This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora
to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the
more for an incident that, presenting itself the second evening,
had deeply disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole,
as I have expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen
apprehension. The postbag, that evening,--it came late,--contained a
letter for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found
to be composed but of a few words enclosing another, addressed to
himself, with a seal still unbroken. “This, I recognise, is from the
head-master, and the head-master’s an awful bore. Read him, please;
deal with him; but mind you don’t report. Not a word. I’m off!”
I broke the seal with a great effort--so great a one that I was a long
time coming to it; took the unopened missive at last up to my room
and only attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let
it wait till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no
counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and it finally
got so the better of me that I determined to open myself at least to
Mrs. Grose.
“What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.”
She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with
a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. “But aren’t they
all----?”
“Sent home--yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back
at all.”
Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. “They won’t take
him?”
“They absolutely decline.”
At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them
fill with good tears. “What has he done?”
I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter--which,
however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put
her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. “Such things are not
for me, Miss.”
My counsellor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake, which I
attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her;
then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back
in my pocket. “Is he really _bad_?”
The tears were still in her eyes. “Do the gentlemen say so?”
“They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that
it should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning.”
Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what
this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some
coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went
on: “That he’s an injury to the others.”
At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly
flamed up. “Master Miles! _him_ an injury?”
There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet
seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the
idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the
spot, sarcastically. “To his poor little innocent mates!”
“It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such cruel
things! Why, he’s scarce ten years old.”
“Yes, yes; it would be incredible.”
She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See him, Miss,
first. _Then_ believe it!” I felt forthwith a new impatience to
see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next
hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could
judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with
assurance. “You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless
her,” she added the next moment--“_look_ at her!”
I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had
established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil,
and a copy of nice “round O’s,” now presented herself to view
at the open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary
detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a
great childish light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the
affection she had conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary
that she should follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the
full force of Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, catching my pupil in my
arms, covered her with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement.
None the less, the rest of the day, I watched for further occasion
to approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to
fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on
the staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her,
holding her there with a hand on her arm. “I take what you said to me
at noon as a declaration that _you’ve_ never known him to be bad.”
She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very
honestly, adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known him--I don’t
pretend _that_!”