TWO FRIENDS.
"Who was that young lady?" Mr. Derwentwater said. "I did not catch the
name."
"What young lady?" To suppose for a moment that Jock did not know who
was meant would be ridiculous, of course; but, for some reason which he
did not explain even to himself, this was the reply he made.
"My dear Jock, there was but one," said MTutor, with much friendliness.
"At your age you do not take much notice of the other sex, and that is
very well and right; but still it would be wrong to imagine that there
is not something interesting in girls occasionally. I did not make her
out. She was quite a study to me at the theatre. I am afraid the greater
part of the performance, and all the most meritorious portion of it,
was thrown away upon her; but still there were gleams of interest. She
is not without intelligence, that is clear."
"You mean Bice," said Jock, with a certain dogged air which Mr.
Derwentwater had seldom seen in him before, and did not understand. He
spoke as if he intended to say as little as was practicable, and as if
he resented being made to speak at all.
"Bice--ah! like Dante's Bice," said MTutor. "That makes her more
interesting still. Though it is not perhaps under that aspect that one
represents to oneself the Bice of Dante--_ben son, ben son, Beatrice._
No, not exactly under that aspect. Dante's Bice must have been more
grand, more imposing, in her dress of crimson or dazzling white."
Jock made no response. It was usual for him to regard MTutor devoutly
when he talked in this way, and to feel that no man on earth talked so
well. Jock in his omnivorous reading knew perhaps Dante better than his
instructor, but he had come to the age when the mind, confused in all
its first awakening of emotions, cannot talk of what affects it most.
The time had been at which he had discussed everything he read with
whosoever would listen, and instructed the world in a child's
straightforward way. At that period he had often improved Lucy's mind on
the subject of Dante, telling her all the details of that wonderful
pilgrimage through earth and heaven, to her great interest and wonder,
as something that had happened the other day. Lucy had not in those days
been quite able to understand how it was that the gentleman of Florence
should have met everybody he knew in the unseen, but she had taken it
all in respectfully, as was her wont. Jock, however, had passed beyond
this stage, and no longer told Lucy, or any one, stories from his
reading; and other sensations had begun to stir in him which he could
not put into words. In this way it was a constant admiration to him to
hear MTutor, who could always, he thought, say the right thing and never
was at a loss. But this evening he was dissatisfied. They were returning
from the theatre by a late train, and nothing but Jock's reputation and
high character as a boy of boys, high up in everything intellectual, and
without reproach in any way, besides the devoted friendship which
subsisted between himself and his tutor, could have justified Mr.
Derwentwater in permitting him in the middle of the half to go to London
to the theatre, and return by the twelve o'clock train. This privilege
came to him from the favour of his tutor, and yet for the first time his
tutor did not seem the superhuman being he had always previously
appeared to Jock. But Mr. Derwentwater was quite unsuspicious of this.
"There is something very much out of the way in the young lady
altogether," he said. "That little black dress, fitting her like a
glove, and no ornament or finery of any description. It is not so with
girls in general. It was very striking--tell me----"
"I didn't think," cried Jock, "that you paid any attention to what women
wore."
Mr. Derwentwater yielded to a gentle smile. "Tell me," he said, as if he
had not been interrupted, "who this young lady may be. Is she a daughter
of the Italian lady, a handsome woman, too, in her way, who was with
your people?" The railway carriage in which they were coursing through
the blackness of the night was but dimly lighted, and it was not easy to
see from one corner to another the expression of Jock's face.
"I don't know," said Jock, in a voice that sounded gruff, "I can't tell
who she is--I never asked. It did not seem any business of mine."
"Old fellow," said MTutor, "don't cultivate those bearish ways. Some men
do, but it's not good form. I don't like to see it in you."
This silenced Jock, and made his face flame in the darkness. He did not
know what excuse to make. He added reluctantly: "Of course I know that
she came with the Contessa; but who she is I don't know, and I don't
think Lucy knows. She is just--there."
"Well, my boy," said Mr. Derwentwater, "if there is any mystery, all
right; I don't want to be prying;" but, as was natural, this only
increased his curiosity. After an interval, he broke forth again. "A
little mystery," he said, "suits them; a woman ought to be mysterious,
with her long robes falling round her, and her mystery of long hair, and
all the natural veils and mists that are about her. It is more poetic
and in keeping that they should only have a lovely suggestive name, what
we call a Christian name, instead of a commonplace patronymic, Miss
So-and-so! Yes; I recognise your Bice as by far the most suitable
symbol."
It is impossible to say what an amount of unexpressed and inexpressible
irritation arose in the mind of Jock with every word. "Your Bice!" The
words excited him almost beyond his power of control. The mere fact of
having somehow got into opposition to MTutor was in itself an irritation
almost more than he could bear. How it was he could not explain to
himself; but only felt that from the moment when they had got into their
carriage together, Mr. Derwentwater, hitherto his god, had become almost
odious to him. The evening altogether had been exciting, but
uncomfortable. They had all gone to the theatre, where Jock had been
prepared to look on not so much at a fine piece of acting as at a
conscientious study, the laboriousness of which was one of its chief
qualities. Neither the Contessa nor Bice had been much impressed by that
fine view of the performance. Madame di Forno-Populo, indeed, had swept
the audience with her opera-glass, and paid very little attention to the
stage. She had yawned at the most important moments. When the curtain
fell she had woke up, looking with interest for visitors, as it
appeared, though very few visitors had come. Bice was put into the
corner under shelter of the Contessa, and thence had taken furtive
peeps, though without any opera-glass, with her own keen, intelligent
young eyes, at the people sitting near, whom Jock had declared not to be
in any sense of the word the world. Bice too looked up, when the box
door opened, with great interest. She kept well in the shade, but it was
evident that she was anxious to see whosoever might come. And very few
people came; one or two men who came to pay their respects to Lucy, one
or two who appeared with faces of excitement and surprise to ask if it
was indeed Madame di Forno-Populo whom they had seen? At these Bice from
out her corner gazed with large eyes; they were not persons of an
interesting kind. One of them was a Lord Somebody, who was red-faced and
had an air which somehow did not suit the place in which Lucy was, and
towards whom Sir Tom, though he knew him, maintained an aspect of
seriousness not at all usual to his cordial countenance. Bice, it was
evident, was struck with a contemptuous amaze at the appearance of these
visitors. There was a quick interchange of glances between her and the
Contessa with shrugs of the shoulders and much play of fans. Bice's
raised eyebrows and curled lips perhaps meant--"Are those your famous
friends? Is this all?" Whereas the Contessa answered deprecatingly, with
a sort of "wait a little" look. Jock, who generally was pleased to
stroll about the lobbies in a sort of mannish way in the intervals
between the acts, sat still in his place to watch all this with a
wondering sense that here was something going on in which there was a
still closer interest, and to notice everything almost without knowing
that he noted it, following in this respect, as in most others, the lead
of his tutor, who likewise addressed himself to the supervision of
everything that went on, discoursing in the meantime to Lucy about the
actors' "interpretation" of the part, and how far he, Mr. Derwentwater,
agreed with their view. To Lucy, indeed, the action of the play was
everything, and the intervals between tedious. She laughed and cried,
and followed every movement, and looked round, hushing the others when
they whispered, almost with indignation. Lucy was far younger, Jock
decided, than Bice or even himself. He, too, had learned already--how
had he learned it?--that the play going on upon the stage was less
interesting than that which was being performed outside. Even Jock had
found this out, though he could not have told how. Shakespeare, indeed,
was far greater, nobler; but the excitement of a living story, the
progress of events of which nobody could tell what would come next, had
an interest transcending even the poetry. That was what people said,
Jock was aware, in novels and other productions; but until to-night he
never believed it was true.
And then there was the journey from town, with all the curious sensation
of parting at the theatre doors, and returning from that shining world
of gaslight, and ladies' dresses, into the dimness of the railway, the
tedious though not very long journey, the plunging of the carriage
through the blackness of the night; and along with these the questions
of Mr. Derwentwater, so unlike him, so uncalled-for, as Jock could not
help thinking. What had he to do with Bice? What had any one to do with
her? So far as she belonged to any one, it was to himself, Jock; her
first friend, her companion in her walks, he to whom she had spoken so
freely, and who had told her his opinion with such simplicity. When Jock
remembered that he had told her she was not pretty his cheeks burned.
There had stolen into his mind, he could not tell how, a very different
feeling now--not perhaps a different opinion. When he reflected it did
not seem to him even now that pretty was the word to use--but the
impression of Bice which was in his mind was something that made the boy
thrill. He did not understand it, nor could he tell what it was. But it
made him quiver with resentment when there was any question about
her--anything like this cold-blooded investigation which Mr.
Derwentwater had attempted to make. It troubled Jock all the more that
it should be MTutor who made it. When our god, our model of excellence,
comes down from his high state to anything that is petty, or less than
perfect, how sore is the pang with which we acknowledge it. "To be wroth
with those we love doth work like madness in the brain." Jock had both
these pangs together. He was angry because MTutor had been interfering
with matters in which he had no concern, and he was pained because
MTutor had condescended to ask questions and invite gossip, like the
smaller beings well enough known in the boy-world as in every other,
who make gossip the chief object of their existence. Could there be
anything in the idol of his youth akin to these? He felt sore and
disappointed, without knowing why, with a dim consciousness that there
were many other people whom Mr. Derwentwater might have inquired about
without awakening any such feelings in him. When the train stopped, and
they got out, it was strange to walk down the silent, midnight streets
by MTutor's side, without the old sensation of pleasure with which the
boy felt himself made into the man's companion. He was awakened out of
his maze of dark and painful feelings by the voice of Derwentwater
calling upon him to admire the effect of the moonlight upon the river as
they crossed the bridge. For long after that scene remained in Jock's
mind against a background of mysterious shadows and perplexity. The moon
rode in the midst of a wide clearing of blue between two broken banks of
clouds. She was almost full, and approaching her setting. She shone full
upon the river, sweeping from side to side in one flood of silver,
broken only by a few strange little blacknesses, the few boats, like
houseless stragglers out by night and without shelter, which lay here
and there by a wharf or at the water's edge. The scene was wonderfully
still and solemn, not a motion to be seen either on street or stream.
"How is it, do you think," said Mr. Derwentwater, "that we think so
little of the sun when it is he that lights up a scene like this, and so
much of the moon?"
Jock was taken by surprise by this question, which was of a kind which
his tutor was fond of putting, and which brought back their old
relations instantaneously. Jock seemed to himself to wake up out of a
strange inarticulate dream of displeasure and embarrassment, and to feel
himself with sudden remorse, a traitor to his friend. He said,
faltering: "I don't know; it is always you that finds out the analogies.
I don't think that my mind is poetical at all."
"You do yourself injustice, Jock," said Derwentwater, his arm within
that of his pupil in their old familiar way. And then he said: "The moon
is the feminine influence which charms us by showing herself clearly as
the source of the light she sheds. The sun we rarely think of at all,
but only of what he gives us--the light and the heat that are our life.
Her," he pointed to the sky, "we could dispense with, save for the
beauty of her."
"I wish," said Jock, "I could think of anything so fine. But do you
think we could do without women like that?" said the inquiring young
spirit, ready to follow with his bosom bare whithersoever this refined
philosophy might lead.
"You and I will," said the instructor. "There are grosser and there are
tamer spirits to whom it might be different. I would not wrong you by
supposing that you, my boy, could ever be tempted in the gross way; and
I don't think you are of the butterfly dancing kind."
"I should rather think not!" said Jock, with a short laugh.
"Then, except as a beautiful object, setting herself forth in conscious
brightness, like that emblem of woman yonder," said MTutor with a wave
of his hand, admiring, familiar, but somewhat contemptuous, towards the
moon, "what do we want with that feminine influence? Our lives are set
to higher uses, and occupied with other aims."
Jock was perfectly satisfied with this profession of faith. He went
along the street with his tutor's arm in his, and a vague elation as of
something settled and concluded upon in his mind. Their footsteps rang
upon the pavement with a manly tramp as they paced away from the light
on the bridge into the shadow of the old houses with their red roofs.
They had gone some way before, being above all things loyal, Jock
thought it right to put in a proviso. "Not intellectually, perhaps," he
said, "but I can't forget how much I owe to my sister. I should have
been a most forlorn little wretch when I was a child, and I shouldn't be
much now, but for Lucy standing by me. It's not well to forget that, is
it, sir? though Lucy is not at all clever," he added in an undertone.
"You are a loyal soul," said MTutor, with a pressure of his arm, "but
Woman does not mean our mothers and sisters." Here he permitted himself
a little laugh. "It shows me how much inferior is my position to that of
your youth, my dear boy," he said, "when you give me such an answer.
Believe me it is far finer than anything you suppose me to be able to
say."
Jock did not know how to respond to this speech. It half angered, half
pleased him, but on the whole he was more ashamed of the supposed
youthfulness than satisfied with the approbation. No one, however young,
likes the imputation of innocence; and Jock had feelings rising within
him of which he scarcely knew the meaning, but which made him still more
sensible of the injustice of this view. He was too proud, however, to
explain himself even if he had been able to do so, and the little way
that remained was trodden in silence. The boy, however, could not help a
curious sensation of superiority as he went to his room through the
sleeping-house, feeling the stillness of the slumber into which he
stole, treading very quietly that he might not disturb any one. He
stopped for a moment with a candle in his hand and looked down the long
passage with its line of closed doors on each side, holding his breath
with a half smile of sympathy, respect for the hush of sleep, yet keen
superiority of life and emotion over all the unconscious household. His
own brain and heart seemed tingling with the activity and tumult of life
in them. It seemed to him impossible to sleep, to still the commotion in
his mind, and bring himself into harmony with that hushed atmosphere and
childish calm.