slept peacefully in the little bed beside him, did Montagu lie awake
wondering whether he would die that night. The very prayer that he said
every evening at his aunt's knee took on a new and terrible
significance:
If I should die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.
Montagu repeated it over and over again with dry lips, while he turned
from side to side in a vain endeavour to get away from the constant
beating as of a hammer upon an anvil that sounded ceaselessly in his
ears.
"If I should die"--the child whispered to himself, then gradually he
fell once more into thinking of his beloved Greeks; they, too, if they
did not actually fear death, met it sorrowfully, for it meant leaving
the bright light of the sun, and presently the reiterated "If I should
die" changed to the cry of Alcestis, "Lay me down, I have no strength in
my feet. Hades is nigh at hand, and dark night steals over mine eyes."
Then more familiar and less terrible came the thought of that "old man,
the guide of the dead, who sitteth at the oar and the helm"--who in
Montagu's mind was inextricably mixed up with a saturnine old boatman he
knew at Leith, till at last he drifted into the blessed haven of sleep.
Next day in the Horace lesson Mr. Wycherly happened to mention that in
religion he was an Epicurean, whereupon Montagu, as was his wont, asked
innumerable questions, which his tutor set himself to answer as fully as
possible; dilating, in his pleasantly detached and impersonal fashion,
on the fact that Epicureanism pure and undefiled did away with the fear
of death among its professors; and quoted the philosopher himself to the
effect that "When we are, death is not; and when death is, we are not."
How that in his time the great incubus of human happiness was fear--fear
of the gods and fear of death--and that pleasure pursued with prudence
and tempered by justice and self-control was the true end and aim of all
wise men.
That what he said could by any remote possibility have any personal
application to Montagu never occurred to him for a moment. He described
the doctrines of Epicurus with as little expectation of their affecting
the boy's attitude toward life as that the use of the prolative
infinitive in his Latin prose should cause him any searchings of the
heart. But he had reckoned without the minister, for Montagu, fresh
from the terrors of the previous night, suddenly determined to adopt as
his own a religion which seemed so singularly free from any disquieting
tenets.
Edmund's curly head was never perplexed or troubled with vain imaginings
or hankerings after the old gods; but equally little did he aspire to
any considerable knowledge of the Shorter Catechism. Lessons of any
kind he frankly detested, and as he learned by heart with difficulty, he
"went through," in two senses, an inordinate number of "Shorter
Catechisms" in the cinnamon paper bindings, such as Miss Esperance was
wont to provide for the instruction of her grand-nephews. Hardly ever
did Edmund get any answer absolutely without mistake, except the one
which replies to the question, "What is the misery of that estate
whereinto man fell?" When he would respond in a dismal sort of chant,
"All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under His wrath
and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death
itself, and to the pains of Hell for ever." This Edmund would repeat
with positive relish till sensitive Montagu shook in his shoes, and
wished harder than ever that he had been born in an age when there
seemed fewer possibilities of wrong-doing, followed by such appalling
punishment; and youths and maidens, light-footed, crowned with garlands,
trooped gaily to propitiate their easy-going gods by means of gifts.
* * * * *
On the evening of the day on which Montagu had announced his preference
for the doctrines of Epicurus Miss Esperance knocked at the door of Mr.
Wycherly's study about nine o'clock. This was a most unusual proceeding
on her part, for they rarely met after supper, as Miss Esperance usually
went to bed about a quarter to nine.
When Mr. Wycherly saw her standing on the threshold he rose hastily and
led her in and set her in his special chair by the fire, taking up his
own position on the hearth-rug. The reading lamp shone full on Miss
Esperance, but his face was in shadow.
"Mr. Wycherly, I am anxious about Montagu," Miss Esperance began
somewhat tremulously.
"Is he ill?" that gentleman interpolated hastily. "He seemed quite well
at dinner-time."
"Oh, he's well enough in health, I think, I am thankful to think--but--"
here Miss Esperance paused as if she found it somewhat difficult to
broach the subject, "I am not equally confident as to his spiritual
condition."
"His spiritual condition!" Mr. Wycherly repeated vaguely. "Montagu's!
He is surely a very young boy to have attained to a--spiritual
condition?"
"That's just it," said Miss Esperance, despair in her voice, and grave
disquietude writ large upon her face. "That's just it. Would you not
say that he was far too young to be assailed by doubts? Would you not
expect so young a child to accept the teaching of our religion without
question or rebellion? And yet Montagu--" Here poor Miss Esperance
again faltered, then by a mighty effort forcing herself to voice the
dreadful thing--"told me to-day, when I was hearing him the Shorter
Catechism, that he intended to become an Epicurean when he was grown up!
What are we to do with him?"
It was well for Mr. Wycherly that his face was in shadow, for although
his mouth remained quite grave, there were little puckers round the
corners of his eyes, not wholly to be accounted for by the lines that
time had drawn there. He coughed slightly, and cleared his throat. "Am
I, dear Miss Esperance, to gather that you think I am in some degree to
blame for Montagu's unregenerate frame of mind?" he asked gently.
"Not to blame!" she hastily ejaculated. "Not to blame! But perhaps he
is learning rather too much about those old days, those unenlightened
heathen times, and evidently you render it all so entertaining that he
gets rather carried away, and is unable to distinguish between what is
mere fable and what is historical, vital truth. He is very little," she
continued pleadingly. "Do you think it is quite wholesome for him to
learn so much mythology? Don't you think it is apt to unsettle him?"
Mr. Wycherly was silent for a minute. "Do you know," he asked suddenly,
"that with the exception of the little 'gilt-books' you had as a child,
we haven't a single child's book in the house? Perhaps I was wrong to
discuss any school of philosophy with him--but as regards mythology, I
have only told Montagu such stories as are in reality the foundation of
most of the child-stories that have ever been written. I don't think
they have really hurt him, and such knowledge will be of use to him by
and by."
"But why should he seem positively to dislike proper religious
instruction?" persisted Miss Esperance. "I am sure that when I was a
child it never occurred to me to do other than learn what was set me
with the greatest reverence. Montagu's critical and rebellious attitude
was undreamt of in my young days."
"Montagu has a curiously analytic mind," said Mr. Wycherly slowly, "and
a passionate longing for pleasantness and gaiety. It is probably
inherited. You remember dear Archie loved cheerfulness, and perhaps
that poor young mother--a Cornish girl, if I remember rightly--perhaps
she, too, had the Southern love of colour and brightness in life. We
are old people to have to do with children, Miss Esperance, and
I--perhaps my aim has been too exclusively to teach Montagu to love
study by making the approach to it as pleasant as possible. It is a
great temptation, for I find him so docile, so receptive, so eager to
please. But perhaps I have been wrong--though Socrates would bear me
out. It is pleasant to wander in the Elysian fields with a young
boy--but if you think--" Mr. Wycherly's voice had dropped almost to a
whisper, and here he paused altogether. He seemed to have been talking
to himself rather than to Miss Esperance, and to be looking past her
into that pleasaunce of memory which is the priceless heritage of the
old. Miss Esperance did not interrupt him, and presently he went on
again. "Perhaps the recollection of my own mother that is clearest to
me is that of seeing her come dancing down a garden path toward me. To
me now she seems so inexpressibly young, and gay, and gracious; and I
have remembered her more distinctly lately, because the other day when I
was reading with Montagu that portion of the Odyssey which describes
Nausicaa at play among her maidens, he interrupted me to exclaim: '_My_
mother was like that, so beautiful!' Now he has never spoken to me of
his mother before. I did not even know that he remembered her, and it
has made me think of how distinctly I remember my own. She was not five
and twenty when she died."
Miss Esperance sat upright in Mr. Wycherly's chair, the lamplight
falling full on her troubled face. In spite of her ready sympathy, a
sympathy so spontaneous that it seemed to give itself at all times
independently of her volition, she felt that her dear old friend was
wandering from the real question at issue. It was all very well to
point out that Montagu loved beauty. She was perfectly aware of it
herself, and it was not without an agreeable thrill that she recalled a
little scene enacted that very evening. Montagu, according to custom,
had been reading aloud to her from one of the very "Gilt-Books" Mr.
Wycherly had mentioned, when the child came upon the somewhat gratuitous
and ungrammatical assertion with regard to the fleeting character of
personal beauty: "People's faces soon alter; when they grow old, nobody
looks handsome."
Then Montagu brought his fist down on the page with a thump, declaring
indignantly: "That's nonsense! You and Mr. Wycherly are both old--and
you are quite beautiful. There's a beautiful oldness as well, don't you
think so, Aunt Esperance?"
The delicate colour that came and went so easily flushed her face as
Miss Esperance met the child's eager, admiring eyes. "For none more
than children are concerned for beauty, and, above all, for beauty in
the old." She not only thought so, but knew so; but it was not the
custom for women of her stamp to acknowledge that they took any sort of
interest in their personal appearance, and although she was distinctly
gratified, she merely shook her head, saying gravely: "What the writer
would point out, Montagu, is this--that without beauty of character mere
personal beauty is of but small account."
Montagu, unlike Miss Esperance, who never allowed her back to "come in
contact with her chair," lolled comfortably in his, disposed to argue
the question. "I think it matters very much how people look," he said
decidedly. "I hope I shall grow up to look like Achilles in the book
Mr. Wycherly gave me."
Miss Esperance looked down at the thin, little, brown boy beside her,
remarking dryly: "Well, at present, Montagu, I see small likelihood of
any such transformation," and returned to the perusal of "The History of
More Children than One."
But Montagu had not yet "threshed the subject out." In spite of his
aunt's forefinger laid entreatingly at the line where he had left off,
he continued in the tone of one who grants something to a vanquished
foe. "Of course, young people look nicer in Greek clothes--I don't
think, f'r instance (Montagu was very fond of "for instance," a
favourite phrase of Mr. Wycherly's), that Mr. Gloag would look nice with
only a wee towel."
Miss Esperance chuckled, and was fain to close the "History of More
Children than One" for that day.
All this time those two dear old people waited in silence--Miss
Esperance fondly remembering Montagu's unconscious compliment of the
morning; Mr. Wycherly absorbed in his vision of the girl who, clad in a
high-waisted, skimpy, muslin frock, with sandalled, twinkling feet, came
dancing down the broad central path of a Shropshire garden nearly sixty
years ago.
The sunlight was on the grass, the air charged heavily with the scent of
the tall lilies on either hand, and she held out her arms toward him,
singing as she came.
Miss Esperance gave a faint little cough, and Mr. Wycherly came back to
the present with a start, saying: "Doubtless I have been wrong in the
way I have taught Montagu. For the future we must have more grammar and
less romance. I am sorry you should have been worried. It is my
fault."
"No, no!" cried Miss Esperance. "I am sure that all you have done, all
you are doing, is right and wise, but I--what am I to do? How can I make
him see the beauty and priceless value of that knowledge without which
all other knowledge is as dust and ashes?"
Mr. Wycherly turned to look at Miss Esperance, and fresh as he was from
his vision of a woman in all the radiance of her first youth and beauty,
he agreed with Montagu that there is a very beautiful oldness, and that
such beauty is to the understanding heart perhaps most fair of all.
She held out her hands in her eagerness, and leant forward, straining
her eyes to read his face in the shadow.
"You are far more fit to deal with such subjects than I," he said
hesitatingly, "but since you have done me the honour to consult me--if I
might venture, I would suggest that for a boy of Montagu's temperament
much dogmatic teaching is a mistake. In childhood we can only realise
the Infinite through the finite. Some of us in that respect never get
beyond childhood; I, myself, somewhat resemble Montagu, and therefore I
think it might be better to defer the--er--Shorter Catechism until he is
older and more able to grapple with--" Mr. Wycherly seemed to swallow
something in his throat, and the lines round his eyes deepened
"its--er--theology."
"No," said Miss Esperance firmly, "he must learn his catechism whether
he understands it or not."
"Well, don't be disappointed if he doesn't understand it, dear Miss
Esperance. I don't, but then I never read it until the other day."
There was an ominous silence for a minute. He and Miss Esperance had
seldom before touched upon any religious question. Now she sighed and
said sadly: "I thought perhaps you would be able to help me, but your
advice has been that, having put my hand to the plough, I should turn
back, and that I cannot do. I wish," she continued timidly, "that
should a suitable opportunity arise, you could see your way to speak to
Montagu. You have such great influence over him, anything that you say
would have so much weight. Don't you think that you could?"
"I cannot promise," he answered nervously; "should a suitable
opportunity arise, perhaps I might, but I cannot promise. I confess
that I should have the greatest difficulty in approaching these subjects
in cold blood, and I question very much whether it would be wise on my
part. I have always and purposely avoided anything that bore upon
religious instruction in my dealings with Montagu because--well, you
know, my dear Miss Esperance, that your good minister, Mr. Gloag,
considers me lamentably latitudinarian in these matters, my whole
training, my whole mental outlook, is so opposed--" Again Mr. Wycherly
stopped, helplessly clasping and unclasping his long, thin hands. Miss
Esperance regarded him sadly, then sighed, saying gently, "I can only
leave the issue in wiser hands than ours."
"And there," said Mr. Wycherly, reverently, "it will be perfectly safe."
Miss Esperance rose, and as he opened the door for her he held out his
hand, saying humbly: "You must try not to be angry with me: it is pure
incapacity, not wilfulness, that renders me so useless as an adviser."
Miss Esperance took the proffered hand in both her own. "Are you sure
that you really care?" she asked gently.
*CHAPTER XXI*
*IN WHICH MR. WYCHERLY HANGS UP HIS COLLEGE ARMS*
For who can always act? but he,
To whom a thousand memories call,
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seemed to be.
_In Memoriam._
Mr. Wycherly, a look of great perplexity upon his face, sat by the
hearth far into the night. The lamp burned low, went out, and he sat on
staring into the darkness till the dawn, cold and gray-mantled, came
creeping through the unshuttered windows to find him still seated,
clear-eyed and contemplative, but with the puzzled lines smoothed out of
his forehead as by a kind hand. Bewilderment and self-reproach had
given place to memory, as the years since the children had come passed
before him in procession.
There was that strange, dreadful journey homeward from Portsmouth, the
long cramped hours of sitting, he and Miss Esperance, each with a child
clasped in stiff, unfamiliar arms: those first bewildering days when the
children made all sorts of incomprehensible demands upon his
inexperience. As he sat alone in the darkness Edmund's indignant
lamentations because he could not "make a 'abbit" sounded in his ears,
and his triumphant outcries when once the manufacture of the creature
was accomplished.
The rabbit scenes came back to him, and a thousand others--those pretty
daily doings full of quaint solemnity, that parents take for granted,
but that come with an ever-recurring shock of almost reverential
pleasure upon such gentle-hearted maids and bachelors as have to do with
little children late in life.
It had never ceased to fill Mr. Wycherly with amazement that baby Edmund
managed to put his spoon into his mouth and not into his eye; and he
never fastened those absurd little strap shoes that were for ever coming
undone, without a slight trembling of the hands. It seemed so wonderful
that he, of all people, should be permitted to officiate at these
mysteries. His memory was clamorous with the children's endless demands
for "stories." Picture after picture unrolled before him of attentive,
eager-eyed Montagu, listening with breathless interest to the tales that
are old and new as life itself; of sturdy, fidgety Edmund with the loud
laugh and handsome, fearless face.... And in all the pictures, the
figure of Miss Esperance, bent now, but quick as ever to deeds of
kindness, moved like the sound of music, gracious and beneficent.
The clock on the mantel-piece struck four, and the room was suddenly
filled with the clear, rosy light that proclaims the advent of the day.
Mr. Wycherly raised himself stiffly from his chair, and crossing the
room to Montagu's table, rearranged his already tidy pile of books with
gentle, tremulous hands. As he left the room to go to bed he stood
still on the threshold and looked back into it as though to fix its
image on his mind.
When Montagu came in to lessons that morning his tutor was not as usual
seated at his writing-table, but in the big chair by the fire. He was
not reading, and was so evidently waiting for the little boy that
Montagu, instead of going to his own seat in the window, went straight
to Mr. Wycherly, who stood him between his knees, laid his hands on the
child's shoulders, and looked long and earnestly into his face.
Montagu, although rather puzzled by this unusual proceeding, was always
patient, and waited in silence, holding the lapels of his old friend's
coat the while, till he should choose to speak.
At last he said, "Montagu, tell me exactly what you meant when you told
Miss Esperance that you would like to be an Epicurean when you are grown
up?"
It seemed a sudden reversal of the accepted order of things that Mr.
Wycherly should ask Montagu to explain anything, and as that youth had
entirely forgotten his enthusiasm for the doctrines of Epicurus directly
his own fear of death had evaporated, he looked rather foolish and
mumbled:
"It seems a comfortable sort of religion."
"And do you consider our religion uncomfortable?" asked Mr. Wycherly,
putting one finger under the little boy's chin and lifting the downcast
face to his.
"Yes, I do," he replied with great decision, looking his teacher
straight in the eyes, "most uncomfortable, with so many ways you can go
to Hell, and people you like, too, and no getting back when you're once
there, either." And Montagu grew quite red in the face with the
vehemence of his objection to these doctrines.
Mr. Wycherly withdrew his hand from under Montagu's chin and laid it on
one of the little brown hands holding his coat so firmly.
"Why do you bother your head about it?" he said gently. "You may take
it from me that no one, above all, no little boy who tries his best to
behave well and pleasantly, ever goes to Hell--and as for the
others--who knows? you certainly don't. Besides, do you honestly think
that any wise person would choose a religion merely because it was
comfortable? There is very little use in any religion that does not at
times make us most uncomfortable, and spur us every day to try to do
better. Dear me, Montagu! when I was your age I believed what I was
told, and never troubled my head about such things. I learned my
catechism without a murmur."
"The Shorter Catechism?" Montagu interrupted.
"No, not that one, but it's very much the same thing," said Mr. Wycherly
mendaciously.
"Well, _I_ believe what I'm told," said Montagu somewhat aggrieved by
this unsympathetic attitude on the part of his old friend. "That's what
makes me so uncomfortable. If I didn't believe it, sir, it wouldn't
matter."
"I assure you, Montagu, if you ask Miss Esperance, or Mr. Gloag,
himself--he is a most sensible man on the whole--they will both tell you
that it is absurd for you to worry yourself about Hell. You don't know
anything about your own religion yet, far less that of the Epicureans.
But now I want you to listen to me very attentively for I have something
serious to say to you. You may take absolutely on trust, either upon
this or upon any other subject, anything that Miss Esperance may tell
you. She is a far safer guide than I, or Mr. Gloag, or indeed any one
that you know. And above all, I beg you to try even harder with
whatever lessons she may set you, than you do with mine. You must try
to please her, to make her happy...."
Mr. Wycherly paused and cleared his throat, the earnest, puzzled face
looking up into his grew suddenly dim, and the little boy felt his
tutor's hand tighten on his own, as he asked suddenly, "Montagu, have
you ever seen anybody drunk?"
"Yes, lots of times: they look horrid, and walk crookedly and have
hoarse voices, the people on the road to Leith are often drunk."
"There was once a man, Montagu, who got into the habit of drinking more
than was good for him. How and why he got into that habit does not
matter, it was at all events no excuse.
"He grew worse and worse--I don't think he ever looked quite like the
people you mention, but I don't know. His brain was going, his friends
were ashamed of him, there seemed no place for him in this world, and
how should he dare face the next? He was not altogether a stupid man,
he knew many things, and best of all that the weakness he encouraged was
a fatal weakness, but he seemed to have no strength of mind or body to
pull himself together till an angel from heaven took him into her house
and helped him, and protected him against himself--till he was cured.
It was not done quickly, and God, who gave her her great heart, alone
knows what she had to bear in the doing of it."
Mr. Wycherly paused, he felt Montagu's body tremble between his knees,
but the child did not speak, and the broken voice went on, "The angel
was your aunt, Montagu, and I, I was the man. And the last time I was
drunk, your father, not much older than you are now, brought me home."
The clock ticked loudly, and a thrush was singing on the alder tree
outside. There was no other sound in the room till Montagu, moved to a
sudden passion of tears, flung himself forward into his old friend's
arms, clasping him round the neck and exclaiming between his sobs, "What
does it matter? Why did you tell me? I didn't think I _could_ love you
any more, but I do, I do, I do!"
* * * * *
"And now," said Mr. Wycherly, some five minutes later, wiping Montagu's
tear-stained face with a large, clean handkerchief, "we had better begin
work, and you may write out the rules concerning the sequence of the
tenses, that you learned yesterday."