Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Miss Beauclerc was waiting at the deanery door. “Well, boys, and who has got it?” was her salutation before any of them were up.

  “A sneaking young beggar,” called out Lewis, thinking he might as well make the best of things to her, and answer first.

  “Then you have not got it, Lewis; I told you you wouldn’t,” laughed the young lady; “though I heard that you made certain sure of it, and had ordered a glass case to keep it in.”

  Lewis nearly boiled over with rage.

  “Arkell has gained it, Miss Beauclerc,” said the senior boy.

  “Of course; I knew he would. I was sure from the first that none of you could contend against him, provided there was a fair field and no favour.”

  “No favour!” scornfully echoed Lewis. “A bright eye and a girl’s face, these are what we should covet now, to curry favour with the Dean and Chapter.”

  “Lewis, you forget yourself,” reproved Miss Beauclerc; “and I’ll inform against you if you talk treason of the dean,” she laughingly continued.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Beauclerc,” was the sullen apology of Lewis, delivered in a most ungracious tone.

  “Arkell’s merits alone have gained the prize, Lewis, and you know it,” proceeded the young lady; “they must have gained it had he been as ugly as you.”

  “I am much obliged to you, Miss Beauclerc,” foamed Lewis, with as much resentment as he dared show to the dean’s daughter.

  “Well, you are right about his merits, Miss Beauclerc,” interrupted Jocelyn; “no question came amiss to him. By Jove! old Ferraday was not wrong in calling him a brilliant scholar; I had no idea he knew half as much. The dean said he was an honour to the school.”

  “That he has been a long while,” she said, quietly. “You boys may sneer — you are sneering now, Aultane, but — —”

  “No, indeed, Miss Beauclerc,” interrupted Aultane, “I would not do such a thing as sneer in your presence. Of course it couldn’t be expected that he’d be anything but a good scholar, when his father’s a schoolmaster.”

  “And teaches boys at half-a-crown an hour,” put in Lewis junior. “He acknowledged to the dean, it was all through his father’s cramming him.”

  Henry Arkell was coming up; Miss Beauclerc moved forwards and shook him by the hand.

  “I congratulate you,” she said, in a half whisper. “Why it looks like the ribbon of the Garter. You may win that some time, if you live; who knows? I knew you would get it, if you were only true to yourself; Frederick St. John said so too. Mind you write to-day to tell him.”

  She had taken the medal in her hand, and was looking at it. The rest pressed round as closely as they dared. Lewis only stood aside, a bitter expression on his ugly lips.

  A little fellow ran up, all in a fright. “Oh! if you please, if you please, Miss Beauclerc, here comes the dean.”

  “What if he does?” retorted Miss Beauclerc; “he won’t eat you. There, you may go, boys. Henry Arkell, you know you are expected at the deanery to-night.”

  “Yes, thank you, Miss Beauclerc,” he replied, some hesitation, or surprise, visible in his tone.

  “Ah, but I mean to us, after the dinner. Mamma has what she calls one of her quiet soirées. You’ll be sure to come.”

  One glance from his brilliant eyes, beneath which her blue ones fell, and he drew away. The rest were already off. Georgina walked forward to meet the dean, and she put her arm within his in her loving manner.

  “Oh, papa, the boys are so envious of the medal. I stopped them and made them show it me. That ugly Lewis is ready to cut his throat.”

  “Random-spoken as usual, my darling. Who’s throat?”

  “Henry Arkell’s of course, papa. But I knew no one else would gain it. They are not fit to tie his shoes.”

  “In learning, they certainly are not. You can’t imagine what a ludicrous display we have had! And some of them go soon to the university!”

  “It’s not the fault of the boys, papa. If they are never taught anything but Greek and Latin, how can they be expected to know anything else?”

  “Very true, Georgie,” mused Dr. Beauclerc. “Some of these old systems are stupid things.”

  The audit dinner in the evening went off as those dinners generally did. The boys dined at a table by themselves, and Henry, as their senior, had to exert firm authority over some, for the supply of wine was unlimited. Later in the evening, he passed through the gallery to the drawing-room, as invited by Miss Beauclerc. A few ladies were assembled: the canons’ wives and daughters, Mrs. Wilberforce, and two or three other inhabitants of the Grounds; all very quiet, and what in these later days might have been called “slow:” Mrs. Beauclerc’s parties mostly were so. They were talking of Frederick St. John when Henry went in, who was again absent from Westerbury, visiting somewhere with his mother and Lady Anne.

  Henry wore his medal; the broad blue ribbon conspicuous. Some time was taken up examining that, and then he was asked to sing. It was a treat to hear him; and his voice as yet gave forth no token of losing its power and sweetness, though he was close upon sixteen.

  He sang song after song — for they pressed for it — accompanying himself. One song that he was especially asked for, he could not remember without the music. Mrs. Wilberforce suggested that he should fetch it from home, but Georgina said she could play it for him, and sat down. It was that fine song called “The Treasures of the Deep,” by Mrs. Hemans. It was found, however, that she could not play it; and after two or three attempts, she began a waltz instead; and the ladies, in the distance round the fire, forgot at length that they had wanted it.

  Georgina wore an evening dress of white spotted muslin, a broad blue sash round her waist, and a bit of narrow blue velvet suspending a cross on her neck. She had taken off her bracelets to play, and her pretty white arms were bare. Her eyes were blue as the ribbon, and altogether she looked very attractive, very young, and she was that night in one of her wild and inexplicable humours.

  What she really said, how he responded, will never be wholly known: certain it is, that she led him on, on, until he resigned himself wholly to the fascination and “told his love;” although he might have known that to do so was little less than madness. She affected to ridicule him; she intimated that her love was not for a college boy; but all the while her looks gave the lie to her words; her blue eyes spoke of admiration still; her flushed face of triumphant, gratified vanity. They were engaged round the fire, round the tables, anywhere; and Georgina had it all to herself, and played bars of music now and then, as if she were essaying different pieces.

  “Let us put aside this nonsense,” she suddenly said. “It is nonsense, and you know it, Harry. Here’s a song,” snatching the first that came to hand— “sing this; I’ll play it for you.”

  “Do you think I can sing? — now? with your cold words blighting me. Oh, tell me the worst!” he added, his tone one of strange pain. “Tell me — —”

  “Goodness, Henry Arkell. If you look and talk in that serious manner, I shall think you have become crazy. Come; begin.”

  “I seem to be in a sort of dream,” he murmured, putting his hands to his temples. “Surely all the past, all our pleasant intercourse, is not to be forgotten! You will not throw me away like this?”

  “Where’s the use of my playing this symphony, if you don’t begin?”

  “Georgina! — let me call you so for the first, perhaps for the last time — dear Georgina, you cannot forget the past! You cannot mean what you have just said.”

  “How unpleasant you are making things to-night!” she said, with a laugh. “I shall begin to think you have followed the example of those wretched little juniors, and taken plentifully of wine.”

  “Perhaps I have; perhaps it is owing to that that I have courage freely to talk to you now. Georgina, you know how I have loved you; you know that for years and years my life has been as one long blissful dream, filled with the image of you.”

  She stole a glance at him fro
m her blue eyes; a smile hovered on her parted lips. He bent his head until his brown wavy curls mingled with her lighter hair.

  “Georgina, you know — you know that you can be life or death to me.”

  He could not speak with consecutive smoothness; his heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds, his whole frame thrilled, his fingers were trembling.

  “Tell me that it is not all to be forgotten!”

  “Indeed, if you have been cultivating a wrong impression — I can only advise you to forget it. I have liked you;” her voice sank to the lowest whisper— “very much; I have been so stupid as to let you see it; but I never meant you to — to — presume upon it in this uncomfortable manner.”

  “One question!” he urged. “Only one. Is it that you have played with me, loving another?”

  Her right hand was on the keys of the piano, striking chords continually; a false note grating now and then on the ear. Her left hand lay passive on her lap, as she sat, slightly turned to him.

  “Stuff and nonsense! No, I have not. You will have them overhear you, Harry.”

  “Do not equivocate — dearest Georgina — let me hear the truth. It may be better for me; I can bear anything rather than deceit. Let me know the truth; I beseech it of you by all the hours we have passed together.”

  “Harry, you are decidedly beside yourself to-night. Don’t suffer the world behind to get a notion of it.”

  “You are playing with me now,” he said, quite a wail in his low voice. “Let me, one way or the other, be at rest. I never shall bear this suspense, and live. Give me an answer, Georgina; one that shall abide for ever.”

  “An answer to what?”

  “Have you all this while loved another?”

  She took her hand off the keys, and began picking out the treble notes of a song with her forefinger, bending her head slightly.

  “The answer might not be palatable.”

  “No, it may not. Nevertheless, I pray you give it me. You are killing me, Georgina.”

  She looked up hastily; she saw that the bright, transparent complexion of the face had turned to a deadly whiteness; and, perhaps, in that one moment, Georgina Beauclerc’s heart smote her with a slight reproach of cruelty. But she may have deemed it well to put an end to the suspense, and she bent her head again as she spoke.

  “Even though I had loved another, what of that? I don’t admit that I have; and I say that it is a question you have no right to ask me. Harry! be reasonable; though I had loved you, it could not come to anything; you know it could not; so what does it signify?”

  “But you have not loved me?”

  “Well — no. Not in that way. Here’s the dean coming in; and here’s pompous old Ferraday. You must sing a song; papa’s sure to ask for one.”

  She hastened from the piano, as if glad to escape. The dean did ask for a song. But when they came to look for him who was to sing it, he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Bless me!” cried the dean, “I thought Henry Arkell was here. Where is he?”

  “I dare say he has gone home for the ‘Treasures of the Deep,’ papa,” readily replied Georgina. “Somebody asked him to fetch it just now.”

  He had not gone for the “Treasures of the Deep;” and, as she guessed pretty accurately, he had no intention of returning. He was walking slowly towards the master’s house, his temporary home; his head was aching, his brain was burning, and he felt as if all life had gone out of him for ever. That she had been befooling him; that she loved Frederick St. John with an impassioned lasting love, appeared to him as clear as the stars in a frosty sky.

  But there were no stars then, and no frost; the fineness of the night had gone, and a drizzling rain was falling. He did not heed it; it might wet him if it would, might soak even that gay blue badge on his breast. Two people within view seemed to heed it as little; they were pacing together, arm-in-arm, in a dark part of the grounds, talking in an undertone. So absorbed were they, that both started when Henry came up; they were near a gaslight then, and he recognised George Prattleton. The other face, on which the light shone brightly, he did not know.

  “How d’ye do?” said Henry. “Do you know whether Prattleton junior has got home yet?” Prattleton junior, the younger of the Reverend Mr. Prattleton’s sons, was in the choir under Henry; and the senior chorister had had some trouble with that gentleman at the dinner-table on this, the audit-night.

  “I don’t know anything about Prattleton junior,” returned George Prattleton in a testy tone, as if the question itself, or the being spoken to, had annoyed him.

  Henry walked on, and round the corner came upon the gentleman in question, Prattleton junior, with another of the choristers, Mr. Wilberforce’s son Edwin, each having taken as much as was good for him, both to eat and to drink.

  “Who’s that with George?” asked Henry — for it was somewhat unusual to see a stranger in the grounds at night.

  “Oh, it’s a Mr. Rolls,” replied young Prattleton: “I heard my brother ask George. He meets him in the billiard rooms.”

  “Well, you be off home, now; you’ll get wet. Wilberforce, I’m going in. You can come with me.”

  Young Mr. Prattleton appeared disposed to resist the mandate. He liked being in the rain, he persisted. But the arrival of his father at that moment from the deanery settled the matter.

  And Henry Arkell, having happened to look back, saw George Prattleton draw the stranger into the shade, and remain in ambush while the minor canon passed.

  CHAPTER XV.

  A NIGHT WITH THE GHOSTS.

  The succeeding day to this was fine again, a charming day for the middle of November; and when the college school rushed down the steps at four o’clock, the upper boys were tempted to commence one of their noisy games. Nearly the only two who declined were the senior boy and Arkell. The senior of the school, whoever he might be for the time being, rarely, if ever, played, and the present one, Jocelyn, was also too idle. Both went quietly on to the master’s, walking arm-in-arm. The school closed at four in the dead of winter. Henry came out again immediately, his music in his hand, and was running past the boys.

  “I say, Arkell, we are going to cast lots for the stag. Where are you bolting to?”

  “I can’t join this evening — I’m off to practise. To-morrow is my lesson day, and I have not touched the organ this week.”

  “Cram! What’s the good? It’ll be night directly, and that mouldy old organ loft as dark as pitch.”

  “Oh, I shall see for ever so long to come — the sun has not set yet,” returned Henry, without stopping. “Thank you, Lewis,” he added, as a sharp stone struck his trencher. “That was from you, I saw. I shall not pay you back in kind.”

  There was a sting in the retort, from the very manner of giving it, so pointedly gentleman-like, for Henry Arkell had stopped a moment, and raised his trencher, as he might have done to the dean. Lewis saw that the boys were laughing at him, and he suddenly set upon seven juniors, and made the whole lot cry.

  Active and swift, Henry soon gained the precincts of the church, St. James the Less. He pushed open the outer door of the clerk’s house, and took the key of the church from its niche in the passage, close to the kitchen door. This he also opened, and looked in. It was a square room, the floor of red brick, and a bed, with a curtain drawn before it, was on one side against the wall. The old man, Hunt, sat smoking in the chimney corner.

  “I am going in to play, Hunt. I have the key.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “How’s the missis?” he stopped to ask.

  “She be bad in all her bones, sir, she be. I telled her to lie down for half an hour: it’s that nasty ague she have got upon her again. This be a damp spot to live in, so many low trees about,” he continued, with a shrug of his shoulders.

  Henry could not remember when the “missis” was not “bad in all her bones;” her ague seemed to be chronic. He proceeded on his way, passed the iron gates, walked up the churchyard, and unlocked the chu
rch door. Once in, he took the key from the outer lock, and placing it upon the bench inside, pushed the door to, but did not shut it. The taking out the key in this manner was by Mr. Wilberforce’s orders: if they left it in the lock outside, some mischievous person might come and remove it, he had told the boys. Then he ascended to the organ-loft and commenced his practising. No blower was required, as certain pedals, touched with the feet, acted instead, something after the manner of a modern harmonium. His heart was in his task, in spite of the heavy care at it, for he loved music; and when it grew too dusk to see, he continued playing from memory.

  The shades of evening were gathering outside, as well as in; and under cover of them a boy might have been seen stealing through the churchyard. It was Henry’s rival, Lewis, whose mind had just been hatching a nice little revengeful plot. To say that Lewis had been half mad since the preceding day, would not be saying too much: he could have borne anything better than taunts from Miss Beauclerc; and for those taunts he would be revenged, the fates permitting, upon Henry Arkell. He did not quite see how, yet; but, as a little prologue, he intended to lock him in the church for the night, the idea of that having flashed into his mind after Henry had thanked him for throwing the stone.

  Lewis gently pulled open the church door, looked for the key, saw it, and snatched it, locked the church door upon the unconscious boy, who was playing, and stole back again, key in hand. Beyond the gates of the churchyard he stopped to laugh, as though he had accomplished a great feat.

  “Won’t his crowing be cooled by morning! He’ll be seeing ghosts all night, and calling out blue murder; but nobody can hear him, and there he must stop with them. What a jolly sell!”

  He hid the key in his jacket pocket until he reached old Hunt’s house. Lewis knew it was kept there, but did not know there was a niche or a nail for it in the passage. He did not care to be seen, and therefore must get the key in, in the best way he could.