In fact, when he returned to Oxford one Friday evening in October, he quite agreed with the old woman’s and the sailor’s superstition that Friday was an unlucky day; he wrapped himself in his rug, and felt that if his heart was not breaking, he was at least deeply in love. Silence was his consolation. He rejected the invitation of a friend whom he met en route to transfer himself and his goods to the atmosphere of a smoking compartment. He stared gloomily at the persistent bookstall-boys; rejected even the offer of a Banbury cake at Didcot. In his condition, there was something positively comforting in that most cheerless and wretched of all stations. The wind that moaned in the telegraph-wires seemed to murmur “Rose.” The bell that rang violently in the platform-porter’s hand seemed like the little single bell in Porchester Church—of course much louder and harsher to Frank’s imagination, but it was a bell, and it recalled Rose, and that was enough.
Having passed safely through the turmoil of the Oxford platform, and the loneliness of Friday night, on Saturday morning he rushed precipitously to Davis’s picture-shop in “the Turl,”[8] and having purchased a photograph of the Huguenot picture by Millais, hung it in a corner by his chimney looking-glass. In that corner his friends noticed he now was constantly to be found sitting. They, of course, did not know that in that picture Frank saw Rose and himself under the vicarage wall. He was at a loss, it is true, to account even to himself for the pocket-handkerchief which is being bound round the reluctant arm. But what mattered to him such a paltry detail, even though it made the whole gist of the picture?
Term began with the usual routine. Chapel at half-past eight on Saturday evening, at which all assembled except a few who were detained by those convenient “tidal trains,” which always seem to be late when one is coming back from a Long-Vacation scamper on the Continent, or from the injured Emerald Isle, but never when one is thither bound.
And then comes Sunday morning, with the many good-intentioned ones hurrying to their seats past the much-enduring Bible-clerk, whose labours would, however, very soon lessen with the growth of term;—Sunday, with the heavy luncheon;—Sunday, with the long constitutional in the bright October sunlight—was a first Sunday in Michaelmas Term ever other than a bright one? Dinner in Hall at six, with the endless greetings that the confusion of Chapel had prevented. Monday morning, with its formal calls on Master and Dean, Tutor and Lecturer; and Monday evening, with its posted list of lectures, club-meetings, and subscriptions; till Tuesday morning comes, with the greater or less obedience of the victims of those various calls, shows that term has begun in very earnest, no matter whether the earnestness be the earnestness of industry or of that which flourishes as abundantly—idleness.
CHAPTER VI.
“THE FLYING TERMS.”
It was a Thursday night; and the rooms of the “Union” were crowded, for the debate was to be opened by a popular member. A few men were in the reading-rooms, indifferent to the subject and its mover; a few were in the writing-room, hurrying over their letters, in order to be in time for the “private business,” which is usually the most amusing part of the evening’s proceedings. There were several important telegrams posted in the Hall, and the stopping of members to read them considerably added to the general confusion. Ladies were hurrying upstairs to the little uncomfortable gallery,[9] with amused looks of curiosity, or the calm equanimity of accustomed visitors. No one to-night waited to read, either for edification or for amusement, the endless notices of those private tutors, to whom advertisement seems a dire necessity—those manifestos of all shades, pleading, peremptory, apologetic, confidential, and confident, which suggest the question:—“Where are the pupils, to be instructed by these willing and anxious instructors?”
The steward’s room is in possession of two attendants only, for the steward and his indefatigable son are upstairs in the committee-room, in attendance upon the committee.