He repeated half of the now well-known little poem of Shelley, headed Passage of the Apennines. He had forgotten the name of the writer, and it was many years before I fell in with the lines myself.
‘The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.’
In the middle of it I saw Clara begin to titter, but she did not interrupt him. When he had finished, she said with a grave face, too grave for seriousness:
‘Will you repeat the third line—I think it was, Mr Osborne?’
He did so.
‘What kind of eggs did the Apennine lay, Mr Osborne?’ she asked, still perfectly serious.
Charley was abashed to find she could take advantage of probably a provincialism to turn into ridicule such fine verses. Before he could recover himself, she had planted another blow’ or two.
‘And where is its nest?’ Between the earth and the sky is vague. But then to be sure it must want a good deal of room. And after all, a mountain is a strange fowl, and who knows where it might lay? Between earth and sky is quite definite enough? Besides, the bird-nesting boys might be dangerous if they knew where it was. It would be such a find for them!’
My champion was defeated. Without attempting a word in reply, he hung back and dropped behind. Mr Coningham must have heard the whole, but he offered no remark. I saw that Charley’s sensitive nature was hurt, and my heart was sore for him.
‘That’s too bad of you, Clara,’ I said.
‘What’s too bad of me, Wilfrid?’ she returned.
I hesitated a moment, then answered—
‘To make game of such verses. Any one with half a soul must see they were fine.’
‘Very wrong of you, indeed, my dear,’ said Mr Coningham from behind, in a voice that sounded as if he were smothering a laugh; but when I looked round, his face was grave.
‘Then I suppose that half soul I haven’t got,’ returned Clara.
‘Oh! I didn’t mean that,’ I said, lamely enough. ‘But there’s no logic in that kind of thing, you know.’
‘You see, papa,’ said Clara, ‘what you are accountable for. Why didn’t you make them teach me logic?’
Her father smiled a pleased smile. His daughter’s naiveté would in his eyes make up for any lack of logic.
‘Mr Osborne,’ continued Clara, turning back, ‘I beg your pardon. I am a woman, and you men don’t allow us to learn logic. But at the same time you must confess you were making a bad use of yours. You know it was all nonsense you were trying to pass off on me for wisdom.’
He was by her side the instant she spoke to him. A smile grew upon his face; I could see it growing, just as you see the sun growing behind a cloud. In a moment it broke out in radiance.
‘I confess,’ he said. ‘I thought you were too hard on Wilfrid; and he hadn’t anything at hand to say for himself.’
‘And you were too hard upon me, weren’t you? Two to one is not fair play—is it now?’
‘No; certainly not.’
‘And that justified a little false play on my part?’
‘No, it did not,’ said Charley, almost fiercely. ‘Nothing justifies false play.’
‘Not even yours, Mr Osborne?’ replied Clara, with a stately coldness quite marvellous in one so young; and leaving him, she came again to my side. I peeped at Mr Coningham, curious to see how he regarded all this wrangling with his daughter. He appeared at once amused and satisfied. Clara’s face was in a glow, clearly of anger at the discourteous manner in which Charley had spoken.
‘You mustn’t be angry with Charley, Clara,’ I said.
‘He is very rude,’ she replied indignantly.
‘What he said was rude, I allow, but Charley himself is anything but rude. I haven’t looked at him, but I am certain he is miserable about it already.’
‘So he ought to be. To speak like that to a lady, when her very friendliness put her off her guard! I never was treated so in all my life.’
She spoke so loud that she must have meant Charley to hear her. But when I looked back, I saw that he had fallen a long way behind, and was coming on very slowly, with dejected look and his eyes on the ground. Mr Coningham did not interfere by word or sign.
When we reached the inn he ordered some refreshment, and behaved to us both as if we were grown men. Just a touch of familiarity was the sole indication that we were not grown men. Boys are especially grateful for respect from their superiors, for it helps them to respect themselves; but Charley sat silent and gloomy. As he would not ride back, and Mr Coningham preferred walking too, I got into the saddle and rode by Clara’s side.
As we approached the house, Charley crept up the other side of Clara’s horse, and laid his hand on his mane. When he spoke Clara started, for she was looking the other way and had not observed his approach.
‘Miss Clara,’ he said, ‘I am very sorry I was so rude. Will you forgive me?’
Instead of being hard to reconcile, as I had feared from her outburst of indignation, she leaned forward and laid her hand on his. He looked up in her face, his own suffused with a colour I had never seen in it before. His great blue eyes lightened with thankfulness, and began to fill with tears. How she looked, I could not see. She withdrew her hand, and Charley dropped behind again. In a little while he came up to my side, and began talking. He soon got quite merry, but Clara in her turn was silent.
I doubt if anything would be worth telling but for what comes after. History itself would be worthless but for what it cannot tell, namely, its own future. Upon this ground my reader must excuse the apparent triviality of the things I am now relating.
When we were alone in our room that night—for ever since Charley’s illness we two had had a room to ourselves—Charley said,
‘I behaved like a brute this morning, Wilfrid.’
‘No, Charley; you were only a little rude from being over-eager. If she had been seriously advocating dishonesty, you would have been quite right to take it up so; and you thought she was.’
‘Yes; but it was very silly of me. I dare say it was because I had been so dishonest myself just before. How dreadful it is that I am always taking my own side, even when I do what I am ashamed of in another! I suppose I think I have got my horse by the head, and the other has not.’
‘I don’t know. That may be it,’ I answered. ‘I’m afraid I can’t think about it to-night, for I don’t feel well. What if it should be your turn to nurse me now, Charley?’
He turned quite pale, his eyes opened wide, and he looked at me anxiously.
Before morning I was aching all over: I had rheumatic fever.
CHAPTER XIX. CHARLEY NURSES ME
I saw no more of Clara. Mr Coningham came to bid me good-bye, and spoke very kindly. Mr Forest would have got a nurse for me, but Charley begged so earnestly to be allowed to return the service I had done for him that he yielded.
I was in great pain for more than a week. Charley’s attentions were unremitting. In fact he nursed me more like a woman than a boy; and made me think with some contrition how poor my ministrations had been. Even after the worst was over, if I but moved, he was at my bedside in a moment. Certainly no nurse could have surpassed him. I could bear no one to touch me but him: from any one else I dreaded torture; and my medicine was administered to the very moment by my own old watch, which had been brought to do its duty at least respectably.
One afternoon, finding me tolerably comfortable, he said, ‘Shall I read something to you, Wilfrid?’