Meanwhile, my first surprise and excitement over, I watched Hartover carefully, fearing to see in him signs of past dissipation and excess. But his beauty was as great as ever. His flesh firm, moreover, his eyes and skin clear. He had matured rather than altered, grown considerably taller and filled-out, though his figure remained gracefully alert and slight. Two points only did I observe which I did not quite like—namely an aspect of anxiety and care upon the brow, and little bitter lines at the corners of the handsome mouth, giving a singular arrogance to his expression when the face was in repose.
We talked for a while of indifferent matters, and he asked me to walk with him to the Bull Hotel, where he had left the post-chaise in which he drove down from town, and where he invited me to dine with him and stay the night as his guest.
‘Give me what time you can, Brownlow,’ he said. ‘Leave all the good boys, the white sheep of your numerous flock, to take care of themselves for once; and look after the bad boy, the black sheep—the scapegoat, rather. For, upon my soul, it amounts to that. The sins of others are loaded on to my unhappy head, I promise you, with a vengeance.’
I could not but be aware of curious and admiring glances, as I walked up King’s Parade in his company. Reflected glory covered me, while he, royally careless of the observation he excited, was quick to note the grace of the different college buildings, the effects of light and colour, to ask a hundred pertinent questions, make a hundred pertinent remarks on all which caught his eye. What a delightful mind he had, open both to poetic and humorous impressions; instinctively using the right word, moreover, and striking out the happy phrase when it suited him to lay aside his slang.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
We dined in a private room on the first floor, which overlooked the street. Hartover proved a brilliant host. Once or twice, after anecdotes a trifle too highly salted for my white tie and clerical coat, he checked himself with a pretty air of penitence, expressing a mischievous hope I ‘wasn’t shocked.’ Shocked I was not, being no puritan; but somewhat grieved, I must admit, his wit should take so gross a turn. Yet what wonder? The guard-room is hardly mealy-mouthed, I supposed; neither, I could imagine, was French Mademoiselle—in intimacy. To her, by the way, I observed, Hartover made so far no smallest allusion.
But he spoke of Braithwaite, asking, with an indifference too studied to carry conviction, if my friendship still continued with the father and daughter, and—‘were they well?’ I answered both questions briefly in the affirmative; and there, to my relief, the subject dropped.
Towards the end of dinner his high spirits, which, entertaining though he had been, struck me all along as slightly forced, deserted him, and he became silent and preoccupied. Were we approaching disclosure of the trouble which, as he asserted, brought him here hot-foot, to Cambridge and to me? How gladly would I have made the way of confession easy for him! But I had sense to know I must be passive in the matter. Whatever confidence he gave must be given spontaneously. To question him, however circumspectly, would be to put him off by arousing his sensitive pride.
As the waiter brought in coffee and lights, Hartover rose, swung out onto the balcony, and, leaning his elbows on the high iron rail of it, stood gazing down into the street. The June twilight lingered, disputing the feeble glimmer of the street lamps. Roofs, gables, pinnacles and towers showed velvet black against the sweet translucence of an almost colourless sky. Footsteps, voices, a grind of wheels and cloppet, cloppet, of horse-hoofs over the stones; the scream of swifts in the buoyant rush of their evening flight, and the tang of a chapel bell, a single reiterated note. Some five minutes must have elapsed while these varied sounds reached me from without. Then Hartover raised his head, calling imperatively over his shoulder——
‘Brownlow, Brownlow, where are you? I want you. Come here.’