“He did, did he?”
“Yes; and, depend upon it, he will do all he can for you in college; you don’t know him very well, I think; but I am sure he takes an interest in you now, at all events,” I continued, “and no man is a more sincere and zealous friend.”
“I beg your pardon, Hawthorne, but I fancy I do know Mr Ormiston very well.”
“Oh! I remember, there seemed some coolness between you, because you never would accept his invitations. Ormiston thought you were too proud to dine with him; and then his pride, which he has his share of, took fire. But that misunderstanding must be all over now.”
“My dear Hawthorne, I believe Mr Ormiston and I understand each other perfectly. Good-morning; I am sorry to seem abrupt, but I have a host of things, not the most agreeable, to attend to.”
It seemed quite evident that there was some little prejudice on Russell’s part against Ormiston. Possibly he did not like his attentions to his sister. But that was no business of mine, and I knew the other too well to doubt his earnest wish to aid and encourage a man of Russell’s high principles, and in his unfortunate position. None of us always know our best friends.
The step which Russell had resolved on taking was, of course, an unusual one. Even the college authorities strongly advised him to remove his name to the books of one of the halls, where he would enter comparatively as a stranger, and where his altered position would not entail so many painful feelings. Every facility was offered him of doing so at one of them where a relative of our Principal’s was the head, and even a saving in expense might thus be effected. But this evident kindness and consideration on their part, only confirmed him in the resolution of remaining where he was. He met their representations with the graceful reply, that he had an attachment to the college which did not depend upon the rank he held in it, and that he trusted he should not be turned out of two homes at once. Even the heart of the splenetic little vice-principal was moved by this genuine tribute to the venerable walls, which to him, as his mistress’s girdle to the poet, encircled all he loved, or hoped, or cared for; and had the date been some century earlier—in those remarkable times when a certain fellow was said to have owed his election into that body to a wondrous knack he had at compounding sherry-posset—it is probable Charles Russell would have stepped into a fellowship by special license at once.
He had harder work before him, however, and he set stoutly to it. He got permission to lodge out of college—a privilege quite unusual, and apparently without any sufficient object in his case. A day or two after his return, he begged me to go with him to see the rooms he had taken: and I was surprised to find that although small, and not in a good part of the town, they were furnished in a style by no means, I thought, in accordance with the strict economy I knew him to be practising in every other respect. They contained, on a small scale, all the appointments of a lady’s drawing-room. It was soon explained. His sister was coming to live with him. “We are but two, now,” said Russell in explanation; “and though poor Mary has been offered what might have been a comfortable home elsewhere, which perhaps would have been more prudent, we both thought, why should we be separated? As to these little things you see, they are nearly all hers: we offered them to the creditors, but even the lawyers would not touch them: and here Mary and I shall live. Very strange, you think, for her to be here in Oxford with no one to take care of her but me; but she does not mind that, and we shall be together. However, Hawthorne, we shall keep a dragon: there is an old housekeeper who would not be turned off, and she comes down with Mary, and may pass for her aunt, if that’s all; so don’t, pray, be shocked at us.”