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"Look here," he said, "I should like to tell you the truth as much of it as is necessary. I happen to know that the young lady with whom you saw me talking this morning, and who is a friend of the Baroness de Sturm's, is suspected in certain quarters of being implicated in a criminal affair which took place recently in London. I myself, in a lesser degree, am also under suspicion.
In the absence of Victor, Sturm's eyes were ever ironic, his bows and leers mocking, his speeches flavoured with clumsy sarcasm; from which it resulted that the girl never quite forgot the impression which he had managed to convey in those few moments of their first encounter, that Sturm knew something she ought to know but didn't, and was meanly jeering at her in his sleeve.
Very frequently one of us would be summoned to my lady to read aloud to her, as she sat in her small withdrawing-room, some improving book. It was generally Mr. Addison's "Spectator;" but one year, I remember, we had to read "Sturm's Reflections" translated from a German book Mrs. Medlicott recommended. Mr.
Chuckle and smirk both were indescribably odious, reminding Sofia of the creature Sturm; he had a laugh like that for her, on the rare occasion when chance propinquity encouraged the Boche to begin one of his uncouth essays in flirtation. Sturm's attitude, in truth, perplexed Sofia to exasperation; that is to say, as much as it offended her.
Pressing the message into Sturm's hand, he rested wearily against the casing of the door, his body shaken by laboured breathing, and while Sturm, with an exclamation of excitement, ripped open the envelope surveyed the dark and rain-wet street out of the corners of his eyes. Across the way a slinking shadow left the sidewalk and blended indistinguishably with the crowded shadows of an areaway.
It will be well to relieve it occasionally with a little Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations, or Sturm's Reflections for Every Day in the Year, or Don Juan, or Ward's History of Stoke-upon-Trent. Isaac D'Israeli says, "Mr Maurice, in his animated memoirs, has recently acquainted us with a fact which may be deemed important in the life of a literary man.
Wasting no more time on the author of the call, he hung up, returned the telephone to its place of concealment, and helped himself to a cigarette before deigning to acknowledge Sturm's persistent stare. Then, elevating his eyebrows in mild impatience, he made the laconic announcement: "Eleven." Sturm's mouth twitched nervously, his eyes burned with a keener fire. "Coming here? To-night?" "Yes."
Fear not for him. He was the first to inform. He was at Master von Sturm's by eight this morning, elbowing half a dozen others, all burning and shining lights of the famous Society of the White Wolf. You are the hero of the day down there, it seems." "And lo! here I am flouted by a stripling girl, and set to carry water by the hour in the broiling sun!" I said within myself.
I am going down to Master von Sturm's house; also my gold chain and bonnet of blue velvet with the golden feather in it which I won at the last arrow-shooting." I saw the fluttering of the fan falter and stop. A light foot went pattering up the stairway and a door slammed in the tower. Then I laughed, like the vain, silly boy I was.
Yet had Ascham not been a friend of Sturm's, it might not have been heard of in England as early as 1570, when the Scholemaster was published. Ascham says it is worthy of study, but shows no great familiarity with the text. The De sublimitate of pseudo-Longinus has a similar history in England.
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