Lizzie looked at him vindictively. “You wanted her yourself, I know. You weren’t good enough, neither. Let go my fingers!”
“Go home, now. See, the people have all gone in.”
“Go’st way in too, then, and leave me here to wait for her.”
Taffy shut his teeth, let go her hand, and taking her by the shoulders, swung her round face toward the gate.
“March!” he commanded, and she moved off whimpering. Once she looked back. “March!” he repeated, and followed her down the road as one follows and threatens a mutinous dog.
The scene by the church gate had puzzled Honoria, and in her first letter (written from Italy) she came straight to the point, as her custom was:
“I hope there is nothing between you and that girl who used to be at Joll’s. I say nothing about our hopes for you, but you have your own career to look to; and as I know you are too honourable to flatter an ignorant girl when you mean nothing, so I trust you are too wise to be caught by a foolish fancy. Forgive a staid matron (of one week’s standing) for writing so plainly, but what I saw made me uneasy—without cause, no doubt. Your future, remember, is not yours only. And now I shall trust you, and never come back to this subject.”
“We are like children abroad, George’s French is wonderful, but not so wonderful as his Italian. When he goes to take a ticket he first of all shouts the name of the station he wishes to arrive at (for some reason he believes all foreigners to be deaf), then he begins counting down francs one by one, very slowly, watching the clerk’s face. When the clerk’s face tells him he has doled out enough, he shouts ‘Hold hard!’ and clutches the ticket. It takes time; but all the people here are friends with him at once—especially the children, whom he punches in the ribs and tells to ‘buck up.’ Their mothers nod and smile and openly admire him; and I—well, I am happy and want everyone else to be happy.”
CHAPTER XXII.
MEN AS TOWERS.
It was May morning, and Taffy made one of the group gathered on the roof of Magdalen Tower. In the groves below and across the river meadows all the birds were singing together. Beyond the glimmering suburbs, St. Clement’s and Cowley St. John, over the dark rise by Bullingdon Green, the waning moon seemed to stand still and wait, poised on her nether horn. Below her the morning sky waited, clean and virginal, letting her veil of mist slip lower and lower until it rested in folds upon Shotover. While it dropped a shaft of light tore through it and smote flashing on the vane high above Taffy’s head, turning the dark side of the turrets to purple and casting lilac shadows on the surplices of the choir. For a moment the whole dewy shadow of the tower trembled on the western sky, and melted and was gone as a flood of gold broke on the eastward-turned faces. The clock below struck five and ceased. There was a sudden baring of heads; a hush; and gently, borne aloft on boys’ voices, clear and strong, rose the first notes of the hymn—