Part 4 (2/2)
Julia said nothing, but drew in perceptibly, and was dead silent ever after.
”Oh, madam!” said Hardie eagerly, ”I do not dispute her authority, nor yours. You have a right to send me where you please, after your kindness in noticing my infernal head, and doing me the honour to speak to me, and lending me this. But if I go to bed, my head will be my master.
Besides, I shall throw away what little chance I have of making your acquaintance; and the race just coming off!”
”We will not usurp authority, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd quietly; ”but we know what a severe headache is, and should be glad to see you sit still in the shade, and excite yourself as little as possible.”
”Yes, madam,” said the youth humbly, and sat down like a lamb. He glanced now and then at the island, and now and then peered up at the radiant young mute beside him.
The silence continued till it was broken by--a fish out of water. An undergraduate in spectacles came mooning along, all out of his element.
It was Mr. Kennet, who used to rise at four every morning to his Plato, and walk up Shotover Hill every afternoon, wet or dry, to cool his eyes for his evening work. With what view he deviated to Henley has not yet been ascertained. He was blind as a bat, and did not care a b.u.t.ton about any earthly boat-race, except the one in the AEneid, even if he could have seen one. However, nearly all the men of his college went to Henley, and perhaps some branch, hitherto unexplored, of animal magnetism drew him after. At any rate, there was his body; and his mind at Oxford and Athens, and other venerable but irrelevant cities. He brightened at sight of his doge, and asked him warmly if he had heard the news.
”No: what? Nothing wrong, I hope?”
”Why, two of our men are ploughed; that is all,” said Kennet, affecting with withering irony to undervalue his intelligence.
”Confound it, Kennet, how you frightened me! I was afraid there was some screw loose with the crew.”
At this very instant, the smoke of the pistol was seen to puff out from the island, and Hardie rose to his feet. ”They are off!” cried he to the ladies, and after first putting his palms together with a hypocritical look of apology, he laid one hand on an old barge that was drawn up ash.o.r.e, and sprang like a mountain goat on to the bow, lighting on the very gunwale. The position was not tenable an instant, but he extended one foot very nimbly and boldly, and planted it on the other gunwale; and there he was in a moment, headache and all, in an att.i.tude as large and inspired as the boldest gesture antiquity has committed to marble--he had even the advantage in stature over most of the sculptured forms of Greece. But a double opera-gla.s.s at his eye ”spoiled the lot,”
as Mr. Punch says.
I am not to repeat the particulars of a distant race coming nearer and nearer. The main features are always the same; only this time it was more exciting to our fair friends, on account of Edward's high stake in it. And then their grateful though refractory patient, an authority in their eyes, indeed all but a river-G.o.d, stood poised in air, and in excited whispers interpreted each distant and unintelligible feature down to them:
”Cambridge was off quickest.”
”But not much.”
”Anybody's race at present, madam.”
”If this lasts long we may win. None of them can stay like us.”
”Come, the favourite is not so very dangerous.”
”Cambridge looks best.”
”I wouldn't change with either, so far.”
”Now, in forty seconds more, I shall be able to pick out the winner.”
Julia went up this ladder of thrills to a high state of excitement; and, indeed, they were all so tuned to racing pitch, that some metal nerve or other seemed to jar inside all three, when the piercing, grating voice of Kennet broke in suddenly with--
”How do you construe [Greek text]?”
The wretch had burrowed in the intellectual ruins of Greece the moment the pistol went off, and college chat ceased. Hardie raised his opera-gla.s.s, and his first impulse was to brain the judicious Kennet, gazing up to him for an answer, with spectacles goggling like supernatural eyes of dead sophists in the sun.
”How do you construe _'Hoc age'_? you incongruous dog. Hold your tongue, and mind the race.”
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