even run. Had not been used to it, he said. What _had_ he been used to
do, then, he was asked one day. Oh, he had sat out in the garden with
his mother; and since her death, with Aunt Claribelle, and gone for an
airing in the carriage three times a week. Was he a girl? roared the
boys. Did he do patchwork? Not now; he had left off sewing when he was
nine, answered Van Rheyn innocently, unconscious of the storm of mockery
the avowal would invoke. "Pray, were you born a young lady?--or did
they change you at nurse?" shouted Jessup, who would have kept the
ball rolling till midnight. "I say, you fellows, he has come to the
wrong school: we don't take in girls, do we? Let me introduce this one
to you, boys--'Miss Charlotte.'" And, so poor Charley Van Rheyn got
that nickname as well as the other. Miss Charlotte!
Latin was a stumbling-block. Van Rheyn had learnt it according to
French rules and French pronunciation, and he could not readily get
into our English mode. "It was bad enough to have to teach a stupid
boy Latin," grumbled the under Latin master (under Dr. Frost), "but
worse to have to _un_-teach him." Van Rheyn was not stupid, however;
if he seemed so, it was because his new life was so strange to him.
One day the boys dared him to a game at leap-frog. Some of them were at
it in the yard, and Van Rheyn stood by, looking on.
"Why don't you go in for it?" suddenly asked Parker, giving him a push.
"There is to be a round or two at boxing this evening, why don't you go
in for _that_?"
"They never would let me do these rough things," replied Van Rheyn, who
invariably answered all the chaffing questions civilly and patiently.
"Who wouldn't? Who's 'they'?"
"My mother and my Aunt Claribelle. Also, when I was starting to come
here, my father said I was not to exert myself."
"All right, Miss Charlotte; but why on earth didn't the respectable old
gentleman send you over in petticoats? Never was such a thing heard of,
you know, as for a girl to wear a coat and pantaloons. It's not decent,
Miss Charlotte; it's not modest."
"Why do you say all this to me for ever? I am not a girl," said poor Van
Rheyn.
"No? Don't tell fibs. If you were not a girl you'd go in for our games.
Come! Try this. Leap-frog's especially edifying, I assure you: expands
the mind. _Won't_ you try it?"
Well, the upshot was, that they dared him to try it. A dozen, or so,
set on at him like so many wolves. What with that, and what with their
stinging ridicule, poor Van Rheyn was goaded out of his obedience to
home orders, and did try it. After a few tumbles, he went over very
tolerably, and did not dislike it at all.
"If I can only learn to do as the rest of you do, perhaps they will let
me alone," he said to me that same night, a sort of eagerness in his
bright grey eyes.
And gradually he did learn to go in for most of the games: running,
leaping, and climbing. One thing he absolutely refused--wrestling.
"Why should gentlemen, who were to be gentlemen all their lives, fight
each other?" he asked. "They would not have to fight as men; it was not
kind; it was not pleasant; it was hard."
The boys were hard on him for saying it, mocking him fearfully; but they
could not shake him there. He was of right blue blood; never caving-in
before them, as Bill Whitney expressed it one day; he was only quiet and
_endured_.
Whether the native Rouen air is favourable to freckles, I don't know;
but those on Van Rheyn's face gradually disappeared over here. His
complexion lost its redness also, becoming fresh and fair, with a
brightish colour on the cheeks. The hair, growing longer, turned out
to be of a smooth brown: altogether he was good-looking.
* * * * *
"I say, Johnny, do you know that Van Rheyn's ill?"
The words came from William Whitney. He whispered them in my ear as we
stood up for prayers before breakfast. The school had opened about a
month then.
"What's the matter with him?"
"Don't know," answered Bill. "He is staying in bed."
Cribbing some minutes from breakfast, I went up to his room. Van Rheyn
looked pale as he lay, and said he had been sick. Hall declared it was
nothing but a bilious attack, and Van Rheyn thought she might be right.
"Meaning that you have a sick headache, I suppose?" I said to him.
"Yes, the migraine. I have had it before."
"Well, look here, Charley," I went on, after thinking a minute; "if I
were you, I wouldn't say as much to any of them. Let them suppose you
are regularly ill. You'll never hear the last of it if they know you lie
in bed for only a headache."
"But I cannot get up," he answered; "my head is in much pain. And I have
fever. Feel my hand."
The hand he put out was burning hot. But that went with sick headaches
sometimes.
It turned out to be nothing worse, for he was well on the morrow; and I
need not have mentioned it at all, but for a little matter that arose
out of the day's illness. Going up again to see him after school in the
afternoon, I found Hall standing over the bed with a cup of tea, and a
most severe, not to say horror-struck expression of countenance, as she
gazed down on him, staring at something with all her eyes. Van Rheyn was
asleep, and looked better; his face flushed and moist, his brown hair,
still uncommonly short compared with ours, pushed back. He lay with his
hands outside the bed, as if the clothes were heavy--the weather was
fiery hot. One of the hands was clasping something that hung round his
neck by a narrow blue ribbon; it seemed to have been pulled by him out
of the opening in his night-shirt. Hall's quick eyes had detected what
it was--a very small flat cross (hardly two inches long), on which was
carved a figure of the Saviour, all in gold.
Now Hall had doubtless many virtues. One of them was docking us boys of
our due allowance of sugar. But she had also many prejudices. And, of
all her prejudices, none was stronger than her abhorrence of idols, as
exemplified in carved images and Chinese gods.
"Do you see that, Master Ludlow?" she whispered to me, pointing her
finger straight at the little cross of gold. "It's no better than a
relict of paganism."
Stooping down, she gently drew the cross out of Van Rheyn's hot clasped
hand, and let it lie on the sheet. A beautiful little cross; the face
of our Saviour--an exquisite face in its expression of suffering and
patient humility--one that you might have gazed upon and been the better
for. How they could have so perfectly carved a thing so small I knew
not.
"He must be one of them worshipping Romanics," said Hall, with horror,
snatching her fingers from the cross as if she thought it would give her
the ague. "Or else a pagan."
And the two were no doubt alike in Hall's mind.
"And he goes every week and says his commandments in class here,
standing up before all the school! I wonder what the doctor----"
Hall cut short her complaints. Van Rheyn had suddenly opened his eyes,
and was looking up at us.
"I find myself better," he said, with a smile. "The pain has nearly
departed."
"We wasn't thinking of pains and headaches, Master Van Rheyn, but of
_this_," said Hall, resentfully, taking the spoon out of the saucer, and
holding it within an inch of the gold cross. Van Rheyn raised his head
from the pillow to look.
"Oh, it is my little cross!" he said, holding it out to our view as far
as the ribbon allowed, and speaking with perfect ease and unconcern. "Is
it not beautiful?"
"Very," I said, stooping over it.
"Be you of the Romanic sex?" demanded Hall of Van Rheyn.
"Am I---- What is it Mrs. Hall would ask?" he broke off to question me,
in the midst of my burst of laughter.
"She asks if you are a Roman Catholic, Van Rheyn."
"But no. Why you think that?" he added to her. "My father is a Roman
Catholic: I am a Protestant, like my mother."
"Then why on earth, sir, do you wear such a idol as that?" returned
Hall.
"This? Oh, it is nothing! it is not an idol. It does me good."
"Good!" fiercely repeated Hall. "Does you good to wear a brazen image
next the skin!--right under the flannel waistcoat. I wonder what the
school will come to next?"
"Why should I not wear it?" said Van Rheyn. "What harm does it do me,
this? It was my poor Aunt Annette's. The last time we went to the Aunt
Claribelle's to see her, when the hope of her was gone, she put the
cross into my hand, and bade me keep it for her sake."
"I tell you, Master Van Rheyn, it's just a brazen image," persisted
Hall.
"It is a keepsake," dissented Van Rheyn. "I showed it to Monsieur Mons
one day when he was calling on mamma, and told him it was a gift to me
of the poor Tante Annette. Monsieur Mons thought it very pretty, and
said it would remind me of the great Sacrifice."
"But to wear it next your skin," went on Hall, not giving in. Giving in
on the matter of graven images was not in her nature. Or on any matter
as far as that went, that concerned us boys. "I've heard of poor
misdeluded people putting horse-hair next 'em. And fine torment it must
be!"
"I have worn it since mamma died," quietly answered Van Rheyn, who did
not seem to understand Hall's zeal. "She kept it for me always in her
little shell-box that had the silver crest on it; but when she died,
I said I would put the cross round my neck, for fear of losing it:
and Aunt Claribelle, who took the shell-box then, bought me the blue
ribbon."
"That blue ribbon's new--or almost new--if ever I saw new ribbon," cried
Hall, who was in a mood to dispute every word.
"Oh yes. It was new when I left Rouen. I have another piece in my trunk
to put on when this shall wear out."
"Well, it's a horrid heathenish thing to do, Master Van Rheyn; and,
though it may be gold, I don't believe Miss Emma Aberleigh would ever
have gave countenance to it. Leastways before she lived among them
foreign French folks," added Hall, virtually dropping the contest, as
Van Rheyn slipped the cross out of view within his night-shirt. "What
she might have come to, after she went off there, Heaven alone knows. Be
you going to drink this tea, sir, or be you not?"
Van Rheyn drank the tea and thanked her for bringing it, his gratitude
shining also out of his nice grey eyes. Hall took back the cup and
tucked him up again, telling him to get a bit more sleep and he would be
all right in the morning. With all her prejudices and sourness, she was
as good as gold when any of us were ill.
* * * * *
"Not bathe! Not bathe! I say, you fellows, here's a lark. Bristles
thinks he'd better not try the water."
It was a terribly hot evening, close upon sunset. Finding ourselves,
some half-dozen of us, near the river, Van Rheyn being one, the water
looked too pleasant not to be plunged into. The rule at Dr. Frost's was,
that no boy should be compelled to bathe against his inclination: Van
Rheyn was the only one who had availed himself of it. It was Parker who
spoke: we were all undressing quickly.
"What's your objection, Miss Charlotte? Girls bathe."
"They would never let me go into cold water at home," was the patient
answer. "We take warm baths there."
"Afraid of cold water? well I never! What an everlasting pussy-cat you
are, Miss Charlotte! We've heard that pussies don't like to wet their
feet."
"Our doctor at Rouen used to say I must not plunge into cold water,"
said poor Van Rheyn, speaking patiently as usual, though he must have
been nearly driven wild. "The shock would not be good for me."
"I say, who'll write off to Evesham for a pair of waterproofs to put
over his shoes? Just give us the measure of your foot, Miss Charlotte?"
"Let's shut him up in a feather-bed!"
"Why, the water's not cold, you donkey!" cried Bill Whitney, who had
just leaped in. "It's as warm as new milk. What on earth will you be fit
for, Bristles? You'll never make a man."
"Make a man! What are you thinking of, Whitney? Miss Charlotte has no
ambition that way. Girls prefer to grow up into young ladies, not into
men."
"Is it truly warm?" asked Van Rheyn, gazing at the river irresolutely,
and thinking that if he went in the mockery might cease.
I looked up at him from the water. "It is indeed, Van Rheyn. Quite
warm."
He knew he might trust me, and began slowly to undress. We had continued
to be the best of comrades, and I never went in for teasing him as the
rest did; rather shielded him when I could, and took his part.
By the time he was ready to go in--for he did nothing nimbly, and
undressing made no exception--some of us were ready to come out. One of
Dr. Frost's rules in regard to bathing was stringent--that no boy should
remain in the water more than three minutes at the very extent. He held
that a great deal of harm was done by prolonged bathing. Van Rheyn
plunged in--and liked it.
"It is warm and pleasant," he exclaimed. "This cannot hurt me."
"Hurt you, you great baby!" shouted Parker.
Van Rheyn had put his clothes in the tidiest manner upon the grass; not
like ours, which were flung down any way. His things were laid smoothly
one upon another, in the order he took them off, though I dare say I
should not have noticed this but for a shout from Jessup.
"Halloa! What's that?"
Those of us who were out, and in the several stages of drying or
dressing, turned round at the words. Jessup, buttoning his braces, was
standing by Van Rheyn's heap, looking down at it. On the top of the
flannel vest, exposed to full view, lay the gold cross with the blue
ribbon.
"What on earth _is_ it?" cried Jessup, picking it up; and at the moment
Van Rheyn, finding all the rest out of the water, came out himself. "Is
it a charm?"
"It is mine--it is my gold cross," spoke Van Rheyn, catching up one of
the wet towels. The bath this evening had been impromptu, and we had
only two towels between us, which Parker and Whitney had brought. In
point of fact, it had been against rules also, for we were not expected
to go into the river without the presence of a master. But just at this
bend it was perfectly safe. Jessup passed the blue ribbon round his
neck, letting the cross hang behind. This done, he turned himself about
for general inspection, and the boys crowded round to look.
"What do you say it is, Bristles?"
"My gold cross."
"You don't mean to tell us to our faces that you wear it?"
"I wear it always," freely answered Van Rheyn.
Jessup took it off his neck, and the boys passed it about from one to
another. They did not ridicule the cross--I think the emblem on it
prevented that--but they ridiculed Van Rheyn.
"A friend of mine went over to the tar-and-feather islands," said
Millichip, executing an aggravating war-dance round about Charley. "He
found the natives sporting no end of charms and amulets--nearly all the
attire they did sport--rings in the nose and chains in the ears. What
relation are those natives to you, Miss Charlotte?"
"Don't injure it, please," pleaded Van Rheyn.
"We've an ancient nurse at home who carries the tip of a calf's tongue
in her pocket for luck," shrieked Thorne. "And I've heard--I _have_
heard, Bristles--that any fellow who arms himself with a pen'orth of
blue-stone from the druggist's, couldn't have the yellow jaundice if he
tried. What might you wear this for, pray?"
"My Aunt Annette gave it me as a present when she was dying," answered
poor helpless Charley, who had never the smallest notion of taking chaff
otherwise than seriously, or of giving chaff back again.
He had dressed himself to his trousers and shirt, and stood with his
hand stretched out, waiting for his cross.
"In the _Worcester Journal_, one day last June, I read an advertisement
as big as a house, offering a child's caul for sale," cried Snepp. "Any
gentleman or lady buying that caul and taking it to sea, could never be
drowned. Bristles thinks as long as he wears this, he won't come to be
hanged."
"How's your grandmother, Miss Charlotte?"
"I wish you would please to let me alone," said he patiently. "My father
would not have placed me here had he known."
"Why don't you write and tell him, Bristles?"
"I would not like to grieve him," simply answered Charley. "I can bear.
And he does so much want me to learn good English."
"This cross is gold, I suppose?" said Bill Whitney, who now had it.
"Yes, it is gold," answered Van Rheyn.
"I wouldn't advise you to fall amongst thieves, then. They might ease
you of it. The carving must be worth something."
"It cost a great deal to buy, I have heard my aunt say. Will you be so
good as to give it me, that I may finish to dress myself?"
Whitney handed him the cross. Time was up, in fact; and we had to make a
race for the house. Van Rheyn was catching it hot and sharp, all the
way.
One might have thought that his very meekness, the unresisting spirit in
which he took things, would have disarmed the mockery. But it did not.
Once go in wholesale for putting upon some particular fellow in a
school, and the tyranny gains with use. I don't think any of them meant
to be really unkind to Van Rheyn; but the play had begun, and they
enjoyed it.
I once saw him drowned in tears. It was at the dusk of evening. Charley
had come in for it awfully at tea-time, I forget what about, and
afterwards disappeared. An hour later, going into Whitney's room for
something Bill asked me to fetch, I came upon Charles Van Rheyn--who
also slept there. He was sitting at the foot of his low bed, his cheek
leaning on one of his hands, and the tears running down swiftly. One
might have thought his heart was broken.
"What is the grievance, Charley?"
"Do not say to them that you saw me," returned he, dashing away his
tears. "I did not expect any of you would come up."
"Look here, old fellow: I know it's rather hard lines for you just now.
But they don't mean anything: it is done in sport, not malice. They
don't _think_, you see, Van Rheyn. You will be sure to live it down."
"Yes," he sighed, "I hope I shall. But it is so different here from what
it used to be. I had such a happy home; I never had one sorrow when my
mother was alive. Nobody cares for me now; nobody is kind to me: it is a
great change."
"Take heart, Charley," I said, holding out my hand. "I know you will
live it down in time."
Of all the fellows I ever met, I think he was the most grateful for a
word of kindness. As he thanked me with a glad look of hope in his eyes,
I saw that he had been holding the cross clasped in his palm; for it
dropped as he put his hand into mine.
"It helps me to bear," he said, in a whisper. "My mother, who loved me
so, is in heaven; my father has married Mademoiselle Thérèsine de
Tocqueville. I have no one now."
"Your father has not married that Thérèsine de Tocqueville?"
"Why, yes. I had the letter close after dinner."
So perhaps he was crying for the home unhappiness as much as for his
school grievances. It all reads strange, no doubt, and just the opposite
of what might be expected of one of us English boys. The French
bringing-tip is different from ours: perhaps it lay in that. On the
other hand, a French boy, generally speaking, possesses a very shallow
sense of religion. But Van Rheyn had been reared by his English mother;
and his disposition seemed to be naturally serious and uncommonly
pliable and gentle. At any rate, whether it reads improbable or
probable, it is the truth.
I got what I wanted for Billy Whitney, and went down, thinking what a
hard life it was for him--what a shame that we made it so. Indulged, as
Van Rheyn must have always been, tenderly treated as a girl, sheltered
from the world's roughness, all that coddling must have become to him as
second nature; and the remembrance lay with him still. Over here he was
suddenly cut off from it, thrown into another and a rougher atmosphere,
isolated from country, home, home-ties and associations; and compelled
to stand the daily brunt of this petty tyranny.
Getting Tod apart that night, I put the matter to him: what a shame it
was, and how sorry I felt for Charley Van Rheyn; and I asked him whether
he thought he could not (he having a great deal of weight in the school)
make things pleasanter for him. Tod responded that I should never be
anything but a muff, and that the roasting Van Rheyn got treated to was
superlatively good for him, if ever he was to be made into a man.
However, before another week ran out, Dr. Frost interfered. How he
obtained an inkling of the reigning politics we never knew. One Saturday
afternoon, when old Fontaine had taken Van Rheyn out with him, the
doctor walked into the midst of us, to the general consternation.
Standing in the centre of the schoolroom, with a solemn face, all of us
backing as much as the wall allowed, and the masters who chanced to be
present rising to their feet, the doctor spoke of Van Rheyn. He had
reason to suspect, he said, that we were doing our best to worry Van
Rheyn's life out of him: and he put the question deliberately to us (and
made us answer it), how we, if consigned alone to a foreign home, all
its inmates strangers, would liked to be served so. He did not wish, he
went on, to think he had pitiful, ill-disposed boys, lacking hearts and
common kindness, in his house: he felt sure that what had passed arose
from a heedless love of mischief; and it would greatly oblige him to
find from henceforth that our conduct towards Van Rheyn was changed: he
thought, and hoped, that he had only to express a wish upon the point,
to ensure obedience.
With that--and a hearty nod and smile around, as if he put it as a
personal favour to himself, and wanted us to see that he did, and was
not angry, he went out again. A counsel was held to determine whether we
had a sneak amongst us--else how could Frost have known?--that Charley
himself had not spoken, his worst enemy felt sure of. But not one could
be pitched upon: every individual fellow, senior and junior, protested
earnestly that he had not let out a syllable. And, to tell the truth, I
don't think we had.
However, the doctor was obeyed. From that day all real annoyance to
Charles Van Rheyn ceased. I don't say but what there would be a laugh at
him now and then, and a word of raillery, or that he lost his names of
Bristles and Miss Charlotte; but virtually the sting was gone. Charley
was as grateful as could be, and seemed to become quite happy; and upon
the arrival of a hamper by grande vitesse from Rouen, containing a huge
rich wedding-cake and some packets of costly sweetmeats, he divided the
whole amongst us, keeping the merest taste for himself. The school made
its comments in return.
"He's not a bad lot after all, that Van Rheyn. He will make a man yet."
* * * * *
"It isn't a bit of use your going in for this, Van Rheyn, unless you can
run like a lamplighter."
"But I can run, you know," responded Van Rheyn.
"Yes. But can you keep the pace up?"
"Why not?"
"We may be out for three or four hours, pelting like mad all the time."
"I feel no fear of keeping up," said Van Rheyn. "I will go."
"All right."
It was on a Saturday afternoon; and we were turning out for hare and
hounds. The quarter was hard upon its close, for September was passing.
Van Rheyn had never seen hare and hounds: it had been let alone during
the hotter weather: and it was Tod who now warned him that he might not
be able to keep up the running. It requires fleet legs and easy breath,
as every one knows; and Van Rheyn had never much exercised either.
"What is just the game?" he asked in his quaintly-turned phrase. And I
answered him--for Tod had gone away.
"You see those strips of paper that they have torn out of old copybooks,
and are twisting? That is for the scent. The hare fills his pockets with
it, and drops a piece of it every now and then as he runs. We, the
hounds, follow his course by means of the scent, and catch him if we
can."
"And then?" questioned Van Rheyn.
"Then the game is over."
"And what if you not catch him?"
"The hare wins; that's all. What he likes to do is to double upon us
cunningly and lead us home again after him."
"But in all that there is only running."
"We vault over the obstructions--gates, and stiles, and hedges. Or, if
the hedges are too high, scramble through them."
"But some hedges are very thick and close: nobody could get through
them," debated Van Rheyn, taking the words, as usual, too literally.
"Then we are dished. And have to find some other way onwards, or turn
back."
"I can do what you say quite easily."
"All right, Charley," I repeated: as Tod had done. And neither of us,
nor any one else, had the smallest thought that it was not all right.
Millichip was chosen hare. Snepp turned cranky over something or other
at the last moment, and backed out of it. He made the best hare in the
school: but Millichip was nearly as fleet a runner.