CHAPTER XI
ONE'S FOLLY, ANOTHER'S OPPORTUNITY
When Henry's holiday had ended and he stepped once again into the outer darkness that lay beyond Hampton Bagot, the words of his which kept ringing like alarm-bells in the ears of his mother and Dora were: "Flo—a jolly, dashing sort of girl." They had been spoken once only; but that was enough. The essential woman in his mother and sister pounced on them like a cat on a mouse peeping from its hole. They turned the phrase over in their mind, put it away, took it down, pecked at it; tossed it afar, and ran after it forthwith, wishful to forget it, but unable to let it go.
It might mean much, it might mean nothing. With some young men it would not have been an excuse for a second thought, but Henry was not like other young men. He was their Henry—or rather, he had been; for Mrs. Charles now watched him with something of that chagrin which must arise in the maternal bosom of the hen that has mothered a brood of ducklings when she sees them going where she cannot follow. As for Dora, she doubted if she had ever known this new Henry who spoke easily of "Flo—a jolly, dashing sort of girl."
The phrase, careless and colloquial though it was, had all the potency of the biograph to project before the mind's eye of Mrs. Charles and of Dora pictures of a young woman who stepped out, smirked, disappeared, and came again in a new dress to do many things they disliked.
But it was not the same young woman that both of them saw, and neither of them mentioned her thoughts to the other. The figure which flashed frequently on to the screen of his mother's thoughts was that of a bold, designing creature—dangerously attractive—whose purpose was to entrap her Henry. Dora recognised her dressed for another part, in which she displayed a tendency to giggle and cast flattering eyes on a gullible young man.
Edward John saw nothing of this figure in the fairy drama of his mind, where Henry always moved close to the footlights and left the other characters in the unillumined region of the stage.
Henry had renewed his acquaintance with the Rev. Godfrey Needham, whom he found still swimming, though with weakening stroke, in his sea of scrappy scholarship, rising manfully some times on a fine billow of Latin, but spluttering a moment later when he breasted a frothy wave of French.
"Ah, my dear Henry, toil on, plod on, and remember always that Hoffnung ist der Wanderstab von der Wiege bis zum grabe, which, as you have no German, means that hope is the pilgrim's staff from the cradle to the grave. We are all pilgrims—always pilgrims—you in the sunshine, I in the frost of life."