Mildred Arkell Volume Ii Part 28

"Does she?"

"Your purse has a hole at both ends, she says, where pictures are concerned, and she wishes you had only a t.i.the of the prudence of Mr.

Isaac St. John."

Another slight knit of the brows. Sarah Beauclerc went to a side table and opened a book of views, taken in Spain, artistic sketches, exquisitely done. She turned her fair face to Mr. St. John.

"Will you kindly tell me if these are correct, Mr. St. John? That is, if you are personally acquainted with the spots."

He needed no second invitation. He did know the spots, and they bent over the views together, St. John growing eloquent. Henry Arkell, tolerably at home at the deanery, had drawn away from the group and was touching the keys of the piano; some sweet, extemporized melody, played so softly that it could scarcely be heard. Suddenly he found Georgina at his side.

"What did I tell you?" she abruptly said.

"What did you tell me?" he replied. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Miss Beauclerc."

"Go on with your playing; why do you stop? I don't care to be heard by the chairs and tables. Did I not tell you that he was in love either with her or with her beauty? You see, and hear."

"Are you sure he is not in love with somebody else?" asked Henry, his heart beating with that wild tumult that it mostly did when in the presence of Miss Beauclerc.

She understood his meaning, however it might please her to affect not to do so. He did not raise his eyes to look at her; and he continued the soft sweet playing, as she desired.

"Somebody else! Do you mean Lady Anne?"

"Oh, Miss Beauclerc! I was not thinking of Lady Anne."

"Perhaps you mean me, you stupid boy; perhaps you would like to insinuate that I am in love with him. You _are_ stupid, Henry. Play a little louder. How I wish I played with half your taste. I should not get so much of old Paul's frownings and mamma's reproachings. Do you think I'd have Fred St. John? No, not though he were worth his weight in gold. We should never get along together; you might as well try to mix oil and water."

Oh, false words! But how many such are uttered daily, in the natural reticence of the shy heart, loving for the first time! Henry Arkell believed her at the moment, and his heart bounded on in its wild love, in spite of that ever present conviction that had taken up an abode within it. The strain changed to a popular love melody; but the playing was soft and sweet as before. Few have the charmed gift of playing as he played.

"I have been making something for you. I can't give it you now with those two pairs of eyes in the room. Lovers though they may be, I dare say they are watching; and Sarah's blue ones are very sharp. She might get telling mamma that I flirt with the college boys. And I won't give it you at all if you are stupid. What's Fred St. John to me, do you suppose? It's nothing really worth having, you know; but your vanity likes to be humoured, and----"

"Henry! how exquisitely you play!"

Mr. St. John was coming towards them with the remark, and the spell was broken. Henry rose from the piano, laughing carelessly in answer; and Frederick St. John wondered at the bright light in his eye, the flush of emotion on his cheek. But he did not read the signs correctly.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE EXAMINATION.

November came in. The nineteenth approached, and the travelling carriages of the different prebendaries bowled into Westerbury, as was customary at that season, bringing their owners to their residences in the Grounds. A great day in cathedral life was the nineteenth of November. It was the grand chapter day; the day when every member attached to the cathedral had to attend in the chapter-house after morning prayers, and answer to their names, as called over from the roll by the chapter clerk. The dean, the canons, the minor canons, the king's scholars, the organist, the lay-clerks, the s.e.xtons, the vergers, the bedesmen, and the two men-cooks officiating for the audit dinners at the deanery; all had to be there, health permitting. It was also the grand audit day; and the first day of the series of dinners held at the deanery; the dinner on this day being confined to the members of the cathedral: that is, the clergy, the choristers, and the lay-clerks. The rest of the boys, those who were only king's scholars, were not included, and very savage they were; but things were done in accordance with ancient custom. When the dean, at the conclusion of the ceremonies in the chapter-house, proffered an invitation to the "gentlemen choristers" to dine with him that evening at the deanery, and the gentlemen choristers bowed a gracious or a confused acquiescence, according to their state of nerves, the thirty king's scholars turned rampant with envy; and always wished either the choristers or the dean might come to some grief before the night arrived.

The great day came; an unusually great day, this, for the school, the examination having been fixed to take place on it by the dean. The morning service in the cathedral was at ten o'clock, the usual daily hour; and at eleven began the business in the chapter-house. Next came the examination. There had been some consultation between the dean and canons as to whether the examination should take place in the college hall, as the schoolroom was called, or the chapter-house; but they decided in favour of the college hall. As the boys were pa.s.sing through the cloisters from the chapter-house on their way to it, walking orderly two and two in their surplices and trenchers, Georgina Beauclerc met them, her blue eyes smiling, the blue strings of her bonnet flying. The undaunted girl stopped to have a word, although the clergy, with the dean at their head, were actually coming out of the chapter-house, within view.

"There _is_ to be a prize, boys," she whispered. "Good luck to whoever gets it. Will it be you, Jocelyn?"

"That it will not, Miss Beauclerc," was the reply of the senior boy.

None knew better than he his own deficiencies, and that they chiefly arose through his own idleness.

"Whose will it be, then?"

"Well, if it turns upon general scholars.h.i.+p it ought to be Arkell's no doubt, Miss Beauclerc, only you see he is not a senior. If we are examined in Greek and Latin only, the merit may lie between him and Lewis senior."

Lewis senior, a great big hulky fellow, with hair as black as his uncle Ben's, sly eyes, and an ugly face, was standing close to Jocelyn. Taking the cla.s.sics only, he was the best scholar in the school, Henry Arkell excepted; but he was more than a year older than Henry. Miss Beauclerc saw his countenance light up with triumph, and she threw back her pretty head. She detested Lewis, though perfectly conscious that he entertained more than a liking for her.

"_You_ won't have much chance, Lewis, by the side of Arkell. Don't deceive yourself; don't faint with the disappointment."

She turned round and flew off, for the dean and clergy were close at hand. The boys continued their way to the college hall, Lewis's amiability not improved by the taunt. The general opinion in the school was, that if a prize was given, Lewis would gain it. He was a clever boy, though not popular; more clever than any one of the other seniors.

Seniority went for everything in the college school, and for the dean to be guilty of the heterodoxy of awarding the prize to any except one of the four seniors had not occurred to the boys as being within the range of serious possibility.

The boys took their station in the school, and the dean proceeded to the examination. Two of the canons were with him, and the masters of the school, one of whom was the Rev. Mr. Prattleton; but he attended only twice a week for an especial branch of study. The clergy and boys all wore their surplices, and the dean and prebendaries retained their caps on their heads.

The examination proceeded smoothly enough, for the complaisant dean confined himself chiefly to the cla.s.sics. He questioned the boys in the books and at the places put into his hands by the masters, and he winked metaphorically at the low promptings administered when the cla.s.ses came to a full stop or a stammer. The masters recovered confidence, and were congratulating themselves inwardly at the dreaded event being well over, when, to their unspeakable dismay, the dean disbanded the cla.s.ses, and, desiring the forty boys to stand indiscriminately before him, began to question them.

This was the real examination: some of the questions were simple, some difficult, embracing various subjects. But, simple or difficult, it was all one, for, taken by surprise, ill-educated, ill-grounded, the boys could not answer. One of them alone proved himself equal to the emergency. You need not be told that it was Henry Arkell. Not at a single question did he hesitate, till at length the dean told him, with a smile, _not_ to answer, until the questions had gone the round of the school. Of all branches of education, save their rote of Latin and Greek, the boys were entirely ignorant, though some of the dean's questions were ludicrously simple.

"Can you make the square of a cube?"

n.o.body answered, save by a prodigious deal of coughing, and Henry Arkell had once more to be appealed to.

"What is the difference between a right angle and an acute one?"

More coughing, and then a dead silence. The dean happened to be looking hard at one particular boy, or the boy fancied so, and his ears became as red as the head master's. "If you please, Mr. Dean, our desk is not in algebra."

"Who was Caligula?" continued the dean.

"King of France in the ninth century," was the prompt answer from one who thought he was in luck.

It was now the dean's turn to cough, as he replaced the question by another: "Can you tell me anything about Charles the Second?"

"He invented black lap-dogs with long ears."

The dean nearly choked.

"And was beheaded," added a timid voice.

"Was he?" retorted the dean. "Can you say anything about Charles the First, and the events of his reign?"

"Yes, sir. He found out the Gunpowder Plot, and was succeeded by Oliver Cromwell."

"Where are the Bahama Isles," asked the dean, in despair.

"In the Mediterranean," cried a tall boy.--"And they are very fertile,"

added another.

The dean paused a hopeless pause. "Can you spell 'Dutch?'"