Confessions of an Etonian

by I. E. M.

Here, then, have I passed days and days, without seeing one soul, reading, sketching, fishing, and bathing. Only once was I sensible of an intruder.

One bright moonlight night, I was passing along by the banks of the stream, when I observed on the other side something which I was confident, from familiar acquaintance with the spot, was not wont to be there. As it was lying on the pebbly beach, partly in the chequered shade of a beech-tree, and partly in the water, I was totally at a loss to imagine what it might be, but had a strong foreboding that it was a human body. A little lower down there was a shallow, through which I passed; and on reaching the spot, I must acknowledge that I was equally horrified to find that the object of my anxiety was a freshly-killed deer. The poor thing had evidently come here to drink, when it had been seized upon by some dog; and I cannot express my mixture of rage and remorse as I watched the damp, warm vapour slowly rising from the lacerated and bloody flank, and contemplated the beautiful but dimmed eye, glazed by the pale moonlight. Our peaceful sanctuary was violated!

I borrowed the very old gun of the very old butler, and watched for the moment of my revenge till daybreak, but it was never satiated.

A few months after this, having received an invitation to a delightful residence near the sea, and at the same time to meet some families of the county, among whom was to be "my own dear somebody," Seymour and I had set off in high glee with such a break in the monotony of our monastic habits.

That afternoon, then, I was riding by the side of this "somebody." A sort of confidence had arisen between us, very delightful and unaccountable; except simply that, on one side of me, as I rode along the edge of the cliffs, there was the Atlantic looking lowering and stormy, mingled in the horizon with the still drearier sky, broken or relieved by the contrast of a very lovely girl.

At this moment it was blowing and raining heavily, and, as she cantered along, my admiration of her was anything but diminished, when I witnessed the cheerful and good-natured indifference with which she treated a boisterous day of "bleak and chill December."

Being an ardent sort of little personage, she had been descanting with considerable animation and enthusiasm on a subject which affected her deeply. Her hair, completely dripping, was hanging down her cheek, now freshened by the coldness of the pelting rain. I cannot conceive how anything could look more beautiful than this girl did at that moment. At the same time though she appeared serious and melancholy, and, I think, a little out of humour too, while her hat, which was too large for her, had, from the wet, become quite shapeless, and appeared pressed down over her face, so that I could not forbear laughing, in spite of everything, though at the moment I felt wofully wretched!

Interrupting herself, and looking up towards the clouds, she pointed out to me, with her whip, a portion of blue sky, perhaps intimating a cessation of the storm. Regardless of either, I coolly as thoughtlessly put my hand out to take hers! but owing to the action of our horses, missed it. She never saw the attempt, and I narrowly escaped making a great fool of myself.

The most egregious act of folly, I think, a man can be guilty of, is to allow himself to meet with "a refusal."

We may easily have tact enough to know, beforehand, the real state and probable result of the case.