Part 6 (1/2)

And, as they talked, the young man began to fancy idly what his own life would have been, had he never gone away from the old Devons.h.i.+re town. It had been intended, of course, that he should stay there, and take his own part in the family concerns; even yet his uncles were keeping a place for him; and although they feared he was quite spoiled by Oxford, yet they would welcome him back, he knew, should he only give up those ambitions, that to them--and to himself sometimes!--seemed so impossible, so dreamy and unreal.

Ruth Ellwood stopped now and then to look at the garden flowers. ”What lovely irises, and how quaint those roses are, trained so stiffly on the old walls.”

”Are you fond of gardening?” he asked.

She was very fond of it, she said--not that she knew much about it! But she liked planting things and tying them up, and she always gathered the flowers for the house. Things grew so well at Dalmouth--roses and peonies, and great chrysanthemums in the autumn. Only it made her a little sad to see the chrysanthemums; their summers were so lovely!

Rutherford knew the house in which his cousin lived, and now he could almost see her there, moving over the sweet gra.s.s, hatless, in the morning light, to gather roses, filling old china bowls with their fragrant leaves; or walking home on rainy evenings past the great cedar, the wet lawn, and borders of dripping flowers.

”How beautiful she is!” he thought, looking furtively at her. The impression of this beauty, her pleasant voice, the friendly people she spoke of, and all the memories that made them seem so intimate together, affected him with a curious fresh sense of happiness, coming into his life, which had been of late somewhat discouraged and lonely, with a charm as real and actual as that of the warmth of the sun, the scent of roses.

They had reached the end of the garden, and as they turned back, still following the others, he said hesitatingly to his companion something about coming to Dalmouth soon for a visit.

”Oh, do come!” she cried, ”I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and they will all be so glad to see you.”

”I hope so--but I'm afraid they must think rather badly of me--will be prejudiced against me; you will have to introduce me.”

”Oh, I will--only really, they won't be prejudiced against you.” Then she added, ”Oxford is so charming!” in a way that touched Rutherford a little. She at least, in spite of all she had heard at home, plainly could see nothing so dreadful or dangerous in Oxford, or her cousin, after all!

Yes, Oxford was charming, she said again, and not at all what she had expected--at first she had been really almost afraid to come! But it was all so pleasant; why had people such a prejudice against the University?--her two brothers wanted to come, but her father would not hear of it. But how could it unfit them for living at home? She had seen how the undergraduates lived. And her brothers would have enjoyed it so.

She had been in several of the Colleges now, and had been on the river, and was going out to tea that afternoon, and afterwards, to a dance.

”Tell me,” she asked, as they followed the others towards the chapel door, ”are you going to any of the dances?”

He was afraid he wouldn't have the time, he said.

”Oh, what a pity, you ought to come,” she cried; but her voice was hushed when, out of the glare and suns.h.i.+ne, they went into the blue obscurity, the cool old smell and quiet of the chapel.

The ladies looked at the windows, the religious carving; and their movement, as they went about, filled with a rustling sound the vacant silence of the place. Then they all gathered in a group while one of the Fellows told them something of the history of the chapel: how it had been built in the fourteenth century, and how ever since then the members of the College had wors.h.i.+pped there, and among them many whose names had afterwards grown famous.

”Tell me,” Ruth Ellwood whispered, as they walked away, ”is this where the undergraduates sit; where do you sit?” He showed her the Scholars'

seats, and the old bra.s.s eagle from which they read the lessons, and then, when they went through the ante-chapel, she paused a moment, looking at the inscriptions and monuments.

”Were there any nice old epitaphs?” she asked. ”Do show them to me, if there are.”

The rest of the party had left the chapel, but could still be seen through the open door standing not far off in the suns.h.i.+ne, and the gossip of their voices came in faintly now and then.

The old bra.s.ses, dating from Gothic times, bore inscriptions in rhyming Latin, that Rutherford read and translated to his companion; there were monuments of a later time, adorned with urns, cherubs, and garlands--old trappings of death that made death itself seem almost quaint and charming. But in the seventeenth century the tranquil records of the scholars' lives were disturbed by echoes of old war and exile.

”Reader, look to thy feet! Honest and Loyal men are sleeping under Thee,” one inscription ran; and the name of more than one was recorded ”who, when Loyalty and the Church fainted, lay down and Died.”

Other monuments were put up to the memory of young men who had died at College. Well-born and modest, the old Latin described them, and dead, centuries ago, in the flower of their fruitless years. ”Vivere dulce fuit!” one of them had complained, as four hundred years before, in florid Latin, he bade farewell to youth and hope.

Of another it was quaintly said, ”Talis erat vita, qualis stylus, elegans et pura”; while another undergraduate's virtues were recorded in verses ending with the line,

”Expertus praedico, tutor eram.”