Chapter 11

now so deserted.

A school-fellow and friend had there been drowned, and I had heard his piercing shriek as he fell from his boat. His body had not yet been recovered. This morning we had been playing at fives together. How were he and I occupied now! I dared hardly think, and then I pictured to myself his listless and lifeless body rolling under the stream into some dark depth:--

"And there I sat all heavily As I heard the night-wind sigh-- Was it the wind that through some hollow stone Sent that soft and tender moan!"

Just then the deep tone of the Castle death-bell came swelling across the river from the other side. In an instant I knew it was the harbinger of death--of the Princess Charlotte? I was right--she was just then dead!

This now struck me as a frightful moment. It was not from the fear of death, nor, alas! from the fear of God. What could it be? I am convinced that no one has literally trembled from fear, but now my heart felt as though it shivered. I stood motionless till the last and least sound had reverberated through the now silent court, and there was nothing to be heard but the beating of my own heart. There I stood fixed like a statue, afraid to stir, even to heave my chest to sigh--this, then, was superstition.

I gradually arose from my trance to be conscious of the truth; and now even concluding it to be my duty to combat against the weakness, though in a joyless mood, I descended the ladder.

"Time and tide tarry for no man," and I think even less for me. The day had now come that I was to take leave of Keate and of Eton, and return to my father's house--and for what! I had not a suspicion, or whether I was destined for the army, church, law, or for anything else. The prospect, however, appeared cloudy and comfortless, and I was now to reside for an indefinite period at the only place, much as I did love the spot, where I ever felt myself to be in the midst of strangers. Here, apparently, I was another being than when at Eton--reserved, gloomy and distrustful--cold and unfeeling--wandering about the place like a solitaire, as I was. I had not, nor have I ever had, an acquaintance in the county--I had never been into another house. Should any friends of the family be staying with them, I would take my breakfast of bread and milk before the usual hour, in order to avoid meeting them, and then absented myself for the rest of the day, until dinner-time. This last was indeed a painful ordeal, especially should there be any ladies present.

The truth is, circumstances, and by no means my own inclinations, forced me to be mute, and that, too, at times, when I would have almost given my life to have been otherwise, and then I looked ashamed of myself, as I really was, for my apparent deficiency of good breeding.

But now it was that I was bidding farewell to Eton--an eternal farewell! now it was that I felt

"How dear the schoolboy spot, We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot."

I had been an Etonian for ten lovely years, and--what had I acquired?

I had, in due routine, become captain of the Oppidans--could, on an emergency, translate the dead languages--had worked myself into the eleven of cricket and of foot-ball, and now came forth from Keate's chamber, destined to learn that "the recollections of past happiness are the wrinkles of the soul."

BOOK THE SECOND.