I once saw him drowned in tears. It was at the dusk of evening. Charley had come in for it awfully at tea-time, I forget what about, and afterwards disappeared. An hour later, going into Whitney’s room for something Bill asked me to fetch, I came upon Charles Van Rheyn—who also slept there. He was sitting at the foot of his low bed, his cheek leaning on one of his hands, and the tears running down swiftly. One might have thought his heart was broken.
“What is the grievance, Charley?”
“Do not say to them that you saw me,” returned he, dashing away his tears. “I did not expect any of you would come up.”
“Look here, old fellow: I know it’s rather hard lines for you just now. But they don’t mean anything: it is done in sport, not malice. They don’t think, you see, Van Rheyn. You will be sure to live it down.”
“Yes,” he sighed, “I hope I shall. But it is so different here from what it used to be. I had such a happy home; I never had one sorrow when my mother was alive. Nobody cares for me now; nobody is kind to me: it is a great change.”
“Take heart, Charley,” I said, holding out my hand. “I know you will live it down in time.”
Of all the fellows I ever met, I think he was the most grateful for a word of kindness. As he thanked me with a glad look of hope in his eyes, I saw that he had been holding the cross clasped in his palm; for it dropped as he put his hand into mine.
“It helps me to bear,” he said, in a whisper. “My mother, who loved me so, is in heaven; my father has married Mademoiselle Thérèsine de Tocqueville. I have no one now.”
“Your father has not married that Thérèsine de Tocqueville?”
“Why, yes. I had the letter close after dinner.”