Mildred had had no desire to spend her vacations with Lady Thomson, and
on the ground of her reading for the Schools, had been allowed to spend
them in Oxford. Tims, who had no relations, remained with her. She had
for Mildred a sentiment almost like that of a parent, besides an
admiration for which she was slightly ashamed, feeling it to be
something of a slur on the memory of Milly, her first and kindest
friend.
Mildred had recovered her memory for most things, but the facts of her
former life were still a blank to her. She had begun to work for her
First in order to evade Aunt Beatrice; but the fever of it grew upon
her, either from the ambient air of the University or from a native
passion to excel in all she did. Her teachers were bewildered by the
mental change in Miss Flaxman. The qualities of intellectual swiftness,
vigor, pliancy, whose absence they had once noted in her, became, on the
contrary, conspicuously hers. Once initiated into the tricks of the
"Great Essay" style, she could use it with a dexterity strangely in
contrast with the flat and fumbling manner in which poor Milly had been
wont to express her ideas. But in the region of actual knowledge, she
now and again perpetrated some immense and childish blunder, which made
the teachers, who nursed and trained her like a jockey or a race-horse,
tremble for the results of the Greats Examination.
All too swiftly the date of the Schools loomed on the horizon; drew
near; was come. The June weather was glorious on the river, but in the
town, above all in the Examination Schools, it was very hot. The sun
glared pitilessly in through the great windows of the big T-shaped room,
till the temperature was that of a greenhouse. The young men in their
black coats and white ties looked enviously at the girl candidate, the
only one, in her white waist and light skirt. They envied her, too, her
apparent indifference to a crisis that paled the masculine cheek. In
fact, Mildred was nervous, but her nerves were strung up to so high a
pitch that she was sensitive neither to temperature nor to fatigue, nor
to want of sleep. And at the service of her quick intelligence and ready
pen lay all the stored knowledge of Milly the First.
On the last day, when the last paper was over, Tims came and found her
in the big hall, planting the pins in her hat with an almost feverish
energy. Although it was five o'clock, she said she wanted air, not tea.
The last men had trooped listlessly down the steps of the Schools and
the two girls stood there while Mildred drew on her gloves. The sun
wearing to the northwest, shone down that curve of the High Street which
all Europe cannot match. The slanting gold illumined the gray face of
the University and the wide pavement, where the black-gowned victims of
the Schools threaded their sombre way through groups of joyous youths in
flannels and ladies in summer attire. On the opposite side cool shadows
were beginning to invade the sunshine, to slant across the old houses,
straight-roofed or gabled, the paladian pile of Queen's, the mediæval
front of All Souls, with its single and perfect green tree, leading up
to the consummation of the great spire of St. Mary's.
Already, from the tall bulk of the nave, a shadow fell broad across the
pavement. But still the heat of the day reverberated from the stones
about them. They turned down to the Botanical Gardens and paced that
gray enclosure, full of the pride of branches and the glory of flowers
and overhung by the soaring vision of Magdalen Tower. Mildred was
walking fast and talking volubly about the Examination and everything
else.
"Look here, old girl," said Tims at last, when they reached for the
second time the seat under the willow trellis, "I'm going to sit down
here, unless you'll come to tea at Boffin's."
"I don't want to sit down," returned Mildred, seating herself; "or to
have tea or anything. I want to be just going, going, going. I feel as
though if I stop for a minute something horrid will happen."
Tims wrinkled her whole face anxiously.
"Don't do that, Tims," cried Mildred, sharply. "You look hideous."
Tims colored, rose and walked away. She suddenly thought, with tears in
her eyes, of the old Milly who would never have spoken to her like
that. By the time she had reached the little basin in the middle of the
garden, where the irises grew, Mildred had caught her up.
"Tims, dear old Tims! What a wretch I am! I couldn't help letting off
steam on something--you don't know what I feel like."
Tims allowed herself to be pacified, but in her heart there remained a
yearning for her earlier and gentler friend--that Milly Flaxman who was
certainly not dead, yet as certainly gone out of existence.
It was towards the end of the last week of Term, and the gayeties of
Commemoration had already begun. Mildred threw herself into them with
feverish enjoyment. She seemed to grudge even the hours that must be
lost in the unconsciousness of sleep. The Iretons, cousins from India,
who had never known the former Milly, took a house in Oxford for a week.
She went with them to three College balls and a Masonic, and spent the
days in a carnival of luncheon and boating-parties. She attracted plenty
of admiration, and enjoyed herself wildly, yet also purposefully;
because she was trying to get rid of that haunting feeling that if she
stopped a minute "something horrid would happen."
Stewart meantime was finding love not so entirely beautiful and
delightful a thing as he had at first imagined it. In his dreamy way he
had overlooked the fact of Commemoration, and planned when Term was over
to find Mildred constantly at the Fletchers' and to be able to arrange
quiet days on the river. But if he found her there, she was always in
company, and though she made herself as charming to him as usual, she
showed no disposition to forsake all others and cleave only to him. He
was not a dancing man, and suffered cruelly on the evenings when he knew
her to be at balls, and fancied all her partners in love with her.
But on the Thursday after Commemoration, the Fletchers gave a strawberry
tea at Wytham, as a farewell festivity to their cousins. And Ian Stewart
was there. With Mrs. Fletcher's connivance, he took Mildred home alone
in a canoe, by the deep and devious stream which runs under Wytham
woods. She went on talking with a vivacious gayety which was almost
foolish. He saw that it was unreal and that her nerves were at high
tension. His own were also. He did not intend to propose to her that
day; but he could no longer restrain himself, and he began to speak to
her of his love.
"Hush!" she cried, with a vehement gesture. "Not to-day! oh, not to-day!
I can't bear it!" She put her head on her knee and moaned again, "Not
to-day, I'm too tired, I really am. I can't bear it."
This was all the answer he could get, and her manner left him in
complete uncertainty as to whether she meant to accept or to refuse him.
Tims had been at the strawberry tea too, and came into Mildred's room in
the evening, curious to know what had happened. She found Mildred
without a light, sitting, or rather lying in a wicker chair. When the
candle was lighted she saw that Mildred was very pale and shivering.
"You're overtired, my girl," she said. "That's what's the matter with
you."
"Oh, Tims," moaned Mildred. "I feel so ill and so frightened. I know
something horrid's going to happen--I know it is."
"Don't be a donkey," returned Tims. "I'll help you undress and then you
turn in. You'll be as jolly as a sandboy to-morrow."
But Mildred was crying tremulously. "Oh, Tims, how dreadful it would be
to die!"
"Idiot!" cried Tims, and shook Mildred with all her might. Mildred's
tiny sobs turned into a shriek of laughter.
"My goodness!" ejaculated Tims; "you're in hysterics!"
"I know I am," gasped Mildred. "I was laughing to think of what Aunt
Beatrice would say." And she giggled amid her tears.
Tims insisted on her rising from the chair, undressing, and getting into
bed. Then she sat by her in the half-dark, waiting for the miserable
tears to leave off.
"Don't cry, old girl, don't cry. Go to sleep and forget all about it,"
she kept repeating, almost mechanically.
At length leaning over the bed she saw that Mildred was asleep, lying
straight on her bed with her feet crossed and her hands laid on her
bosom.