Mary, Mary, quite contrary,How does your garden grow?
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,How does your garden grow?
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,How does your garden grow?
Thank you marm, kindly, but frogs ’as eaten me out of ’ouse and ’ome an’ garden too! Hor—hor—hor!”
And Rattling Jack began to indulge in those deep, uncouth sounds which he produced as laughter. Always deeply impressed by his own wit, he likedto appreciate any joke he thought he had perpetrated to its full extent and flavour, and Boy waited patiently till his ‘hor—hor—hor’ decreased in volume and died away in a snuffle.
“Yes, I’m sure you’re quite right about France,” he then said timidly—“because you have been there. But you see, I can’t help it. I shall have to go there if my mother sends me!”
Rattling Jack laid a big hand on Boy’s small shoulder.
“Yes, I suppose you’ll hev to do as yer mother bids. I don’t know yer mother, and don’t want to. If I did, mebbe I’d give her a bit o’ my mind. What I thinks is this—that the ways of natur are best, and in the ways of natur mothers don’t interfere when they’ve done their nussin’. See!” And he stretched out an arm with a roughly eloquent gesture towards the ocean, where the seagulls screamed and flew—“They birds has to take the rough-and-tumble of the storm and the sea. Born and bred in a hole of the cliffs, they’ve got to larn to fly—and larn they do,—and when they flies, they flies their own way—they takes it and they keeps it! And so with all birds and animals ’cept man. Man’s the idiot of the universe, always a worritin’ of himself. He wants his chillun to be just like himself, and a mussiful Lord makes ’em as different as chalk from cheese. For which let’s be joyful! And when they wants to go their own way, man, the idiot, pulls ’em back,and says, ‘you shan’t!’ An’ then it’s more than likely old Nick steps in an’ says, ‘you shall!’ And away they go, straight to the devil! When I was a boy I took my own way—and wal!—here I am!”
“And do you like yourself now?” asked Boy respectfully.
“Like myself? Of course I like myself! I ain’t got no one else to like me, so why shouldn’t I like myself?”
“Ilike you,” said Boy,—“I always have liked you! I think you so—so clever!”
Rattling Jack was not often shaken from the cynical attitude he chose to assume towards all mankind, but this innocent remark certainly touched him in a weak spot. He was not insensible to flattery,—and the evident fact that Boy did not intend to flatter, but spoke with the simple conviction of his own heart, moved the old seafarer to a sudden stirring of more fervent feeling than was customary with him.
“Ye’ve a good deal o’ sense for a little chap,” he observed condescendingly, “and I don’t mind sayin’ that I’ve rather took to ye. Now, look’y ’ere! If ye don’t want to go to school in France, why don’t you do as they seagulls do, and fly away?”
“Fly away!” repeated Boy,—“you mean, run away!”
“Fly or run, it’s all the same, bless yer ’eart!” saidJack. “Get out of yer little hole in the rock and spread yer wings to the sun and the breeze! Hain’t yer got any friends?”
“Yes, I’ve one very good friend,” said Boy, thinking of Miss Letty. “She’s a very kind lady, and I’m going to write to her. But you see if I ran away I should be brought back again—I’m not very old—I’m not quite ten yet.”
“Not quite ten, ain’t yer!” said Jack, suddenly becoming conscious of the extreme youth and helplessness of his small friend. “That ain’t much, for sartin! Wal!—look ’ere,—I’ll tell you what I’ll do for ye—I’ll give ye a tiger’s tooth!”
Boy stared.
“Will you?” he said. “What’s it for?”
“A tiger’s tooth,” said Jack solemnly, “takes the owner through the forests o’ difficulty. A tiger’s tooth protects him agin his enemies! Mark that! Take it with ye to France! A tiger’s tooth bites traitors! A tiger’s tooth! Lord love ye!—a’most anythin’ can be done with a tiger’s tooth! Look at it!”
He fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a shining white object of pointed ivory.
“That come from Bengal,” he said. “An’ ’e as give it to me was what they call a ma-geesan! He could swallow sarpints and fire quite promiskus-like,—seemed his nat’ral food. An’ ’e sed to me, ses ’e, ‘’Ere’s a tiger’s tooth for ye,—keep it in mem’ry ofthe world-famous Oriental conjurer Garoo-Garee!’ And then ’e guv a screech an’ was gone!”
Boy listened to this interesting narrative with awe. “What a wonderful man!” he said. “And his name was Garoo-Garee!”
“Just that!” answered Jack. “Will ye have the tooth?”
“Indeed I will!” said Boy gratefully, taking the mystic talisman out of Jack’s horny palm—“you’re awfully good to me! I’m ever so much obliged! And if I have to go to France, I will come and see you directly I get back.”
Rattling Jack shouldered his basket again slowly, and with difficulty.
“No, ye won’t!” he said dismally. “No, ye won’t think no more o’ me among they Frenchies. God bless my ’eart! An’ not yet ten ye ain’t! Wal, good-bye to ye! I’ll not be seein’ ye agin in this mortal world,—so I’ll just think o’ ye kindly, as a little chap wot’s dead!”
Boy’s heart sank, and his young blood seemed to grow cold.
“Oh, don’t do that, Jack!” he cried; “don’t do that!”
“I must,” said Jack with dreary gravity, looking a melancholy figure enough as he stood on the wet sand, with the gray storm-clouds scudding overhead, and the wind tossing his scanty white locks of hair. “For when a child is a child he’s one thing—andwhen he ain’t, he’s another. First there’s a baby—then there ain’t no baby, but a child,—and the baby’s gone. Then by-and-by there ain’t no child, but a boy—and the child’s gone. Then, afore ye can so much as look round, the boy’s gone, and there’s a man. Argyfyin’ my way, ye see baby, child, boy is all gone, which is to say, dead—for what’s bein’ dead but gone, and what’s bein’ gone but dead? And only the man is left, which is generally a poor piece of work. There’s wise folk writin’ in the newspapers wot calls it ever-lotion, but wot it is the lotion’s good for, God only knows. Anyhow I’ve seen a darned sight many more decent chillun than I have men. Which it proves that the chillun is dead. But my talk is too deep for ye—I kin see that! Ye poor little skinny white-faced chap,—ye can’t be expected to understan’ Feel Osophy.”
“No,” said Boy humbly, “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. But I hope you’ll think of me just as if I were here,—you see you have given me the tiger’s tooth—and I shall never forget you!”
“M’appen the tooth will do somethin’ in the way of nippin’ the memory,” said Jack thoughtfully,—“mebbe so! Good-bye t’yer! There’s a cloud just a-goin’ to burst in the sky, and ye’ll be drenched to the skin afore ye knows where ye are!” and he turned up his quaint old physiognomy to the darkening heavens, from which already big drops of rain were beginning to fall. “Run ’ome, little ’un! Run ’ome! Thatmother o’ yourn ’ll be down on ye if ye wets yer clothes. Shake ’ands?” For Boy had timidly extended his small hand. “Sartinly!” And the old man grasped the tiny child fingers within his own rough dirty ones. “For it’s a long good-bye! Sartin sure of that I am! Don’t let ’em make a frog of ye out there in France, if ye can ’elp it. Good-bye! I’ll just think o’ ye as if ye were dead!”
The rain now began to fall in heavy earnest, and Boy could not stop to protest further against this obstinate final statement of his seafaring friend. He put the tiger’s tooth in his pocket, smiled, lifted his cap, and ran, a little light figure flying across the sand, some of his curls escaping loose and gleaming like the sunshine that was now lacking in the sky. Rattling Jack stood still and watched him go, heedless of the rain that began to drift in sweeping gusts round and round him. The sea uprose and lashed the flat shore with fringes of yellow foam, angrily murmuring and snarling like some savage beast of prey. But Jack heard nothing, or if he heard, he did not heed. Equally he saw nothing, but that small child figure racing through the rain over the glistening sand, till at the corner of an old jetty where the mists of the land and sea hung low like a curtain, it turned and disappeared.
“There ye go!” said the old man, talking to himself—“there ye go—away for ever! An’ the rain fallin’, and the mists a-gatherin’. There ye go! Theway of all the chillun—a bit of sunshine, and then the mist and the rain! There ye go—and good-bye to ye! Ye wor a nice little chap—quiet, yet speerety-like—a nice little chap ye wor, an’ I’ll think o’ ye kindly, as if the good God had took ye,—just as if ye wor dead!”
Thenext day Boy shut himself up in his own little bedroom and wrote a letter to Miss Leslie. He was a long time about it, and he took infinite pains to spell carefully. The result of his anxious thought and trouble was the following epistle:—
“My deer frend miss LettyI am gowin to skool nex week you will bee sory to heer it is not a skool in England like Alister Macdonald it is in France ware I have never bin I am sory to tell you I do not like to go thare. Mother expecs me to speek French but I am sory to tell you I do not feel I shall speek very quikly the new langwige if you cood do enny thing to safe me from the skool in France I wood be glad I am afrade Mother will send me before you can cum my close are been packt and I am to bee put on boord a ship to the Captain who is to give me to the skool I am very sory and cannot help cryin if I cood run away wood you meet me enny ware I wood like to see you I think of deer Skotland and Alister and Majer Desmond, pleese give my luv and say I have to goto skool in France Alister will be very sory as he alwas sade he wood fite the french the plase is called Noirville (Boy wrote this very roundly and carefully) in Brittany and the master takes boys who are cheep mother says I am afrade I shal not see you deer miss Letty I am your lovin frendBoy.”
“My deer frend miss Letty
I am gowin to skool nex week you will bee sory to heer it is not a skool in England like Alister Macdonald it is in France ware I have never bin I am sory to tell you I do not like to go thare. Mother expecs me to speek French but I am sory to tell you I do not feel I shall speek very quikly the new langwige if you cood do enny thing to safe me from the skool in France I wood be glad I am afrade Mother will send me before you can cum my close are been packt and I am to bee put on boord a ship to the Captain who is to give me to the skool I am very sory and cannot help cryin if I cood run away wood you meet me enny ware I wood like to see you I think of deer Skotland and Alister and Majer Desmond, pleese give my luv and say I have to goto skool in France Alister will be very sory as he alwas sade he wood fite the french the plase is called Noirville (Boy wrote this very roundly and carefully) in Brittany and the master takes boys who are cheep mother says I am afrade I shal not see you deer miss Letty I am your lovin frend
Boy.”
This letter finished, and put in an envelope, Boy carefully addressed it in a very big round hand to Miss Leslie at her house in Hans Place, and then went down to his mother to ask for a penny stamp.
“Whom have you been writing to?” she demanded, with a touch of suspicion.
For one instant Boy was tempted to answer,—“To Alister McDonald,” but he resisted the temptation bravely. He had promised his dear Miss Letty never to tell a lie again after the fatal affair with the Major’s gun. So he answered frankly,—
“To Miss Letty.”
His mother dived into the depths of a capacious pocket, and opening a very bulgy purse, produced the required stamp.
“There you are,” she said graciously; “I hope you have written her a nice letter.”
“Oh yes, mother!”
“Well, leave it outside on the hall table. I have some letters to write too, and they can all go together.”
Boy obeyed. He would have liked to go and post his letter himself, but his conscience told him that were he to ask to do so it would look like doubting his mother’s integrity.
“It will be all right!” he said to himself, though there was just a little sinking at his heart as he placed it where he had been told. “Mother wouldn’t touch it.”
He hung about for a while, looking at the precious epistle, which to him involved so much, till, hearing his little shuffling feet in the hall, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir grew impatient.
“Boy!” she called.
“Yes, mother.”
“Come here. I want you to wind off this worsted for me.”
Boy went to her, and meekly accepted the thick hank of ugly grey wool she offered him, and stretching it out, as was his custom when he had to do this kind of duty, on the back of a chair, he set to work patiently winding it off into a ball. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir meanwhile wrote two letters, and sealed them in their respective envelopes. Then she took them out into the hall, and Boy heard her call the servant to take all the letters to the post.
“Is mine gone too?” he asked, as she re-entered.
“Of course! Do you think your mother could be so careless as to forget it?”
Boy said nothing, but went on winding the greyworsted till he had made a neat, soft, big round of it,—then he handed it to his mother and ventured to kiss her cheek.
“My own Boy!” she said gushingly. “You do love me, don’t you?”
“Yes, mother. Only—only——-”
“Only what?”
“I wish you were sending me to a school in England. I don’t like going to France!”
“That’s because you don’t know what is for your good, dear!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, with a magnificent air. “Trust to mother! Mother always does everything for the best!”
Boy made no answer, but presently went away to his room and took down a book in large print, which Major Desmond had given him as a parting gift, entitled “Our Country’s Heroes,”—in which there were some very thrilling pictures of young men, almost boys, fighting, escaping from prison, struggling with wild beasts, climbing Alpine heights, swimming tempestuous seas, and generally distinguishing themselves,—and as he turned the pages, he wondered wistfully whether he would ever be like any one of them. He feared not; there was no encouragement held out to him to be a “country’s hero.”
“Alister McDonald will be doing great things some day, I’m sure!” he said to himself. “He’s full of most wonderful ideas about killing all the country’s enemies!”
And while he thus pored over his book and thought, his mother opened his poor little letter to Miss Leslie (“For it is a mother’s duty!” she said to herself, to excuse her dishonourable act to a trusting child) and read every word two or three times over. She had of course never intended it to be posted, and when she had gone into the hall to apparently give the servant all the letters for the post, she had kept it back and quietly slipped it into her pocket. As she now perused it, her whole large figure swelled with the “noble matron’s” indignation.
“What a wicked old thing that Leslie woman must be!” she exclaimed,—“A perfect mischief-maker!—she has poisoned my son’s mind! He would evidently run away to her if he could! How fortunate it is that I have intercepted this letter! Not that it matters much, because of course I should have soon put a stop to the old maid’s nonsense, and Boy’s too. Stupid child! But it isn’t his fault, poor darling—it’s the fault of that conceited old thing who has put all these foolish notions into his head. Really, a mother has to be always on her guard!”
With which sagacious observation, she posted Boy’s letter to his “deer frend” into the fire. Then, satisfied that she “had done a mother’s duty,” she called Boy, and asked him if he would like a game of draughts with her. He nodded a glad assent, and as he brought out the board and set the pieces, he looked so bright and animated that his mother“swelled” towards him as it were, and shed one of her slowest, fattest smiles upon him.
“I shall be very lonely without you, Boy!” she said plaintively,—“No nice little son to play draughts with me! But it’s for your good, I know, and a mother must always sacrifice herself for her children.”
She sighed in bland self-admiration, but Boy, not being able to argue on the duties of mothers, had already made his first move on the draught-board, so she had to resign herself with as good a grace as she could to the game, which she had only proposed by way of aruseto take Boy’s mind off any further possibility of its dwelling on the subject of his letter to Miss Leslie.
But Boy thought of it all the same, though he said nothing. Day after day he waited anxiously for a reply,—and when none came, his little face grew paler, and his brows contracted the habit of frowning. One morning when his mother was just opening some letters of her own which had arrived by the first delivery, she looked up and said smilingly,—
“Have you heard from Miss Letty yet, Boy?”
Boy looked at her with a straight fearless glance, which, had she been a little less mean and treacherous and poor of soul than she was, might have made her wince.
“No, mother!”
“What a shame!” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir settled herself more comfortably in her chair, still smiling.“But you see, she’s getting rather an old lady now, and she can hardly be expected to write to little boys!”
“She promised me she would always answer me if I wrote to her!” said Boy, his small mouth set and stern, and his eyes looking quite tired and pained—“Shepromised!”
“And you believed her?” his mother queried carelessly. “Poor dear child! Yes, of course! So nice of you! But you will have to learn, dear, as you grow older, that people don’t always keep their promises!”
“I can’t think Miss Letty would ever break hers!” said Boy slowly.
His mother laughed unkindly.
“What a touching faith you have in her!” she said, and laughed again. “Such a little boy!—and quite in love with such an old lady! Oh, go along, Boy! Don’t be silly! You really are too absurd! Miss Letty has got quite enough to do with counting up her money and looking after the interest of it, without bothering to write toyou!”
“Is she very rich?” asked Boy suddenly.
“Rich? I should think she is indeed! Do you know”—and she smiled blandly—“she wanted to give you all the money she has got!”
“Me!” exclaimed Boy, and stared breathlessly.
“Yes—you! But then you would have had to go away from me, and be likeherson instead ofmine!That would have been quite dreadful! And of course I could not have allowed such a thing!”
Boy said not a word. He grew a little paler still, but was quite silent.
“And then,” went on Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir graciously, “you would have had all her thousands of pounds when she was dead!”
This word broke up Boy’s unnatural composure.
“Dead! When she was dead! Oh, I don’t want Miss Letty to die!” he said, the colour rushing up hotly to his brows. “No—no! I don’t want any money—— I wouldn’t have it—not if Miss Letty had to die first! I would rather die myself!”
And unable to control his rising emotion, he suddenly burst into tears and ran out of the room.
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir gazed after him helplessly. Then rising, she paced the room slowly to and fro with elephantine tread, and sniffed the air portentously.
“He’s getting quite unmanageable! I’m thankful—yes, thankful that I have decided on that school in Brittany, and the sooner he goes the better!”
Meanwhile Boy was crying quietly, and by himself, in his room.
“Oh, Miss Letty!” he sobbed—“Dear Miss Letty! You wanted me to beyourBoy! Oh, I wish I was!—I wish I was! Not for all the money—I don’t want any—but I wantyou! I wantyou, Miss Letty! Oh, I do want you so much! I do want you!”
Alas, the Fates, so often invincibly obstinate in their particular way of weaving the web of a life, and sometimes tangling the threads as they go, were apparently set dead against any change for the better occurring in this child’s destiny,—and no “occult” force of sound, or other form of spirit communication was vouchsafed to Miss Letty concerning the troubles and difficulties of her little friend. And the day came when Boy, to quote the ancient ballad of Lord Bateman,
“Shipped himself all aboard of a ship,Some foreign countries for to see.”
“Shipped himself all aboard of a ship,Some foreign countries for to see.”
“Shipped himself all aboard of a ship,Some foreign countries for to see.”
A solitary little figure, he stood on the deck where his mother had left him after “seeing him off,” somewhat doubtfully received and considered by the captain of the said ship as a sort of package, labelled, and needing speedy transit—and as he saw the white cliffs of England recede, his heart was heavy as lead, and his soul full of bitterness. Not for his mother or father were his farewells—but for Miss Letty. To her he sent his parting thoughts,—to her he silently breathed the last love, the last tenderness of his innocent childhood. For his trust in her remained unbroken. She would have answered his letter, he knew, if she had received it. He felt instinctively certain that it had never been posted,—and when once this idea took root in his young mind, it bore its natural fruit,—a deep distrust, which was almost scorn,of the mother who could stoop so low as to deliberately deceive him. The incident made such a strong impression upon him, that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it “had aged him.” He had never been able to respect his father,—and now he was moved to despise his mother. Hence his good-byes to her were cold and lifeless—the kiss he gave her was a mere touch—his little hand lay limply in hers—while she, in her sublime self-conceit, thought that this numb and frozen attitude of the child was the result of his grief at parting from her.
“See that he has a good dinner, please!” she said to the captain, in whose care she had placed him, heaving her large bosom expansively as she spoke—“Poor, dear little fellow! He’s so terribly cut up at parting from me,—we have been such friends—such close companions! You will look after him, won’t you?”
The captain grunted a brief assent, thinking what a remarkably stout woman she was,—and Boy smiled—such a pale, cold little smile—the first touch of the sarcasm that was destined to make his pretty mouth into such a hard line in a few more years. And the ship plunged away from the English shore through the grey-green foam-crested billows—and Boy leaned over the deck rail, and watched the churning water under the paddle-wheels, and the sea-birds swooping down in search of stray scraps of food thrown out from the ship’s kitchen,—and he remembered what Rattling Jack had said about them—“Born andbred in a hole of the cliffs, they’ve got to larn to fly—and larn they do—and when they flies, they flies their own way—they takes it an’ they keeps it!”
And moved by an odd sense of the injurious treatment of an untoward Fate, he took out from his pocket the precious “tiger’s tooth” the old sailor had given him as a talisman, and dropped it in the waves.
“For it’s evidently not a bit of use,” he said to himself; “Jack said it would take me through difficulties, but it hasn’t. It has been no help to me at all. It’s a humbug, like—like most things. And as for the sea-gulls, I’m sure the world is a better place for birds than boys. I wish I’d never been a boy.”
But youthful wishes, like youthful hopes, are often vain, and doomed to annihilation through the cross-currents of opposing influences; and heedless of Boy’s aching little heart, so full of crushed aspirations and disappointments, the ship went on and bore him relentlessly away from everything in which he had the faintest interest. And while he was on his journey to France, his estimable “Muzzy” sat down at home, and in high satisfaction and importance, wrote two letters. One was to the Master of the “skool” at Noirville, as follows:—
“Dear Sir,My son has left England to-day so that he will arrive in time to meet your representative at St. Malo, where I understand you will send to receivehim. I have no further instructions respecting his education to give you, except to ask you to kindly supervise his letters. He has a young friend named Alister McDonald, son of Colonel McDonald, who is of very good family, to whom he may wish to write, and I have no objection whatever to his doing so. But there is an elderly person named Miss Leslie, who has an extremely unfortunate influence upon his mind, and I shall be obliged to you if you will intercept any letters he may attempt to write to her and forward them to me.Mes meilleurs compliments!Amelia D’Arcy-Muir.”
“Dear Sir,
My son has left England to-day so that he will arrive in time to meet your representative at St. Malo, where I understand you will send to receivehim. I have no further instructions respecting his education to give you, except to ask you to kindly supervise his letters. He has a young friend named Alister McDonald, son of Colonel McDonald, who is of very good family, to whom he may wish to write, and I have no objection whatever to his doing so. But there is an elderly person named Miss Leslie, who has an extremely unfortunate influence upon his mind, and I shall be obliged to you if you will intercept any letters he may attempt to write to her and forward them to me.
Mes meilleurs compliments!Amelia D’Arcy-Muir.”
The other was to Miss Leslie.
“My dear Letitia,I am sure you will be glad to hear that dear Boy has gone to school. I have sent him to a very good establishment in Noirville, Brittany, where he will pick up French very quickly, and languages are so necessary to a boy nowadays. He left his love for you, and told me to say good-bye to you for him. I hope you are quite well, and that this rather damp weather is not affecting your spirits. I am of course rather lonely without my darling son, but to be a good mother one must always suffer something.Sincerely yours,Amelia D’Arcy-Muir.”
“My dear Letitia,
I am sure you will be glad to hear that dear Boy has gone to school. I have sent him to a very good establishment in Noirville, Brittany, where he will pick up French very quickly, and languages are so necessary to a boy nowadays. He left his love for you, and told me to say good-bye to you for him. I hope you are quite well, and that this rather damp weather is not affecting your spirits. I am of course rather lonely without my darling son, but to be a good mother one must always suffer something.
Sincerely yours,Amelia D’Arcy-Muir.”
It was with a curious sense of self-congratulation that she posted these two letters, and thought of the result they would effect. The one to the French schoolmaster would subject Boy to a sort ofespionage, which would, she decided, be “good for him,”—it was part of “a mother’s duty” to make a child feel that he was watched and suspected and mistrusted, and that every innocent letter he wrote was under “surveillance” as if he were a prisoner of war,—and the one to Miss Letty would cause that good and gentle creature such grief and consternation as made the worthy Amelia D’Arcy-Muir wriggle with pleasure to contemplate. She was one of those very common types of women who delight in making other women unhappy, and who approve of themselves for doing an unkindness as though it were a virtue. There was nothing she liked better than to meet some sour old beldame-gossip and talk with a sort of condescending pity of some beautiful or well-known person completely out of her sphere, as if the said person were an ancient hooded crow. To pick a reputation to pieces was one of her delights,—to make mischief in households, another,—and to create confusion and discord where, till her arrival, all had been peace, was an ecstacy whose deliciousness to her soul almost approached surfeit. She always said her disagreeable things in the softest accents, as though she were imparting a valuable secret,—and when an inextricably hopeless muddle of affairs among perfectly harmlesspeople had come about through her interference, she put on a grand air of protesting innocence, and looked “like Niobe all tears.” But in secret she hugged herself with joy to think what trouble she had managed to work up out of nothing,—hence her mood was one of the smoothest, most suave satisfaction, as she pictured Miss Letty’s face of woe when she heard that Boy had gone away out of England! She ordered a dozen native oysters, and had a pint of champagne for supper, by way of outward expression for her inward comfort—and enjoyed these luxuries doubly because of the delighted consciousness she had that Miss Letty was unhappy.
And she was right enough. Poor Miss Leslie was indeed unhappy. When she received Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir’s letter, her astonishment and regret knew no bounds.
“Boy gone to school in France!” she exclaimed—“In France!”
And the tears sprang to her eyes. She read the news again and yet again.
“Oh, poor Boy!” she murmured,—“Why didn’t you write to me! And yet—— if his mother was obstinately resolved upon such a scheme I could have done nothing. But—to send him to France!”
She thought over it, and worried about it all the morning, and finally sent a brief telegram to Major Desmond at his club, asking him to call and see her that afternoon about tea-time if he had nothing moreimportant to do. And the Major, thinking Letty must be ill or she never would have wired for him, took a hansom straight away, and arrived to luncheon instead of to tea.
“Oh, Dick!” said Miss Letty at once as she gave him her hand in greeting,—“I have such bad news about Boy! They have sent him away to school in France!”
The Major stared.
“France!” he echoed blankly.
“Yes—France! To a place called Noirville in Brittany. Poor child! Here is his mother’s letter.” And she gave him Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir’s communication.
He read it in visible impatience,—then he threw it down upon the table angrily.
“That woman is a fiend, Letty!” he said,—“A devil encased in fat! That’s what she is! If she had been thin, she would have been a Murderess—as it is, she’s a Muddler! A criminal Muddler!” He walked up and down the room wrathfully—then stopped in front of Miss Leslie, whose gentle face was pale, and her eyes were suspiciously moist.
“Now, Letty, listen to me! Be a man!—I mean, be a brave woman!—and look this thing in the face. You must say good-bye to Boy for ever!”
“Say good-bye to Boy for ever!” repeated Miss Leslie mechanically—“Must I?”
“Yes, you must!” said the Major with an attemptat sternness,—“Don’t you see? The child has gone—and he’ll never come back.Aboy will come back, but not the boyyouknew. The boy you knew is practically dead. Try to realize that, Letty! It’s very hard, I know—but it’s a fact. The poor little chap had enough against him in his home surroundings, God knows!—but a cheap foreign school is the last straw on the camel’s back. Whatever is good in his nature will go to waste,—whatever is bad will grow and flourish!”
Miss Letty said nothing. She sat down and clasped her hands together to control their nervous trembling.
“An English school,” went on Desmond, “might have been the saving of Boy. He would have been taught there that death is preferable to dishonour. But at a foreign school he’ll learn that to tell lies prettily, and to cheat with elegance, are cardinal points in a gentleman’s conduct. And there are other things besides,—No, Letty!—no—it’s no good you fretting yourself! Say good-bye to Boy—and say it for ever!”
He came and bent over her, and took one of the delicate trembling hands in his own.
“You have said good-bye to so many hopes and joys, Letty!” he said, with deep tenderness in his kind voice—“and said it so bravely and unrepiningly, that you must not lose courage now. It’s just one more disappointment—that’s all. Think of Boy as achild—the coaxing little rascal who used to call you ‘Kiss-Letty’”—he paused a moment—then went on—“And you will get accustomed after a bit to believe he has gone to Heaven. You know you’ll never see that little winsome child again,—there was hardly anything of him left in the boy who came to visit you in Scotland. But you had the last of his childhood there, Letty,—be satisfied! Say good-bye!”
Miss Letty looked up at the honest sympathising face of her staunch old friend, and tried to smile.
“No, Dick, I don’t think I’ll do that,” she said gently—“I don’t think I can. You see I may perhaps be able to help Boy in some way later on——”
“There’s no doubt you will if you’re inclined to, and that he’ll need help,” said the Major somewhat grimly—“But what I mean, Letty, is that you must put away all your fancies about him. Don’t idealize him any more. Don’t think that he will be an exceptional sort of fellow, or turn out brilliantly as a noble example to the world in general,—because he won’t. There’s no hope in that quarter. And—if you take my advice, you’ll stop thinking about him for the present, and make up your mind to join me and a few friends who are going out to the States. Come to America, Letty,—come along! And I’ll try and find another Boy for you!”
Miss Leslie shook her head.
“That’s impossible!” she said sorrowfully,—“I’m very conservative in my affections.”
“I know that!” said the Major dolefully—“By Jove! I know that!”
He was silent, looking at her wistfully, and tugging at his white moustache.
“Letty, I say!” he broke out presently—“I’m getting an old man, you know,—I shall soon be turning up my toes to the daisies—will you not domea kindness?”
“Why, of course I will if I can, Dick!” she answered readily—“What is it?”
“Come to America! There’s a little orphan niece of mine,—Violet Morrison—only child of my old pal Jack Morrison of the Guards—he married my youngest sister—both of ’em dead—and only this little girl left. She’s just twelve, and I want her to finish her education in America, where they honour bright women instead of despising them. But I don’t want to leave you behind. Come and play Auntie to her, will you?”
“Do you really want me?” Miss Leslie asked anxiously—“Should I be useful?”
“Useful! You would be worth more than your weight in gold—as you always are! Come and chaperone Violet—she hasn’t got a soul in the world except me to care a button for her. You’ll do no good brooding here by yourself in London, and wondering how Boy is getting on in France. You had much better come and be happy in giving happiness to others.”
“Do you think Boy might write to me?” she asked hesitatingly.
“He might—but it’s more than possible his letter would never reach you. And if you wrote to him, it’s ten to one whether your letter would ever reachhim. They spy on boys in foreign schools, and report everything to their parents. Anyhow, if he did write to you here at this address, the letter would be forwarded. Don’t hesitate, Letty! Come to America and help me take care of Violet! Say yes!”
“When do you start?”
“In a week.”
Miss Letty thought a moment.
“Very well, Dick. I certainly have no ties to keep me in England. I know you mean it kindly. I’ll come and look after your niece. It will give me something to do.”
“Of course it will!” said the Major, delighted—“Letty, you’re a brick!”
She laughed a little, but her eyes were sad.
“Dick!” she said.
“Letty!”
“Don’t ask me to forget Boy! I can’t!”
The Major raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“All right, I won’t. But I didn’t ask you to forget the child. No. He was a charming child. But—he’s gone!”
“Yes,” said Miss Letty with a sigh—“He’s gone.”
And she did not answer Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir’s letter, nor did she write to Boy.
The following week she started for New York with the Major and his niece, a pretty, bright little girl who was completely fascinated by Miss Letty’s charm and gentleness, and who obeyed her implicitly with devotion and tenderness at once,—and the only intimation Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir received of her departure was through a letter to her husband from Major Desmond, which of course she opened. It ran as follows:—
“Dear D’Arcy,I’m off to America with a party of two or three friends, including Miss Leslie, who is kindly chaperoning my young niece Violet Morrison, whom I am going to place at a finishing school in New Jersey. I daresay you remember Jack Morrison of the Guards—this is his only child,—and I prefer an American education for girls to an English one. I hear your little chap has been sent to school in France—it’s a d——d shame to try and turn an upright-standing Briton into a French frog. Better by far have sent him to one of the first-class educational establishments in the States. However, I suppose your wife has different ideas to anyone else respecting the education of boys. Take my advice and don’t drink yourself into the lower regions—look after your own affairs, and attend to the education of the little chap whose appearance and conduct in this world you are answerable for. If he ever goes to the bad, it won’t be half as much his fault as yours. I always speak my mind, as you know—and I’m doing it now.Yours truly,Dick Desmond.”
“Dear D’Arcy,
I’m off to America with a party of two or three friends, including Miss Leslie, who is kindly chaperoning my young niece Violet Morrison, whom I am going to place at a finishing school in New Jersey. I daresay you remember Jack Morrison of the Guards—this is his only child,—and I prefer an American education for girls to an English one. I hear your little chap has been sent to school in France—it’s a d——d shame to try and turn an upright-standing Briton into a French frog. Better by far have sent him to one of the first-class educational establishments in the States. However, I suppose your wife has different ideas to anyone else respecting the education of boys. Take my advice and don’t drink yourself into the lower regions—look after your own affairs, and attend to the education of the little chap whose appearance and conduct in this world you are answerable for. If he ever goes to the bad, it won’t be half as much his fault as yours. I always speak my mind, as you know—and I’m doing it now.
Yours truly,Dick Desmond.”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir bridled with offence as she read these lines, but she put them calmly into her usual posting-place for other people’s letters—the fire,—and for once she was exceedingly annoyed. Her ordinary bland state of complacent self-satisfaction was seriously disturbed. Miss Leslie, instead of writing to express her grief and distress at Boy’s departure—instead of doing anything that she was expected to do—had actually packed up her things and gone to America! Did any one ever hear of such a thing! And who could tell!—she might take a fancy to Major Desmond’s niece and leave her all her money! And Boy would be done out of it! For this flabby-minded, inconsistent woman had convinced herself that Boy must inevitably be Miss Leslie’s heir in the long run. And now here was a most unexpected turn to affairs.
That night she wrote to Boy a letter in which the following passage occurred:—
“I do not think Miss Leslie is as fond of you as she professed to be, for she has never said one word about your going to school, or sent you any message.I hear she has gone to America with Major Desmond’s little niece, who is being taken out there to finish her education. It seems a funny place to send an English girl to school, but I suppose the Major thinks he knows best.”
“I do not think Miss Leslie is as fond of you as she professed to be, for she has never said one word about your going to school, or sent you any message.I hear she has gone to America with Major Desmond’s little niece, who is being taken out there to finish her education. It seems a funny place to send an English girl to school, but I suppose the Major thinks he knows best.”
Boy read this with the weary scorn that was becoming habitual with him. If America was a funny place to send an English girl to school at, he thought France was a still funnier place for an English boy. And Miss Letty “was not so fond of him as she professed to be,” wasn’t she? Boy thought he knew better. But if he was mistaken, it did not matter much. Nothing mattered now! He didn’t care! Not he! It was foolish to care about anything or anybody. So one of his schoolmates told him,—a wiry boy from Paris with dark eyes, curly black hair, and a trick of smiling at nothing, and shrugging his shoulders.
“Qu’est que c’est la vie?” this youthful satirist would say. “C’est vieux jeu!—bagatelle! Ouf! Une farce! Une comédie! Tout passe—tout casse!—et Dieu s’amuse!”
And Boy shrugged his shoulders likewise and smiled at nothing, and said,—
“Qu’est que c’est la vie? Une comédie! Et Dieu s’amuse!”
Thesteady pulse of time, which goes on mercilessly beating with calm inflexibility, regardless of all the lesser human pulses that hurriedly beat with it for a little while and then cease for ever, had measured out six whole years since Boy went to “skool” in France, and he was now sixteen, and also one of the foremost scholars at a well-known English military school. He had stayed in France for over a year, his mother having gone there to spend his holidays with him, rather than allow him to return to England and “spoil his French accent,” as she said. Poor Boy! He never had much of an accent, and what he learned of French was very soon forgotten when he came home. But what he learned of morals in France was not forgotten, and took deep root in his character. When he came back to England he found his father settled in London again, and bent on a sudden new scheme of education for him. The Honourable Jim was beginning to suffer severely from his constant unlimited potations; he was looking very bloated and heavy, and his eyes had an unpleasant fixed glare in them occasionally, which toa medical observer, boded no good. He had almost died in one bad fit of delirium tremens, and it was during the gradual process of his recovery from this attack, when in a condition of maudlin sentiment and general shakiness, that he decided on a public military training school as the next element in Boy’s education.
“Poor little chap!” he whimpered to the physician who had just blandly told him that he would be dead on whisky in two years,—“Poor little chap! I’ve been a bad father to him, doctor,—yes, I have—d——n it! I’ve left his bringing up to my wife—and she’s a d——d fool—always was—married her for her looks; ain’t much of ’em now, eh? ha-ha! all gone to seed! Well, well!—we’re here to-day and gone to-morrow!” and he rolled his confused head to and fro on his pillows, smiling feebly,—“That’s what the old-fashioned clowns used to say in the old-fashioned pantomimes. But by Jove! I’ll turn over a new leaf—Boy shall be properly educated, d——n it! He shall!”
So he swore—and so he resolved, and for once carried his way over the expostulations of his wife, who had some other “scheme” in view for “my son’s advancement,” but what scheme it was she was unable to state clearly. No such idea crossed either of their minds as the fact that Boy was already educated, so far as character and susceptibility of temperament were concerned. Bothfather and mother were too ignorant to realize that whatever good or bad there was in his disposition, was already too fully developed to be either checked or diverted from its course. And when the lad went to the school decided upon, it was with exactly the same weariness, indifference and cynicism with which he had gone to France. He had a bright brain, and soon became fully conscious of his powers. He mastered his lessons easily,—and as he had a sort of dogged determination to stand high in his classes, he succeeded. But his success gave him no joy. His vague fancies about the great possibilities of life, had all vanished. In the French school, among the boys of all ages and dispositions he met there, he had learned that the chief object of living was to please one’s Self. To do all that seemed agreeable to one’s Self—and never mind the rest! For example,—one could believe in God as long as one wished to,—but when this same God did not arrange things as suited one’s Self, then let God go. And Boy took this lesson well to heart,—it coloured and emphasized all the other “subjects” for which he “crammed” steadily, filling up his exam. papers and gaining thousands of marks for the parrot-like proficiency in such classical forms of study as were bound to be of no use whatever to him in the practical business of life. He was training to be an officer—and in consequence of this, was learning precisely everything an officer need not know. Butas this is too frequently the system of national education nowadays in all professions, particularly the military, the least said about it the better. Boy, like other boys, did just what he was ordered to do, learned just what he was required to learn, with steady dogged persistence but no enthusiasm, and spared no pains to grind himself down into the approved ordinary pattern of an English college boy, and for this he made a complete sacrifice of all his originality. His studies fagged him, but he showed nothing of his weariness, and equally said nothing. He grew thin and tall and weak and nervous-looking—and one of the chief troubles of his life was his mother. Always dutiful to her, he did his best to be affectionate,—for he was old enough now to feel very sorry for her,—sorry and ashamed as well. Truth to tell, the most casual stranger looking at Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, could not but feel a timid reluctance to be seen in her company. Always inclined to fat, she had grown fatter than ever,—always loving slothful ease, she had grown lazier; her clothes were a mere bundle hooked loosely round her large form, and with ill-cut, non-fitting garments, she affected a “fashionable” hat, which created a wild and almost alarming effect whenever she put it on. Boy blushed deeply each time he saw her thus arrayed. In fact he often became painfully agitated when passers-by would stare at his mother with a derisive smile,—alwaysover-sensitive, he could scarcely keep the tears out of his eyes. He lived in terror lest she should fulfil her frequently expressed intention of visiting his college to see the cricket matches or sham fights which often took place in the grounds—for if she did come, he would have to walk about with her and introduce her perhaps to some of his school-fellows. He dreaded this possibility, for he could not but compare her with the neat, and even elegantly dressed ladies who came at stated times to the school, and were proudly presented by various boys to their masters as “my mother.” How dreadful it would be if he had to own that the large lolling bundle of clothes, wispy hair and foolish face was “my mother”! It was not as if she had not the means to be tidy,—she had,—and as Boy often noticed, even some of the poorest women kept themselves clean and sweet. Why could not his mother look as tidy for instance as their own servant-maid when she went out on Sunday? He could not imagine. And he dared not ask her to be more careful of her personal appearance in order to save him shame; she would of course take the suggestion as a piece of gross impertinence.
And did he ever think of Miss Letty? Yes,—often and often he thought of her, but in a dull, hopeless, far-away fashion, as of one who had passed out of his life, never to be seen again. Ages seemed to have rolled by since his childhood,—and the face and figure of his old friend were pretty nearly as dimly indistinctin his memory as the shape and look of his once adored cow “Dunny.” He heard of her now and then,—for her course of life and action had considerably astonished and irritated Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, who frequently found occasion to make unkind remarks on the “fads” of that “silly old maid.” However, Miss Letty had no “fads,”—she merely made it a rule to be useful wherever she could,—and if she thought she saw a line of work and duty laid down for her to follow, she invariably followed it. When she had gone out to the States with Major Desmond as temporary chaperone to his niece, she met with so much kindness and hospitality from the Americans,—so much instant appreciation of her good breeding, grace and fine qualities, that she was quite affected by it,—and she had only been two or three months in New York, when she found to her amazement and gratitude that she had hosts of friends. Young girls adored her,—young men came to her with their confidences,—and all the elder women, married and unmarried, came round her, attracted by her sweetness, tactfulness, simplicity of manner and absolute sincerity. “Our English Miss Letty” was her new sobriquet,—and Major Desmond’s young niece, Violet Morrison, always called her “my own Miss Letty.” Violet was a very sweet, engaging child, and when she went to the school in New Jersey selected for her, she said to her uncle coaxingly on the day he left her there,—
“Wouldn’t it be nice if Miss Letty lived over here while I am at school? I could always go to her for my holidays then.”
The Major pinched her soft round cheek and kissed her and called her a “little baggage,”—did she suppose, he asked, that Miss Letty was going to absent herself from England all that while just to make holidays for a chit of a girl? But he thought about the matter a good deal, not from any selfish point of view, but solely on account of the happiness of the dear woman he had secretly loved so long, and whom he meant to love to the end. Sitting meditatively in one of the luxurious New York clubs, of which, with the ready courtesy Americans show to their stranger-visitors, he had been made an honorary member, the Major turned Miss Letty’s position over in his mind. She was all alone in the world, and though she was rich, he knew her nature well enough to be sure that in her case riches did not compensate for solitude. She had certain friends in England,—but none of them were half as sympathetic, warm-hearted or kindly, as those she had made so quickly in America. She had been disappointed in her love for Boy,—and if she tried to intervene in the further disposition of his fate, she would probably be disappointed again. Now here, in America, was Violet,—studying hard to become a bright, clever, sweet woman,—to learn to talk well and to know thoroughly what she was talking about—not to be a mere figure-head of femininity, justcapable of wearing a gown and having a baby. Something more than that was demanded for Violet,—the Major wanted her to be brought up to understand the beauty and satisfaction of an impersonal life—a life that should widen, not narrow with experience,—and who could be a more faithful home instructress of unselfishness and virtue than Miss Letty? Yes; it would certainly mean a great and lasting benefit to Violet if she could have the blessing of Miss Letty’s influence and affectionate guidance in the opening out of her young life. And what of Miss Letty herself?
“Give that dear woman something to do for somebody else,” mused the Major, “and she’s perfectly happy. It’s only for herself she doesn’t care to do anything. Now I shall make her life best worth living, if I can fill it with duties—that is, if I can only persuade her to accept the duties.”
And after some further cogitation he went to Miss Letty and explained himself thoroughly, with, as he thought, a most artful and painstaking elaboration of his young niece’s position,—how hard it was for her to be without some one of her own sex to look after her, deprived as she was of a mother’s influence and example, and so on and so on, till Miss Letty suddenly stopped him in his eloquent harangue by a little shake of her hand, and an uplifted finger of protest.
“Dick!” she said, with a sparkle in her eyessuggestive of a dewdrop and sunbeam in one—“You are a dear old humbug!”
The Major started and blushed,—yes, actually blushed. He had considered himself a wonderful diplomatist, able to prepare a scheme of so deep and wily a nature that the most astute person would never be able to fathom it, and after all his crafty preparations, his plan turned out to be so transparent that a simple woman could see through it at once! He wriggled on his chair uneasily, coughed, and looked distinctly taken aback, while Miss Letty went on,—
“Yes, you are a dear old humbug, Dick!” she said, “And a good kind friend as well! It is not for Violet’s sake that you want me to stay over this side of ocean for a while, for there are hundreds of nice women here who would be only too pleased to have the child pass her holidays with them and their daughters,—no, Dick!—it isn’t for Violet’s sake half so much as it is for mine! I see that,—and I understand your good heart. You think I am a lonely old body—getting older quickly every day—and that the more friends I have, and the greater the interest I can take in other lives than my own, the better it will be for me. And you’re right, Dick! I’m not a fool, and I hope I am neither obstinate nor selfish. I see what you mean! You are very clear, my dear friend,—clear as crystal! I have not known you all these years for nothing. I honour and admire you, Dick,and if I didn’t go by your advice pretty often, I should be the most ungrateful creature under the sun. The only interest I have—or had—in England, apart from my natural love of home, is Boy,—but it is quite evident his mother doesn’t wish me to interfere with him, so I’m better out of the way. And the long and the short of it is, Dick, I’ll do just what you wish me to do!”
“Hooray, hooray!” cried the Major ecstatically. “Oh, Letty, Letty, what a wife you would have made! And it’s not too late even now. Won’t you have me? We’re too old to play Romeo and Juliet, but we can play Darby and Joan!”
In his excitement, Desmond had risen, and leaning behind Miss Letty’s chair, had slipped an arm round her, and now with one hand he turned up the dear face, so delicate, so little wrinkled, so tenderly shaped by approving Time into the sweetest of sweet expressions. The faintest pink coloured the pale cheeks at this impulsive caress of her old and faithful adorer.
“Dick, if I did not believe, as I do, that God always brings true lovers together again after death, I should say ‘yes’ to you, and do my best, old woman as I am, to be a companion to you for the rest of your life, and make your home cosy and comfortable; but you see I gave my promise to Harry before he went to India, that I would never marry any one but himself. He died true—and so must I!”
Never was the poor Major more bitterly and sorelytempted than at that moment. With all his heart he longed to tell the gentle trusting creature how utterly unworthy this same “Harry” had always been of such pure devotion,—he wanted to say that the person likely to “die true” was himself, and that the dead man she idolized did not merit a day’s regret,—but the strong sense of honour in the gallant old man held him silent, though he bit his lips hard to check the outburst of truth which threatened to rise and overcome his self-control. If he told her all, he would be doing two things that were in his estimation villainous,—first, he would be taking away a dead man’s character, and secondly, he would be destroying a good woman’s lifelong faith. No,—it was impossible—he could not, would not do it. He gave a deep sigh,—then patted Miss Letty’s white forehead gently and smoothed the silver hair.
“Have your own way, my dear!” he said resignedly, “Have your own way! I ought to be contented to have you as my friend, without hankering after you as a wife. I am a selfish old rascal,—that’s what’s the matter with me. Forget and forgive!”
“There’s nothing to either forget and forgive, Dick,” she said quickly, and with a sense of compunction, giving him her hand, which he kissed tenderly, though “Harry’s” engagement-ring still sparkled on it,—“I don’t deserve all your affection,—but I don’t mind telling you I should be very much unhappier than I am, without it!”
“Well, that’s something!” said the Major, beginning to smile again, and walking up and down the room,—“That’s what we may call a bit of heartsease. And now if you are going to do exactly what I want you to do, I suggest that you should take a pretty house on Long Island,—one of those charming and luxurious villas with big gardens, where you can roam about and enjoy yourself,—and let me cross the herring-pond for you and see to the letting of your place in England. You can do something advantageous with it for a year or two, and till that time you might tour through America and see everything worth seeing. And when I have transacted your business I will attend to my own, come out here again, and enjoy myself too!”
And so,—after more discussion, it was finally decided, and so,—much to the pleasure of Miss Letty’s numerous friends in America, it was finally arranged. And “our English Miss Letty” established herself in a beautiful house elegantly furnished, whose windows commanded a fine view of the sea, and which was surrounded by gardens full of wonderful flowers, such as are never seen in England, and a conservatory still more gorgeously supplied,—and though she missed the songs of the sweet English birds, the skylark, the blackbird, the thrush, and the familiar robin, she still had sufficient natural beauty about her to be in her own quiet way thankful for life and its privileges. She began to have serious thoughts of making herhome for good in America, for Violet gathered about her such an assemblage of bright young people, and she herself was so much in demand, that she often wondered how it would ever be possible for her to escape from so many pleasant ties and go back to England again. She had written to Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, giving her address and stating something of her future intentions,—but had received no reply. And Boy never wrote to her at all. But she was not very much surprised at that, as it was most likely his mother would not tell him where she was. And so time flew on insensibly, one year after another, and Violet Morrison, from a little girl, grew up into a pretty maiden of seventeen summers,—graceful and gentle—clever, good, true, and devoted to Miss Letty, who loved her as a daughter, though her old affection for Boy never grew cold. Boy as she knew him,—Boy with all his little droll, pretty ways as a child,—Boy with his sad, wistful, old-fashioned manner, the result of home drawbacks, when he came to see her in Scotland, after which she had lost him for good,—Boy was still the secret idol of her heart next to “Harry,” whose image remained the centre of that inmost shrine. She could not picture Boy at all as a lad of fifteen—to her he was always a child; and on a little bracket near the chair where she was accustomed to sit every day with her needlework, there always stood the only two mementoes she had of him—the toy cow “Dunny,” unchanged in aspect,which he had viewed with such indifference in Scotland, and had left behind him there; and the little pair of shabby shoes, the souvenirs of the first time he ever stayed with her.
One day Violet Morrison asked her uncle about these mysterious relics.
“Why does Miss Letty keep that funny toy cow and those little shoes always beside her?”
Major Desmond puffed at his cigar, and surveyed his niece’s pretty rounded figure, bright face and sweet expression with much inward satisfaction. He met her question with another.
“Have you ever asked her?”
Violet blushed.
“No, I don’t think it’s good taste to ask people about their little fancies. One may hurt them quite unintentionally. And I wouldn’t hurt darling Miss Letty for the world!”
“That’s right, child!” said the Major—“You have the true feeling. But there is not much mystery about that toy cow or those shoes. Miss Letty, bless her heart, has no deep secrets in her life. The cow and the shoes belonged to a little chap named Robert D’Arcy-Muir, but generally called ‘Boy.’ She loved him very much, and wanted to adopt him; but his mother would not let her—and so—and so—she has got the cow and the shoes, and that’s all that’s left of him!”
“I see!” murmured Violet, and her pretty eyesgrew moist. After a pause she said, “I suppose she could not love me as she loved Boy?”
“She loves you very much,” answered the Major discreetly.
“Yes—but not as she loved Boy! I was never quite a little child with her. I think”—and the girl’s fair face grew very serious—“if you once love a little child, you must always love it!”
“What, even if the child disappears altogether into a boy, and then into a man?—and perhaps an unpleasant man?” queried the Major with some amusement. But Violet did not smile.
“Yes—I think so,” she replied. “You see, you can never forget—if you ever knew—that though he may be grown into a man—perhaps a bad man—still he was a dear little child once! That’s what makes mothers so patient, I’m sure!”
She turned away, not trusting herself to say any more,—for she had loved her own mother dearly, and had never quite got over her loss.
The Major took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at its end meditatively.
“How these young creatures think nowadays!” he said. “Dear me! I never used to think about anything when I was Violet’s age. Life was all beer and skittles, as they say! I kicked about me like a young colt in a green pasture! Upon my word, I think that life is much too crowded with learning for the young folks in our present gloriousage of progress. They become positively metaphysical before they’re twenty!”
Meanwhile Violet, whose heart was burdened with a secret which she was afraid to tell to her uncle, went in search of Miss Letty. It was a very warm day, though not as warm as summer days in America usually are, and the shadiest part of the house was the deep verandah, where clematis and the trumpet-vine clustered together round the light wooden pillars, and made tempting festoons of blossom for the humming-birds, which, like living jewels, poised and flew, and thrust their long slender beaks into the deep cups of the flowers, with an incessant, soft, bee-like murmur of delight. Violet, in her simple white gown, tied at the waist with a knot of ribbon, paused and shaded her eyes from the burning sunlight, while she looked right and left to see if Miss Letty were anywhere near. Yes!—there she was, sitting just inside the verandah in a low basket-chair, protected by a pretty striped awning, busy as usual with the embroidery at which she was such a skilled adept, her white fingers moving swiftly, and her whole attitude and expression one of the greatest simplicity and content.
“How peaceful she looks!” thought Violet, with a little nervous tremour—“I wonder if she will be vexed with me?”
Miss Letty at that moment raised her eyes to watch the dainty caperings of two of the humming-birds, whose exquisite blue wings glittered like largeanimated sapphires, and in so doing saw Violet, and smiled. The girl approached quickly, and threw herself down beside her, taking her hat off, and lifting her bright hair from her forehead with a little sigh.
“Are you tired, my dear?” asked Miss Letty gently.
“Yes, I think I am. It is warm, isn’t it? Oh dear, Miss Letty, you do look so sweet! Were you always as good as you are now?”
Miss Letty laid down her embroidery and smiled at this question.
“Good? My dear child, I’m not good! I am just as I always was—a woman—getting to be a very old one now—full of faults and failings. What makes you ask me such a funny question?”
“I don’t know!” and Violet bit the ribbon of her hat spasmodically—“My own Miss Letty! Were you ever in love?”
The gentle lady started, and her delicate hands trembled, as she quietly took up her work and resumed her stitching.
“Yes, Violet,” she answered softly—“And what you will say is more extraordinary, I am in love still!”
“He is dead?” queried Violet timidly.
“Yes. He is dead, so far as this world goes—but he is alive for me in Heaven. And I shall meet him—soon!”
She raised her patient sweet eyes for a moment—and their expression was so heavenly—the youth and beauty of the past was so earnestly reflected in theirclear depths, that Violet almost forgot it was an old face in which these orbs of constancy were set.
“Is that why you never married?” asked Violet, in hushed, tender tones.
“Yes, my dear. That is why. For I am an old-fashioned body—and I believe in the maxim, ‘Once love, love always’!”
“Ah yes!”
Violet turned her head away and was silent for a long time. Miss Letty, still working, glanced at her now and then with a smile, till at last she said in sweet, equable tones,—
“Well! How long am I to wait for this little confession! Who is he?”
A face was turned upon her, rosy as the leaves of the trumpet-vine flowers above,—a pair of bright eyes flashed, like the twinkle of the humming-bird’s wings, and a muffled voice exclaimed,—
“Miss Letty!”
In another moment the girl was at her feet, hiding her head in the folds of her old friend’s gown, and making dreadful havoc with the silks and filoselles which were in use for the embroidery.
“Mind! There are needles about!” said Miss Letty, laughing a little—“They will scratch your pretty face—dear me!—you’re catching all the silks in your hair!” and she carefully took out threads of blue and red and gold from the bright, ripplingcurls of the bent head at her knee. “Now what’s the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter,” answered Violet, still hiding her eyes—though she got hold of Miss Letty’s two hands and held them fast,—“It’s only that last night—he said—he said——”
“That he loved you?” said Miss Letty tenderly, trying to help her out,—“Well, that’s very natural on the part of any young man, I’m sure! But who is he?”
Violet perked her head up for a minute, and then burrowed it down again.
“Ah! That’s just it!” she said, in smothered accents. “He is not exactly young.”
“Oh, dear me! Is he old?”
“Ohno!” This answer was most emphatic—“But he isn’t a boy, you know! He is—well—I suppose he is about thirty-five!”
“My dear child! But—before I pass any opinion, or give any advice—will you not just tell me plainly who he is? Does your uncle know him? Do I know him?”
“Everybody knows him!” said Violet. “That’s the worst of it! That’s why I’m afraid you won’t like it! He is Mr. Max Nugent!”
Miss Letty almost jumped out of her chair. Max Nugent, the millionaire!—the man after whom all the “society” beauties of London, Paris, and New York had been running like hunters after a fox,—he in love with little Violet? It seemed strange—almost unnatural—she could scarcely believe it, and in the extremity of her surprise, was quite speechless.
“He says he wishes he was not a millionaire!” said Violet in doleful accents, beginning to twist her hat round and round—“He says he wishes he was just a clerk in an office doing a grind, and coming home to me in a little weeny house! He would be quite content! But he can’t help it! You see, his father left him all the dreadful money,—and the only thing he can use it for is to try to make other people happy. And he thinks I might help him to do that! But there,—I see by your looks you don’t like it!”
A sudden rush of tears filled her eyes, and Miss Letty, recalling her scattered wits, made haste to put her arms round her and comfort her.
“My dear Violet, my darling girl, don’t cry,—you quite mistake me. I am surprised,—indeed very much surprised—but I am not displeased. I know very little about Mr. Nugent,—I daresay he is a very good man—your uncle sees more of him than I do,—but—you must remember he is so much older than you are, and so much sought after by the world that it seems difficult to realize that he wants to marry my little girl! There—there! Don’t cry! Does your uncle know?”