Chapter One #2
When Midge’s little goddess said nothing, he threw himself once more unto the breach.
“You perhaps do not recall me, Miss Eveleigh, but I—we—have been introduced—I made your acquaintance on other occasions—Mr. Eveleigh’s lectures, that is—” His discomfiture was in no way relieved by the look Miss Eveleigh’s companion gave him from her close-set eyes, one of which had an involuntary squint, so that she appeared to regard both his face and his shoulder simultaneously.
“Of course I know you, Mr. Midgecomb,” Miss Eveleigh answered in a voice so sweet he trembled. “You are Papa’s most indefatigable apostle whenever he speaks in chapel, and you have quite charmed Mama. I would remember you, therefore, even if we had not been introduced multiple times.”
“You do me honor,” he croaked.
“And may we present our cousin Miss Jarvis to you?” Mrs. Eveleigh indicated the squint-eyed companion. “Miss Jarvis, Mr. Miles Midgecomb. His stepmama is a cousin of mine on my mother’s side.”
“Honored,” rasped Midge again. “One—er—one big happy family. And—and—and may I in turn introduce to you my good friends Mr. Tilson and Mr. Hearne? We are all of us Students of Christ Church. That is, fellows. We don’t call them fellows, though, at Christ Church, as Oriel does.
Call them fellows, I mean to say. We call them Students.
Confusing, I know. At any rate, we’re not undergraduates, you understand. ”
Who knows if they even heard him? With sinking spirits, even as he bumbled out this speech, Midge saw their female gaze drift to Hearne beside him.
Drift and sharpen.
No. No, no, no!
But what else could he have expected? What if Hearne should take one look at the beautiful Miss Eveleigh and renounce his singleness on the spot?
Turning to follow their looks, Midge braced for the destruction of all his hopes, only to discover—a miracle!
It was not that Adam Hearne had been transformed on the spot into an attraction-less toad, but he had certainly somehow been transformed.
For though he stood there, glorious as ever, sustaining, as ever, the ladies’ admiration, it was Hearne and not Hearne before them.
That is, he looked outwardly like Adam Hearne, as if Adonis himself had donned coat and trousers to drop into Oxford’s High Street, but he did not appear to be himself in toto.
For this version of Adam Hearne blinked back at them all with equal parts good nature and vacancy, like a chick newly hatched, pleased to find his barnyard so agreeable.
John Tilson choked back a laugh, but thankfully no one was looking at him, and he soon schooled his features properly. “What a pleasure,” he said after a beat, when it appeared Hearne would say nothing at all. “To meet such pleasant ladies on a pleasant day.”
“It would be even more pleasant if the weather improved,” Miss Eveleigh declared boldly, indicating her sheathed umbrella.
“Indeed,” replied Midgecomb, wishing it was permissible to wiggle his fingers in Miss Eveleigh’s eyes to recapture her attention.
Her lack of interest, however, did have the benefit of curing his stammer.
“I wonder if we will have another wettish summer. I recall a bad summer cold going around the senior common room this time last year.”
“Well, rain or shine, Mr. Eveleigh and I have settled with the agent, and we will be escaping to the country this long vacation,” declared Mrs. Eveleigh.
Midgecomb’s face fell. What? To be deprived of even these chance sightings for three long months?
“How splendid for you,” he uttered.
“And splendid for others, I hope,” she replied mysteriously. “For by ‘the country’ I mean nearby Iffley, and we hope to fill the house with company. Perhaps you, Mr. Midgecomb, might be prevailed upon to visit us…?”
His spirits shot up like rockets! “Certainly,” he blurted. “You may rely upon me whenever you require someone to fill a set or a card table or whatever you like! Iffley isn’t far at all. I walk out to the meadows there sometimes when it is fine.”
“Good,” she said. “I will count upon you, sir, as I do upon our mutual cousin George Denver. Good afternoon to you all.”
Thus dismissed, they could only turn and walk away (inconveniently not in the direction they intended to go, but it would hardly do to follow the Eveleighs and Miss Jarvis), and Midge only restrained himself with difficulty from dancing a jig.
“Did you hear that?” he crowed. “I will see her at private parties this summer! I cannot believe my good fortune! I must hunt Denver up at once and learn what he knows about this.”
“You seem to have the mother’s approval already,” agreed Tilson, clapping him on the shoulder, “so let’s have no more of your moping about.”
“Moping? I’ll never mope again, please God.
And Hearne, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your dumb show back there.
They all wanted to love you and hear you speak, I know, but thank you for not obliging them.
Now I will have all summer to make her fall in love with me, so that, by Michaelmas term she may be able to bear the sight of you with tolerable indifference. ”
Fortune continued to smile upon Miles Midgecomb, for when the threesome turned up Queen’s Lane, intending to circle around the Radcliffe Library back to Christ Church, George Denver himself collided with them, dropping his armful of books.
“Denver!” hallooed Midge, helping him up and retrieving his books with unwonted courtesy. “Just the man I wanted to see.”
“Me, sir?” The gangling youth frowned at the unusual sight of three Christ Church dons with whom he had only a nodding acquaintance encircling him.
“Indeed, if you can indulge us a minute. You hail from Iffley, do you not?”
“In a fashion,” he answered warily. “I was a boarder pupil of the rector Mr. Terry there for years…Why?”
Midge’s blade of a nose sliced the air between them as he leaned toward the lad. “Because I was just speaking with our mutual cousin Mrs. Stanton Eveleigh of Oriel. She tells me the Eveleighs will be living in Iffley this summer. Know anything of it?”
“I do. I know I’m to stay with them during the long vac.”
“Are you!” The incredulity in his voice was hardly flattering, but Midge was amazed. Why should this one stripling cousin be summoned to come under a common roof and share Miss Eveleigh’s rarefied air, and not he, who was nearly as much a cousin?
“They’ve rented one of the big houses for a party,” explained Denver with maddening indifference.
“Myself, I’d much rather stay with the Terrys at the rectory because I know them better, so I’m trying to come up with an excuse.
” He shrugged. “But I wager it’s time to marry off Miss Eveleigh, which means all hands to the pump. ”
Midge regarded him awfully. “Why, you ingrate,” he said.
“Apostate,” said Hearne.
“Renegate,” added Tilson.
“Mrs. Eveleigh has invited me to join the company as well, Denver,” Midge informed him loftily. “Not to live there, per se, but to—to—”
“To make up to Miss Eveleigh?”
“To augment the numbers,” suggested Hearne, seeing Midge swell with wrath at this lèse-majesté. “For dancing, card-playing, conversation, and so forth.”
“Oh, aye. I imagine you won’t be the only one Mrs. Eveleigh asks.”
Gathering his dignity about him, Midgecomb said stiffly, “Yes. Thank you, Hearne, that is what I meant. I will augment the numbers for my cousins. But will I know anyone there besides you, Denver? Have you any idea who else has been asked?”
The junior soph from Queen’s College shrugged his bony shoulders again, his gown riding up. “She gave me to understand there’d be a number of Oxford acquaintances.”
Midge’s heart smote him at the careless reference to “a number of Oxford acquaintances”—how many was “a number”? Would it be war to the knife, even for a word apart with Miss Eveleigh?
“And then, after however many of those she can get, she’ll want the chief Iffley families,” Denver continued carelessly. “She’s thick as thieves with Mrs. Markham Dere of Perryfield, for instance, and Mrs. Dere will likely suggest the Barstows to keep Miss Eveleigh company.”
“Who are the Barstows? Males or females?”
“Females,” Denver replied, the first scornful note creeping in.
He had guessed which way the wind blew with Midgecomb, and not being in love with Miss Eveleigh himself, he had scant sympathy for anyone who was.
“The only unmarried Iffley males who might show up are not above twelve years old, so you’ve nothing to fear there. ”
“Who said I feared anything?” snapped Midge.
“Well, if you aren’t afraid, then I don’t know why you’re harping on it.”
“Yes, Midge,” spoke up Hearne again, taking him by the sleeve. “Do stop harping. You have kept this young man long enough from his studies. Some things must be left shrouded in mystery, it seems. But you will have answers soon enough, when you and Denver here see each other again in Iffley.”
“Along with the countless other junior and senior members,” Tilson couldn’t resist teasing him.
“That’s right,” said Denver, backing away from them and nearly colliding with another undergraduate. “So good-bye.” But at the corner of the High Street he turned back to call, “Indeed, it’s far more likely I’ll see all three of you there.”
Denver’s prediction proved true. That summer A Midsummer Night’s Dream would never be performed on the tennis courts of Christ Church, nor would the nominated Mr. Pendergast ever play Titania.
While Adam Hearne would still have his opportunity to be acting manager, the cast would be nothing at all like he envisioned.