Love and Mr. Lewisham

  CHAPTER V.

  HESITATIONS.

  Mr. Bonover, having fully matured a Hint suitable for the occasion,dropped it in the afternoon, while Lewisham was superintending cricketpractice. He made a few remarks about the prospects of the firsteleven by way of introduction, and Lewisham agreed with him thatFrobisher i. looked like shaping very well this season.

  A pause followed and the headmaster hummed. "By-the-bye," he said, asif making conversation and still watching the play; "I,ah,--understood that you, ah--were a _stranger_ to Whortley."

  "Yes," said Lewisham, "that's so."

  "You have made friends in the neighbourhood?"

  Lewisham was troubled with a cough, and his ears--those confoundedears--brightened, "Yes," he said, recovering, "Oh yes. Yes, I have."

  "Local people, I presume."

  "Well, no. Not exactly." The brightness spread from Lewisham's earsover his face.

  "I saw you," said Bonover, "talking to a young lady in the avenue. Herface was somehow quite familiar to me. Who _was_ she?"

  Should he say she was a friend of the Frobishers? In that caseBonover, in his insidious amiable way, might talk to the Frobisherparents and make things disagreeable for her. "She was," saidLewisham, flushing deeply with the stress on his honesty and droppinghis voice to a mumble, "a ... a ... an old friend of my mother's. Infact, I met her once at Salisbury."

  "Where?"

  "Salisbury."

  "And her name?"

  "Smith," said Lewisham, a little hastily, and repenting the lie evenas it left his lips.

  "Well _hit_, Harris!" shouted Bonover, and began to clap hishands. "Well _hit_, sir."

  "Harris shapes very well," said Mr. Lewisham.

  "Very," said Mr. Bonover. "And--what was it? Ah! I was just remarkingthe odd resemblances there are in the world. There is a MissHenderson--or Henson--stopping with the Frobishers--in the very sametown, in fact, the very picture of your Miss ..."

  "Smith," said Lewisham, meeting his eye and recovering the fullcrimson note of his first blush.

  "It's odd," said Bonover, regarding him pensively.

  "Very odd," mumbled Lewisham, cursing his own stupidity and lookingaway.

  "_Very_--very odd," said Bonover.

  "In fact," said Bonover, turning towards the school-house, "I hardlyexpected it of you, Mr. Lewisham."

  "Expected what, sir?"

  But Mr. Bonover feigned to be already out of earshot.

  "Damn!" said Mr. Lewisham. "Oh!--_damn_!"--a most objectionableexpression and rare with him in those days. He had half a mind tofollow the head-master and ask him if he doubted his word. It was onlytoo evident what the answer would be.

  He stood for a minute undecided, then turned on his heel and marchedhomeward with savage steps. His muscles quivered as he walked, and hisface twitched. The tumult of his mind settled at last into angryindignation.

  "Confound him!" said Mr. Lewisham, arguing the matter out with thebedroom furniture. "Why the _devil_ can't he mind his own business?"

  "Mind your own business, sir!" shouted Mr. Lewisham at the wash-handstand. "Confound you, sir, mind your own business!"

  The wash-hand stand did.

  "You overrate your power, sir," said Mr. Lewisham, a littlemollified. "Understand me! I am my own master out of school."

  Nevertheless, for four days and some hours after Mr. Bonover's Hint,Mr. Lewisham so far observed its implications as to abandon open-airstudy and struggle with diminishing success to observe the spirit aswell as the letter of his time-table prescriptions. For the most parthe fretted at accumulating tasks, did them with slipshod energy orlooked out of window. The Career constituent insisted that to meet andtalk to this girl again meant reproof, worry, interference with hiswork for his matriculation, the destruction of all "Discipline," andhe saw the entire justice of the insistence. It was nonsense thisbeing in love; there wasn't such a thing as love outside of trashynovelettes. And forthwith his mind went off at a tangent to her eyesunder the shadow of her hat brim, and had to be lugged back by mainforce. On Thursday when he was returning from school he saw her faraway down the street, and hurried in to avoid her, lookingostentatiously in the opposite direction. But that was aturning-point. Shame overtook him. On Friday his belief in love waswarm and living again, and his heart full of remorse for laggard days.

  On Saturday morning his preoccupation with her was so vivid that itdistracted him even while he was teaching that most teachable subject,algebra, and by the end of the school hours the issue was decided andthe Career in headlong rout. That afternoon he would go, whateverhappened, and see her and speak to her again. The thought of Bonoverarose only to be dismissed. And besides--

  Bonover took a siesta early in the afternoon.

  Yes, he would go out and find her and speak to her. Nothing shouldstop him.

  Once that decision was taken his imagination became riotous withthings he might say, attitudes he might strike, and a multitude ofvague fine dreams about her. He would say this, he would say that,his mind would do nothing but circle round this wonderful pose oflover. What a cur he had been to hide from her so long! What could hehave been thinking about? How _could_ he explain it to her, when themeeting really came? Suppose he was very frank--

  He considered the limits of frankness. Would she believe he had notseen her on Thursday?--if he assured her that it was so?

  And, most horrible, in the midst of all this came Bonover with arequest that he would take "duty" in the cricket field instead ofDunkerley that afternoon. Dunkerley was the senior assistant master,Lewisham's sole colleague. The last vestige of disapprobation hadvanished from Bonover's manner; asking a favour was his autocratic wayof proffering the olive branch. But it came to Lewisham as a cruelimposition. For a fateful moment he trembled on the brink ofacquiescence. In a flash came a vision of the long duty of theafternoon--she possibly packing for Clapham all the while. He turnedwhite. Mr. Bonover watched his face.

  "_No_," said Lewisham bluntly, saying all he was sure of, andforthwith racking his unpractised mind for an excuse. "I'm sorry Ican't oblige you, but ... my arrangements ... I've made arrangements,in fact, for the afternoon."

  Mr. Bonover's eyebrows went up at this obvious lie, and the glow ofhis suavity faded, "You see," he said, "Mrs. Bonover expects a friendthis afternoon, and we rather want Mr. Dunkerley to make four atcroquet...."

  "I'm sorry," said Mr. Lewisham, still resolute, and making a mentalnote that Bonover would be playing croquet.

  "You don't play croquet by any chance?" asked Bonover.

  "No," said Lewisham, "I haven't an idea."

  "If Mr. Dunkerley had asked you?..." persisted Bonover, knowingLewisham's respect for etiquette.

  "Oh! it wasn't on that account," said Lewisham, and Bonover witheyebrows still raised and a general air of outraged astonishment lefthim standing there, white and stiff, and wondering at hisextraordinary temerity.