re, and, from the university standpoint, an even brilliant one.

I liked my
work. It interested me. Yet, in some aspects, this university life seemed to
me narrow. It pained me to see old faces depart, and new ones enter who
knew naught of me. Other men halted here, but for a while, on their life’s
journey, moving forward to meet the larger issues, to seek ‘fresh woods
and pastures new.’ And I remained—as one, held up by accident, remains
at some half-way house, seeing the stream of traf c and of wayfarers
sweep for ever forward along the great crowded highroad, and pass him
by.
If I had not had that break in my university course, if I had not spent
those two years at Hover in a society and amid interests and occupations—
pleasures, let me put it roundly—foreign to my own social sphere,
Cambridge, and all Cambridge stood for, would not probably have palled
upon me. But I had beheld wider horizons; beheld them, moreover,
through the windows of an enchanted castle. Thus memory cast its shadow
over the present, making me—it was faithless, ungrateful, I had nearly
said, sinful—dissatis ed and sad.
However, being in good health, I was not too sad to eat a good dinner;
and so, one ne day at the beginning of term, when the bell rang for hall, I
crossed the quadrangle and went in—or went
[2]
rather to the door, and there stopped short. For, face to face, I met none
other than Mr. Halidane, in all the glory of a freshman’s brand-new gown.
‘Ah! Mr. Brownlow,’ he exclaimed, with his blandest and most beaming
smile, ‘it is indeed a gracious dispensation to meet you, sir, an old and
valued friend, on my rst day within these hallowed and venerable walls. I
feared you might not have come up yet. Allow me to congratulate you
upon your distinctions, your degree, your fellowship. With what gladness
have I heard of them, have I welcomed the news of your successful
progress. I trust you are duly thankful to an over-ruling providence!’
‘I trust I am,’ quoth I.
I believed the man to be a hypocrite. He had done me all the harm he
could. Yet, what with my loneliness, what with my memories of that
enchanted castle, I could not but be moved at this unexpected meeting with
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him. I choked down my disgust, my resentment for the dirty tricks he had
played me, and shaking him by the hand asked what had brought him here.
‘The generosity of my pious patron,’ he answered, casting up his eyes
devoutly. ‘Ah! what do I not owe—under providence—to that true
ornament of his exalted station! Through his condescending liberality I am
enabled to ful l the wish long nearest my heart; and by taking, as I humbly
hope in due time, Holy Orders, to enter upon a more extended sphere of
Christian and national usefulness.’
I abstained from asking how he had suddenly discovered the Church of
England suited his religious convictions and abilities better than the sect of
the ‘Saints indeed,’ and contented myself, not without a beating heart, by
enquiring after Lord Longmoor and all at Hover.
I got answers; but none that I wanted. The Earl was perfection; the
Countess perfection; even for Colonel Esdaile he had three or four
superlatives. The Countess, he trusted, had been lately brought to the
knowledge of the truth. The Colonel only needed to be brought to it—and
he was showing many hopeful signs—to be more than mortal man.—It
was evidently his cue to approve highly of Hover and all dwellers therein.
And when, with almost a faltering voice, I asked news of my dear boy, he
broke out into fresh superlatives; from amid the rank growth of which I
could only discover that Lord Hartover was a very dashing and popular
young man about town, and that it served
[3]
Mr. Halidane’s purpose to approve—or seem to approve—of his being
such.
‘The pomps and vanities of this wicked world, you know, my dear
Brownlow,’—the fellow began to drop the ‘Mr.’ now—‘the pomps and
vanities—but we must make allowances for youth—and those to whom
little is given, you know, of them will little be required.’
‘Little given!’ thought I with a shudder, as I contrasted Halidane’s words
with my own old lessons.—God grant that this fellow may not have had
the opportunity of undoing all the good which I had done! I made the boy
believe once that very much had been given him.—But I said nothing.
Why waste words where the conversation will never go deeper than
words?
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 So we went in to hall together; and, what was more, came out together,
for it was plainly Mr. Halidane’s plan to quarter himself upon me,
physically and morally—physically, in that he came up into my rooms and
sat down therein, his countenance falling when he perceived that I brought
out no wine.
‘You are a Nazarite still?’ he said at last, after looking uneasily several
times towards door and cupboard.
‘I am, indeed,’ I replied, amused at his inability to keep his own counsel.
‘Ah—well. All the more freedom, then, for the wine of the Spirit. I trust
that we shall have gracious converse together often, my dear Brownlow,
and edify one another with talk of that which belongs to our souls’ health
as we wander through this wilderness of tears.’
I replied by asking, I fear a little slyly, after Lord Longmoor’s book on
prophecy.
‘As was to be expected—a success,’ he replied—‘a magni cent success,
though I say so. Not perhaps in the number of copies sold. But what is
worldly fame, and how can we expect the carnal man to favour spiritual
things? Not, again, from a pecuniary point of view. But what is lthy
lucre? His lordship’s philanthropy has enabled him, so to speak, to make
the book a present, a free gift to the elect. No, not in such material gains as
Christians will leave to the unsancti ed, to a Scott or a Byron, does
success lie; but in the cause of the Gospel. And, if humble I have been
instrumental to that success, either in assisting his lordship’s deeper
intellect, as the mouse might the lion, or in having the book properly
pushed in certain Gospel quarters where I have a little
[4]
unworthy in uence—’ (Unworthy indeed, I doubt not, thought I!)
—‘why, then—have I not my reward—I say, have I not my reward?’
I thought he certainly had. For being aware he wrote the whole book
himself, and tacked his patron’s name to it, I began to suspect shrewdly he
had been franked at College as hush-money, the book being a dead failure.
And so I told the good old Master next day, who slapped his thigh and
chuckled, and then scolded me for an impudent truth-speaking fellow who
would come to ruin by his honesty.
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 I assured him that I should tell no one but him, having discovered at
Hover that the wisdom of the serpent was compatible with the innocence
of the dove, and that I expected to need both in my dealing with Mr.
Halidane.
‘Why, I understood that he was an intimate friend of yours. He told me
that your being here was one of the main reasons for his choosing this
College. He entreated humbly to be allowed rooms as near you as possible.
So—as he came with the highest recommendations from Lord Longmoor
—we have put him just over your head!’
I groaned audibly.
‘What’s the matter? He is not given to playing skittles, or practising the
ddle at midnight, is he?’
‘Heavens, no!’
But I groaned again, at the thought of having Halidane tied to me, riding
me pick-a-back as the Old Man of the Sea did Sindbad, for three years to
come. In explanation I told the Master a good deal of what I knew. About
Nellie, however, I still said not one word.
The Master smiled mischievously.
‘I suspect the object of his sudden conversion from sectarianism is one
of my lord’s fat livings. You may see him a bishop yet, Brownlow, for a
poor opinion of his own merits will never stand in the way of his
promotion.—Well, I will keep my eye on this promising convert to the
Church of England as by Law Established, meanwhile—and you may do
the same if you like.’
I did like—the more so because I found him, again and again, drawing
round to the subject of Mr. Braithwaite and of Nellie. He slipped away
smoothly enough when he saw I avoided the matter, complimenting me
greasily upon my delicacy and discretion. I was torn two ways—by
longing to hear something of both father and daughter, and repulsion that
this man should soil
[5]
the name of her whom I loved by so much as daring to pronounce it. B
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