Chapter VI The Awakening of Mr. Wycherly
Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken tree
By the hour, nor count time lost.
PARACELSUS.
Montagu’s education was taken in hand at once, and a very curious course of instruction it proved to be. Mr. Wycherly taught him to read, and to read Latin at the same time that he learned to read English. He also, which Montagu very much preferred, told him endless stories, historical and mythological, and in illustration thereof gave him for himself his own two precious oblong folios of Flaxman’s “Compositions,” on the very first birthday the little boy spent with Miss Esperance. These books were for Montagu the only nursery picture books he knew, and Ulysses and Hector were as real and familiar to him as “Jack the Giant Killer” or “Bluebeard” to the ordinary child. He treasured them and treated them always with the greatest care and tenderness. They were the one possession he declined to share with Edmund, who was careless, and tore things, to whom wide margins and spacious pages made no appeal. He pored over the pictures for hours at a time, arriving at a very clear conception of the beauty of pure line.
When the children first came Mr. Wycherly might have been seen, during all such time as those energetic young people left to him, immersed in the study of a serviceable sheepskin volume, the Wrexham edition of Roger Ascham’s “Schoolmaster,” making notes on the margins of the same, and marking such passages as seemed to him especially applicable to the matter under consideration.
Years after the owner’s death Montagu found and read the wise old book, and realised how humbly and patiently Mr. Wycherly had set himself to follow out whatever he considered most valuable in the teaching of one whose mental attitude toward youth was certainly centuries in advance of his age. On the flyleaf he had written in his small, delicate handwriting: “In all my life, if I have done but little harm, I have done no good or useful thing. God help me that I may do this thing well,” and Montagu, with an almost rapturous remembrance of his teaching, could testify that the prayer had not been made in vain.
It was no doubt a good thing for Montagu that his tutor had such a common-sense standard of teaching always before him, for Mr. Wycherly’s own inclination was apt to draw him away from the grind of grammar to discourse with enthusiasm on the beauties and solemnities of the authors he so loved. Montagu was quick and receptive, with considerable power of concentration, and because he loved his teacher, he speedily grew to love the subjects that he taught, so that he might truly have said with Lady Jane Grey: “My book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me.”
Mr. Wycherly’s sitting-room was much the largest in the little house. It was on the first floor and of a cheerful aspect, having two windows facing east and south, respectively. Here, for Montagu’s own special use, were placed a little square oak table with stout, stumpy legs, of a solid steadiness that even the most fidgety of little boys could not shake, and a three-legged stool that had once served Elsa as a milking-stool. These were set sideways in the window looking on to the kitchen garden, as being a view less likely to distract the learner than that of the other, from which one beheld the front garden with the green railings, and the village street with all its possible excitements. The little table possessed a drawer with bright handles, and in this drawer Montagu kept his own exercise books, his pen with the pebble handle that Elsa had given him, his box of pencils, and every scrap of paper suitable for drawing on, that he could collect—generally half sheets torn off letters by the careful hand of Miss Esperance. The table itself, in imitation of Mr. Wycherly’s, was piled with books, but they were in orderly piles, and never set open, one on the top of the other, as was the older scholar’s habit.
There was another reason why Mr. Wycherly chose that window for Montagu: the morning sun shone straight through it, and the scholar, always something of a stranger in this chill north, craved all the sunshine he could get for the child. He liked to lean back in his own deep-seated revolving chair, set by the big knee-hole table in the centre of the room, and watch the little stooping figure in the patch of sunshine in the window, laboriously tracing the Greek characters so neatly and carefully. A large-eyed thin-faced boy was Montagu, somewhat sallow, with the round shoulders got during those early studies which he never lost in later life.
It was not only during lessons that Montagu sat at his little table: long hours did he spend there on wet days while the wind howled round the little house like a hungry wolf, and the rain battered on the panes like shot—making drawings for himself of the battle in the “great harbour of Syracuse,” which he had read about in Thomas Hobbes’s translation. For Mr. Wycherly’s shelves abounded in translations as well as in the “original texts,” and although, like most translators, he disagreed with all accepted renderings, yet he encouraged Montagu’s use of them, perhaps that he, himself, might the better, by-and-by, point out where he considered that they failed.
These drawings were afterwards bestowed upon Edmund, who would listen to Montagu’s classic stories when they dealt with battles or ships, but who otherwise infinitely preferred Elsa’s more homely legends regarding the doings of “Cockie Lockie and Henny Penny.”
But there was more than the garden to be seen from Montagu’s window: far away, sharp against the sky line, lay the lion back of Arthur’s Seat, and whenever Montagu raised his eyes from his work to look out, it was there that they rested. And inasmuch as at that time the Odyssey and its hero filled all his thoughts, the great gaunt hill became for him actually that Ithaca long sought and longed for by the many-counselled one: till every sight of it would thrill him with a sense of personal possession and delighted recognition.
Sometimes Montagu, looking back into the room, would find his old friend watching him, and the little boy would nod gaily without speaking, smiling the while the confident, comrade smile of childhood, and thinking that, failing Achilles, he would like to look like Mr. Wycherly when he was old.
There is always something pleasantly surprising in the conjunction of white hair and very dark eyes and eyebrows, and in Mr. Wycherly’s case the expression of the dark eyes was extremely gentle, the features sharply cut and refined, the whole face of that clean-shaven, regular, aristocratic type, which the Reverend Peter Gloag—half in admiration, half in derision—described as so “intensely Oxfordish.”
“He has got such a tidy face,” Montagu said to his aunt one day.
“My dear, Mr. Wycherly is always considered a man of great personal attractions,” she replied, rather shocked at his choice of an adjective.
“Yes, aunt, dear, I know, but it’s a tidy sort of handsomeness; not a bit like Noah and Jacob and those hairy prophets in the parlour.”
The walls of his aunt’s sitting-room were adorned by many engravings illustrative of the Scriptures, and Montagu, fresh from the study of his beloved Flaxman, would compare these bearded Hebrew prophets, so hampered by heavy draperies, with his airily attired and clean-limbed Greeks, always to the advantage of the latter. Yet he was forced to acknowledge to himself that his adored Mr. Wycherly resembled them equally little both in appearance and manner of life: for nothing could savour less of the adventurous than his existence. So Montagu “put the question by” as one to be answered in that wonderful, grown-up time that children think will solve so many riddles. Mr. Wycherly was immensely happy in this new work and approached his task with a certain tender reverence, rare among teachers, for he agreed with wise old Roger Ascham in thinking that “the pure, clean wit of a sweet, young babe is like the newest wax, most able to receive the best and fairest printing, and like a new bright silver dish never occupied to receive and keep clean any good thing that is put in it.”
One morning in early October, Montagu was sitting, as usual, at his little table copying the Greek alphabet, while Mr. Wycherly sat watching him with pleased, dreamy eyes. As the little boy completed his task he raised his head with a sigh of satisfaction and happened to look down into the garden.
“Do you think?” he suddenly asked Mr. Wycherly, “I might go out and help Aunt Esperance dig the potatoes? The ground seems so heavy this morning.”
Mr. Wycherly rose hastily, crossed over to Montagu’s window and looked out.
“Good God!” he exclaimed, and fled from the room.
Much astonished at this outburst from his usually serene tutor, Montagu tore downstairs after him.
What Mr. Wycherly had seen to cause him such consternation was what he might have seen any time during the last fifteen years—namely, the tiny, stooping figure of Miss Esperance digging the potatoes for the day’s dinner. But if it ever happened that he did look out he had never chanced to look down into the homely garden below, or if he had his eyes were holden, and he was wrapped in his dreams. So that he beheld only the things of the spirit, nor did he know how often the palms of those little hands, so ready to help others, were hard and blistered by their labours.
Since the days when he ran shouting along the towing path at Oxford Mr. Wycherly had never run as he ran that morning to the potato patch at Remote. Montagu was hard put to it to catch him, but just managed it, and they arrived together before the astonished eyes of Miss Esperance, who saw them coming in such hot haste, and rested on her spade in fear and trembling as to what could have happened.
When Mr. Wycherly did reach her he could not speak, so breathless was he: but he looked beseechingly at her and gently took the spade out of her hands.
“Why?” he gasped, “Why?” His face worked strangely and he could say nothing more. Montagu stood watching him with solemn, puzzled eyes.
But Miss Esperance understood. “You have come to help me,” she said gently, “that is very kind of you. Montagu! away and get your wee spade and dig too.”
The little boy needed no second bidding, and flew to the tool-house. Mr. Wycherly hadn’t the faintest notion how to dig potatoes. He had never held a spade in his hands before, and held this much as a nervous person unaccustomed to firearms might hold a loaded gun. He looked helplessly at Miss Esperance, and still the lines were deep about his mouth and his eyes full of that new, dumb pain.
“Watch Montagu!” she whispered reassuringly, “he’s a famous digger.”
Between them they dug quite a lot of potatoes, and Mr. Wycherly, himself, carried the heavy basket to Elsa at the back door. She took it from him without comment of any kind, but when he had gone round through the garden to get into the house by the front, she looked into the basket, exclaiming, “Now what put sic’ a whigmalerie as this in his head?” And it seemed as if the potatoes must have thrown some light upon the question, for in another minute she said softly, “Yon’s no a bad buddy.”
When Montagu went back to his lessons he found his tutor, with earthy hands clasped behind him, restlessly pacing up and down his room.
“I think you’ve done enough this morning,” said Mr. Wycherly. “You’d better go out and play while it is so fine and nice.”
“It’s not twelve o’clock yet,” Montagu objected, “and I generally do lessons till twelve.”
“We shall have plenty of wet days by-and-by,” Mr. Wycherly answered. “Go out now, and make the most of it while it is fine.”
“But Robina and Edmund’s gone, and Aunt Esperance is busy—won’t you come?”
“Yes, I’ll come.” But yet Mr. Wycherly made no move to get ready.
“I’ve washed my hands,” Montagu remarked virtuously.
Mr. Wycherly started, unclasped his hands and held them out in front of him. “I fear,” he said sadly, “that nothing will wash mine.” A remark which puzzled Montagu extremely, for in a few minutes Mr. Wycherly returned from his bedroom with perfectly clean hands.
It was a very silent walk at first, and what conversation there was Montagu made. At last he grew rather tired of this one-sided intercourse and gave his companion’s hand a tug as he demanded: “Are you asleep, that you don’t never answer?”
Mr. Wycherly started. “No, my dear son,” he said very gently; “I think that I am just beginning to be awake.”
“Will you talk to me then, like you generally do, and tell me things? Shall we go on about Jason? I do love stories where people do things.”
Mr. Wycherly stood still in the middle of the road, and looked down into the little eager face uplifted to his. “You are right, Montagu,” he said very gravely; “it is of little use to think things if you don’t do them.” And then it seemed as though Mr. Wycherly gave himself a mental shake, for he devoted his whole attention to Montagu for the rest of their walk.
Mr. Wycherly’s early dinner was served in his own room, but he always supped downstairs with Miss Esperance at seven o’clock. He was the most unpunctual of mortals, and when he first came, infuriated Elsa by sometimes forgetting to eat any lunch at all. But when he discovered that these lapses really distressed Miss Esperance, he schooled himself to keep as nearly as possible to the appointed hours. He was never late for supper, for that would have been discourteous to Miss Esperance, and he was incapable of discourtesy; but he did allow himself a certain amount of laxity with regard to lunch. As for breakfast—ever since the coming of the children he had been a model of punctuality, for they woke him up so uncommonly early.
When he entered his room after the walk with Montagu, he found his lunch all ready set on the round table in the middle of the room. This table was sacred to meals, and he was not permitted to pile it with books and papers. Hence, he was wont to regard its oaken emptiness between whiles with a wistful envy. It was so much good space wasted. His lunch was always very nicely laid, and to-day there was cold beef, thin dainty slices adorned with parsley by Elsa’s careful hand, and beside the beef stood a covered vegetable dish. Mr. Wycherly sat down at the table, poured out a glass of ale from the little Toby jug set at his right hand and mechanically lifted the cover of the dish. Potatoes were in that dish, and at the sight of them he rose hastily from the table. He went over to his big, knee-hole desk, and sitting down in front of it said aloud: “And all these years she has been digging potatoes for me!”
Like a tired schoolboy he leaned forward, his arms upon his desk, laid his head down on them, and the room was very still.
When Elsa went in to take away the dishes, he had gone out: but his lunch was untouched. She shook her head ominously, and went and turned down his bed, though it was only early afternoon.
Mr. Wycherly walked and walked till he was quite worn out. He got back to the house about four o’clock, crawled up to his room, and sank quite exhausted into his big chair by the window. All afternoon Elsa had been watching for him, and three minutes after his return she followed him upstairs bearing a little tray on which were set a cup of tea and a plate of most tempting-looking scones. She didn’t even knock at his door, but went straight in, pushed the round table up to his elbow and laid the little tray upon it. She took up her stand at the window with her back to Mr. Wycherly, remarking fiercely: “From this place I’ll not stir till you’ve taken that tea.”
She did not even add the usual tardy “sir,” and Mr. Wycherly was so startled that he never noticed the omission. He drank the tea, and ate two scones, and all the time Elsa stood with her back to him looking out of the window.
Presently he touched her on the arm. “I am very much obliged to you, Elsa,” he said. “I think I must have forgotten to eat as much lunch as usual, I was so extremely tired, but I feel much refreshed now.”
Elsa grunted something quite inaudible, took the tray off the table, and, still with averted head, stumped out of the room.
But the fates had not done with Mr. Wycherly that day. As he and Miss Esperance sat down to supper, Montagu, who for some reason was rather later than usual in going to bed, came in to say good night to them. He first kissed his aunt, who sat at one end of the table, then went to kiss Mr. Wycherly who sat at the other. Having said good night, of course he lingered, leant confidingly against his tutor, and in the universal fashion of children who would fain put off the evil hour of bed, remarked detachedly: “You’ve got chops. Aunt Esperance has only got an egg. Don’t you like chops, Aunt Esperance? I do, much better than eggs.”
Mr. Wycherly dropped back in his chair, looking painfully distressed. For a moment there was a dreadful pause, but the beautiful breeding of Miss Esperance stood her in good stead even then.
“Do you know,” she exclaimed, as though a sudden thought had struck her, “I feel unusually hungry to-night. I think I will defy my doctor for once, and take a chop after all, Mr. Wycherly.”
And Miss Esperance handed up her little plate for the chop which Mr. Wycherly joyfully placed upon it. But now came another difficulty. Miss Esperance, who had eaten a boiled egg at this hour nearly every night for some twenty years, had no fork.
“Montagu, my son,” she said cheerfully, “run and ask Elsa for a fork for me.”
No man ever existed who cared less about eating than Mr. Wycherly. Whatsoever was set before him, that he ate meekly and without comment—if he remembered. He always offered to help Miss Esperance from whatever dish was set before him at supper, and she as invariably refused it. It would have seemed to him an unwarrantable piece of interference even so indirectly to criticise her housekeeping as to suggest what she should eat. But to-day there had occurred something which had entirely shaken him out of his usual patient acquiescence in existing conditions: so that, when Montagu pointed out that his fare was so much better than that of Miss Esperance, he was seized by a new anguish of self-reproach. Had he, all these years, been living luxuriously?—that is how poor Mr. Wycherly put it to himself—while she, who with her frail little hands had pulled him forcibly back from the abyss into which he was so surely slipping, had she been living sparely, and he never even noticed whether she had enough to eat? In his misery he was ready to accuse himself of having starved Miss Esperance that he might go full-fed himself.
It was rather a silent meal. Miss Esperance did her best to start topics of interest, but his response, though never lacking in urbane attention, was somewhat half-hearted and depressed.
When he had gone upstairs to his own room, Miss Esperance waited with the little bell, which summoned Elsa, still in her hand till that good woman appeared, when she asked anxiously: “Elsa, do you know if anything has occurred to upset Mr. Wycherly? He is not looking at all well to-night.”
Elsa shook her head. “I dinna ken, mem, what it’ll be, but he never touched his denner, and when he came back this afternoon he looked like he’d been greetin’ and greetin’ sair.”
Elsa paused; Miss Esperance made no answer, but stood still, looking at the lamp on the table, lost in thought.
“It’s no the old thing,” Elsa added suddenly, lowering her voice.
Miss Esperance put out her hand as if warding off a blow. “Of course not,” she exclaimed. “I am surprised, Elsa, that you should so far forget yourself as to refer, to—that time—so long ago, so entirely passed.”
The little lady seemed in some subtle fashion to withdraw herself to an immense distance from the homely serving-woman who stood fingering her apron and saying nothing. She knew that she had offended her mistress, and when Miss Esperance was offended, she, usually the gentlest and friendliest of women, became quite unapproachable. She left the room with her usual noiseless tread, and for a good five minutes after she had gone Elsa stood where she was, still fingering her apron and wondering what she could do to make amends.
Mr. Wycherly sat at his knee-hole table far into the night. From the recesses of a drawer that had been locked for years he brought forth papers; long, legal-looking papers, and set himself, for the first time since he came to live with Miss Esperance, to look into his financial position. He made many notes and his brow was furrowed by care and thought, for his brain lent itself with difficulty to the understanding of figures. Still he persevered, and gradually his expression became less pained and perplexed. For once he did not leave his papers scattered all over the table. He arranged them neatly in bundles and put them back again into the drawer and locked it.
When he had finished these unusually orderly arrangements, he pulled up the blind of Montagu’s window and looked out toward Arthur’s Seat. It was a moonlight night, and something of the large peace of that majestic hill seemed to pass into his soul, for his gentle, scholarly face was no longer troubled, and he whispered as if in prayer: “Thank God, I can at least do that for her. Thank God!”
The tender moonbeams touched Mr. Wycherly’s hair, white since he was seven and twenty, to purest silver, and there seemed a benediction in that quiet hour for the little house that held so much of innocence and sorrow and repentance.