And I, a boy of the age of this youngster--he "s not like me, I can declare!--I was a sneak and a coward. It follows, I was a liar and a traitor. Who cured me of that vileness, that scandal? I will tell you--an Englishman and an Englishwoman: my schoolmaster and his wife. My schoolmaster--my friend! He is the comrade of his boys: English, French, Germans, Italians, a Spaniard in my time--a South American I have sent him--two from Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts--and clever!--all emulous to excel, none boasting. But, to myself; I was that mean fellow. I did--I could let you know: before this young lady--she would wither me with her scorn, Enough, I sneaked, I lied. I let the blame fall on a schoolfellow and a housemaid. Oh! a small thing, but I coveted it--a scarf. It reminded me of Rome. Enough, there at the bottom of that pit, behold me.
It was not discovered, but my schoolfellow was unpunished, the housemaid remained in service; I thought, I thought, and I thought until I could not look in my dear friend Matthew"s face. He said to me one day: "Have you nothing to tell me, Giulio?" as if to ask the road to right or left.
Out it all came. And no sermon, no! He set me the hardest task I could have. That was a penance!--to go to his wife, and tell it all to her.
Then I did think it an easier thing to go and face death--and death had been my nightmare. I went, she listened, she took my hand she said: "You will never do this again, I know, Giulio." She told me no English girl would ever look on a man who was a coward and lied. From that day I have made Truth my bride. And what the consequence? I know not fear! I could laugh, knowing I was to lie down in my six-foot measure to-morrow. If I have done my duty and look in the face of my dear Matthew and his wife!
Ah, those two! They are loved. They will be loved all over Europe. He works for Europe and America--all civilized people--to be one country.
He is the comrade of his boys. Out of school hours, it is Christian names all round--Matthew, Emile, Adolf, Emilio, Giulio, Robert, Marcel, Franz, et caetera. Games or lessons, a boy can"t help learning with him.
He makes happy fellows and brave soldiers of them without drill. Sir, do I presume when I say I have your excuse for addressing you because you are his countryman? I drive to the old school in half an hour, and next week he and his dear wife and a good half of the boys will be on the tramp over the Simplon, by Lago Maggiore, to my uncle"s house in Milan for a halt. I go to Matthew before I see my own people."
He swept another bow of apology, chiefly to Philippa, as representative of the s.e.x claiming homage.
Lord Ormont had not greatly relished certain of the flowery phrases employed by this young foreigner. "Truth his bride," was d.a.m.nable: and if a story had to be told, he liked it plain, without jerks and evolutions. Many offences to our taste have to be overlooked in foreigners--Italians! considered, before they were proved in fire, a people cla.s.sed by nature as operatic declaimers. Bobby had shown himself on the road out to Bern a difficult boy, and stupefyingly ignorant. My lord had two or three ideas working to cloudy combination in his head when he put a question, referring to the management of the dormitories at the school. Whereupon the young Italian introduced himself as Giulio Calliani, and proposed a drive to inspect the old school, with its cricket and football fields, lake for rowing and swimming, gymnastic fixtures, carpenter"s shed, bowling alley, and four European languages in the air by turns daily; and the boys, too, all the boys rosy and jolly, according to the last report received of them from his friend Matthew. Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism in Lord Ormont; somewhat as if a dancing beggar had entered a kennel-dog"s yard, designing to fascinate the faithful beast. It is a chord of one note, that is tightened to sound by the violent summons to accept, which is a provocation to deny. At the same time, the enthusiast"s dance is rather funny; he is not an ordinary beggar; to see him trip himself in his dance would be rather funnier. This is to say, inspect the trumpeted school and retire politely. My lord knew the Bern of frequent visits: the woman was needed beside him to inspire a feeling for scenic mountains. Philippa"s admiration of them was like a new-pressed grape-juice after a draught of the ripe vintage. Moreover, Bobby was difficult: the rejected of his English schools was a stiff Ormont at lessons, a wheezy Benlew in the playground: exactly the reverse of what should have been. A school of four languages in bracing air, if a school with healthy dormitories, and a school of the trained instincts we call gentlemanly, might suit Master Bobby for a trial. An eye on the boys of the school would see in a minute what stuff they were made of. Supposing this young Italianissimo with the English tongue to be tolerably near the mark, with a deduction of two-thirds of the enthusiasm, Bobby might stop at the school as long as his health held out, or the master would keep him. Supposing half a dozen things and more, the meeting with this Mr. Calliand was a lucky accident. But lucky accidents are antic.i.p.ated only by fools.
Lord Ormont consented to visit the school. He handed his card and invited his guest; he had a carriage in waiting for the day, he said; and obedient to Lady Charlotte"s injunctions, he withheld Philippa from the party. She and her maid were to pa.s.s the five hours of his absence in efforts to keep their monkey Bobby out of the well of the solicitious bears.
My lord left his carriage at the inn of the village lying below the school-house on a green height. The young enthusiast was dancing him into the condition of livid taciturnity, which could, if it would, flash out pungent epigrams of the actual world at Operatic recitative.
"There"s the old school-clock! Just in time for the half-hour before dinner," said Calliani, chattering two hundred to the minute, of the habits and usages of the school, and how all had meals together, the master, his wife, the teachers, the boys. "And she--as for her!" Calliani kissed finger up to the furthest skies: into which a self-respecting sober Northener of the Isles could imagine himself to kick enthusiastic gesticulators, if it were polite to do so.
The school-house faced the master"s dwelling house, and these, with a block of building, formed a three-sided enclosure, like barracks! Forth from the school-house door burst a dozen shouting lads, as wasps from the hole of their nest from a charge of powder. Out they poured whizzing; and the frog he leaped, and p.u.s.s.y ran and doubled before the hounds, and hockey-sticks waved, and away went a ball. Cracks at the ball anyhow, was the game for the twenty-five minutes breather before dinner.
"French day!" said Calliani, hearing their cries. Then he bellowed "Matthew!--Giulio!"
A l.u.s.ty inversion of the order of the names and an Oberland jodel returned his hail. The school retreating caught up the Alpine cry in the distance. Here were lungs! Here were sprites!
Lord Ormont bethought him of the name of the master. "Mr. Matthew, I think you said, sir," he was observing to Calliani, as the master came nearer; and Calliani replied: "His Christian name. But if the boys are naughty boys, it is not the privilege. Mr. Weyburn."
There was not any necessity to p.r.o.nounce that name Calliani spoke it on the rush to his friend.
Lord Ormont and Weyburn advanced the steps to the meeting. Neither of them flinched in eye or limb.
At a corridor window of the dwelling-house a lady stood. Her colour was the last of a summer day over western seas; her thought: "It has come!"
Her mind was in her sight; her other powers were frozen.
The two men conversed. There was no gesture.
This is one of the lightning moments of life for the woman, at the meeting of the two men between whom her person has been in dispute, may still be; her soul being with one. And that one, dearer than the blood of her body, imperilled by her.
She could ask why she exists, if a question were in her grasp. She would ask for the meaning of the gift of beauty to the woman, making her desireable to those two men, making her a cause of strife, a thing of doom. An incessant clamour dinned about her: "It has come!"
The two men walked conversing into the school-house. She was unconscious of the seeing of a third, though she saw and at the back of her mind believed she knew a friend in him. The two disappeared. She was insensible stone, except for the bell-clang: "It has come"; until they were in view again, still conversing: and the first of her thought to stir from petrifaction was: "Life holds no secret."
She tried, in shame of the inanimate creature she had become, to force herself to think: and had, for a chastising result, a series of geometrical figures shooting across her brain, mystically expressive of the situation, not communicably. The most vivid and persistent was a triangle. Interpret who may. The one beheld the two pa.s.s from view again, still conversing.
They are on the gravel; they bow; they separate. He of the grey head poised high has gone.
Her arm was pressed by a hand. Weyburn longed to enfold her, and she desired it, and her soul praised him for refraining. Both had that delicacy.
"You have seen, my darling," Weyburn said. "It has come, and we take our chance. He spoke not one word, beyond the affairs of the school. He has a grandnephew in want of a school: visited the dormitories, refectory, and sheds: tasted the well-water, addressed me as Mr. Matthew. He had it from Giulio. Came to look at the school of Giulio"s "friend Matthew,":--you hear him. Giulio little imagines!--Well, dear love, we stand with a squad in front, and wait the word. It mayn"t be spoken. We have counted long before that something like it was bound to happen. And you are brave. Ruin"s an empty word for us two."
"Yes, dear, it is: we will pay what is asked of us," Aminta said. "It will be heavy, if the school... and I love our boys. I am fit to be the school-housekeeper; for nothing else."
"I will go to the boys" parents. At the worst, we can march into new territory. Emile will stick to us. Adolf, too. The fresh flock will come."
Aminta cried in the voice of tears: "I love the old so!"
"The likelihood is, we shall hear nothing further."
"You had to bear the shock, Matthew."
"Whatever I bore, and you saw, you shared."
"Yes," she said.
"Mais, n"oublions pas que c"est aujourd"hui jour francais; si, madame, vous avez a.s.sez d"appet.i.t pour diner avec nous?
"Je suis, comme toujours, aux ordres de Monsieur." She was among the bravest of women. She had a full ounce of lead in her breast when she sat with the boys at their midday meal, showing them her familiar pleasant face.
Shortly after the hour of the evening meal, a messenger from Bern delivered a letter addressed to the Headmaster. Weyburn and Aminta were strolling to the playground, thinking in common, as they usually did.
They read the letter together. These were the lines:
"Lord Ormont desires to repeat his sense of obligation to Mr. Matthew for the inspection of the school under his charge, and will be thankful to Mr. Calliani, if that gentleman will do him the favour to call at his hotel at Bern to-morrow, at as early an hour as is convenient to him, for the purpose of making arrangements, agreeable to the Head-master"s rules, for receiving his grandnephew Robert Benlew as a pupil at the school."
The two raised eyes on one another, pained in their deep joy by the religion of the restraint upon their hearts, to keep down the pa.s.sion to embrace.
"I thank heaven we know him to be one of the true n.o.ble men," said Aminta, now breathing, and thanking Lord Ormont for the free breath she drew.
Weyburn spoke of an idea he had gathered from the earl"s manner. But he had not imagined the proud lord"s great-heartedness would go so far as to trust him with the guardianship of the boy. That moved, and that humbled him, though it was far from humiliating.
Six months later, the brief communication arrived from Lady Charlotte
"She is a widow.
"Unlikely you will hear from me again. Death is always next door, you said once. I look on the back of life.
"Tell Bobby, capital for him to write he has no longing for home holidays. If any one can make a man of him, you will. That I know.
"CHARLOTTE EGLETT."