Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

And yonder, “sitting upon the river-bank o’ergrown,” with questioning eyes, was another shade, more habituated to these haunts--the shade known so well to bathers “in the abandoned lasher,” and to dancers “around the Fyfield elm in May.” At the bell’s final stroke, the Scholar Gipsy rose, letting fall on the water his gathered wild-flowers, and passed towards Cumnor. And now, duly, throughout Oxford, the gates of the Colleges were closed, and closed were the doors of the lodging-houses. Every night, for many years, at this hour precisely, Mrs. Batch had come out from her kitchen, to turn the key in the front-door. The function had long ago become automatic. To-night, however, it was the cue for further tears. These did not cease at her return to the kitchen, where she had gathered about her some sympathetic neighbours--women of her own age and kind, capacious of tragedy; women who might be relied on; founts of ejaculation, wells of surmise, downpours of remembered premonitions. With his elbows on the kitchen table, and his knuckles to his brow, sat Clarence, intent on belated “prep.” Even an eye-witness of disaster may pall if he repeat his story too often. Clarence had noted in the last recital that he was losing his hold on his audience. So now he sat committing to memory the names of the cantons of Switzerland, and waving aside with a harsh gesture such questions as were still put to him by the women.