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СКАЧАТЬ Marston knew, and knew well, nearly every one worth knowing in the University. He did not appear particularly rich; he was not handsome; he was not brilliant in conversation; he did not dress well, though he was always neat; he was not a cricketer, a rower, or a rider; he never spoke at the Union; he never gave large parties; no one knew anything about his family; he never betted; and yet he was in the best set in the University.

      There was, of course, some reason for this; in fact, there were three good and sufficient reasons, although above I may seem to have exhausted the means of approach to good University society. First, He had been to Eton as a town boy, and had been popular there. Second, He had got one of the great open scholarships. And third, His behaviour had always been most correct and gentlemanly.

      A year before this he had met Charles as a freshman in Lord Welter's rooms, and had conceived a great liking for him. Charles had just come up with a capital name from Shrewsbury, and Marston hoped that he would have done something; but no. Charles took up with riding, rowing, driving, &c., &c., not to mention the giving and receiving of parties, with all the zest of a young fellow with a noble constitution, enough money, agreeable manners, and the faculty of excelling to a certain extent in every sport he took in hand.

      He very soon got to like and respect Marston. He used to allow him to blow him up, and give him good advice when he wouldn't take it from any one else. The night before he went down Marston came to his rooms, and tried to persuade him to go home, and not to "the training stables," as he irreverently called Ranford; but Charles had laughed and laughed, and joked, and given indirect answers, and Marston saw that he was determined, and discontinued pressing him.

CHAPTER IX.

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      ADELAIDE.

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      The next afternoon Lord Welter and Charles rode up to the door at Ranford. The servants looked surprised; they were not expected. His lordship was out shooting; her ladyship was in the poultry-yard; Mr. Pool was in the billiard-room with Lord Saltire.

      "The deuce!" said Lord Welter; "that's lucky, I'll get him to break it to the governor."

      The venerable nobleman was very much amused by the misfortunes of these ingenuous youths, and undertook the commission with great good nature. But, when he had heard the cause of the mishap, he altered his tone considerably, and took on himself to give the young men what was for him a severe lecture. He was sorry this had come out of a drunken riot; he wished it … which, though bad enough, did not carry the disgrace with it that the other did. Let them take the advice of an old fellow who had lived in the world, ay, and moved with the world, for above eighty years, and take care not to be marked, even by their own set, as drinking men. In his day, he allowed, drinking was entirely de rigueur; and indeed nothing could be more proper and correct than the whole thing they had just described to him, if it had happened fifty years ago. But now a drunken row was an anachronism. Nobody drank now. He had made a point of watching the best young fellows, and none of them drank. He made a point of taking the time from the rising young fellows, as every one ought to, who wished to go with the world. In his day, for instance, it was the custom to talk with considerable freedom on sacred subjects, and he himself had been somewhat notorious for that sort of thing; but look at him now: he conformed with the times, and went to church. Every one went to church now. Let him call their attention to the fact that a great improvement had taken place in public morals of late years.

      So the good-natured old heathen gave them what, I daresay, he thought was the best of advice. He is gone now to see what his system of morality was worth. I am very shy of judging him, or the men of his time. It gives me great pain to hear the men of the revolutionary era spoken of flippantly. The time was so exceptional. The men at that time were a race of giants. One wonders how the world got through that time at all. Six hundred millions of treasure spent by Britain alone! How many millions of lives lost none may guess. What wonder if there were hell-fire clubs and all kinds of monstrosities. Would any of the present generation have attended the fête of the goddess of reason, if they had lived at that time, I wonder? Of course they wouldn't.

      Charles went alone to the poultry-yard; but no one was there except the head keeper, who was administering medicine to a cock, whose appearance was indictable—that is to say, if the laws against cock-fighting were enforced. Lady Ascot had gone in; so Charles went in too, and went upstairs to his aunt's room.

      One of the old lady's last fancies was sitting in the dark, or in a gloom so profound as to approach to darkness. So Charles, passing out of a light corridor, and shutting the door behind him, found himself unable to see his hand before him. Confident, however, of his knowledge of localities, he advanced with such success that he immediately fell crashing headlong over an ottoman; and in his descent, imagining that he was falling into a pit or gulf of unknown depth, uttered a wild cry of alarm. Whereupon the voice of Lady Ascot from close by answered, "Come in," as if she thought she heard somebody knock.

      "Come up, would be more appropriate, aunt," said Charles. "Why do you sit in the dark? I've killed myself, I believe."

      "Is that you, Charles?" said she. "What brings you over? My dear, I am delighted. Open a bit of the window, Charles, and let me see you."

      Charles did as he was desired; and, as the strong light from without fell upon him, the old lady gave a deep sigh.

      "Ah, dear, so like poor dear Petre about the eyes. There never was a handsome Ravenshoe since him, and there never will be another. You were quite tolerable as a boy, my dear; but you've got very coarse, very coarse and plain indeed. Poor Petre!"

      "You're more unlucky in the light than you were in the darkness, Charles," said a brisk, clear, well-modulated voice from behind the old lady. "Grandma seems in one of her knock-me-down moods to-day. She had just told me that I was an insignificant chit, when you made your graceful and noiseless entrance, and saved me anything further."

      If Adelaide had been looking at Charles when she spoke, instead of at her work, she would have seen the start which he gave when he heard her voice. As it was, she saw nothing of it; and Charles, instantly recovering himself, said in the most nonchalant voice possible:

      "Hallo, are you here? How do you contrive to work in the dark?"

      "It is not dark to any one with eyes," was the curt reply. "I can see to read."

      Here Lady Ascot said that, if she had called Adelaide a chit, it was because she had set up her opinion against that of such a man as Dr. Going; that Adelaide was a good and dutiful girl to her; that she was a very old woman, and perhaps shouldn't live to see the finish of next year; and that her opinion still was that Charles was very plain and coarse, and she was sorry she couldn't alter it.

      Adelaide came rapidly up and kissed her, and then went and stood in the light beside Charles.

      She had grown into a superb blonde beauty. From her rich brown crêpé hair to her exquisite little foot, she was a model of grace. The nose was delicately aquiline, and the mouth receded slightly, while the chin was as slightly prominent; the eyes were brilliant, and were concentrated on their object in a moment; and the eyebrows surmounted them in a delicately but distinctly marked curve. A beauty she was, such as one seldom sees; and Charles, looking on her, felt that he loved her more madly than ever, and that he would die sooner than let her know it.

      "Well, Charles," she СКАЧАТЬ