IRIS THE HERALD.
By a somewhat remarkable coincidence it was on this very evening that
Iris first made the acquaintance of her pupil, Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot.
These coincidences, I believe, happen oftener in real life than they
do even on the stage, where people are always turning up at the very
nick of time and the critical moment.
I need little persuasion to make me believe that the first meeting of
Arnold Arbuthnot and Iris, on the very evening when her cousin was
opening matters with the Foxy one, was nothing short of Providential.
You shall see, presently, what things might have happened if they had
not met. The meeting was, in fact, the second of the three really
important events in the life of a girl. The first, which is seldom
remembered with the gratitude which it deserves, is her birth; the
second, the first meeting with her future lover; the third, her
wedding-day; the other events of a woman's life are interesting,
perhaps, but not important.
Certain circumstances, which will be immediately explained, connected
with this meeting, made it an event of very considerable interest to
Iris, even though she did not suspect its immense importance. So much
interest that she thought of nothing else for a week beforehand; that
as the appointed hour drew near she trembled and grew pale; that when
her grandfather came up for his tea, she, who was usually so quick to
discern the least sign of care or anxiety in his face, actually did
not observe the trouble, plainly written in his drooping head and
anxious eyes, which was due to his interview with Mr. David Chalker.
She poured out the tea, therefore, without one word of sympathy. This
would have seemed hard if her grandfather had expected any. He did
not, however, because he did not know that the trouble showed in his
face, and was trying to look as if nothing had happened. Yet in his
brain were ringing and resounding the words, "Within three
weeks--within three weeks," with the regularity of a horrid clock at
midnight, when one wants to go to sleep.
"Oh," cried Iris, forced, as young people always are, to speak of her
own trouble, "oh, grandfather, he is coming to-night."
"Who is coming to-night, my dear?" and then he listened again for the
ticking of the clock: "Within three weeks--within three weeks." "Who
is coming to-night, my dear?"
He took the cup of tea from her, and sat down with an old man's
deliberation, which springs less from wisdom and the fullness of
thought that from respect to rheumatism.
The iteration of that refrain, "Within three weeks," made him forget
everything, even the trouble of his granddaughter's mind.
"Oh, grandfather, you cannot have forgotten!"
She spoke with the least possible touch of irritation, because she had
been thinking of this thing for a week past, day and night, and it was
a thing of such stupendous interest to her, that it seemed impossible
that anyone who knew of it could forget what was coming.
"No, no." The old man was stimulated into immediate recollection by
the disappointment in her eyes. "No, no, my dear, I have not
forgotten. Your pupil is coming. Mr. Arbuthnot is coming. But, Iris,
child, don't let that worry you. I will see him for you, if you like."
"No; I must see him myself. You see, dear, there is the awful
deception. Oh, how shall I tell him?"
"No deception at all," he said stoutly. "You advertised in your own
initials. He never asked if the initials belonged to a man or to a
woman. The other pupils do not know. Why should this one? What does it
matter to him if you have done the work for which he engaged your
services?"
"But, oh, he is so different! And the others, you know, keep to the
subject."
"So should he, then. Why didn't he?"
"But he hasn't. And I have been answering him, and he must think that
I was drawing him on to tell me more about himself; and now--oh, what
will he think? I drew him on and on--yet I didn't mean to--till at
last he writes to say that he regards me as the best friend and the
wisest adviser he has ever had. What will he think and say?
Grandfather, it is dreadful!"
"What did you tell him for, Iris, my dear? Why couldn't you let things
go on? And by telling him you will lose your pupil."
"Yes, of course; and, worse still, I shall lose his letters. We live
so quietly here that his letters have come to me like news of another
world. How many different worlds are there all round one in London? It
has been pleasant to read of that one in which ladies go about
beautifully dressed always, and where the people have nothing to do
but to amuse themselves. He has told me about this world in which he
lives, and about his own life, so that I know everything he does, and
where he goes; and"--here she sighed heavily--"of course it could not
go on forever; and I should not mind so much if it had not been
carried on under false pretenses."
"No false pretenses at all, my dear. Don't think it."
"I sent back his last check," she said, trying to find a little
consolation for herself. "But yet--"
"Well, Iris," said her grandfather, "he wanted to learn heraldry, and
you have taught him."
"For the last three months"--the girl blushed as if she was confessing
her sins--"for the last three months there has not been a single word
in his letters about heraldry. He tells me that he writes because he
is idle, or because he wants to talk, or because he is alone in his
studio, or because he wants his unknown friend's advice. I am his
unknown friend, and I have been giving him advice."
"And very good advice, too," said her grandfather benevolently. "Who
is so wise as my Iris?"
"I have answered all his letters, and never once told him that I am
only a girl."
"I am glad you did not tell him, Iris," said her grandfather; but he
did not say why he was glad. "And why can't he go on writing his
letters without making any fuss?"
"Because he says he must make the acquaintance of the man--the man, he
says--with whom he has been in correspondence so long. This is what he
says."
She opened a letter which lay upon a table covered with papers, but
her grandfather stopped her.
"Well, my dear, I do not want to know what he says. He wishes to make
your acquaintance. Very good, then. You are going to see him, and to
tell him who you are. That is enough. But as for deceiving"--he
paused, trying to understand this extreme scrupulosity of
conscience--"if you come to deceiving--well, in a kind sort of a way
you did allow him to think his correspondent a man. I admit that. What
harm is done to him? None. He won't be so mean, I suppose, as to ask
for his money back again."
"I think he ought to have it all back," said Iris; "yes, all from the
very beginning. I am ashamed that I ever took any money from him. My
face burns when I think of it."
To this her grandfather made no reply. The returning of money paid for
services rendered was, to his commercial mind, too foolish a thing to
be even talked about. At the same time, Iris was quite free to manage
her own affairs. And then there was that roll of papers in the safe.
Why, what matter if she sent away all her pupils? He changed the
subject.
"Iris, my dear," he said, "about this other world, where the people
amuse themselves; the world which lives in the squares and in the big
houses on the Chelsea Embankment here, you know--how should you like,
just for a change, to belong to that world and have no work to do?"
"I don't know," she replied carelessly, because the question did not
interest her.
"You would have to leave me, of course. You would sever your
connection, as they say, with the shop."
"Please, don't let us talk nonsense, grandfather."
"You would have to be ashamed, perhaps, of ever having taught for your
living."
"Now that I never should be--never, not if they made me a duchess."
"You would go dressed in silk and velvet. My dear, I should like to
see you dressed up just for once, as we have seen them at the
theater."
"Well, I should like one velvet dress in my life. Only one. And it
should be crimson--a beautiful, deep, dark crimson."
"Very good. And you would drive in a carriage instead of an omnibus;
you would sit in the stalls instead of the upper circle; you would
give quantities of money to poor people; and you would buy as many
second hand books as you pleased. There are rich people, I believe,
ostentatious people, who buy new books. But you, my dear, have been
better brought up. No books are worth buying till they have stood the
criticism of a whole generation at least. Never buy new books, my
dear."
"I won't," said Iris. "But, you dear old man, what have you got in
your head to-night? Why in the world should we talk about getting
rich?"
"I was only thinking," he said, "that perhaps, you might be so much
happier--"
"Happier? Nonsense! I am as happy as I can be. Six pupils already. To
be sure I have lost one," she sighed; "and the best among them all."
When her grandfather left her, Iris placed candles on the
writing-table, but did not light them, though it was already pretty
dark. She had half an hour to wait; and she wanted to think, and
candles are not necessary for meditation. She sat at the open window
and suffered her thoughts to ramble where they pleased. This is a
restful thing to do, especially if your windows look upon a tolerably
busy but not noisy London road. For then, it is almost as good as
sitting beside a swiftly-running stream; the movement of the people
below is like the unceasing flow of the current; the sound of the
footsteps is like the whisper of the water along the bank; the echo of
the half heard talk strikes your ear like the mysterious voices wafted
to the banks from the boats as they go by; and the lights of the shops
and the street presently become spectral and unreal like lights seen
upon the river in the evening.
Iris had a good many pupils--six, in fact, as she had boasted; why,
then, was she so strangely disturbed on account of one?
An old tutor by correspondence may be, and very likely is, indifferent
about his pupils, because he has had so many; but Iris was a young
tutor, and had as yet known few. One of her pupils, for instance, was
a gentleman in the fruit and potato line, in the Borough. By reason of
his early education, which had not been neglected so much as entirely
omitted, he was unable to personally conduct his accounts. Now a
merchant without his accounts is as helpless as a tourist without his
Cook. So that he desired, in his mature age, to learn book keeping,
compound addition, subtraction, and multiplication. He had no
partners, so that he did not want division. But it is difficult--say,
well-nigh impossible--for a middle-aged merchant, not trained in the
graces of letter-writing, to inspire a young lady with personal
regard, even though she is privileged to follow the current of his
thoughts day by day, and to set him his sums.
Next there was a young fellow of nineteen or twenty, who was beginning
life as an assistant-teacher in a commercial school at Lower Clapton.
This way is a stony and a thorny path to tread; no one walks upon it
willingly; those who are compelled to enter upon it speedily either
run away and enlist, or they go and find a secluded spot in which to
hang themselves. The smoother ways of the profession are only to be
entered by one who is the possessor of a degree, and it was the
determination of this young man to pass the London University
Examinations, and to obtain the degree of Bachelor. In this way his
value in the educational market would be at once doubled, and he could
command a better place and lighter work. He showed himself, in his
letters, to be an eminently practical, shrewd, selfish, and
thick-skinned young man, who would quite certainly get on in the
world, and was resolved to lose no opportunities, and, with that view,
he took as much work out of his tutor as he could get for the money.
Had he known that the "I.A." who took such a wonderful amount of
trouble with his papers was only a woman, he would certainly have
extorted a great deal more work for his money. All this Iris read in
his letters and understood. There is no way in which a man more surely
and more naturally reveals his true character than in his
correspondence, so that after awhile, even though the subject of the
letters be nothing more interesting than the studies in hand, those
who write the letters may learn to know each other if they have but
the mother wit to read between the lines. Certainly this young
schoolmaster did not know Iris, nor did he desire to discover what she
was like, being wholly occupied with the study of himself. Strange and
kindly provision of Nature. The less desirable a man actually appears
to others, the more fondly he loves and believes in himself. I have
heard it whispered that Narcissus was a hunchback.
Then there was another pupil, a girl who was working her very hardest
in order to become, as she hoped, a first-class governess, and who,
poor thing! by reason of her natural thickness would never reach even
the third rank. Iris would have been sorry for her, because she worked
so fiercely, and was so stupid, but there was something hard and
unsympathetic in her nature which forbade pity. She was miserably
poor, too, and had an unsuccessful father, no doubt as stupid as
herself, and made pitiful excuses for not forwarding the slender fees
with regularity.
Everybody who is poor should be, on that ground alone, worthy of pity
and sympathy. But the hardness and stupidity, and the ill-temper, all
combined and clearly shown in her letters, repelled her tutor. Iris,
who drew imaginary portraits of her pupils, pictured the girl as plain
to look upon, with a dull eye, a leathery, pallid cheek, a forehead
without sunshine upon it, and lips which seldom parted with a smile.
Then there was, besides, a Cambridge undergraduate. He was neither
clever, nor industrious, nor very ambitious; he thought that a
moderate place was quite good enough for him to aim at, and he found
that his unknown and obscure tutor by correspondence was cheap and
obliging, and willing to take trouble, and quite as efficacious for
his purposes as the most expensive Cambridge coach. Iris presently
discovered that he was lazy and luxurious, a deceiver of himself, a
dweller in Fool's Paradise and a constant shirker of work. Therefore,
she disliked him. Had she actually known him and talked with him, she
might have liked him better in spite of these faults and shortcomings,
for he was really a pleasant, easygoing youth, who wallowed in
intellectual sloth, but loved physical activity; who will presently
drop easily, and comfortably, and without an effort or a doubt, into
the bosom of the Church, and will develop later on into an admirable
country parson, unless they disestablish the Establishment: in which
case, I do not know what he will do.
But this other man, this man who was coming for an explanation, this
Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, was, if you please, a very different kind of
pupil. In the first place he was a gentleman, a fact which he
displayed, not ostentatiously, in every line of his letters; next, he
had come to her for instruction--the only pupil she had in that
science, in heraldry, which she loved. It is far more pleasant to be
describing a shield and settling questions in the queer old language
of this queer old science, than in solving and propounding problems in
trigonometry and conic sections. And then--how if your pupil begins to
talk round the subject and to wander into other things? You cannot
very well talk round a branch of mathematics, but heraldry is a
subject surrounded by fields, meadows, and lawns, so to speak, all
covered with beautiful flowers. Into these the pupil wandered, and
Iris not unwillingly followed. Thus the teaching of heraldry by
correspondence became the most delightful interchange of letters
imaginable, set off and enriched with a curious and strange piquancy,
derived from the fact that one of them, supposed to be an elderly man,
was a young girl, ignorant of the world except from books, and the
advice given her by two old men, who formed all her society. Then, as
was natural, what was at first a kind of play, became before long a
serious and earnest confidence on the one side, and a hesitating
reception on the other.
Latterly he more than once amused himself by drawing an imaginary
portrait of her; it was a pleasing portrait, but it made her feel
uneasy.
"I know you," he said, "from your letters, but yet I want to know you
in person. I think you are a man advanced in years." Poor Iris! and
she not yet twenty-one. "You sit in your study and read; you wear
glasses, and your hair is gray; you have a kind heart and a cheerful
voice; you are not rich--you have never tried to make yourself rich;
you are therefore little versed in the ways of mankind; you take your
ideas chiefly from books; the few friends you have chosen are true and
loyal; you are full of sympathy, and quick to read the thoughts of
those in whom you take an interest." A very fine character, but it
made Iris's cheek to burn and her eyes to drop. To be sure she was not
rich, nor did she know the world; so far her pupil was right, but yet
she was not gray nor old. And, again, she was not, as he thought, a
man.
Letter-writing is not extinct, as it is a commonplace to affirm, and
as people would have us believe. Letters are written still--the most
delightful letters--letters as copious, as charming, as any of the
last century; but men and women no longer write their letters as
carefully as they used to do in the old days, because they were then
shown about, and very likely read aloud. Our letters, therefore,
though their sentences are not so balanced nor their periods so
rounded, are more real, more truthful, more spontaneous, and more
delightful than the laborious productions of our ancestors, who had to
weigh every phrase, and to think out their bon mots, epigrams, and
smart things for weeks beforehand, so that the letter might appear
full of impromptu wit. I should like, for instance, just for once, to
rob the outward or the homeward mail, in order to read all the
delightful letters which go every week backward and forward between
the folk in India and the folk at home.
"I shall lose my letters," Iris recollected, and her heart sunk. Not
only did her correspondent begin to draw these imaginary portraits of
her, but he proceeded to urge upon her to come out of her concealment,
and to grant him an interview. This she might have refused, in her
desire to continue a correspondence which brightened her monotonous
life. But there came another thing, and this decided her. He began to
give, and to ask, opinions concerning love, marriage, and such
topics--and then she perceived it could not possibly be discussed with
him, even in domino and male disguise. "As for love," her pupil wrote,
"I suppose it is a real and not a fancied necessity of life. A man, I
mean, may go on a long time without it, but there will come a time--do
not you think so?--when he is bound to feel the incompleteness of life
without a woman to love. We ought to train our boys and girls from the
very beginning to regard love and marriage as the only things really
worth having, because without them there is no happiness. Give me your
own experience. I am sure you must have been in love at some time or
other in your life."
Anybody will understand that Iris could not possibly give her own
experience in love-matters, nor could she plunge into speculative
philosophy of this kind with her pupil. Obviously the thing must come
to an end. Therefore she wrote a letter to him, telling him that
"I.A." would meet him, if he pleased, that very evening at the hour of
eight.
It is by this time sufficiently understood that Iris Aglen professed
to teach--it is an unusual combination--mathematics and heraldry; she
might also have taught equally well, had she chosen, sweetness of
disposition, goodness of heart, the benefits conferred by pure and
lofty thoughts on the expression of a girl's face, and the way to
acquire all the other gracious, maidenly virtues; but either there is
too limited a market for these branches of culture, or--which is
perhaps the truer reason--there are so many English girls, not to
speak of Americans, who are ready and competent to teach them, and do
teach them to their brothers, and their lovers, and to each other, and
to their younger sisters all day long.
As for her heraldry, it was natural that she should acquire that
science, because her grandfather knew as much as any Pursuivant or
King-at-Arms, and thought that by teaching the child a science which
is nowadays cultivated by so few, he was going to make her fortune.
Besides, ever mindful of the secret packet, he thought that an heiress
ought to understand heraldry. It was, indeed, as you shall see, in
this way that her fortune was made; but yet not quite in the way he
proposed to make it. Nobody ever makes a fortune quite in the way at
first intended for him.
As for her mathematics, it is no wonder that she was good in this
science, because she was a pupil of Lala Roy.
This learned Bengalee condescended to acknowledge the study of
mathematics as worthy even of the Indian intellect, and amused himself
with them when he was not more usefully engaged in chess. He it was
who, being a lodger in the house, taught Iris almost as soon as she
could read how letters placed side by side may be made to signify and
accomplish stupendous things, and how they may disguise the most
graceful and beautiful curves, and how they may even open a way into
boundless space, and there disclose marvels. This wondrous world did
the philosopher open to the ready and quick-witted girl; nor did he
ever lead her to believe that it was at all an unusual or an
extraordinary thing for a girl to be so quick and apt for science as
herself, nor did he tell her that if she went to Newnham or to Girton,
extraordinary glories would await her, with the acclamations of the
multitude in the Senate House and the praise of the Moderators. Iris,
therefore, was not proud of her mathematics, which seemed part of her
very nature. But of her heraldry she was, I fear, extremely
proud--proud even to sinfulness. No doubt this was the reason why,
through her heraldry, the humiliation of this evening fell upon her.
"If he is young," she thought, "if he is young--and he is sure to be
young--he will be very angry at having opened his mind to a girl"--it
will be perceived that, although she knew so much mathematics, she was
really very ignorant of the opposite sex, not to know that a young man
likes nothing so much as the opening of his mind to a young lady. "If
he is old, he will be more humiliated still"--as if any man at any age
was ever humiliated by confessing himself to a woman. "If he is a
proud man, he will never forgive me. Indeed, I am sure that he can
never forgive me, whatever kind of man he is. But I can do no more
than tell him I am sorry. If he will not forgive me then, what more
can I say? Oh, if he should be vindictive!"
When the clock began to strike the hour of eight, Iris lighted her
candles, and before the pulsation of the last stroke had died away,
she heard the ringing of the house-bell.
The door was opened by her grandfather himself, and she heard his
voice.
"Yes," he said, "you will find your tutor, in the first floor front,
alone. If you are inclined to be vindictive, when you hear all,
please ring the bell for me."
The visitor mounted the stairs, and Iris, hearing his step, began to
tremble and to shake for fear.
When the door opened she did not at first look up. But she knew that
her pupil was there, and that he was looking for his tutor.
"Pardon me"--the voice was not unpleasant--"pardon me. I was directed
to this room. I have an appointment with my tutor."
"If," said Iris, rising, for the time for confession had at length
arrived, "if you are Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, your appointment is, I
believe, with me."
"It is with my tutor," he said.
"I am your tutor. My initials are I.A."
The room was only lighted by two candles, but they showed him the
hanging head and the form of a woman, and he thought she looked young,
judging by the outline. Her voice was sweet and clear.
"My tutor? You?"
"If you really are Mr. Arnold Arbuthnot, the gentleman who has
corresponded with I.A. for the last two years on heraldry, and--and
other things, I am your tutor."
She had made the dreaded confession. The rest would be easy. She even
ventured to raise her eyes, and she perceived, with a sinking of the
heart, that her estimate of her pupil's age was tolerably correct. He
was a young man, apparently not more than five or six and twenty.
It now remained to be seen if he was vindictive.
As for the pupil, when he recovered a little from the blow of this
announcement, he saw before him a girl, quite young, dressed in a
simple gray or drab colored stuff, which I have reason to believe is
called Carmelite. The dress had a crimson kerchief arranged in folds
over the front, and a lace collar, and at first sight it made the
beholder feel that, considered merely as a setting of face and figure,
it was remarkably effective. Surely this is the true end and aim of
all feminine adornment, apart from the elementary object of keeping
one warm.
"I--I did not know," the young man said, after a pause, "I did not
know at all that I was corresponding with a lady."
Here she raised her eyes again, and he observed that the eyes were
very large and full of light--"eyes like the fishpools of
Heshbon"--dove's eyes.
"I am very sorry," she said meekly. "It was my fault."
He observed other things now, having regained the use of his senses.
Thus he saw that she wore her hair, which was of a wonderful chestnut
brown color, parted at the side like a boy's, and that she had not
committed the horrible enormity of cutting it short. He observed, too,
that while her lips were quivering and her cheek was blushing, her
look was steadfast. Are dove's eyes, he asked himself, always
steadfast?
"I ought to have told you long ago, when you began to write
about--about yourself and other things, when I understood that you
thought I was a man--oh, long ago I ought to have told you the truth!"
"It is wonderful!" said the young man, "it is truly wonderful!" He
was thinking of the letters--long letters, full of sympathy, and a
curious unworldly wisdom, which she had sent him in reply to his own,
and he was comparing them with her youthful face, as one involuntarily
compares a poet's appearance with his poetry--generally a
disappointing thing to do, and always a foolish thing.
"I am very sorry," she repeated.
"Have you many pupils, like myself?"
"I have several pupils in mathematics. It does not matter to them
whether they are taught by a man or a woman. In heraldry I had only
one--you."
He looked round the room. One end was occupied by shelves, filled with
books; in one of the windows was a table, covered with papers and
adorned with a type-writer, by means of which Iris carried on her
correspondence. For a moment the unworthy thought crossed his mind
that he had been, perhaps, artfully lured on by a siren for his
destruction. Only for a moment, however, because she raised her face
and met his gaze again, with eyes so frank and innocent, that he could
not doubt them. Besides, there was the clear outline of her face, so
truthful and so honest. The young man was an artist, and therefore
believed in outline. Could any sane and intelligent creature doubt
those curves of cheek and chin?
"I have put together," she said, "all your letters for you. Here they
are. Will you, please, take them back? I must not keep them any
longer." He took them, and bowed. "I made this appointment, as you
desired, to tell you the truth, because I have deceived you too long:
and to beg you to forgive me; and to say that, of course, there is an
end to our correspondence."
"Thank you. It shall be as you desire. Exactly," he repeated, "as you
desire."
He ought to have gone at once. There was nothing more to say. Yet he
lingered, holding the letters in his hand.
"To write these letters," he said, "has been for a long time one of
my greatest pleasures, partly because I felt that I was writing to a
friend, and so wrote in full trust and confidence; partly because they
procured me a reply--in the shape of your letters. Must I take back
these letters of mine?"
She made no answer.
"It is hard, is it not, to lose a friend so slowly acquired, thus
suddenly and unexpectedly?"
"Yes," she said, "it is hard. I am very sorry. It was my fault."
"Perhaps I have said something, in my ignorance--something which ought
not to have been said or written--something careless--something which
has lowered me in your esteem--"
"Oh, no--no!" said Iris quickly. "You have never said anything that a
gentleman should not have said."
"And if you yourself found any pleasure in answering my letters--"
"Yes," said Iris with frankness, "it gave me great pleasure to read
and to answer your letters, as well as I could."
"I have not brought back your letters. I hope you will allow me to
keep them. And, if you will, why should we not continue our
correspondence as before?" But he did not ask the question
confidently.
"No," said Iris decidedly "it can never be continued as before. How
could it, when once we have met, and you have learned the truth?"
"Then," he continued, "if we cannot write to each other any more, can
we not talk?"
She ought to have informed him on the spot that the thing was quite
impossible, and not to be thought of for one moment. She should have
said, coldly, but firmly--every right-minded and well-behaved girl
would have said--"Sir, it is not right that you should come alone to a
young lady's study. Such things are not to be permitted. It we meet in
society, we may, perhaps, renew our acquaintance."
But girls do go on sometimes as if there was no such thing as
propriety at all, and such cases are said to be growing more frequent.
Besides, Iris was not a girl who was conversant with social
convenances. She looked at her pupil thoughtfully and frankly.
"Can we?" she asked. She who hesitates is lost, a maxim which cannot
be too often read, said, and studied. It is one of the very few golden
rules omitted from Solomon's Proverbs. "Can we? It would be pleasant."
"It you will permit me," he blushed and stammered, wondering at her
ready acquiescence, "if you will permit me to call upon you
sometimes--here, if you will allow me, or anywhere else. You know my
name. I am by profession an artist, and I have a studio close at hand
in Tite Street."
"To call upon me here?" she repeated.
Now, when one is a tutor, and has been reading with a pupil for two
years, one regards that pupil with a feeling which may not be exactly
parental, but which is unconventional. If Arnold had said, "Behold me!
May I, being a young man, call upon you, a young woman?" she would
have replied: "No, young man, that can never be." But when he said,
"May I, your pupil, call sometimes upon you, my tutor?" a distinction
was at once established by which the impossible became possible.
"Yes," she said, "I think you may call. My grandfather has his tea
with me every evening at six. You may call then if it will give you
any pleasure."
"You really will let me come here?"
The young man looked as if the permission was likely to give him the
greatest pleasure.
"Yes; if you wish it."
She spoke just exactly like an Oxford Don giving an undergraduate
permission to take an occasional walk with him, or to call for
conversation and advice at certain times in his rooms. Arnold noticed
the manner, and smiled.
"Still," he said, "as your pupil."
He meant to set her at her ease concerning the propriety of these
visits. She thought he meant a continuation of a certain little
arrangement as to fees, and blushed.
"No," she said; "I must not consider you as a pupil any longer. You
have put an end to that yourself."
"I do not mind, if only I continue your friend."
"Oh," she said, "but we must not pledge ourselves rashly to
friendship. Perhaps you will not like me when you once come to know
me."
"Then I remain your disciple."
"Oh no," she flushed again, "you must already think me presumptuous
enough in venturing to give you advice. I have written so many foolish
things--"
"Indeed, no," he interrupted, "a thousand times no. Let me tell you
once for all, if I may, that you have taught me a great deal--far more
than you can ever understand, or than I can explain. Where did you get
your wisdom? Not from the Book of Human Life. Of that you cannot know
much as yet."
"The wisdom is in your imagination, I think. You shall not be my pupil
nor my disciple, but--well--because you have told me so much, and I
seem to have known you so long, and, besides, because you must never
feel ashamed of having told me so much, you shall come, if you please,
as my brother."
It was not till afterward that she reflected on the vast
responsibilities she incurred in making this proposal, and on the
eagerness with which her pupil accepted it.
"As your brother!" he cried, offering her his hand. "Why, it is
far--far more than I could have ventured to hope. Yes, I will come as
your brother. And now, although you know so much about me, you have
told me nothing about yourself--not even your name."
"My name is Iris Aglen."
"Iris! It is a pretty name!"
"It was, I believe, my grandmother's. But I never saw her, and I do
not know who or what my father's relations are."
"Iris Aglen!" he repeated. "Iris was the Herald of the Gods, and the
rainbow was constructed on purpose to serve her for a way from Heaven
to the Earth."
"Mathematicians do not allow that," said the girl, smiling.
"I don't know any mathematics. But now I understand in what school you
learned your heraldry. You are Queen-at-Arms at least, and Herald to
the Gods of Olympus."
He wished to add something about the loveliness of Aphrodite, and the
wisdom of Athene, but he refrained, which was in good taste.
"Thank you, Mr. Arbuthnot," Iris replied. "I learned my heraldry of my
grandfather, who taught himself from the books he sells. And my
mathematics I learned of Lala Roy, who is our lodger, and a learned
Hindoo gentleman. My father is dead--and my mother as well--and I have
no friends in the world except these two old men, who love me, and
have done their best to spoil me."
Her eyes grew humid and her voice trembled.
No other friends in the world! Strange to say, this young man felt a
little sense of relief. No other friends. He ought to have sympathized
with the girl's loneliness; he might have asked her how she could
possibly endure life without companionship, but he did not; he only
felt that other friends might have been rough and ill-bred; this girl
derived her refinement, not only from nature, but also from separation
from the other girls who might in the ordinary course have been her
friends and associates. And if no other friends, then no lover.
Arnold was only going to visit the young lady as her brother; but
lovers do not generally approve the introduction of such novel effects
as that caused by the appearance of a brand-new and previously
unsuspected brother. He was glad, on the whole, that there was no
lover.
Then he left her, and went home to his studio, where he sat till
midnight, sketching a thousand heads one after the other with rapid
pencil. They were all girls' heads, and they all had hair parted on
the left side, with a broad, square forehead, full eyes, and straight,
clear-cut features.
"No," he said, "it is no good. I cannot catch the curve of her
mouth--nobody could. What a pretty girl! And I am to be her brother!
What will Clara say? And how--oh, how in the world can she be, all at
the same time, so young, so pretty, so learned, so quick, so
sympathetic, and so wise?"