Johnny Ludlow Fifth Series Part 60

"We only went four miles. Four out and four in."

"You may be driving her rather too far some day--fourteen, or so."

"I don't think she'd be driven. With all her simplicity, she knows how to take care of herself."

Simplicity! I looked at him; and saw he spoke the word in good faith.

_He_ was simple.

"She has a husband, Tod."

"Well?"

"Do you suppose he would like to see you driving her abroad?--and all you fellows in her rooms to the last minute any of you dare stop out?"

"That's not my affair. It's his."

"Any way, Everty might come down upon the lot of you some of these fine days, and say things you'd not like. _She's_ to blame. Why, you heard what that old lady in the brown bonnet said--that her husband must think Sophie was staying with her."

"The fire's low, and I'm cold," said Tod. "Good-night, Johnny."

He went into his room, and I to mine.

A few years ago, there appeared a short poem called "Amor Mundi."[1]

While reading it, I involuntarily recalled this past experience at Oxford, for it described a young fellow's setting-out on the downward path, as Tod did. Two of life's wayfarers start on their long life journey: the woman first; the man sees and joins her; then speaks to her.

[1] Christina G. Rossetti.

"Oh, where are you going, with your love-locks flowing, And the west wind blowing along the narrow track?"

"This downward path is easy, come with me, an it please ye; We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back."

So they two went together in the sunny August weather; The honey-blooming heather lay to the left and right: And dear she was to dote on, her small feet seemed to float on The air, like soft twin-pigeons too sportive to alight.

And so they go forth, these two, on their journey, revelling in the summer suns.h.i.+ne and giving no heed to their sliding progress; until he sees something in the path that startles him. But the syren accounts for it in some plausible way; it lulls his fear, and onward they go again.

In time he sees something worse, halts, and asks her again:

"Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?"

"Oh, that's a thin dead body that waits the Eternal term."

The answer effectually arouses him, and he pulls up in terror, asking her to turn. She answers again, and he knows his fate.

"Turn again, oh my sweetest! Turn again, false and fleetest!

This way, whereof thou weetest, is surely h.e.l.l's own track!"

"Nay, too late for cost counting, nay too steep for hill-mounting, This downward path is easy, but there's no turning back."

Shakespeare tells us that there is a tide in the affairs of man, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: omitted, all the voyage of the after life is spent in shoals and miseries. That will apply to other things besides fortune. I fully believe that after a young fellow has set out on the downward path, in almost all cases there's a chance given him of pulling up again, if he only is sufficiently wise and firm to seize upon it. The opportunity was to come for Tod. He had started; there was no doubt of that; but he had not got down very far yet and could go backward almost as easily as forward. Left alone, he would probably make a sliding run of it, and descend into the shoals. But the chance for him was at hand.

Our commons and Whitney's went up to Gaiton's room in the morning, and we breakfasted there. Lecture that day was at eleven, but I had work to do beforehand. So had Tod, for the matter of that; plenty of it. I went down to mine, but Tod stayed up with the two others.

Bursting into our room, as a fellow does when he is late for anything, I saw at the open window somebody that I thought must be Mr. Brandon's ghost. It took me aback, and for a moment I stood staring.

"Have you no greeting for me, Johnny Ludlow?"

"I was lost in surprise, sir. I am very glad to see you."

"I dare say you are!" he returned, as if he doubted my word.

"It's a good half-hour that I have waited here. You've been at a breakfast-party!"

He must have got that from the scout. "Not at a party, sir. Gaiton asked us to take our commons up, and breakfast with him in his room."

"Who is Gaiton?"

"He is Lord Gaiton. One of the students at Christchurch."

"Never mind his being a lord. Is he any good?"

I could not say Gaiton was particularly good, so pa.s.sed the question over, and asked Mr. Brandon when he came to Oxford.

"I got here at mid-day yesterday. How are you getting on?"

"Oh, very well, sir."

"Been in any rows?"

"No, sir."

"And Todhetley? How is he getting on?"

I should have said very well to this; it would never have done to say very ill, but Tod and Bill Whitney interrupted the answer. They looked just as much surprised as I had been. After talking a bit, Mr. Brandon left, saying he should expect us all three at the Mitre in the evening when dinner in Hall was over.

"What the deuce brings him at Oxford?" cried Tod.

Whitney laughed. "I'll lay a crown he has come to look after Johnny and his morals."

"After the lot of us," added Tod, pus.h.i.+ng his books about. "Look here, you two. I'm not obliged to go bothering to that Mitre in the evening, and I shan't. You'll be enough without me."

"It won't do, Tod," I said. "He expects you."

"What if he does? I have an engagement elsewhere."

"Break it."

"I shall not do anything of the kind. There! Hold your tongue, Johnny, and push the ink this way."

Tod held to that. So when I and Whitney reached the Mitre after dinner, we said he was unable to get off a previous engagement, putting the excuse as politely as we could.

"Oh," said old Brandon, twitching his yellow silk handkerchief off his head, for he had been asleep before the fire. "Engaged elsewhere, is he!

With the lady I saw him driving out yesterday, I suppose: a person with blue feathers on her head."