Read Ebook: Alas! A Novel by Broughton Rhoda

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Ebook has 2550 lines and 150063 words, and 51 pages

"Dear old place!" he says, under his breath, "everybody is dead; and I am dead; and Brown is deader than anyone. I am glad that you, at least, are still alive!"

Are these more ghosts coming round the corner? A man and a woman ghost strolling along, and looking about them as strangers look. When they are within a pace or two of him the woman says something--something about the floods--to her companion, and at the sound Burgoyne starts.

"She did not speak last night; if she had spoken I should have known her at once. She always had such a sweet voice."

He raises his arms from the bridge-top, and, turning, meets them face to face, eye to eye, and in an instant he has seen that both recognise him. At the same instant he is aware of a simultaneous inclination on the part of man and wife to avert their heads, and pass him without claiming his acquaintance. Perhaps, if he had had time to reflect, he would have allowed them to do so, but the impulse of the moment forbids it. Why should they wish to cut him? What has he done to deserve it? Ten years ago, they were his very good friends, and he was the familiar comrade of their children, the daily guest at their table. What has the unavoidable lapse of those years done to make him less fit for their company at twenty-nine than he was at nineteen? There must be some misconception, which a moment will set right.

"I am afraid that you do not remember me, Mrs. Le Marchant," he says, lifting his hat.

This is not quite true, as he is perfectly convinced that they are as much aware of his identity as he is of theirs. But what formula has a man to employ in such a case? They both look back at him with a sort of irresolution. To his astonishment, in their eyes is a velleity of flight, but apparently she--women's minds moving more quickly than men's--is the first to realize that flight is out of the question.

"I know--I know!" she interrupts, finding speech at last--speech low and hurried. "I remember perfectly. You are Mr. Burgoyne."

"It is a long time--it is ten years since we met."

"Yes, ten years; it must be quite ten years," she assents, evidently making a great effort to regain composure.

She does not feign the slightest pleasure in the meeting, and Burgoyne feels that the one thought that occupies her mind is how she can soonest end it. But his roused curiosity, together with the difficulty of parting without further observation after having forced his presence upon them, combine to prevent her succeeding.

"And how is the Moat?" he asks, reflecting that this, at least, is a safe question; a brick and mortar house, at all events, cannot be dead. "How is Devonshire?"

Apparently it is not so harmless a question as he had imagined; at least, Mrs. Le Marchant is obviously quite incapable of answering it. Her husband, for the first time, comes to her rescue.

"The Moat is let," he says, in a dry voice; "we have left Devonshire a long while--nine, nine and a half years ago."

The Moat let! Judging by the light of Burgoyne's recollections, it would have seemed less surprising to him to hear that Windsor Castle had been turned into a Joint Stock Company Hotel. It is probably, then, some money trouble that has turned Mrs. Le Marchant's hair white--snow white, as he now sees it to be. But no; he rejects the explanation as insufficient. She is not the woman to have taken a diminished income so much to heart.

Good manners forbid him to ask, "Why is the Moat let?" so all that he says is, "Nine and a half years ago? Why, that must have been very soon after I left Devonshire."

He addresses his remark involuntarily rather to the wife than the husband, but she does not answer it. Her eyes are fixed upon the bubbles sailing so fast upon the swollen river, which is distinguishable only by its current from the sameness of the surrounding water. A lark--there is always a lark in Mesopotamia--a tiny, strong-throated singer, that never seems to have to stop to take breath, fills up the silence, shouting somewhere out of sight among the black clouds, in and out of which the uncertain sun is plunging. Whether of a moneyed nature or not, there is evidently something very unpleasant connected with their leaving their native county and their immemorial home, so he had better get away from the subject as fast as possible.

"Anyhow," he says, with a rather nervous smile, "I hope that the world has been treating you kindly--that things have gone well with you since those dear old days when you were so good to me."

There is an instant's pause--perhaps he would not have noticed it had not his suspicions been already roused--before the husband, again taking upon him the task of replying, answers, with a sort of laboured carelessness:

"Oh, yes, thanks; we do not complain. It has not been a very rosy time for landlords lately, as you are aware."

"With my aunt? Well, I never exactly lived with her; I made, and make my headquarters there when I am in England, which is not very often. I have been a rolling stone; I have rolled pretty well round the world since we parted."

They do not care in the least where he has rolled, nor how much nor how little moss he has collected in the process. They are only thinking how they can best get rid of him. But the past is strong upon him; he cannot let them slide out of his life again for another ten--twenty years perhaps, without finding out from them something about his five merry playmates. His inquiry must needs be a vague one. Who dares ask specifically after this or that man, woman, or even child, when ten years have rolled their tides between?

His eyes are fixed apprehensively upon the mother of those young comrades, to whom he thus cautiously alludes. Perhaps, carefully as he has worded his question, he may have touched some terrible raw. Her face is turned aside, presenting only its profile to him, but she answers almost at once:

"Yes; we are all scattered now. Charlie is planting oranges in Florida--he does not mind the heat; you know he always said no weather could be too hot for him; and Tom has an ostrich farm in Australia; and Rose has been married two years--she has a dear little baby; and Miriam is married too; we have just come down from her wedding."

"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 shore, 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 repetition 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!"

"Do you know that Willy has been sent down again?"

Six weeks have passed 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 Shropshire, 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 circumstance, 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 friendship 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 Willy 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 screwing 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.

"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, Willy 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 Willy 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 chasseur uniform to shoot tomtits?" 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.

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