“Oh! I don't feel at all shy with him,” said Mary, laughing. “How lucky it is that he found us out so soon. I like him so much. There is a sort of way about him, as if he couldn't help himself. I am sure one could turn him round one's finger. Don't you think so?”
“I'm not so sure of that. But he always was soft-hearted, poor boy. But he isn't a boy any longer. You must take care, Mary. Shall we ring for tea?”
CHAPTER XXVI—THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS
“Do well unto thyself and men will speak good of thee,” is a maxim as old as King David's time, and just as true now as it was then. Hardy had found it so since the publication of the class list. Within a few days of that event it was known that his was a very good first. His college tutor had made his own inquiries, and repeated on several occasions in a confidential way the statement that, “with the exception of a want of polish in his Latin and Greek verses, which we seldom get except in the most finished public school men—Etonians in particular—there has been no better examination in the schools for several years.” The worthy tutor went on to take glory to the college, and in a lower degree to himself. He called attention, in more than one common room, to the fact that Hardy had never had any private tuition, but had attained his intellectual development solely in the curriculum provided by St. Ambrose's College for the training of the youth entrusted to her. “He himself, indeed,” he would add, “had always taken much interest in Hardy, and had, perhaps, done more for him than would be possible in every case, but only with direct reference to, and in supplement of the college course.”
The Principal had taken marked and somewhat pompous notice of him, and had graciously intimated his wish, or, perhaps I should say, his will (for he would have been much astonished to be told that a wish of his could count for less than a royal mandate to any man who had been one of his servitors) that Hardy should stand for a fellowship, which had lately fallen vacant. A few weeks before, this excessive affability and condescension of the great man would have wounded Hardy; but, somehow, the sudden rush of sunshine and prosperity, though it had not thrown him off his balance, or changed his estimate of men and things had pulled a sort of comfortable sheath over his sensitiveness, and gave him a second skin, as it were, from which the Principal's shafts bounded off innocuous, instead of piercing and rankling. At first, the idea of standing for a fellowship at St Ambrose's was not pleasant to him. He felt inclined to open up entirely new ground for himself, and stand at some other college, where he had neither acquaintance nor association. But on second thoughts, he resolved to stick to his old college, moved thereto partly by the lamentations of Tom when he heard of his friends meditated emigration but chiefly by the unwillingness to quit a hard post for an easier one, which besets natures like his to their own discomfort, but, may one hope, to the single benefit of the world at large. Such men may see clearly enough all the advantages of a move of this kind—may quite appreciate the ease which it would bring them—may be impatient with themselves for not making it at once, but when it comes to the actual leaving the old post, even though it may be a march out with all the honours of war, drums beating and colors flying, as it would have been in Hardy's case, somehow or another, nine times out of ten, they throw up the chance at the last moment, if not earlier; pick up their old arms—growling perhaps at the price they are paying to keep their own self-respect—and shoulder back into the press to face their old work, muttering, “We are asses; we don't know what's good for us; but we must see this job through somehow, come what may.”
So Hardy stayed on at St. Ambrose, waiting for the fellowship examination, and certainly, I am free to confess, not a little enjoying the change in his position and affairs.
He had given up his low dark back rooms to the new servitor, his successor, to whom he had presented all the rickety furniture, except his two Windsor chairs and Oxford reading-table. The intrinsic value of the gift was not great, certainly, but was of importance to the poor raw boy who was taking his place; and it was made with the delicacy of one who knew the situation. Hardy's good offices did not stop here. Having tried the bed himself for upwards of three long years, he knew all the hard places, and was resolved while he stayed up that they should never chafe another occupant as they had him. So he set himself to provide stuffing, and took the lad about with him, and cast a skirt of his newly-acquired mantle of respectability over him, and put him in the way of making himself as comfortable as circumstances would allow, never disguising from him all the while that the bed was not to be a bed of roses. In which pursuit, though not yet a fellow, perhaps he was qualifying himself better for a fellowship than he could have done by any amount of cramming for polish in his versification. Not that the electors of St. Ambrose would be likely to hear of or appreciate this kind of training. Polished versification would no doubt have told more in that quarter. But we who are behind the scenes may disagree with them, and hold that he who is thus acting out and learning to understand the meaning of the word “fellowship,” is the man for our votes.
So Hardy had left his rooms and gone out of college into lodgings near at hand. The sword, epaulettes, and picture of his father's old ship—his tutelary divinities, as Tom called them—occupied their accustomed places in his new rooms, except that there was a looking-glass over the mantel-piece here, by the side of which the sword hung—instead of in the centre, as it had done while he had no such luxury. His Windsor chairs occupied each side of the pleasant window of his sitting-room, and already the taste for luxuries of which he had so often accused himself to Tom began to peep out in the shape of one or two fine engravings. Altogether fortune was smiling on Hardy, and he was making the most of her, like a wise man, having brought her round by proving that he could get on without her, and was not going out of the way to gain her smiles. Several men came at once, even before he had taken his B. A. degree, to read with him, and others applied to know whether he would take a reading party in the long vacation. In short, all things went well with Hardy, and the Oxford world recognized the fact, and tradesmen and college servants became obsequious, and began to bow before him, and recognize him as one of their lords and masters.
It was to Hardy's lodgings that Tom repaired straight-way, when he left his cousin by blood, and cousin by courtesy, at the end of the last chapter. For, running over in his mind all his acquaintance, he at once fixed upon Hardy as the man to accompany him in escorting the ladies to the Long Walk. Besides being his own most intimate friend, Hardy was the man whom he would prefer to all others to introduce to ladies now. “A month ago it might have been different,” Tom thought; “he was such an old guy in his dress. But he has smartened up, and wears as good a coat as I do, and looks well enough for anybody, though he never will be much of a dresser. Then he will be in a bachelor's gown too, which will look respectable.”