“Ever yours, affectionately,
“T. B.”
The above letter, and that to his father, asking for leave to emigrate, having been written and sent off, Tom was left, on the afternoon of the day following his upset, making manful, if not very successful, efforts to shake off the load of depression which weighed on him, and to turn his thoughts resolutely forward to a new life in a new country. East was away at the Docks. There was no one moving in the Temple. The men who had business were all at Westminster, or out of sight and hearing in the recesses of their chambers. Those who had none were for the most part away enjoying themselves, in one way or another amongst the mighty whirl of the mighty human sea of London. There was nothing left for him to do; he had written the only two letters he had to write, and had only to sit still and wait for the answers, killing the meantime as well as he could. Reading came hard to him, but it was the best thing to do, perhaps; at any rate he was trying it on, though his studies were constantly interrupted by long fits of absence of mind, during which, though his body remained in the temple, he was again in the well-kept garden of Barton, or in the hazel wood under the lee of the Berkshire hills.
He was roused out of one of these reveries, and brought back to external life and Fig-tree Court, by a single knock at the outer door, and a shout of the newsman's boy for the paper. So he got up, found the paper, which he had forgotten to read, and, as he went to the door, cast his eye on it, and saw that a great match was going on at Lord's. This gave a new turn to his thoughts. He stood looking down stairs after the boy, considering whether he should not start at once for the match.
He would be sure to see a lot of acquaintances there at any rate. But the idea of seeing and having to talk to mere acquaintances was more distasteful than his present solitude. He was turning to bury himself again in his hole, when he saw a white dog walk quietly up seven or eight stairs at the bottom of the flight, and then turn round, and look for some one to follow.
“How odd!” thought Tom, as he watched him; “as like as two peas. It can't be. No. Why, yes it is.” And then he whistled, and called “Jack,” and the dog looked up, and wagged his tail, as much as to say, “All right, I'm coming directly; but I must wait for my master.” The next moment Drysdale appeared at the bottom of the stairs, and looking up, said—
“Oh! that's you, is it? I'm all right then. So you knew the old dog?”
“I should rather think so,” said Tom. “I hope I never forget a dog or horse I have once known.”
In the short minute which Drysdale and Jack took to arrive at his landing, Tom had time for a rush of old college memories, in which the grave and gay, pleasant and bitter, were strangely mingled. The light when he had been first brought to his senses about Patty came up very vividly before him, and the commemoration days, when he had last seen Drysdale. “How strange!” he thought, “is my old life coming back again just now? Here, on the very day after it is all over, comes back the man with whom I was so intimate up to the day it began, and have never seen since. What does it mean?”
There was a little touch of embarrassment in the manner of both of them as they shook hands at the top of the stairs, and turned into the chambers. Tom motioned to Jack to take his old place at one end of the sofa, and began caressing him there, the dog showing unmistakably, by gesture and whine, that delight at renewing an old friendship for which his race are so nobly distinguished. Drysdale threw himself down in an arm-chair and watched them.