The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Tom had gone into Hardy's rooms according to his custom, after hall; and Hardy at once opened fire concerning the Choughs.

"Brown, you've no right to go to that place," he said abruptly.

"Why?" said Tom.

"You know why," said Hardy.

"Why am I not to go to the Choughs? Because there happens to be a pretty barmaid there? All our crew go, and twenty other men besides."

"Yes; but do any of them go in the sort of way you do? Does she look at any one of them as she does at you?"

"You seem to know a great deal about it," said Tom. "How should I know?"

"That's not fair or true, or like you, Brown," said Hardy. "You do know that that girl doesn't care a straw for the other men who go there. You do know that she is beginning to care for you. I've taken it on myself to speak to you about this, and I shouldn't be your friend if I shirked it. You shan't go on with this folly, this sin, for want of warning."

"So it seems," said Tom doggedly. "Now I think I've had warning enough. Suppose we drop the subject?"

"Not yet," said Hardy firmly. "There are only two endings to this sort of business, and you know it as well as I."

"A right and a wrong one--eh? And because I'm your friend, you assume that my end will be the wrong one?"

"I say the end must be the wrong one here! There's no right end. Think of your family. You dare not tell me that you will marry her!"

"I dare not tell you!" said Tom, starting up. "I dare tell any man anything I please!"

"I say again," went on Hardy, "you dare not say you mean to marry her! You don't mean it! And, as you don't, to kiss her in the passage as you did tonight----"

"So you were sneaking behind to watch me?" burst out Tom.

Hardy only answered calmly and slowly, "I will not take these words from any man! You had better leave my rooms!"

The next minute Tom was in the passage; the next striding up and down the side of the inner quadrangle in the peace of the pale moonlight.

The following day, and for many days, neither Hardy nor Tom spoke to one another. Both were wretched, and both feared lest others should notice the quarrel.

Tom went more and more to the Choughs, and Patty noticed a change in the youth--a change that half-fascinated and half-repelled her.

Then, for the next few days, Tom plunged deeper and deeper downwards. He left off pulling on the river, shunned his old friends, and lived with a set of men who were ready enough to let him share all their brutal orgies.

Drysdale, with whom Tom had been on good terms, noted the difference, and advised him "to cut the Choughs business."

"You're not the sort of a fellow to go in for this kind of thing," he said. "I'll be hanged if it won't kill you, or make a devil of you before long! Make up your mind to cut the whole concern, old fellow!"

"I'm awfully wretched, Drysdale," was all Tom could say.

All the same, Tom could not follow Drysdale's advice at once and break off his visits to the Choughs altogether.

The real crisis was over. He had managed to pass through the eye of the storm, and was drifting into the skirts of it, conscious of an escape from utter shipwreck.

His visits to the Choughs became shorter; he never stayed behind now after the other men, and avoided interviews with Patty alone as diligently as he had sought them before.

Patty, unable to account for this fresh change of manner, was piqued, and ready to revenge herself in a hundred little ways. If she had been really in love with him it would have been a different matter; but she was not. In the last six weeks she certainly had often had visions of the pleasures of being a lady and keeping servants, but her liking was not more than skin deep.

Of late, indeed, she had been much more frightened than attracted by the conduct of her admirer, and really felt it a relief, notwithstanding her pique, when he retired into a less demonstrative state.

Before the end of that summer term Tom had it made up with Hardy, and it was Hardy who, at Tom's request, called in at the Choughs, just to see how things were going on. Tom saw at a glance that something had happened when Hardy appeared again.

"What is it? She is not ill?" he said quickly.

"No; quite well, her aunt says."

"You didn't see her, then?"

"No the fact is, she has gone home."

IV.--The Master's Term

The years speed by, bringing their changes to St. Ambrose. Hardy is a fellow and tutor of the college in Tom's second year, and Drysdale has been requested to remove his name from the books. Tom is all for politics now, and the theories he propounds in the Union gain him the name of Chartist Brown.

In his third year, Hardy often brought him down from high talk of "universal democracy" and "the good cause" by insisting on making the younger man explain what he really meant. And though Tom suffered under this severe treatment, in the end he generally came round to acknowledge the reasonableness of Hardy's methods of argument.