“JOHN HARDY.”
Here we will drop the curtain for the next hour. At the end of that time, Tom staggered out of his room, down the staircase, across the quadrangle, up Drysdale's staircase. He paused at the door to gather some strength, ran his hands through his hair, and arranged his coat; notwithstanding, when he entered, Drysdale started to his feet, upsetting Jack from his comfortable coil on the sofa.
“Why, Brown, you're ill; have some brandy,” he said, and went to his cupboard for the bottle.
Tom leant his arm on the fireplace; his head on it. The other hung down by his side, and Jack licked it, and he loved the dog as he felt the caress. Then Drysdale came to his side with a glass of brandy, which he took and tossed off as though it had been water. “Thank you,” he said, and as Drysdale went back with the bottle, reached a large armchair and sat down in it.
“Drysdale, I sha'n't go with you to Abingdon fair to-morrow.”
“Hullo! what, has the lovely Patty thrown you over?” said Drysdale, turning from the cupboard, and resuming his lounge on the sofa.
“No.” he sank back into the chair, on the arms of which his elbows rested, and put his hands up before his face, pressing them against his burning temples. Drysdale looked at him hard, but said nothing; and there was a dead silence of a minute or so, broken only by Tom's heavy breathing, which he labored in vain to control.
“No,” he repeated at last, and the remaining words came out slowly as they were trying to steady themselves, “but, by God, Drysdale I can't take her with you, and that—” a dead pause.
“The young lady you met to-night, eh?”
Tom nodded, but said nothing.
“Well, old fellow,” said Drysdale, “now you've made up your mind, I tell you, I'm devilish glad of it. I'm no saint, as you know, but I think it would have been a d—d shame if you had taken her with us.”
“Thank you,” said Tom, and pressed his fingers tighter on his forehead; and he did feel thankful for the words, though coming from such a man, they went into him like coals of fire.
Again there was a long pause, Tom sitting as before.
Drysdale got up and strolled up and down his room, with his hands in the pockets of his silk-lined lounging coat, taking at each turn a steady look at the other. Presently he stopped, and took his cigar out of his mouth. “I say, Brown,” he said, after another minute's contemplation of the figure before him, which bore such an unmistakable impress of wretchedness, that it made him quite uncomfortable, “why don't you cut that concern?”
“How do you mean?” said Tom.
“Why that 'Choughs' business—I'll be hanged if it won't kill you, or make a devil of you before long, if you go on with it.”
“It's not far from that now.”
“So I see—and I'll tell you what, you're not the sort of fellow to go in for this kind of thing. You'd better leave it to cold-blooded brutes, like some we know—I needn't mention names.”
“I'm awfully wretched, Drysdale; I've been a brute my self to you and everybody of late.”
“Well, I own I don't like the new side of you. Now make up your mind to cut the whole concern, old fellow,” he said, coming up goodnaturedly, and putting his hand on Tom's shoulder, “it's hard to do, I dare say, but you had better make a plunge and get it over. There's wickedness enough going about without your helping to shove another one into it.”
Tom groaned as he listened, but he felt that the man was trying to help him in his own way, and according to his light, as Drysdale went on expounding his own curious code of morality. When it was ended, he shook Drysdale's hand, and, wishing him good night, went back to his own rooms. The first step upwards towards the light had been made,—for he felt thoroughly humbled before the man on whom he had expended in his own mind so much patronizing pity for the last half year—whom he had been fancying he was influencing for good.
During the long hours of the night the scenes of the last few hours, of the last few days, came back to him and burnt into his soul. The gulf yawned before him now plain enough, open at his feet—black, ghastly. He shuddered at it, wondering if he should even yet fall in, felt wildly about for strength to stand firm, to retrace his steps; but found it not. He found not yet the strength he was in search of, but in the grey morning he wrote a short note:—
“I shall not be able to take you to Abingdon fair to-day. You will not see me perhaps for some days. I am not well.
“I am very sorry. Don't think that I am changed. Don't be unhappy, or I don't know what I may do.” There was no address and no signature to the note.
When the gates opened he hurried out of the college and, having left it and a shilling with Dick (whom he found cleaning the yard, and much astonished at his appearance, and who promised to deliver it to Patty with his own hands before eight o'clock), he got back again to his own rooms, went to bed, worn out in mind and body, and slept till mid-day.