‘It’s so delightful, dear Herr Max,’ Ernest was saying at that exact moment, ‘to have you down here with us even for a single night. You can’t imagine what an oasis your coming has been to us both. I’m sure Edie has enjoyed it just as much as I have, and is just as anxious you should stop a little time here with us as I myself could possibly be.
‘Oh, yes, Herr Schurz,’ Edie put in persuasively with her sweet little pleading manner; ‘do stay a little longer. I don’t know when dear Ernest has enjoyed anything in the world so much as he has enjoyed seeing you. You’ve no idea how dull it is down here for him, and for me too, for that matter; everybody here is so borné, and narrow-minded and self-centred; nothing expansive or sympathetic about them, as there used to be about Ernest’s set in dear, quiet, peaceable old Oxford. It’s been such a pleasure to us to hear some conversation again that wasn’t about the school, and the rector, and the Haigh Park people, and the flower show, and old Mrs. Jenkins’s quarrel with the vicar of St. Barnabas. Except when Mr. Berkeley runs down sometimes for a Saturday to Monday trip to see us, and takes Ernest out for a good blow with him on the top of the breezy downs over yonder, we really never hear anything at all except the gossip and the small-talk of Pilbury Regis.’
‘And what makes it worse, Herr Max,’ said Ernest, looking up in the old man’s calm strong face with the same reverent almost filial love and respect as ever, ‘is the fact that I can’t feel any real interest and enthusiasm in the work that’s set before me. I try to do it as well as I can, and I believe Dr. Greatrex, who’s a kind-hearted good sort of man in his way, is perfectly satisfied with it; but my heart isn’t in it, you see, and can’t be in it. What sort of good is one doing the world by dinning the same foolish round of Horace and Livy and Latin elegiacs into the heads of all these useless, eat-all, do-nothing young fellows, who’ll only be fit to fight or preach or idle as soon as we’ve finished cramming them with our indigestible unserviceable nostrums!’
‘Ah, Ernest, Ernest,’ said Herr Max, nodding his heavy head gravely, ‘you always WILL look too seriously altogether at your social duties. I can’t get other people to do it enough; and I can’t get you not to do it too much entirely. Remember, my dear boy, my pet old saying about a little leaven. You’re doing more good by just unobtrusively holding your own opinions here at Pilbury, and getting in the thin end of the wedge by slowly influencing the minds of a few middle-class boys in your form, than you could possibly be doing by making shoes or weaving clothes for the fractional benefit of general humanity. Don’t be so abstract, Ernest; concrete yourself a little; isn’t it enough that you’re earning a livelihood for your dear little wife here, whom I’m glad to know at last and to receive as a worthy daughter? I may call you, Edie, mayn’t I, my daughter? So this is your school, is it? A pleasant building! And that stern-looking old gentleman yonder, I suppose, is your head master?’
‘Dr. Greatrex,’ said Edie innocently, stepping up to him in her bright elastic fashion, ‘let me introduce you to our friend Herr Schurz, whose name I dare say you know—the German political economist. He’s come down to Pilbury to deliver a lecture here, and we’ve been fortunate enough to put him up at our little lodging.’
The doctor bowed very stiffly. ‘I have heard of Herr Schurz’s reputation already,’ he said with as much diplomatic politeness as he could command, fortunately bethinking himself at the right moment of the exact phrase that would cover the situation without committing him to any further courtesy towards the terrible stranger. ‘Will you excuse my saying, Mrs. Le Breton, that we’re very busy this afternoon, and I want to have a few words with your husband in private immediately? Perhaps you’d better take Herr Schurz on to the downs’ (‘safer there than on the Parade, at any rate,’ he thought to himself quickly), ‘and Le Breton will join you in the combe a little later in the afternoon. I’ll take the fifth form myself, and let him have a holiday with his friend here if he’d like one. Le Breton, will you step this way please?’ And lifting his square cap with stern solemnity to Edie, the doctor disappeared under the porch into the corridor, closely followed by poor frightened and wondering Ernest.
Edie looked at Herr Max in dismay, for she saw clearly there was something serious the matter with the doctor. The old man shook his head sadly. ‘It was very wrong of me,’ he said bitterly: ‘very wrong and very thoughtless. I ought to have remembered it and stopped away. I’m a caput lupinum, it seems, in Pilbury Regis, a sort of moral scarecrow or political leper, to be carefully avoided like some horrid contagion by a respectable, prosperous head-master. I might have known it, I might have known it, Edie; and now I’m afraid by my stupidity I’ve got dear Ernest unintentionally into a pack of troubles. Come on, my child, my poor dear child, come on to the downs, as he told us; I won’t compromise you any longer by being seen with you in the streets, in the decent decorous whited sepulchres of Pilbury Regis.’ And the grey old apostle, with two tears trickling unreproved down his wrinkled cheek, took Edie’s arm tenderly in his, and led her like a father up to the green grassy slope that overlooks the little seaward combe by the nestling village of Nether Pilbury.
Meanwhile, Dr. Greatrex had taken Ernest into the breakfast-room—the study was already monopolised by Mr. Blenkinsopp—and had seated himself nervously, with his hands folded before him, on a straight-backed chair There was a long and awkward pause, for the doctor didn’t care to begin the interview; but at last he sighed deeply and said in a tone of genuine disappointment and difficulty, ‘My dear Le Breton, this is really very unpleasant.’
Ernest looked at him, and said nothing.
‘Do you know,’ the doctor went on kindly after a minute, ‘I really do like you and sympathise with you. But what am I to do after this? I can’t keep you at the school any longer, can I now? I put it to your own common-sense. I’m afraid, Le Breton—it gives me sincere pain to say so—but I’m afraid we must part at the end of the quarter.’