Home to your quarters now, if you please, Mr. Ludlow."
And I knew he believed me just as much as he would had I told him I"d been up in a balloon.
"You are a nice lot, Master Johnny!"
The salutation was Tod"s. He and Bill Whitney were sitting over the fire in our room.
"I couldn"t help being late."
"Of course not! As to late--it"s only midnight. Next time you"ll come in with the milk."
"Don"t jest. I"ve been with that poor Charley, and I think he"s dying.
The worst of it is, the proctor has just dropped upon me."
"No!" It sobered them both, and they put aside their mockery. Bill, who had the tongs in his hand, let them go down with a crash.
"It"s a thousand pities, Johnny. Not one of us has been before the dean yet."
"I can only tell the dean the truth."
"As if he"d believe you! By Jupiter! Once get one of our names up, and those proctors will track every step of the ground we tread on. They watch a marked man as a starving cat watches a mouse."
With the morning came in the requisition for me to attend before the dean. When I got there, who should be stealing out of the room quite sheepishly, his face down and his ears red, but Gaiton.
"Is it your turn, Ludlow!" he cried, closing the room-door as softly as though the dean had been asleep inside.
"What have you been had up for, Gaiton?"
"Oh, nothing. I got knocking about a bit last night, for Mrs. Everty did not receive, and came across that confounded proctor."
"Is the dean in a hard humour?"
"Hard enough, and be hanged to him! It"s not the dean: he"s ill, or something; perhaps been making a night of it himself: and Applerigg"s on duty for him. Dry old scarecrow! For two pins, Ludlow, I"d take my name off the books, and be free of the lot."
Dr. Applerigg had the reputation of being one of the strictest of college dons. He was like a maypole, just as tall and thin, with a long, sallow face, and enough learning to set up the reputations of three archbishops for life. The doctor was marching up and down the room in his college-cap, and turned his spectacles on me.
"Shut the door, sir."
While I did as I was bid, he sat down at an open desk near the fire and looked at a paper that had some writing on it.
"What age may you be, Mr. Ludlow?" he sternly asked, when a question or two had pa.s.sed. And I told him my age.
"Oh! And don"t you think it a very disreputable thing, a great _discredit_, sir, for a young fellow of your years to be found abroad by your proctor at midnight?"
"But I could not help being late, sir, last night; and I was not abroad for any purpose of pleasure. I had been staying with a poor fellow who is sick; dying, in fact: and--and it was not my fault, sir."
"Take care, young man," said he, glaring through his spectacles.
"There"s one thing I can never forgive if deliberately told me, and that"s a lie."
"I should be sorry to tell a lie, sir," I answered: and by the annoyance so visible in his looks and tones, it was impossible to help fancying he had found out, or thought he had found out, Gaiton in one. "What I have said is truth."
"Go over again what you did say," cried he, very shortly, after looking at his paper again and then hard at me. And I went over it.
"_What_ do you say the man"s name is?"
"Charles Ta.s.son, sir. He was our scout until he fell ill."
"Pray do you make a point, Mr. Ludlow, of visiting all the scouts and their friends who may happen to fall sick?"
"No, sir," I said, uneasily, for there was ridicule in his tone, and I knew he did not believe a word. "I don"t suppose I should ever have thought of visiting Ta.s.son, but for seeing him look so ill one afternoon up at G.o.dstowe."
"He must be very ill to be at G.o.dstowe!" cried Dr. Applerigg. "Very!"
"He was so ill, sir, that I thought he was dying then. Some flyman he knew had driven him to G.o.dstowe for the sake of the air."
"But what"s your _motive_, may I ask, for going to sit with him?" He had a way of laying emphasis on certain of his words.
"There"s no motive, sir: except that he is lonely and dying."
The doctor looked at me for what seemed ten minutes. "What is this sick man"s address, pray?"
I told him the address in Stagg"s Entry; and he wrote it down, telling me to present myself again before him the following morning.
That day, I met Sophie Chalk; her husband was with her. She nodded and seemed gay as air: he looked dark and sullen as he took off his hat. I carried the news into college.
"Sophie Chalk has her husband down, Tod."
"Queen Anne"s dead," retorted he.
"Oh, you knew it!" And I might have guessed that he did by his not having spent the past evening in High Street, but in a fellow"s rooms at Oriel. And he was as cross as two sticks.
"What a _fool_ she must have been to go and throw herself away upon that low fellow Everty!" he exclaimed, putting his shoulders against the mantelpiece and stamping on the carpet with one heel.
"Throw herself away! Well, Tod, opinions vary. _I_ think she was lucky to get him. As to his being low, we don"t know that he is. Putting aside that one mysterious episode of his being down at our place in hiding, which I suppose we shall never come to the bottom of, we know nothing of what Everty has, or has not been."
"You shut up, Johnny. Common sense is common sense."
"Everty"s being here--we can"t a.s.sociate with him, you know, Tod--affords a good opportunity for breaking off the visits to High Street."
"Who wants to break off the visits to High Street?"
"I do, for one. Madame Sophie"s is a dangerous atmosphere."
"Dangerous for you, Johnny?"
"Not a bit of it. _You_ know. Be wise in time, old fellow."
"Of all the m.u.f.fs living, Johnny, you are about the greatest. In the old days you feared I might go in for marrying Sophie Chalk. I don"t see what you can fear now. Do you suppose I should run away with another man"s wife?"