"There was once a man, Montagu, who got into the habit of drinking more than was good for him. How and why he got into that habit does not matter, it was at all events no excuse.
"He grew worse and worse—I don't think he ever looked quite like the people you mention, but I don't know. His brain was going, his friends were ashamed of him, there seemed no place for him in this world, and how should he dare face the next? He was not altogether a stupid man, he knew many things, and best of all that the weakness he encouraged was a fatal weakness, but he seemed to have no strength of mind or body to pull himself together till an angel from heaven took him into her house and helped him, and protected him against himself—till he was cured. It was not done quickly, and God, who gave her her great heart, alone knows what she had to bear in the doing of it."
Mr. Wycherly paused, he felt Montagu's body tremble between his knees, but the child did not speak, and the broken voice went on, "The angel was your aunt, Montagu, and I, I was the man. And the last time I was drunk, your father, not much older than you are now, brought me home."
The clock ticked loudly, and a thrush was singing on the alder tree outside. There was no other sound in the room till Montagu, moved to a sudden passion of tears, flung himself forward into his old friend's arms, clasping him round the neck and exclaiming between his sobs, "What does it matter? Why did you tell me? I didn't think I could love you any more, but I do, I do, I do!"
* * * * *
"And now," said Mr. Wycherly, some five minutes later, wiping Montagu's tear-stained face with a large, clean handkerchief, "we had better begin work, and you may write out the rules concerning the sequence of the tenses, that you learned yesterday."
As Montagu settled himself at the stout, stumpy table, the sun shone in on him with a radiance that made him blink. And Mr. Wycherly looked round the room with the relieved expression of one who, expecting everything to be changed, found it still blessedly the same.
He had played his great stake and won: and never was winner more happily relieved. When Montagu finished his morning's lessons and went downstairs and Mr. Wycherly moved about his room dusting his books and rearranging the piles of papers on his desk, he might have been heard to sing softly and with subdued but joyful emphasis certain stanzas that always concluded with a rollicking "fal la la la la la la."
Presently he went to Montagu's window and looked out toward Arthur's Seat. But he did not see it, for in dreams he walked in his college garden beside the bastioned city wall. "I would like to see the chestnuts in bloom once more," he said softly, "and the perfect grass."
Montagu met his aunt on the staircase as he was going down and she at once noted that his face looked tear-stained and his eyelids were swollen with crying. It was so unheard of a thing that Montagu should cry during his lessons, whatever else he might cry about, that Miss Esperance stopped him to ask anxiously what had happened. The boy crimsoned to the roots of his hair. "It was about the catechism, Aunt Esperance," he said slowly. "I am sorry; I won't be tiresome any more.