The Castle Inn | Page 4

or timidity as to seem
unconscious of his company. The neighbourhood of Oxford is low and
flat, and except where a few lights marked the outskirts of the city a
wall of darkness shut them in, permitting nothing to be seen that lay
more than a few paces away. A grey drift of clouds, luminous in
comparison with the gloom about them, moved slowly overhead, and
out of the night the raving of a farm-dog or the creaking of a dry bough
came to the ear with melancholy effect.
The fine gentleman of that day had no taste for the wild, the rugged, or
the lonely. He lived too near the times when those words spelled
danger. He found at Almack's his most romantic scene, at Ranelagh his
terra incognita, in the gardens of Versailles his ideal of the charming
and picturesque. Sir George, no exception to the rule, shivered as he
looked round. He began to experience a revulsion of spirits; and to
consider that, for a gentleman who owned Lord Chatham for a patron,
and was even now on his roundabout way to join that minister--for a

gentleman whose fortune, though crippled and impaired, was still
tolerable, and who, where it had suffered, might look with confidence
to see it made good at the public expense--or to what end patrons or
ministers?--he began to reflect, I say, that for such an one to exchange a
peer's coach and good company for a night trudge at a woman's heels
was a folly, better befitting a boy at school than a man of his years. Not
that he had ever been so wild as to contemplate anything serious; or
from the first had entertained the most remote intention of brawling in
an unknown cause. That was an extravagance beyond him; and he
doubted if the girl really had it in her mind. The only adventure he had
proposed, when he left the carriage, was one of gallantry; it was the
only adventure then in vogue. And for that, now the time was come,
and the incognita and he were as much alone as the most ardent lover
could wish, he felt singularly disinclined.
True, the outline of her cloak, and the indications of a slender,
well-formed shape which it permitted to escape, satisfied him that the
postboy had not deceived him; but that his companion was both young
and handsome. And with this and his bargain it was to be supposed he
would be content. But the pure matter-of-factness of the girl's manner,
her silence, and her uncompromising attitude, as she walked by his side,
cooled whatever ardour her beauty and the reflection that he had
jockeyed Berkeley were calculated to arouse; and it was with an effort
that he presently lessened the distance between them.
'Et vera incessu patuit dea!' he said, speaking in the tone between jest
and earnest which he had used before. '"And all the goddess in her step
appears." Which means that you have the prettiest walk in the world,
my dear--but whither are you taking me?'
She went steadily on, not deigning an answer.
'But--my charmer, let us parley,' he remonstrated, striving to maintain a
light tone. 'In a minute we shall be in the town and--'
'I thought that we understood one another,' she answered curtly, still
continuing to walk, and to look straight before her; in which position
her hood, hid her face. 'I am taking you where I want you.'

'Oh, very well,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. But under his breath
he muttered, 'By heaven, I believe that the pretty fool really thinks--that
I am going to fight for her!'
To a man who had supped at White's the night before, and knew his age
to be the âge des philosophes, it seemed the wildest fancy in the world.
And his distaste grew. But to break off and leave her--at any rate until
he had put it beyond question that she had no underthought--to break
off and leave her after placing himself in a situation so humiliating, was
too much for the pride of a Macaroni. The lines of her head and figure
too, half guessed and half revealed, and wholly light and graceful, had
caught his fancy and created a desire to subjugate her. Reluctantly,
therefore, he continued to walk beside her, over Magdalen Bridge, and
thence by a path which, skirting the city, ran across the low wooded
meadows at the back of Merton.
A little to the right the squat tower of the college loomed against the
lighter rack of clouds, and rising amid the dark lines of trees that
beautify that part of the outskirts, formed a coup d'oeil sufficiently
impressive. Here and there, in such of the chamber windows as looked
over the meadows, lights twinkled cheerfully;