Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)Wood, Henry, Mrs.
General
Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
Fiction
Groups were wending their way to the Bishop's Garden: not the private
garden of the respected prelate who reigned over the diocese of
Westerbury, but a semi-public garden-promenade called by that name. In
the years long gone by, a bishop of Westerbury caused a piece of waste
land belonging to the grounds of his palace to be laid out as an
ornamental garden. Broad sunny walks for the cold of winter, shady
winding ones for the heat of summer, shrubberies and trees, flower-beds
and grass-plots, miniature rocks and a fountain, were severally formed
there; and then the bishop threw it open to the public, and it had ever
since gone by the name of the Bishop's Garden. Not to the public
indiscriminately--only to those of superior degree; the catering for the
recreation of the public indiscriminately had not come into fashion
then. It had always lain especially under the patronage of the residents
of the grounds, and they took care--or the Cerberus of a gatekeeper did
for them--that no inferior person should dare venture within yards of
it: a tradesman might not so much as put his nose through the iron
railings to take a peep in.
The garden was getting full when a college boy--he might be known by his
trencher--passed the gate with a slow step. A party had just gone in
whose movements his eyes had eagerly followed, but he was not near
enough to speak. As he looked after them wistfully, his eye caught
something glittering on the ground, and he stooped and picked it up. It
was a small locket of gold, bearing the initials "G. B."
He knew to whom it belonged. He would have given half his remaining
life, as it seemed, to go in and restore it to its owner. But that might
not be; for the college boys, whether king's scholars or private pupils,
were rigorously excluded by custom from the Bishop's Garden. And
Williams, the gatekeeper, was stealing up then.
He was tall of his age, looking about sixteen, though he was not quite
so much; tall enough to lean over the iron railings, which he did with
intense eagerness; and never did woman's face betray more beauty,
whether of form or colouring, than did his.
It was Henry Arkell. For the years have gone on, and the lovely boy of
ten or eleven, has grown into this handsome youth. Other people and
other things have grown with him.
"Now then! What be you doing here? You just please to take yourself off,
young gentleman."
He quitted the railings in obedience; the college boys never thought of
disputing the orders of the gatekeeper. Stepping backwards with a sort
of spring, he stepped upon the foot of some one who was approaching the
gate.
"Take care, Arkell."
He turned hastily and raised his trencher. The speaker was the
good-natured Bishop of Westerbury; his widowed daughter on his arm.
"I beg your lordship's pardon."
"Too intent to see me, eh! You were gazing into the garden as if you
longed to be there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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