"Tell me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where is Hipparchia, and where is Thais?
Neither of them the fairer woman.
Where is Echo beheld of no one,
Only heard on river and mere?
She whose beauty was more than human,
But where are the snows of yester-year?"
"There is no reason why we should not go home now; are you ready?" cries
Brown, bustling up to his friend, who has not waited for this question
to make straight, as the needle to the pole, for the corner where the
collected umbrellas stand in their little area of lake.
Burgoyne would probably have laughed at the unconscious irony of this
inquiry if he had heard it; but he has not, his attention being
otherwise directed. On the same umbrella quest as himself, being helped
on with her mackintosh by one of the two men who had accompanied her, a
pepper-and-salt-haired, sturdy gentleman of an obviously unacademic cut,
is the lady whose face had flashed upon him with that puzzling sense of
unfamiliar familiarity. Since they are now in close proximity, and both
employed alike in struggling into their wraps, there is nothing more
natural than that she should turn her eyes full upon him. They are very
fine eyes, though far from young ones. Is it a trick of his imagination,
or does he see a look of half-recognition dawn in them, such as must
have been born in his own when they first alighted on her? At all
events, if there is such a look of half-recognition in her eyes, she is
determined that it shall not have a chance of becoming a whole one.
Either he is mistaken, and she has not recognised him, or she is
determined not to acknowledge the acquaintance, for she looks away again
at once, nor does she throw another glance in his direction. Indeed, it
seems to him that she hurries on her preparations with added speed, and
walks out into the night accompanied by her double escort before him.
The weather has changed, and for the better. The rollicking wind has
lulled, the pattering rain ceased. Between the ragged, black
cloud-sheets star-points shine, and a shimmering moon shows her wet face
reflected in the puddles. Talk, which had been impossible on their way
to the meeting, is not only possible but easy now, and Brown is
evidently greatly inclined for it. Burgoyne, on the other hand, had
never felt more disinclined. It is not so much that he is out of humour
with his tiresome friend, though he is that too, as that his whole mind
is centred on making his memory give up the secret of that face that has
come back to him out of some vague cavern of his past.
Who is the woman whom he knows, and who knows him (for on reflection he
is sure that that look of hers was one of half--of more than
half--recognition), and yet whose place in his history, whose very name,
he seeks so vainly? She does not belong to his Oxford days, as he has
already ascertained. He has learnt from Brown that she does not belong
to the Oxford of to-day, being apparently a stranger, and, with her
husband, a visitor to the Warden of ---- College, in whose company they
had arrived. He explores the succeeding years of his life. In vain; she
has no place there; in vain he dives and plunges into the sea of his
memory; he cannot fish up the pearl he seeks. He must hark back to
earlier days--his school-time, the six months he spent in Devonshire
with a coach before he came up to New. Ah! he has it--he has it at last!
just as they have reached Brown's door, while he is fumbling with his
latch-key for the keyhole, imprecating the moon for withdrawing her
shining at the very instant he most needs her, Burgoyne has come up with
the shy object of his chase. It is conjured back into his mind by the
word Devonshire.
"I have it," he says to himself; "her hair has turned white, that was
why I did not recognise her; it used to be raven-black. But it is
she--of course it is she! To think of my not knowing her again! Of
course it is Mrs. Le Marchant."
What a door into the distance that name has opened!--a door through
which he passes into a Devonshire garden, and romps with rose-faced
Devonshire children. The very names of those children are coming back to
him. Tom and Charles, those were the schoolboys; Rose and Miriam,
and--Elizabeth. He recalls--absurd trick of freakish memory--those
children's pets. Tom and Charles had guinea-pigs; Miriam had a white
rat; Rose--what had Rose? Rose must have had something; and Elizabeth
had a kangaroo. Elizabeth's kangaroo was short-lived, poor beast, and
died about hay-time; the guinea-pigs and the white rat have been dead
too for ages now, of course. And are Tom and Charles, and Rose and
Miriam, and bright Elizabeth dead also? Absurd! Why should they be?
Nothing more unlikely! Why, it is only ten years ago, after all.
He is roused from his meditations by Brown's voice, to find himself in
Brown's study, where its owner is filling himself a pipe, and festally
offering him whisky-and-water. But it is only an abstracted attention
that Burgoyne lends, either to the whisky or the whisky's master; and
his answers are sometimes inattentively beside the mark, to talk, which
indeed is not without some likeness to the boasted exploits in Clement's
Inn, and the affectionate inquiries after Jane Nightwork, of a more
famous fool than he.
It is a relief to the guest when, earlier than he had expected--a
blessing he, no doubt, owes to Mrs. Brown--his host breaks up the
seance, and he is free to retire to his own room. At once he is back in
that Devonshire garden, he is there almost all night, between sleep and
wake. It is strange that persons and circumstances banished from his
memory for ten long years should rush back with such tyrannous
insistence now.
Such silly recollected trifles crowd back upon his mind. The day on
which Tom nearly choked himself by swallowing a barley beard; the day on
which the lop-eared rabbit littered--ah, rabbits, of course! those were
what Rose had!--the day on which Tom pushed Miriam into the moat, and
Elizabeth fell in, too, in trying to fish her out. Elizabeth, the
eldest, the almost grown-up one, embarrassed by her newly lengthened
petticoats, so harassing at cricket, in races, in climbing apple-trees.
Elizabeth was sixteen; he remembers the fact, because her birthday had
fallen two days before his own departure. He had given her a gold
thimble set with turquoises upon the occasion; it was not a surprise,
because he recalls measuring her finger for the size. He can see that
small middle finger now. Elizabeth must now be twenty-six years of age.
Where is she? What is she--maid, wife, or widow?
And why has Mrs. Le Marchant's hair turned snow-white? Had it been
merely gray he would not have complained, though he would have deplored
the loss of the fine smooth inky sweep he remembers. She has a fair
right to be gray; Mrs. Le Marchant must be about forty-six or
forty-seven, bien sonne. But white, snow-white--the hue that one
connects with a venerable extremity of age. Can it be bleached? He has
heard of women bleaching their hair; but not Mrs. Le Marchant, not the
Mrs. Le Marchant he remembers. She would have been as incapable of
bleach as of dye. Then why is she snow-haired? Because Providence has so
willed it is the obvious answer. But somehow Burgoyne cannot bring
himself to believe that she has come fairly by that white head.
With the morning light the might of the Devonshire memories grows
weaker; and, as the day advances, the Oxford ones resume their sway. How
can it be otherwise, when all day long he strays among the unaltered
buildings in the sweet sedate college gardens, down the familiar "High,"
where, six years ago, he could not take two steps without being hailed
by a jolly fresh voice, claiming his company for some new pleasure; but
where now he walks ungreeted, where the smooth-faced boys he meets, and
who strike him as so much more boyish than his own contemporaries had
done, pass him by indifferently, unknown to the whole two thousand as he
is. He feels a sort of irrational anger with them for not recognising
him, though they have never seen him before.
Yes, there is no place where a man is so quickly superannuated as in
Oxford. He is saying this to himself all day, is saying it still as he
strolls in the afternoon down Mesopotamia, to fill up the time before
the hour for college chapel. Yes, there is no place where men so soon
turn into ghosts. He has been knocking up against them all day at every
street-corner; they have looked out at him from every gray window in the
Quad at New--jovial, athletic young ghosts, so much painfuller to meet
than rusty, century-worn old ones. They are rather less plentiful in
Mesopotamia than elsewhere; perhaps, because in his day, as now,
Mesopotamia on Sundays was given over to the mechanic and the
perambulator. Oh, that Heaven would put it into the head of some
Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay a swingeing tax upon that
all-accursed vehicle! But not even mechanic and perambulator can hinder
Mesopotamia from being fair on a fine February day, when the beautiful
floods are out, the floods that the Thames Conservators and the Oxford
authorities have combined to put down, as they have most other beautiful
things within their reach. But they have not yet quite succeeded.
To-day, for instance, the floods are out in might.
Burgoyne is pacing along a brown walk, like a raised causeway, with a
sheet of white water on either hand, rolling strong ripples to the bank.
Gnarled willows stand islanded in the coldly argent water. A blackbird
is flying out of the bushes, with a surprised look at finding himself
turned into a sea-bird. No sun; an even sweep of dull silver to right
and left. No sun; and yet as he looks, after days of rain, the "_grand
decorateur_," as someone happily called him, rides out in royalty on a
cleared sky-field, turning the whole drenched country into
mother-of-pearl--a sheet of opal stretched across the drowned meadows;
the distance opal too, a delicate, dainty, evanescent loveliness
snatched from the ugly brown jaws of winter.
Burgoyne is leaning over the wooden bridge beneath which, in its normal
state, the water of the lasher rushes down impetuously; but it is now
raised to such a height that it lies level, almost flush with the
planking. He is staring across the iridescent water-plain to where, in
the poetic atmosphere of sun and mist, dome, and schools and soaring
spires stand etherealized.
"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 am sure that you have no intention of cutting me," Jim goes on, with
a smile, seeing that she is apparently struggling with a difficulty in
utterance; "at least, you must be very much changed from what you were
ten years ago if you have. My name is----"
"I know--I know!" she interrupts, finding speech at last--speech low and
hurried. "I remember perfectly. You are Mr. Burgoyne."
Her confusion--she used always to be such a placid, even-mannered
woman--is so patent, born of whatever unaccountable feeling it may be,
that he now heartily wishes he had let the poor woman pass unmolested.
But such repentance is too late. He has arrested her; she is standing on
the gravel path before him, and though he feels that her extraordinary
shyness--_mauvaise honte_, whatever it may be--has infected himself, he
must make some further remark to her. Nothing better occurs to him than
the obvious one:
"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."
"And _you_?" cries the wife, striking in with a species of hurry in her
voice--a hurry due, as his instinct tells him, to the fact of her fear
of his entering into more detailed inquiries. "And _you_? We must not
forget you. Have you been well, flourishing, all this long time? Do you
still live with your----"
She stops abruptly. It is apparent that she has entirely forgotten what
was the species of relation with whom he lived. There is a little tinge
of bitterness in his heart, though not in his tone, as he supplies the
missing word "aunt." After all, he had forgotten _her_ name; why should
not she forget his aunt?
"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?
"And you are all well?" he says, with a certain wistfulness lurking in
the indifferent _banal_ phrase. "Dear me, what a jolly party we used to
be! I suppose that--that they are all out in the world now?"
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!"