do this thing for me, I shall be satisfied. I shall know.'
She was close beside me, holding my arm and looking into my face. That sense of the unreality of things which had haunted me since that moment at the dance came over me with renewed intensity. Life had ceased to be a rather grey, orderly business in which day succeeded day calmly and without event. Its steady stream had broken up into rapids, and I was being whirled away on them.
'Will you do it, Peter? Say you will.'
A voice, presumably mine, answered 'Yes'.
'My dear old boy!'
She pushed me into a chair, and, sitting on the arm of it, laid her hand on mine and became of a sudden wondrously business-like.
'Listen,' she said, 'I'll tell you what we have arranged.'
It was borne in upon me, as she began to do so, that she appeared from the very beginning to have been extremely confident that that essential part of her plans, my consent to the scheme, could be relied upon as something of a certainty. Women have these intuitions.
III
Looking back, I think I can fix the point at which this insane venture I had undertaken ceased to be a distorted dream, from which I vaguely hoped that I might shortly waken, and took shape as a reality of the immediate future. That moment came when I met Mr. Arnold Abney by appointment at his club.
Till then the whole enterprise had been visionary. I gathered from Cynthia that the boy Ogden was shortly to be sent to a preparatory school, and that I was to insinuate myself into this school and, watching my opportunity, to remove him; but it seemed to me that the obstacles to this comparatively lucid scheme were insuperable. In the first place, how were we to discover which of England's million preparatory schools Mr. Ford, or Mr. Mennick for him, would choose? Secondly, the plot which was to carry me triumphantly into this school when—or if—found, struck me as extremely thin. I was to pose, Cynthia told me, as a young man of private means, anxious to learn the business, with a view to setting up a school of his own. The objection to that was, I held, that I obviously did not want to do anything of the sort. I had not the appearance of a man with such an ambition. I had none of the conversation of such a man.
I put it to Cynthia.
'They would find me out in a day,' I assured her. 'A man who wants to set up a school has got to be a pretty brainy sort of fellow. I don't know anything.'
'You got your degree.'
'A degree. At any rate, I've forgotten all I knew.'
'That doesn't matter. You have the money. Anybody with money can start a school, even if he doesn't know a thing. Nobody would think it strange.'
It struck me as a monstrous slur on our educational system, but reflection told me it was true. The proprietor of a preparatory school, if he is a man of wealth, need not be able to teach, any more than an impresario need be able to write plays.
'Well, we'll pass that for the moment,' I said. 'Here's the real difficulty. How are you going to find out the school Mr. Ford has chosen?'
'I have found it out already—or Nesta has. She set a detective to work. It was perfectly easy. Ogden's going to Mr. Abney's. Sanstead House is the name of the place. It's in Hampshire somewhere. Quite a small school, but full of little dukes and earls and things. Lord Mountry's younger brother, Augustus Beckford, is there.'
I had known Lord Mountry and his family well some years ago. I remembered Augustus dimly.
'Mountry? Do you know him? He was up at Oxford with me.'
She seemed interested.
'What kind of a man is he?' she asked.
'Oh, quite a good sort. Rather an ass. I haven't seen him for years.'
'He's a friend of Nesta's. I've only met him once. He is going to be your reference.'
'My what?'
'You will need a reference. At least, I suppose you will. And, anyhow, if you say you know Lord Mountry it will make it simpler for you with Mr. Abney, the brother being at the school.'
'Does Mountry know about this business? Have you told him why I want to go to Abney's?'
'Nesta told him. He thought it was very sporting of you. He will tell Mr. Abney anything we like. By the way, Peter, you will have to pay a premium or something, I suppose. But Nesta will look after all expenses, of course.'
On this point I made my only stand of the afternoon.
'No,' I said; 'it's very kind of her, but this is going to be entirely an amateur performance. I'm doing this for you, and I'll stand the racket. Good heavens! Fancy taking money for a job of this kind!'
She looked at me rather oddly.
'That is very sweet of you, Peter,' she said, after a slight pause. 'Now let's get to work.'
And together we composed the letter which led to my sitting, two days later, in stately conference at his club with Mr. Arnold Abney, M.A., of Sanstead House, Hampshire.
Mr. Abney proved to be a long, suave, benevolent man with an Oxford manner, a high forehead, thin white hands, a cooing intonation, and a general air of hushed importance, as of one in constant communication with the Great. There was in his bearing something of the family solicitor in whom dukes confide, and something of the private chaplain at the Castle.
He gave me the key-note to his character in the first minute of our acquaintanceship. We had seated ourselves at a table in the smoking-room when an elderly gentleman shuffled past, giving a nod in transit. My companion sprang to his feet almost convulsively, returned the salutation, and subsided slowly into his chair again.
'The Duke of Devizes,' he said in an undertone. 'A most able man. Most able. His nephew, Lord Ronald Stokeshaye, was one of my pupils. A charming boy.'
I gathered that the old feudal spirit still glowed to some extent in Mr. Abney's bosom.
We came to business.
'So you wish to be one of us, Mr. Burns, to enter the scholastic profession?'
I tried to look as if I did.
'Well, in certain circumstances, the circumstances in which I—ah—myself, I may say, am situated, there is no more delightful occupation. The work is interesting. There is the constant fascination of seeing these fresh young lives develop—and of helping them to develop—under one's eyes; in any case, I may say, there is the exceptional interest of being in a position to mould the growing minds of lads who will some day take their place among the country's hereditary legislators, that little knot of devoted men who, despite the vulgar attacks of loudmouthed demagogues, still do their share, and more, in the guidance of England's fortunes. Yes.'
He paused. I said I thought so, too.
'You are an Oxford man, Mr. Burns, I think you told me? Ah, I have your letter here. Just so. You were at—ah, yes. A fine college. The Dean is a lifelong friend of mine. Perhaps you knew my late pupil, Lord Rollo?—no, he would have been since your time. A delightful
