It would have driven him stark mad if our Traxelby choir-master, with his petty efficiency and trivial thoroughness, could have heard the Bérigny organ pounding and blaring, and the Bérigny faithful bawling "Credo" through their noses. An untuneful but hearty lad on my left sang the whole creed through in Latin without a book. I wonder, would our Traxelby youths be a shade less loutish, a shade nearer to these courteous villagers of Bérigny, if they too were taught to dip a cup in the main stream of human culture, and to quaff ever so small a draught? I imagine it must be the beginning of a revolution, even in the humblest mind, when it makes room for fifty words of a language other than its own.
Sunday night.
Yes, I have some traces of will-power. I have wanted to ask Susan whether she posted my note; but I haven't asked her. And I have wanted to think about Ruddington's letter--not so much its galling references to myself, as the disclosure it makes of an uncommon personality in the midst of an uncommon situation. I have wanted to think about it all day--even in church. But I haven't yielded. Or, at most, I have yielded only a very little.
Monday morning.
Susan posted the letter.
I asked her after breakfast, in a casual sort of way, what she had done with it; and she answered, almost as casually, that she and Georgette posted it on Saturday afternoon. I could see that, for some reason, Susan didn't want to be cross-questioned.
"Susan," I said, when she came into the room again, "how many people know anything about this affair of Lord Ruddington?"
Susan started.
"Whom have you told?" I asked again. "Did you talk about it at Traxelby?"
"Oh, no, Miss!" said Susan, almost reproachfully. Then, after an awkward pause, she added: "Unless..."