Orville College: A Story

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"What would he have given, in that one half hour of agony, to undo his act of folly, that poor young dying man!" he continued. "He was a Lutheran, and had been religiously trained: 'the child of many prayers,' said a friend of the mother to me. Ah, what petitions of imploring anguish, as he lay in his remorse, must have gone up to his Saviour for pardon! for grace even for him."

And so the conversation continued, this duel being the topic to the end of dinner. It seemed to Gall and Loftus that Mr. Bouncely kept it up on purpose: when anybody strayed to a different subject, he recurred to this. As they were crossing the court-yard after rising, to go into the public drawing-room, or to their rooms up stairs, as inclination led, some one touched Gall on the arm. It was Talbot, who had been waiting under the porte-cochère. Gall stepped aside with him, apparently just taking a look at the street and at the library windows opposite, lighted up.

"I thought I'd come and tell you, Gall, that the wind's gone down," whispered Talbot. "I have been on the pier with Onions, and it's nothing like as high; so there will be no impediment on that score. We got talking to an old fisherman, and he says it will be calm by morning. How's Dick?"

"Oh, he's all right," answered Gall, speaking more as if he were in a dream than awake. At least, it sounded so, and Talbot glanced at him.

"Are you going to the ball to-night?" asked Talbot, the whirling by of a carriage with flashing lamps probably suggesting the remembrance of the ball to him.

"No," said Gall; and for the life of him he could not have helped the sudden sense of the general unfitness of things that just then came over him. Balls in one place, duels and death in another.

"Onions is gone. His mother made him go. At least he's gone in to dress for it. She wants to be there once, just to see what it's like, she says. Onions was very mad, but he couldn't get off it."

"Ah, yes," answered Gall, thinking how much happier Onions was than himself. "I must go in, earl; I promised Dick I'd sit with him after dinner. Good night."

Talbot put out his hand; an unusual occurrence, for the college boys were not given to ceremony between themselves, either at meeting or parting. Gall responded to it mechanically.

"I say, Gall," he said, as he held it, and his voice dropped to a sort of solemn, concerned tone, as if this, that he was about to say, were serious and what had gone before was froth, "must this go on?"