and tender as yon great canopy of blue sky, folding all in its embrace, true as steel that has been tempered in the fire?

And it was over. He was coming home to make up for everything. And what would he think when he heard that she had been here staying in his very rooms, looking from the window, out of which he had leant, doubtless, smoking and chaffing other undergraduates as gay, thoughtless, idle, and lovable as Jack himself? Oh! Jack, dear, sweet-tempered, generous, facile Jack, he will learn to do himself and his friends credit at last.

Patter, patter, went the continuous tread of feet beneath the window of the yellow house in St. Giles’s. But after the twilight had passed into dusk one footstep came and went, went and came, backwards and forwards, in regular fall, again and again. Bennet did not dream of rising and looking out. Why should she? How could she connect the heavy step which never came nearer with the light one entering and mounting the stairs at a rush, without fear or doubt, as she had pictured it to herself a few minutes ago?

Jack Prior came to another Oxford than that which his friends had found. He had neglected to calculate on a probable change in the trains, and so had arrived much later in the day than he had counted on. He took it for granted that the party would be out, and he dared not go in their absence to his old lodgings, where his landlady would recognise him and announce his arrival before he could make the unexpected entrance he had proposed. He could only lurk and dodge about as he had done last night at the door of the Volunteer Hall, and catch glimpses, or only fancy he caught glimpses, which caused his heart to thump violently, of the trio for whom he was looking. Oxford was full towards the close of the last term, and seen at a distance there was more than one big man--not in gown and cap, but in a rustically, well-bred morning suit of a squirish cut--escorting ladies. It was easy to guess they had come betimes to do honour to some lad’s triumph, or to revisit on the man’s account the scenes of his early struggles and victories, that the often-mentioned localities might be exhibited to his daughters or his nieces, or his young wife and one of her friends. The tableau they presented was a very familiar one in the gathering before the great dispersal. For heads of colleges, tutors, and professors of every degree, with their womenkind and children--unencumbered Fellows in the pensive rather than hilarious ease of their single-blessedness--reading parties as full of frolic as of application to business, were on the eve of the longest of the perpetually-recurring holidays to which studious Oxford is prone, whether the flight be to mountain or moor, or seaboard, across the Channel, or across the Atlantic to the Golden Horn or the Golden Gate.

Jack had been left to his own company from the time of his arrival, and he had not relished the experience. He was thrown back on himself at the very moment when himself was most hateful to him. Though this offended self turned from the Oxford of the past rising again before his eyes with quick disgust, the old slang names of street, hall, and college rose to his lips, the ‘Broad’ and the ‘High,’ ‘Skimmery’ and ‘Teddy’s,’ and plain ‘John,’ with their appropriate people and incidents, were once more fresh in his mind. How often he had fled from the proctors. How many times he had been ‘gated’ and sent up to his dean. How few lectures he had found ‘tippy.’ Of what ‘howlers’ he had been guilty when he went up for his disastrous examinations. He remembered that he had been concerned in the blocking up of that chapel door and in the sticking of a striking caricature on that superciliously sported oak. What endless hours he had spent at tennis and billiards, as well as at football and cricket, in floating in punts no less than in rowing in his college boat. He had ridden capital horses when he ought only to have afforded himself hacks or to have walked. He had run up scores of bills which his allowance would not meet. The life had been pleasant enough at the time; he had meant no harm. He had not gone farther wrong than was implied in idleness, and trifling, with the briefest spurts of repentant diligence. But he could not take the comfort of the limitation; he could not call it a merit when practices, in which some of his companions indulged, had been simply distasteful, and, in certain instances, abhorrent to him. The busy, largely open-air life, including the means of work, if he chose to work, which unfortunately had been rarely, with abundant companionship and numerous engagements, had been perhaps, as people said, the typical life for a lad of his age and rank, and had been shared in by hundreds of fellows no better and no worse than himself. But, like many things pleasant at the moment, there had been a lurking sting in it which pierced on more days than that on which he was ‘bossed’ and left Oxford without his degree. He had to meet his father and hear that a university education had been thrown away on a fool. Money, which could ill be spared at Redcot, had been as good as flung into the fire. He had to confess that his allowance had not been enough--make a clean breast of his debts, and see the expression on his father’s face when he wrote the cheque. It was a case of ‘Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.... But----’ That ‘but’ had been fulfilled where he was concerned. He had seen the payment exacted in other instances. There was poor Thurles, who had been a plucky, nice enough fellow when he knew him first, had taken to drink hopelessly, and was little better than an imbecile; Clive Lowndes had gone to the bad in a more blackguardly heartless way; while Estcourt, who had been hard-up even in these early days, had since been accused of so ‘dirty’ a racing transaction that he had been forced to leave the country because no honourable man would keep company with him. No doubt these were only stray examples of the many black sheep fed on Oxford pastures. Now it was his turn; and it was in the scene of his follies, possibly in the very rooms where he had been wont to whistle thought down the wind, that he was to meet his desert. He did not know how many similar debts were discharged in a variety of ways, but discharged in some sort the obligations must be, for this was the lane from which there was no turning. It was in his old rooms at Oxford that Jack was to see Bennet again. It was there he was to be told his fate by her after he had travelled far to make a home for her by his own efforts, according to her decree. He had been persuaded that he had succeeded in the first step, and had hurried back to tell what he had judged would be his thrice-welcome tale, when she had a different tale to tell. She had reflected and weighed the risks, and found them too great. Mat Crabtree was a man to be depended on, a man to be proud of at Oxford and elsewhere. Haybridge was a safe and honourable home which any woman might be excused for preferring to a squatter’s shanty.

So Jack Prior lashed himself metaphorically, and did not spare the whip as he paced before his former lodgings, well into the summer night, knowing who was within, burning to see her. Yet not going to her. He had come there for the purpose of having it out with Bennet Gray, but when he was close to his goal his heart sank to such a degree that he put off the die for a few hours longer. He would wait till the morning, and then finish the chapter which he had held to be the key to his life.