CHAPTER V.

THE LONG VACATION.

There was a good deal of the school-boy’s pleasure in the commencement of the holidays, mixed with the pride that he felt in his new condition. There were only a few passengers for Porchester, and only a few people on the platform when he alighted; but the few there were knew him, and Oxford made the chief matter of their inquiries, and a pleasant topic for him to dilate upon. But he was soon hurried off by two of his admiring younger brothers, and seated at the side of old John, the factotum, in the pony-carriage, talking hard, now to him, now to his brothers, who sat behind. How familiar the road was! Did green hedges ever look so green as those? or was summer twilight ever so sweet as this that lay so peacefully about little Porchester? The old church-tower rose like a soft shadow from the close trees. There, beside it, peeped the vicarage gables and chimneys. There was old Sally, the laundress, resting at her gateway, rubbing her wrinkled fingers as though she would smooth away the signs of so much soap and water. There was the postmaster putting up the shutters of his little grocery-shop; the tailor in his garden, tending his standard roses; the blacksmith at his silent smithy; there were the carrier’s horses just being unharnessed from the van that in these primitive parts was no mean rival of the railway. A few children here; a knot of women there, chattering, scolding, laughing, staring, questioning; there a group of men outside the “Anchor;” here some boys playing marbles.

How unchanged it all was! The term at Oxford seemed like a dream. Frank could scarcely believe he had been away more than two months.

Now they are passing the vicarage garden. The gate is open, and Frank, much to the amusement of Tom and Will in the hind-seat of the pony-carriage, stares hard through the white posts and up the lawn. Whatever his thoughts or hopes may have been, they are rudely interrupted (and most probably shattered) by a couple of voices from behind, which seem to be bubbling over with amusement, and to be jostling each other for the first and loudest place.

“She’s away!”

“Who’s away?” asked Frank quietly, with assumed indifference.

“Who’s away?” repeat the two behind. “Why, who’re you looking for, eh?”

“_Are_ the vicarage people away, then?” said Frank.

“Rose is,” again comes from the bubbling voices.

But before the subject can be pursued further, old John, pointing with his whip, says,--

“There’s the master, sir.”

And Frank, looking straight away up the road, discerns his father coming towards them, and jumps out of the carriage.

“Why, Frank, my boy, I declare you’ve grown!”

Nor did his dignity decline the honour. He took his father’s arm, and, letting the younger ones drive home with John and the luggage, walked and talked with his father till they reached the house. His mother and sisters were at the door to welcome him. Never had there been such a pleasant, proud home-coming yet. The servants peeped from the upper windows to see “Master Frank,” whom they doubtless expected to find completely transformed, and John, taking the luggage from the carriage, again took stock of him, and told the servants with an air that, as always, carried weight,--

“Arter all, there’s no place like college to make a man of a young gentleman.”

One scene more to complete the first act of our freshman’s life.

Mr. Ross was, as became a lawyer, a man of sound business-like habits. Directly after breakfast on the following morning he called Frank into his study, and they went together through all the bills.

The result of their investigation was as follows:--

£ _s._ _d._ Travelling and Hotel Expenses at Matriculation 5 10 0 Caution Money (to Paul’s) 30 0 0 Matriculation Fee (to the University) 2 10 0 Glass and China (to the scout) 9 19 6 Cap and Gown 1 2 6 Entrance Fee (Union Society) 1 5 0 Boat Club Subscription 3 10 0 Cricket Club 2 10 0 Paul’s Debating Society 0 2 6 Rifle Corps 5 0 0 Valuation of Furniture 30 0 0 Battels for Summer Term 35 0 0 Fee for Responsions 1 0 0 Books, Sundries, and Travelling Expenses 10 0 0

The summer passed. Frank had been to the Henley Regatta at Crawford’s invitation, and had stayed with him at the old “Red Lion” with various crews; had run down the bank at his side when he was practising for the Diamond Sculls in the sweet June mornings, and had shouted with the shouting crowd when he won the race, beating the London man and the Cantab who had been training “dark.” Then he had gone to Crawford’s home for a pleasant week; then back to little Porchester, where, with garden-parties and cricket, with boating on the river that seemed so deserted after the crowded Isis, and lawn-tennis, the time had passed away happily enough. Of work for the “Schools” Frank had done little or nought; but when in August the vicar’s daughter left Porchester for six weeks, work somehow seemed easier, and he managed to get through a fair amount; and again, when the boys went back to school about the middle of September, and he was left alone with his parents and sisters, there seemed fresh opportunities for study. But then--but then back came the vicar’s daughter, and books were again forgotten. The village seemed to have gained fresh beauties. Every old gate and stile seemed no longer made of common wood, every hedge no longer clad with common green. The organ-loft where she practised in the week was no longer a dusty, dark, break-neck place, but the place for breaking something which, whatever lovers may say, is often easily mended by

“Time and the change the old man brings.”

And what a poet Frank was in those days! How he idealized, and in his own fashion glorified, every little winding woodland path, every glimpse of wold seen through the fading autumn leaves, every stretch of quiet river, the old boats, the crumbling bridge, the dark weir, the church-tower--that useful part of a young poet’s stock-in-trade.

In fact, when he returned to Oxford one Friday evening in October, he quite agreed with the old woman’s and the sailor’s superstition that Friday was an unlucky day; he wrapped himself in his rug, and felt that if his heart was not breaking, he was at least deeply in love. Silence was his consolation. He rejected the invitation of a friend whom he met _en route_ to transfer himself and his goods to the atmosphere of a smoking compartment. He stared gloomily at the persistent bookstall-boys; rejected even the offer of a Banbury cake at Didcot. In his condition, there was something positively comforting in that most cheerless and wretched of all stations. The wind that moaned in the telegraph-wires seemed to murmur “Rose.” The bell that rang violently in the platform-porter’s hand seemed like the little single bell in Porchester Church--of course much louder and harsher to Frank’s imagination, but it was a bell, and it recalled Rose, and that was enough.

Having passed safely through the turmoil of the Oxford platform, and the loneliness of Friday night, on Saturday morning he rushed precipitously to Davis’s picture-shop in “the Turl,”[8] and having purchased a photograph of the Huguenot picture by Millais, hung it in a corner by his chimney looking-glass. In that corner his friends noticed he now was constantly to be found sitting. They, of course, did not know that in that picture Frank saw Rose and himself under the vicarage wall. He was at a loss, it is true, to account even to himself for the pocket-handkerchief which is being bound round the reluctant arm. But what mattered to him such a paltry detail, even though it made the whole gist of the picture?

Term began with the usual routine. Chapel at half-past eight on Saturday evening, at which all assembled except a few who were detained by those convenient “tidal trains,” which always seem to be late when one is coming back from a Long-Vacation scamper on the Continent, or from the injured Emerald Isle, but never when one is thither bound.

And then comes Sunday morning, with the many good-intentioned ones hurrying to their seats past the much-enduring Bible-clerk, whose labours would, however, very soon lessen with the growth of term;--Sunday, with the heavy luncheon;--Sunday, with the long constitutional in the bright October sunlight--was a first Sunday in Michaelmas Term ever other than a bright one? Dinner in Hall at six, with the endless greetings that the confusion of Chapel had prevented. Monday morning, with its formal calls on Master and Dean, Tutor and Lecturer; and Monday evening, with its posted list of lectures, club-meetings, and subscriptions; till Tuesday morning comes, with the greater or less obedience of the victims of those various calls, shows that term has begun in very earnest, no matter whether the earnestness be the earnestness of industry or of that which flourishes as abundantly--idleness.