he could not understand. He was generous, bold, and adventurous, a keen judge of character according to his own idea, yet a thorough hero-worshipper, very fond of addressing himself in the mirror, and trying to give an impartial account of his own appearance and qualities.
"Well, Tom, my boy," I heard him say one day, for he was confidential to others, as well as to himself, about himself, "you are not looking quite the thing this morning. A few cigars less, Tom, would suit you better. And little crow's-feet already coming! What business have they there at five-and-twenty? It can't be reading too hard, or you would have got through, last time. Never mind, Tom, you are not a bad-looking fellow, though you mustn't suppose you are handsome. There is not enough of you; that's the great fault—not enough of you to look dignified."
In all this he was perfectly correct, though he might have supposed himself handsome without any very great partiality; for his eyes were of a rich and lively brown, such as many a maiden might have envied. And his features quite regular enough, and short, and full of genial vivacity. He was right enough also in the observation that there was not enough of him to enforce the impression which such wisdom as his should create; for although not by any means a dwarf, he was of less than average stature, while exceedingly active and very well built. But he never said a truer thing in the purest of all self-commune, than that his crow's-feet, if any there were, could not have owed their origin to excess of mental labour. Such is the sort of man one likes; because he can never put one right, when a plague of accuracy comes on.
Now what was my inducement, who shall say? And the reasons come too late to make much difference, when a man has done a very foolish thing. It may have been partly because I had never kept any secret back from Tom, after my long time at school and college with him, and I did not like to do so now; and it may have been also that I felt uneasy about my own behaviour, and longed for some encouragement. Be that as it will, when Tom Erricker came down, as he never failed to do at least once every month, to spend Saturday and Sunday with us, no sooner had I got him in my little den at the back of our cottage where the harness was kept, than I bundled old Croaker, our only stableman, away to his dinner, and with proper introductions poured forth to my friend the whole narrative of that strange affair which I had witnessed as above, but spoken of as yet to no one.
My friend's interjections and frequent questions need not be set down, for he was of the many who can never hear a story without interruption. But when I had assured him for the fiftieth time that there was nothing more to tell, his face, which had been a fine study of amazement, became equally full of oracular wisdom.
"Leave it to me," he said; "leave it to me, George. I will soon get to the bottom of it. I never speak rashly. You know what I am. There is something very deep behind all this. You, who live so near, and are only acquainted with country ways, must not move in the matter. I shall find the key to it. You can do nothing. I get about among people so much; and I know nearly all that goes on in Soho. You have never done a wiser thing than to keep this dark and consult me about it. And a wonderfully lovely girl, you say!"
"Dark let it be if you please," I answered; though I had never even thought about that before, for I do detest all mystery. "Erricker, I told you this in confidence. It looks as if I was wrong in doing even that, when you begin talking in that sort of way. Is it likely that I would let you take it up? If I cannot myself, as a gentleman, pry into a thing I was not meant to see, do you suppose I would let a young fellow"—Tom was my junior by about three months—"a young fellow like you meddle with it?"
"Now don't be in a huff, George;" he spoke with a smile, as if I were making a fuss about nothing. "I have far more important things than this to think of. It was only for your sake that I said a word. But I always try to be straightforward. Why did I go down in the last exam? They asked me to describe a contingent remainder; and I said it was a remainder that was contingent. Could anything be more correct than that? And yet the infernal old Q. C. said that I must pursue my studies. And now, if I don't get through next time, the glorious tinman will cut short my allowance. But, thank God, I have got a maiden aunt."
The glorious tinman was Tom's worthy father, the head of a great plating firm at Sheffield. Being perpetually involved in law-suits concerning trade-marks and patents, and finding silver and gold enough for a month's heavy plating sink into the long robe, this gentleman had said to his wife, "Why not keep it in the family?" And she had replied, "Oh, how clever our Tom is! None of those councillors understand the trade." Therefore was Tom at the Temple now.
When my friend once began upon his own affairs, and the ignorance of his examiners, he was ready to go on for ever; and so I cut him short with the question which had chiefly induced me to unburden my mind to him.
"The point is this, my dear boy. Ought I to feel ashamed, do you feel ashamed of me, for acting the spy upon a young lady who had no idea I was looking at her? Speak plainly, I won't be offended."
"If I ever get through, I am sure to be a judge," Tom Erricker replied, with a glance of deprecation at his rather "loud" suit of red-and-white plaid "Dittoes;" "my aunt Gertrude has said so fifty times; and I feel the making of it in me, though it takes a long time in development. And I sum up the merits thus, George Cranleigh. You had no right to begin; but when you had begun, I am blowed if I can see how you could help going on. And I should like to go on a lot further with it."
My mind (which was larger then than now, for nothing loses more by wear and tear) was relieved, much more than it would be now by even some valid pronouncement.
"Tom Erricker, you are a brick," I said; "and I don't mind showing you the place. There is plenty of time before dinner yet. Only you must give me your word of honour—not a syllable about it to any one."
"Hands up. That's what we say in our corps,"—for he was a member of the "Devil's Own," and a very zealous one, for such a lazy fellow—"but I could not walk so far without a gun."
This difficulty did not last long; for I ran to the door, and asked my sister to lend her pony Amabel to my friend Tom for an hour or two. Grace was the most obliging girl that was ever too good to be married, and although she felt some kind disdain, as it seemed to me sometimes, for Tom, her pony was heartily at his service, if he would promise not to whip her. Tom came out of our little hole, when this stipulation reached his ears, and he put on his hat for the pleasure and glory of taking it off again to my sister. Among his many tendernesses, the sweetest and biggest of all perhaps was one with our Grace at the end of it. But he knew, as we know such things by instinct, that she never would come in to share it; and though he fetched many a sigh, they were shallow, because hope had never been beneath them.
Off we set in the summer afternoon, for the month was come to June already, with everything going on as if we were nothing. Because I have not said much about it—as behoves an average young Englishman—if anybody reads this, he may think that nothing to dwell upon had come home to me, by reason of what I had seen that day when the millers made light of my samples. But this I can declare, and would have done so long ago except for some sense that it was my affair alone, the whole world had been quite a different thing to me, ever since I set eyes upon—well, there is but one to any man worth anything; and does he ever get her?
Tom Erricker was the last fellow in the world to whom one could offer any fine gush of feeling; because he was sadly sentimental sometimes, when his veins of thought were varicose, and when something nasty had happened to himself; but when his spirits were up, you would think there had never been a tear shed in the world, except by some brat who knew not how to cut his teeth. He was now in great exaltation at having fetched me, as he thought, to his level; for I had always regarded his light flirtations with a pleasant turn of humour, and he could not see the difference between himself and me. So I rode Old Joseph, who was a good tall horse; and he on little Amabel looked up at me, with no more reverence than Sancho Panza showed to the immortal knight, who ever failed to elevate him.
"Give
