LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 255, 6 April 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CHAELES VON RHEYN. {From the Argosy.) (Continued.) ' Oh dear ! What was the cause ?' * Papa did not tell me. He and Monsieur Petit talked about the heart. They said it was feeble. Oh, how we cried, papa and I ! He cried for many clays. I hope he will not bring home Theresine de Tocqueville !' The dinner-bell rang out, and we went down. Dr Frost was putting up the letter, which old Fontaine had been translating to him. It was full of directions about Van Rheyn s health. What he was to do, and what not to do. Monsieur Van Rheyn said his son was noi strong : he was not to be allowed to do the gymnastics, or the ' boxing,' or to play at rough games, or take violent exercise of any kind; and a small glass of milk was to be given him at night when he went to bed. If the clothes sent over with him were not suitable to the school, or in accordance with the English mode, Dr Frost was prayed to be at the trouble of procuring him new ones. He was to be brought well on in all the studies necessary to constitute the ' gentilhomme,' and especially in the speaking and reading of English. Dr Frost directed his spectacles to Charles Van Rheyn, examining him from top to toe. The round, red, freckled face, and the strongly-built frame appeared to give nothing but indications of robust health. The doctor questioned him in what way he was not strong —whether he was subject to a cough, or to want of appetite, and other such items. But Van Rheyn seemed to know nothing about it, and said he had always been quite well. ' The father fears we should make him into a muscular Englishman, hence these restrictions,' thought Dr Frost. In the afternoon, the fellows began to come in thick and threefold. To describe their amazement when they saw Van Rheyn is quite beyond me. It seemed that they never meant to leave off staring. Some of them gave him a little chaff, even that first night. Van Rheyn was very shy and silent. Though entirely at his ease with me alone, the numbers seemed to _ daunt him; to strike him and his courage into himself. * * * *

On the whole, Van Rheyn was not liked. Once let a school set itself against a new fellow at first—and Van Kheyn's queer appearance had done that much for him—it takes a long while to bring matters round—if they ever are brought round. When his hair began to sprout, it looked exactly like pig's bristles. And that was the first nickname he got : Bristles. The Doctor had soon changed his style of coat, and he wore jackets, as we did. Charles Van Rheyn did not seem inclined to grow sociable. Shy and silent as he had shown himself to them that first evening, so he remained. True, he got no encouragement to be otherwise. The boys threw ridicule on him continually, making him into an almost perpetual butt. Any mistake in the pronunciation of an English word—Van Rheyn never made a mistake as to its meaning—they hissed, and groaned and shouted at. I shall never forget one. Being asked when that Indian lot intended to arrive (meaning the Scotts), and whether they would make the voyage 1 in a palanquin (for the boys plied him with ridiculous questions purposely), he answered ' Not in a palanquin, but in a sheep—meaning ship. The uproar at that was so vast, that some of the masters looked in to know what was up. Van Rheyn, too, was next door to helpless. He did not climb, or kick, or even run. Had never been used to do it, he said. What had he been used to do then, he was asked, one day. Oh, he sat down in the garden with his mother: and since her death with Aunt Claribelle; andhadgone for an airing in the carriage three times a week. Was he a girl ? roared the boys. Did he 30* patchwork? Not now; he had left off sewing when he was nine, answered Van Rheyn innocently, unconscious of the storm of mockery the avowal would invoke. ' Pray, were you born a young lady?—or did they change you at nurse?' shouted Jessup, who would have kept the ball rolling till midnight. ' I say, you fellows, he has come to the wrong school: we don't take in girls, we don't. Let me introduce one to you—Miss Charlotte.' And, so poor Charley Vail Rheyn got that nickname as well as the othex- 3 Miss Charlotte.

Latin was a stumbling-block. Van Kheyn had learnt it according to French rules and French pronunciation, and he could not readily get into our English mode. ' It Avas bad enough to have to teach a stupid boy Latin,' grumbled the under Latin master (under Dr Frost), ' but worse to have to unteach him.' Van Kheyn was not stupid, however; if he seemed so, it was because his new life was so strange to him. One day the boys dared him to a game at leap-frog. Some of them were at it in the yard, and Vac Rheyn stood by, looking, on. ' Why don'tyou go iaiorit fsuddenly asked

Parker, giving him a push. ' There is to be a round or two at boxing this evening, why don't you go in for that ?' ' They never would let me do these rough things,' replied Van Rheyn, who invariably answered all the chaffing civilly and patiently. 'Who wouldn't ? Who's they?' 'My mother and my Aunt Claribelle. Also, when I was starting to come here, my father said to me I was not to exert myself,' 'All right, Miss Charlotte; but why on earth did not the respectable old gentleman send you over in petticoats ? Never was such a thing heard of, you know, as for a girl to wear a coat and pantaloons. It's not decent, Miss Charlotte; it's not modest.' ' Why you say all this to me for ever ? I am not a girl,' said poor Van Rheyn. 'No ? don't tell fibs. If you were not a girl you'd go in for our games. Come ! Leap-frog's especially edifying, I assure you: expands the mind. Won't you try it?' Well, the upshot was, that they dared him to try it. A dozen, or so, set on at him like so many wolves. What with that, and what with their stinging ridicule, poor Van Rheyn was goaded out of his obedience to home orders, and did try it. After a few tumbles, he went over very tolerably, and did not dislike it at all.

'lf I can only learn to do as the rest of you do, perhaps they will let me alone,' he said to me that same night, a kind of hopeful eagerness in his bright grey eyes. And gradually he did learn to go in for most of the games: running, leaping, and climbing. One thing he absolutely refused—wrestling. ' Why should gentlemen, who were to be gentlemen all their lives, fight each other?' he asked: ' they would not have to fight as men: it was not kind; it was unpleasant; it was hard.' The boys were hard on him for saying it, mocking him frightfully; but they could not shake him there. He was of right blue blood; never caving in before them, as Bill Whitney expressed it one day; he only was quiet, and endured. Whether the native Rouen air is favourable to freckles, I don't know; but those on Van Rheyn's face gradually disappeared over here. The complexion lost its redness also, becoming fresh and fair, with a brightish colour on the cheeks. The hair, getting longer, turned out to be of a smooth brown; altogether he was good-looking. ' I say, Johnny, do you know Van Rheyn's ill?' The words came from William Whitney. He whispered them in my ear as we stood up for prayers before breakfast. The school had opened about a month then. ' What's the matter with him ?' 'Don't know,' answered Bill. 'He is staying in bed.' Cribbing some minutes from breakfast, I went up to his room. Van Rheyn looked pale as he lay, and said he had been sick. Hall declared it was nothing but a sick headache, and Van Rheyn thought she might be right. ' Yes, the migraine,' he assented. ' I have had it before.' * Well, look here, Charley,' I said, after thinking a minute ; 'if I were you I'd not say as much to any of them. Let them suppose you are regularly ill. You'll never hear the last of it if they know you lie in bed for only a headache.' ' But I cannot get up,' he answered : *my head is in much pain. And I have the fever. Feel my hand.' The hand he put out was burning hot. But that went with sick headaches sometimes. It turned out to be nothing worse, for he Avas weU on the morrow; and I need not have mentioned it at all, but for a little matter that arose out of the day's illness. Going up again to see him after school in the afternoon, I found Hall standing over the bed with a cup of tea, and a most severe, not to say horror-struck, expression of countenance, as she gazed down on him, staring at something with all her eyes. Van Rheyn was asleep, and looked better; his face flushed and moist, his brown hair, still uncommonly short, compared with ours, pushed back. He lay with his hands outside the bed, as if the clothes were heavy—the weather was fiery hot—and one of them was clasping something that hung round his neck by a narrow blue ribbon, and seemed to have been pulled by him out of the opening in his night shirt. Hall's quick eyes had detected what it was—a very small cross (hardly two inches long), on which was carved a figure of the Saviour, all in gold. Now Hall had doubtless many virtues. One of them was docking us boys of our due allowance of sugar. But she had also many prejudices. And of all her prejudices none was stronger than her abhorrence of idols, as exemplified in carved images and Chinese gods.

'Do you see that, Master Ludlow?' she whispered to me, pointing her figer straight at the little cross of gold. • It's no better than a relict of paganisum.' Stooping down, she gently drew the cross out of Van Rheyn's hot, clasped hand, and let it lie on the sheet. A beautiful little cross it was; the face of the Saviour; an exquisite face in its expression of suffering and patient humility; one that you might have gazed upon and been tli6 better for. How they could have so perfectly carved tha thing so small, I did not know. 'He must be one of them worshipping Romanics,' said Hall, snatching her fingers from the cross as if she thought it would giv« her the ague. 'Or else a pagan ! And he goes every week and says his commandments in class, a-standing up afore all the school! I wonder what the doctor '

Hall cut short her complaints. Van Rheyn had suddenly opened his eyea and was looking up at us. ' I find myself better,' he said with a smile. ' The pain has most departed." ' We wasn't thinking of pain and headaches, Master Van Rheyn, but of this,' said Hall resentfully, taking the spoon out of the saucer and pointing it to the gold cross. Van Eheyn raised his head from the pillow to look. 1 Oh, it is my little cross, he said, holding it out to our view as far as the ribbon allowed, and speaking with perfect ease and Unconcern. 'ls it not beautiful V ' Very,' I said, stooping over it. *Be you of the Romanic sex V demanded Hall of Van Rheyn. 'Am I What is it Mistress Hall would ask ?' he broke off to question me, in the midst of my burst of laughter. ' She asks if you are a Roman Catholic, Van Rheyn.' 'But no. Why do you think that?' he added to her. *My father is Roman Catholic : I am Protestant, like my mother.' ' Then why on earth, sir, do you wear such. a idol as that ?' returned Hall. (To be continued.)