VII.
CHARLES VAN RHEYN.
I shall always say it was a singular thing that I should chance to go back to school that time the day before the quarter opened. Singular, because I heard and saw more of the boy I am going to tell of than I otherwise might have heard and seen. I was present at his arrival; and I was present at his—well, let us say, at his departure.
The midsummer holidays were nearly up when Hugh was taken ill. Duffham was uncertain what the illness was going to be: so he pitched upon scarlatina. Upon that, the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley packed me back to school there and then. Not from any fear of my taking it; I had had it, and Tod too (and both of us were well again, I recollect, within a week or so); but if once the disease had really shown itself, Dr. Frost would not have liked us to return lest we might convey it to the school. Tod was in Gloucestershire. He was written to, and told not to return home, but to go straight to school.
Dr. Frost was surprised to see me. He said my coming back was quite right; and I am sure he tried to put me at ease and make me comfortable. Not a single boy had stayed the holidays that summer, and the doctor and I were alone. The school would open the following day, when masters and boys were alike expected to return. I had dinner with the doctor—he usually dined late during the holidays—and we played at chess afterwards.
Breakfast was just over the next morning when the letters came in. Amongst them was one from France, bearing the Rouen post-mark. Now the doctor, learned man though he was in classics and what not, could make nothing of French. Carrying the letter to the window, turning its pages over and back again, and staring at it through his spectacles, he at last brought it to me.
“You are a pretty good French scholar, Johnny; can you read this? I can’t, I confess. But the paper’s so thin, and the ink so pale, and the writing so small, I could scarcely see it if it were English.”
And I had to go over it twice before I could make it out. As he said, the ink was pale, and it was a frightfully small and cramped handwriting. The letter was dated Rouen, and was signed curtly, “Van Rheyn,” French fashion, without the writer’s Christian name. Monsieur Van Rheyn wrote to say that he was about to consign his son, Charles Aberleigh Van Rheyn, to Dr. Frost’s care, and that he would arrive quickly after the letter, having already departed on his journey under the charge of a “gentilhomme Anglais.” It added that the son would bring credentials with him; that he spoke English, and was of partly English descent, through his mother, the late Madame Van Rheyn, née Aberleigh.
“Rather a summary way of consigning a pupil to my charge,” remarked Dr. Frost. “Aberleigh?—Aberleigh?” he continued, as if trying to recollect something, and bending his spectacles over the letter. “She must have been one of the Aberleighs of Upton, I should think. Perhaps Hall knows? I have heard her mention the Aberleighs.”
Ringing the bell, the housekeeper was sent for. Dr. Frost asked her what she knew of the Aberleighs of Upton.