Alas! Part 2

"Miriam married!" repeats Burgoyne in a tone of wonder. "Miriam with a husband instead of a white rat!"

The mother laughs. It is the first time that he has heard her laugh, and she used to laugh so often.

"I think she likes the exchange."

There is another little pause, again filled by the lark's crowding notes. There are two words battering against the gate of Burgoyne's lips for egress--two words that he dares not utter.

"And Elizabeth?" She was the eldest. She would naturally have been mentioned first; but neither first nor last is there any speech of her.

She must, then, be dead--dead long ago, too; for there is no trace of mourning in her parents' dress. Elizabeth is dead--bright Elizabeth, the beauty and the pet! Charles Lamb's tender lines come pensively back to him--

"My sprightly neighbour gone before To that unknown and silent sh.o.r.e, Shall we not meet as heretofore, Some summer morning?"

Is it only fancy that he sees in the eye of Elizabeth's mother a dread lest he shall ask tidings of her, as she says, hastily, and with a smile, "Well, I am afraid we must be going; it has been very pleasant meeting you again, but I am afraid that the Warden will be expecting us"?

She adds to her parting hand-shake no wish for a repet.i.tion of that meeting, and he watches them down the Willow Walk with a sort of sadness in his heart.

"Elizabeth is dead! Elizabeth is undoubtedly dead!"

CHAPTER III.

"Do you know that w.i.l.l.y has been sent down again?"

Six weeks have pa.s.sed since Burgoyne's eye followed his quondam friends down Mesopotamia, and he is not in Oxford now. He left it, indeed, twenty-four hours after the rencounter described; left it with something of a determination never to revisit it. This, too, in spite of the good Brown's vociferously reiterated invitation to him to run down for another Sunday, whenever he should feel inclined, and which he accepted civilly, knowing that he should never feel inclined.

At the present moment he is pacing up and down the still wintry, north-windswept walks of a country-house garden in Shrops.h.i.+re, in the company of a lady whom he has known as long as he can remember; a lady who would have been a friend of circ.u.mstance, even if she had not been one of choice, since her home has been in the immediate neighbourhood of the only one he has ever had; a lady whose friends.h.i.+p he has tested by letters on thin paper from New Guinea and Central Africa all about himself; at whose feet he has laid on his return more heads, and skins, and claws than she has well known what to do with; whose husband he thought a very good fellow, and to whom he wrote a very nice letter on that husband's death; lastly, concerning whose only child has been made the communication that opens this chapter--"Do you know that w.i.l.l.y has been sent down again?"

"I did not know it; but I am very sorry now that I do know."

"You need not be," returns she cheerfully; "he does not mind it in the least; indeed, happily for him, most of his friends have been sent down too."

"What has he been doing this time? Putting the porter into the fountain?

or s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the Dean? or what other playful little pleasantry?"

"You need not speak in that nasty sarcastic voice," says she, half laughing and half vexed. "After all, you must know that young men will be young men, or, at least, if you do not know it now, you must have known it once."

"If you take that tone to me," retorts Burgoyne, smiling, "I shall have to souse your gardener in your fountain, to prove my juvenility; but come, what has he done?"

"Absolutely nothing, as far as I can make out," replies she, spreading out her hands as if to emphasize the statement.

"Do you mean to say that the authorities have sent him down _de gaiete de coeur_, without any provocation at all?" asks Burgoyne, in a tone out of which he is unable to keep a shade of incredulity.

"I mean to say," replies she, nettled, "that he had a few men to supper, and I suppose they were making a little noise; did you ever in your day hear of an undergraduate supper where there was not noise? However, in this case, from what he tells me, w.i.l.l.y was taking positively no part in it."

"He was sitting in a corner, with cotton-wool in his ears, reading Aristotle," suggests Burgoyne teasingly.

"And it seems," continued she, not deigning to notice the interruption, "that the Proctor came in, and was very rude, and w.i.l.l.y was told to go to the Dean next morning, and he either was a little late, or mistook the hour, or some trifle of that sort; and when he did go he was told that he was sent down. However"--with some triumph in her voice--"it did not matter in the least--he did not mind; in fact, he was rather glad, as he has long wanted to go to Italy in the spring."

"To Italy? Then perhaps we shall meet; I too am going to Italy."

"Are you?" she says. "Why should you go to Italy? There is nothing to kill there, is there? Is not it at Naples that they go out in full cha.s.seur uniform to shoot tomt.i.ts?" Which speech is her revenge for his sarcasms upon her son.

But Burgoyne's face has taken on a rather careworn look; and her little arrow misses its mark.

"You see, Amelia is at Florence," he says explanatorily; "her father, Mr. Wilson, had a clergyman's throat in the autumn, and was obliged to give up duty, so they all went abroad. They have been abroad all the winter; you know that I have not seen her since I came back from the Rockies."

They are now walking in a winding shrubbery path, whose laurels protect them from the pinching wind. They have turned several corners, and traversed half a quarter of a mile before either again breaks silence.

It is the lady who does so finally.

"Jim, how long have you been engaged to Amelia?"

There is a sigh mixed with his answer.

"Eight years--eight years this next June; it was the second summer term after I came up."

"And as far as you can see, you are likely to be engaged for another eight years?"

"As far as I can see--yes; but then I cannot see far."

Perhaps his companion is a fanciful woman; but she notices that this time he does not sigh.

"Poor Amelia!" she says, half under her breath.

"Poor Amelia!" repeats he sharply; "why poor?--for being engaged to me?

You are not very complimentary, Mrs. Byng."

She looks up friendlily at him. "For being engaged to you, or being only engaged to you?--which? I leave you a choice of interpretation."

But either Jim is too ruffled by the pity expressed in her tone towards his betrothed, or her remarks have provoked in him a train of thought which does not tend towards loquacity. The loud rooks, balancing themselves on improbably small twigs above their heads, and, hoa.r.s.ely melodious, calling out their airy vernal news to each other, make for some time the only sound that breaks the silence of the cold spring afternoon. It is again Mrs. Byng who at last infringes it.

"If you and w.i.l.l.y are both going to Italy, why should not you go together?"

Jim does not immediately answer; the project is sprung upon him with such suddenness that he does not at once know whether it is agreeable to him or the reverse.

"You do not like the idea?" continues the mother, trying, not very successfully, to keep out of her tone the surprise she feels at his not having jumped at a plan so obviously to his own advantage.

"I did not say so. I did not even think so."

"w.i.l.l.y is an ideal fellow-traveller," says she, "excepting in the matter of punctuality; I warn you"--laughing--"that you would always have to drag him out of bed."

"But," suggests Jim slowly, "even supposing that I embraced your design with the warmth which I see you think it deserves, how can you tell that it would meet with his approbation? He has probably made up a party with some of the other innocent victims of a corrupt University system."

"No, he has not; the friend with whom he was to have gone has thrown him over; at least, poor man, that is hardly the way to express it, for he has broken his leg; but anyhow he is _hors de combat_. If you went with w.i.l.l.y," she adds, after a pause, and with a rather wistful air, "I should be sure of knowing if anything went wrong."