"Why didn't you teach me what a beautiful thing love is?" asked Harry. "We've read a lot about it together, but I never had an idea of it until now. I don't think anybody in the world has ever been so happy as I am."
Wilbraham was torn in two again. His appreciations were not all bookish, and he loved Harry. He saw that in a nature such as his love would come as a very beautiful thing, and his searching observation of Viola had revealed nothing in her that could make it less so. And yet—!
"How long have you known her?" he asked.
"What does it matter?" said Harry. "I've known her all my life. If I look back to any time in it, she was there, though I'd never seen her. We've been meeting every day, if that's what you mean."
It was what Wilbraham had meant, and he felt discomfort at having asked the question. It was the discomfort that must come from probing into this situation, with the fear before him of saying something that would smirch the bright purity of Harry's mind. Anything that brought his actions to the test must do that, if he came to understand what tests were applicable to his meetings with Viola.
"Why didn't you tell us?" seemed to be the safest thing to say, and he said it with a half hope that the answer would give him some handle, though without mental acknowledgment of the hope.
"Well, I felt somehow that you'd try to stop me," said the boy. "At least mother and Granny would. I did nearly tell mother, the first time I'd seen Viola, but something warned me not to. I've been glad since that I didn't. It has just been she and I—Viola and I. Oh, how I love her! I'm glad you've seen her. But you must keep it to yourself. We haven't much longer together. I can't have our time spoilt."
He spoke almost with authority. With every moment Wilbraham felt some new little emotion of change and development too quick for him to master. Harry had been the most docile of pupils. Never once since his first dealings with him as a young child had he had to exercise authority against desires or inclinations of his. True, he had held the reins lightly, and never given him a rebuke or a direction that had mood instead of reason behind it; but it had sometimes crossed his mind that the boy was too docile, and that his sense of responsibility and self-mastery might be sapped if he was brought up to give unquestioning obedience to the directions of his elders. He had mentioned this fear to Lady Brent, and her answer to it had been of the kind that he had received once or twice before in his consultations with her, from which his confidence in her ultimate wisdom had been so firmly fixed. The same doubt, it seemed, had crossed her own mind. It was to be met by allowing Harry the fullest possible trust and freedom. If at any time he overstepped the freedom it was not to be treated as a fault. He was to be told why it was not advisable for him to do this or that, and the decision left to him. Once or twice this had happened, and once he had stuck out for his own will. It was when his nocturnal rambles had been discovered by chance, shortly after that night upon which Grant had seen him out in the park. Lady Brent, with calm and admirable self-restraint, had said: "Very well, Harry. After all, I don't know that there's any harm in it. If I had known of it a year ago I might have stopped it; but now you're old enough to do as you like in that sort of way."
No one observing the boy, Wilbraham had thought, could say that he was molly-coddled into submission. Few boys of his age had such freedom granted to them, or carried a more gallant air before the world; and the Grants, of whom he had taken counsel, as representing the views of the world more closely than he in his retirement could do, had supported him.
And yet, there had been the feeling that Harry was extraordinarily easy to manage—too amiably submissive, almost, to the guidance of his elders, and Wilbraham himself particularly.