‘Our vanship was the Asia—The Albion and Genoa!’
‘Our vanship was the Asia—The Albion and Genoa!’
‘Our vanship was the Asia—The Albion and Genoa!’
‘Our vanship was the Asia—
The Albion and Genoa!’
‘He’s getting well,’ thought Black Sheep, who knew the song through all its seventeen verses. But the blood froze at his little heart as he thought. The voice leapt an octave, and rang shrill as a boatswain’s pipe:—
‘And next came on the lovely Rose,The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed,And the little Brisk was sore exposedThat day at Navarino.’
‘And next came on the lovely Rose,The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed,And the little Brisk was sore exposedThat day at Navarino.’
‘And next came on the lovely Rose,The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed,And the little Brisk was sore exposedThat day at Navarino.’
‘And next came on the lovely Rose,
The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed,
And the little Brisk was sore exposed
That day at Navarino.’
‘That day at Navarino, Uncle Harry!’ shoutedBlack Sheep, half wild with excitement and fear of he knew not what.
A door opened, and Aunty Rosa screamed up the staircase: ‘Hush! For God’s sake hush, you little devil. Uncle Harry isdead!’
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,Every wise man’s son doth know.
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,Every wise man’s son doth know.
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,Every wise man’s son doth know.
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
‘I wonder what will happen to me now,’ thought Black Sheep, when semi-pagan rites peculiar to the burial of the Dead in middle-class houses had been accomplished, and Aunty Rosa, awful in black crape, had returned to this life. ‘I don’t think I’ve done anything bad that she knows of. I suppose I will soon. She will be very cross after Uncle Harry’s dying, and Harry will be cross too. I’ll keep in the nursery.’
Unfortunately for Punch’s plans, it was decided that he should be sent to a day-school which Harry attended. This meant a morning walk with Harry, and perhaps an evening one; but the prospect of freedom in the interval was refreshing. ‘Harry’ll tell everything I do, but I won’t do anything,’ said Black Sheep. Fortified with this virtuous resolution,he went to school only to find that Harry’s version of his character had preceded him, and that life was a burden in consequence. He took stock of his associates. Some of them were unclean, some of them talked in dialect, many dropped their h’s, and there were two Jews and a negro, or some one quite as dark, in the assembly. ‘That’s ahubshi,’ said Black Sheep to himself. ‘Even Meeta used to laugh at ahubshi. I don’t think this is a proper place.’ He was indignant for at least an hour, till he reflected that any expostulation on his part would be by Aunty Rosa construed into ‘showing off,’ and that Harry would tell the boys.
‘How do you like school?’ said Aunty Rosa at the end of the day.
‘I think it is a very nice place,’ said Punch quietly.
‘I suppose you warned the boys of Black Sheep’s character?’ said Aunty Rosa to Harry.
‘Oh yes,’ said the censor of Black Sheep’s morals. ‘They know all about him.’
‘If I was with my father,’ said Black Sheep, stung to the quick, ‘I shouldn’tspeakto those boys. He wouldn’t let me. They live in shops. I saw them go into shops—where their fathers live and sell things.’
‘You’re too good for that school, are you?’said Aunty Rosa, with a bitter smile. ‘You ought to be grateful, Black Sheep, that those boys speak to you at all. It isn’t every school that takes little liars.’
Harry did not fail to make much capital out of Black Sheep’s ill-considered remark; with the result that several boys, including thehubshi, demonstrated to Black Sheep the eternal equality of the human race by smacking his head, and his consolation from Aunty Rosa was that it ‘served him right for being vain.’ He learned, however, to keep his opinions to himself, and by propitiating Harry in carrying books and the like to get a little peace. His existence was not too joyful. From nine till twelve he was at school, and from two to four, except on Saturdays. In the evenings he was sent down into the nursery to prepare his lessons for the next day, and every night came the dreaded cross-questionings at Harry’s hand. Of Judy he saw but little. She was deeply religious—at six years of age Religion is easy to come by—and sorely divided between her natural love for Black Sheep and her love for Aunty Rosa, who could do no wrong.
The lean woman returned that love with interest, and Judy, when she dared, took advantage of this for the remission of Black Sheep’s penalties. Failures in lessons at school werepunished at home by a week without reading other than school-books, and Harry brought the news of such a failure with glee. Further, Black Sheep was then bound to repeat his lessons at bedtime to Harry, who generally succeeded in making him break down, and consoled him by gloomiest forebodings for the morrow. Harry was at once spy, practical joker, inquisitor, and Aunty Rosa’s deputy executioner. He filled his many posts to admiration. From his actions, now that Uncle Harry was dead, there was no appeal. Black Sheep had not been permitted to keep any self-respect at school: at home he was, of course, utterly discredited, and grateful for any pity that the servant girls—they changed frequently at Downe Lodge because they, too, were liars—might show. ‘You’re just fit to row in the same boat with Black Sheep,’ was a sentiment that each new Jane or Eliza might expect to hear, before a month was over, from Aunty Rosa’s lips; and Black Sheep was used to ask new girls whether they had yet been compared to him. Harry was ‘Master Harry’ in their mouths; Judy was officially ‘Miss Judy’; but Black Sheep was never anything more than Black Sheeptout court.
As time went on and the memory of Papa and Mamma became wholly overlaid by the unpleasant task of writing them letters, under Aunty Rosa’seye, each Sunday, Black Sheep forgot what manner of life he had led in the beginning of things. Even Judy’s appeals to ‘try and remember about Bombay’ failed to quicken him.
‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘I know I used to give orders and Mamma kissed me.’
‘Aunty Rosa will kiss you if you are good,’ pleaded Judy.
‘Ugh! I don’t want to be kissed by Aunty Rosa. She’d say I was doing it to get something more to eat.’
The weeks lengthened into months, and the holidays came; but just before the holidays Black Sheep fell into deadly sin.
Among the many boys whom Harry had incited to ‘punch Black Sheep’s head because he daren’t hit back,’ was one more aggravating than the rest, who, in an unlucky moment, fell upon Black Sheep when Harry was not near. The blows stung, and Black Sheep struck back at random with all the power at his command. The boy dropped and whimpered. Black Sheep was astounded at his own act, but, feeling the unresisting body under him, shook it with both his hands in blind fury and then began to throttle his enemy; meaning honestly to slay him. There was a scuffle, and Black Sheep was torn off the body by Harry and some colleagues, and cuffed home tingling butexultant. Aunty Rosa was out: pending her arrival, Harry set himself to lecture Black Sheep on the sin of murder—which he described as the offence of Cain.
‘Why didn’t you fight him fair? What did you hit him when he was down for, you little cur?’
Black Sheep looked up at Harry’s throat and then at a knife on the dinner-table.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said wearily. ‘You always set him on me and told me I was a coward when I blubbed. Will you leave me alone until Aunty Rosa comes in? She’ll beat me if you tell her I ought to be beaten; so it’s all right.’
‘It’s all wrong,’ said Harry magisterially. ‘You nearly killed him, and I shouldn’t wonder if he dies.’
‘Will he die?’ said Black Sheep.
‘I daresay,’ said Harry, ‘and then you’ll be hanged, and go to Hell.’
‘All right,’ said Black Sheep, picking up the table-knife. ‘Then I’ll killyounow. You say things and do things and—andIdon’t know how things happen, and you never leave me alone—and I don’t carewhathappens!’
He ran at the boy with the knife, and Harry fled upstairs to his room, promising Black Sheep the finest thrashing in the world when AuntyRosa returned. Black Sheep sat at the bottom of the stairs, the table-knife in his hand, and wept for that he had not killed Harry. The servant-girl came up from the kitchen, took the knife away, and consoled him. But Black Sheep was beyond consolation. He would be badly beaten by Aunty Rosa; then there would be another beating at Harry’s hands; then Judy would not be allowed to speak to him; then the tale would be told at school, and then—
There was no one to help and no one to care, and the best way out of the business was by death. A knife would hurt, but Aunty Rosa had told him, a year ago, that if he sucked paint he would die. He went into the nursery, unearthed the now disused Noah’s Ark, and sucked the paint off as many animals as remained. It tasted abominable, but he had licked Noah’s Dove clean by the time Aunty Rosa and Judy returned. He went upstairs and greeted them with: ‘Please, Aunty Rosa, I believe I’ve nearly killed a boy at school, and I’ve tried to kill Harry, and when you’ve done all about God and Hell, will you beat me and get it over?’
The tale of the assault as told by Harry could only be explained on the ground of possession by the Devil. Wherefore Black Sheep was not only most excellently beaten, once by Aunty Rosa andonce, when thoroughly cowed down, by Harry, but he was further prayed for at family prayers, together with Jane who had stolen a cold rissole from the pantry, and snuffled audibly as her sin was brought before the Throne of Grace. Black Sheep was sore and stiff but triumphant. He would die that very night and be rid of them all. No, he would ask for no forgiveness from Harry, and at bedtime would stand no questioning at Harry’s hands, even though addressed as ‘Young Cain.’
‘I’ve been beaten,’ said he, ‘and I’ve done other things. I don’t care what I do. If you speak to me to-night, Harry, I’ll get out and try to kill you. Now you can kill me if you like.’
Harry took his bed into the spare room, and Black Sheep lay down to die.
It may be that the makers of Noah’s Arks know that their animals are likely to find their way into young mouths, and paint them accordingly. Certain it is that the common, weary next morning broke through the windows and found Black Sheep quite well and a good deal ashamed of himself, but richer by the knowledge that he could, in extremity, secure himself against Harry for the future.
When he descended to breakfast on the first day of the holidays, he was greeted with the newsthat Harry, Aunty Rosa, and Judy were going away to Brighton, while Black Sheep was to stay in the house with the servant. His latest outbreak suited Aunty Rosa’s plans admirably. It gave her good excuse for leaving the extra boy behind. Papa in Bombay, who really seemed to know a young sinner’s wants to the hour, sent, that week, a package of new books. And with these, and the society of Jane on board-wages, Black Sheep was left alone for a month.
The books lasted for ten days. They were eaten too quickly in long gulps of twelve hours at a time. Then came days of doing absolutely nothing, of dreaming dreams and marching imaginary armies up and downstairs, of counting the number of banisters, and of measuring the length and breadth of every room in handspans—fifty down the side, thirty across, and fifty back again. Jane made many friends, and, after receiving Black Sheep’s assurance that he would not tell of her absences, went out daily for long hours. Black Sheep would follow the rays of the sinking sun from the kitchen to the dining-room and thence upward to his own bedroom until all was gray dark, and he ran down to the kitchen fire and read by its light. He was happy in that he was left alone and could read as much as he pleased. But, later, he grew afraid of the shadows of window-curtainsand the flapping of doors and the creaking of shutters. He went out into the garden, and the rustling of the laurel-bushes frightened him.
He was glad when they all returned—Aunty Rosa, Harry, and Judy—full of news, and Judy laden with gifts. Who could help loving loyal little Judy? In return for all her merry babblement, Black Sheep confided to her that the distance from the hall-door to the top of the first landing was exactly one hundred and eighty-four handspans. He had found it out himself.
Then the old life recommenced; but with a difference, and a new sin. To his other iniquities Black Sheep had now added a phenomenal clumsiness—was as unfit to trust in action as he was in word. He himself could not account for spilling everything he touched, upsetting glasses as he put his hand out, and bumping his head against doors that were manifestly shut. There was a gray haze upon all his world, and it narrowed month by month, until at last it left Black Sheep almost alone with the flapping curtains that were so like ghosts, and the nameless terrors of broad daylight that were only coats on pegs after all.
Holidays came and holidays went, and Black Sheep was taken to see many people whose faces were all exactly alike; was beaten when occasion demanded, and tortured by Harry on all possibleoccasions; but defended by Judy through good and evil report, though she hereby drew upon herself the wrath of Aunty Rosa.
The weeks were interminable, and Papa and Mamma were clean forgotten. Harry had left school and was a clerk in a Banking-Office. Freed from his presence, Black Sheep resolved that he should no longer be deprived of his allowance of pleasure-reading. Consequently when he failed at school he reported that all was well, and conceived a large contempt for Aunty Rosa as he saw how easy it was to deceive her. ‘She says I’m a little liar when I don’t tell lies, and now I do, she doesn’t know,’ thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa had credited him in the past with petty cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his head. By the light of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to him he paid her back full tale. In a household where the most innocent of his motives, his natural yearning for a little affection, had been interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam, or to ingratiate himself with strangers and so put Harry into the background, his work was easy. Aunty Rosa could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but not all. He set his child’s wits against hers and was no more beaten. It grew monthly more and more of a trouble to read the school-books, and even the pages of the open-print storybooksdanced and were dim. So Black Sheep brooded in the shadows that fell about him and cut him off from the world, inventing horrible punishments for ‘dear Harry,’ or plotting another line of the tangled web of deception that he wrapped round Aunty Rosa.
Then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken. It was impossible to foresee everything. Aunty Rosa made personal inquiries as to Black Sheep’s progress and received information that startled her. Step by step, with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed housemaid of the theft of cold meats, she followed the trail of Black Sheep’s delinquencies. For weeks and weeks, in order to escape banishment from the bookshelves, he had made a fool of Aunty Rosa, of Harry, of God, of all the world! Horrible, most horrible, and evidence of an utterly depraved mind.
Black Sheep counted the cost. ‘It will only be one big beating and then she’ll put a card with “Liar” on my back, same as she did before. Harry will whack me and pray for me, and she will pray for me at prayers and tell me I’m a Child of the Devil and give me hymns to learn. But I’ve done all my reading and she never knew. She’ll say she knew all along. She’s an old liar too,’ said he.
For three days Black Sheep was shut in his own bedroom—to prepare his heart. ‘That means two beatings. One at school and one here.Thatone will hurt most.’ And it fell even as he thought. He was thrashed at school before the Jews and thehubshifor the heinous crime of carrying home false reports of progress. He was thrashed at home by Aunty Rosa on the same count, and then the placard was produced. Aunty Rosa stitched it between his shoulders and bade him go for a walk with it upon him.
‘If you make me do that,’ said Black Sheep very quietly, ‘I shall burn this house down, and perhaps I’ll kill you. I don’t know whether Icankill you—you’re so bony—but I’ll try.’
No punishment followed this blasphemy, though Black Sheep held himself ready to work his way to Aunty Rosa’s withered throat, and grip there till he was beaten off. Perhaps Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black Sheep, having reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself with a new recklessness.
In the midst of all the trouble there came a visitor from over the seas to Downe Lodge, who knew Papa and Mamma, and was commissioned to see Punch and Judy. Black Sheep was sent to the drawing-room and charged into a solid tea-table laden with china.
‘Gently, gently, little man,’ said the visitor,turning Black Sheep’s face to the light slowly. ‘What’s that big bird on the palings?’
‘What bird?’ asked Black Sheep.
The visitor looked deep down into Black Sheep’s eyes for half a minute, and then said suddenly: ‘Good God, the little chap’s nearly blind!’
It was a most business-like visitor. He gave orders, on his own responsibility, that Black Sheep was not to go to school or open a book until Mamma came home. ‘She’ll be here in three weeks, as you know of course,’ said he, ‘and I’m Inverarity Sahib. I ushered you into this wicked world, young man, and a nice use you seem to have made of your time. You must do nothing whatever. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Punch in a dazed way. He had known that Mamma was coming. There was a chance, then, of another beating. Thank Heaven, Papa wasn’t coming too. Aunty Rosa had said of late that he ought to be beaten by a man.
For the next three weeks Black Sheep was strictly allowed to do nothing. He spent his time in the old nursery looking at the broken toys, for all of which account must be rendered to Mamma. Aunty Rosa hit him over the hands if even a wooden boat were broken. But that sin was of small importance compared to the other revelations, so darkly hinted at by Aunty Rosa. ‘Whenyour Mother comes, and hears what I have to tell her, she may appreciate you properly,’ she said grimly, and mounted guard over Judy lest that small maiden should attempt to comfort her brother, to the peril of her soul.
And Mamma came—in a four-wheeler—fluttered with tender excitement. Such a Mamma! She was young, frivolously young, and beautiful, with delicately-flushed cheeks, eyes that shone like stars, and a voice that needed no appeal of outstretched arms to draw little ones to her heart. Judy ran straight to her, but Black Sheep hesitated. Could this wonder be ‘showing off’? She would not put out her arms when she knew of his crimes. Meantime was it possible that by fondling she wanted to get anything out of Black Sheep? Only all his love and all his confidence; but that Black Sheep did not know. Aunty Rosa withdrew and left Mamma, kneeling between her children, half laughing, half crying, in the very hall where Punch and Judy had wept five years before.
‘Well, chicks, do you remember me?’
‘No,’ said Judy frankly, ‘but I said, “God bless Papa and Mamma” ev’vy night.’
‘A little,’ said Black Sheep. ‘Remember I wrote to you every week, anyhow. That isn’t to show off, but ’cause of what comes afterwards.’
‘What comes after? What should come after, my darling boy?’ And she drew him to her again. He came awkwardly, with many angles. ‘Not used to petting,’ said the quick Mother-soul. ‘The girl is.’
‘She’s too little to hurt any one,’ thought Black Sheep, ‘and if I said I’d kill her, she’d be afraid. I wonder what Aunty Rosa will tell.’
There was a constrained late dinner, at the end of which Mamma picked up Judy and put her to bed with endearments manifold. Faithless little Judy had shown her defection from Aunty Rosa already. And that lady resented it bitterly. Black Sheep rose to leave the room.
‘Come and say good-night,’ said Aunty Rosa, offering a withered cheek.
‘Huh!’ said Black Sheep. ‘I never kiss you, and I’m not going to show off. Tell that woman what I’ve done, and see what she says.’
Black Sheep climbed into bed feeling that he had lost Heaven after a glimpse through the gates. In half an hour ‘that woman’ was bending over him. Black Sheep flung up his right arm. It wasn’t fair to come and hit him in the dark. Even Aunty Rosa never tried that. But no blow followed.
‘Are you showing off? I won’t tell you anything more than Aunty Rosa has, andshedoesn’tknow everything,’ said Black Sheep as clearly as he could for the arms round his neck.
‘Oh, my son—my little, little son! It was my fault—myfault, darling—and yet how could we help it? Forgive me, Punch.’ The voice died out in a broken whisper, and two hot tears fell on Black Sheep’s forehead.
‘Has she been making you cry too?’ he asked. ‘You should see Jane cry. But you’re nice, and Jane is a Born Liar—Aunty Rosa says so.’
‘Hush, Punch, hush! My boy, don’t talk like that. Try to love me a little bit—a little bit. You don’t know how I want it. Punch-baba, come back to me! I am your Mother—your own Mother—and never mind the rest. I know—yes, I know, dear. It doesn’t matter now. Punch, won’t you care for me a little?’
It is astonishing how much petting a big boy of ten can endure when he is quite sure that there is no one to laugh at him. Black Sheep had never been made much of before, and here was this beautiful woman treating him—Black Sheep, the Child of the Devil and the inheritor of undying flame—as though he were a small God.
‘I care for you a great deal, Mother dear,’ he whispered at last, ‘and I’m glad you’ve come back; but are you sure Aunty Rosa told you everything?’
‘Everything. Whatdoesit matter? But——’ the voice broke with a sob that was also laughter—‘Punch, my poor, dear, half-blind darling, don’t you think it was a little foolish of you?’
‘No.It saved a lickin’.’
Mamma shuddered and slipped away in the darkness to write a long letter to Papa. Here is an extract:—
... Judy is a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman, and wears with as much gravity as her religious opinions—only eight, Jack!—a venerable horsehair atrocity which she calls her Bustle! I have just burnt it, and the child is asleep in my bed as I write. She will come to me at once. Punch I cannot quite understand. He is well nourished, but seems to have been worried into a system of small deceptions which the woman magnifies into deadly sins. Don’t you recollect our own upbringing, dear, when the Fear of the Lord was so often the beginning of falsehood? I shall win Punch to me before long. I am taking the children away into the country to get them to know me, and, on the whole, I am content, or shall be when you come home, dear boy, and then, thank God, we shall be all under one roof again at last!
Three months later, Punch, no longer Black Sheep, has discovered that he is the veritable owner of a real, live, lovely Mamma, who is also a sister, comforter, and friend, and that he must protect her till the Father comes home. Deception does not suit the part of a protector, and, when onecan do anything without question, where is the use of deception?
‘Mother would be awfully cross if you walked through that ditch,’ says Judy, continuing a conversation.
‘Mother’s never angry,’ says Punch. ‘She’d just say, “You’re a littlepagal”; and that’s not nice, but I’ll show.’
Punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the knees. ‘Mother, dear,’ he shouts, ‘I’m just as dirty as I can pos-sib-ly be!’
‘Then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-sib-ly can!’ Mother’s clear voice rings out from the house. ‘And don’t be a littlepagal!’
‘There! ’Told you so,’ says Punch. ‘It’s all different now, and we are just as much Mother’s as if she had never gone.’
Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith was.
HIS MAJESTY THE KING
Where the word of a King is, there is power: And who may say unto him—What doest thou?
Where the word of a King is, there is power: And who may say unto him—What doest thou?
Where the word of a King is, there is power: And who may say unto him—What doest thou?
‘Yeth! And Chimo to sleep at ve foot of ve bed, and ve pink pikky-book, and ve bwead—’cause I will be hungwy in ve night—and vat’s all, Miss Biddums. And now give me one kiss and I’ll go to sleep.—So! Kite quiet. Ow! Ve pink pikky-book has slidded under ve pillow and ve bwead is cwumbling! Miss Biddums! MissBid-dums! I’msouncomfy! Come and tuck me up, Miss Biddums.’
His Majesty the King was going to bed; and poor, patient Miss Biddums, who had advertised herself humbly as a ‘young person, European, accustomed to the care of little children,’ was forced to wait upon his royal caprices. The going to bed was always a lengthy process, because His Majesty had a convenient knack of forgetting which of his many friends, from themehter’ssonto the Commissioner’s daughter, he had prayed for, and, lest the Deity should take offence, was used to toil through his little prayers, in all reverence, five times in one evening. His Majesty the King believed in the efficacy of prayer as devoutly as he believed in Chimo the patient spaniel, or Miss Biddums, who could reach him down his gun—‘with cursuffun caps—reelones’—from the upper shelves of the big nursery cupboard.
At the door of the nursery his authority stopped. Beyond lay the empire of his father and mother—two very terrible people who had no time to waste upon His Majesty the King. His voice was lowered when he passed the frontier of his own dominions, his actions were fettered, and his soul was filled with awe because of the grim man who lived among a wilderness of pigeon-holes and the most fascinating pieces of red tape, and the wonderful woman who was always getting into or stepping out of the big carriage.
To the one belonged the mysteries of the ‘duftar-room,’ to the other the great, reflected wilderness of the ‘Memsahib’s room,’ where the shiny, scented dresses hung on pegs, miles and miles up in the air, and the just-seen plateau of the toilet-table revealed an acreage of speckly combs, broidered ‘hanafitch-bags,’ and ‘white-headed’ brushes.
There was no room for His Majesty the King either in official reserve or worldly gorgeousness. He had discovered that, ages and ages ago—before even Chimo came to the house, or Miss Biddums had ceased grizzling over a packet of greasy letters which appeared to be her chief treasure on earth. His Majesty the King, therefore, wisely confined himself to his own territories, where only Miss Biddums, and she feebly, disputed his sway.
From Miss Biddums he had picked up his simple theology and welded it to the legends of gods and devils that he had learned in the servants’ quarters.
To Miss Biddums he confided with equal trust his tattered garments and his more serious griefs. She would make everything whole. She knew exactly how the Earth had been born, and had reassured the trembling soul of His Majesty the King that terrible time in July when it rained continuously for seven days and seven nights, and—there was no Ark ready and all the ravens had flown away! She was the most powerful person with whom he was brought into contact—always excepting the two remote and silent people beyond the nursery door.
How was His Majesty the King to know that, six years ago, in the summer of his birth, Mrs. Austell, turning over her husband’s papers, had come upon the intemperate letter of a foolish womanwho had been carried away by the silent man’s strength and personal beauty? How could he tell what evil the overlooked slip of notepaper had wrought in the mind of a desperately jealous wife? How could he, despite his wisdom, guess that his mother had chosen to make of it excuse for a bar and a division between herself and her husband, that strengthened and grew harder to break with each year; that she, having unearthed this skeleton in the cupboard, had trained it into a household God which should be about their path and about their bed, and poison all their ways?
These things were beyond the province of His Majesty the King. He only knew that his father was daily absorbed in some mysterious work for a thing called theSirkar, and that his mother was the victim alternately of theNautchand theBurrakhana. To these entertainments she was escorted by a Captain-Man for whom His Majesty the King had no regard.
‘Hedoesn’tlaugh,’ he argued with Miss Biddums, who would fain have taught him charity. ‘He only makes faces wiv his mouf, and when he wants to o-muse me I amnoto-mused.’ And His Majesty the King shook his head as one who knew the deceitfulness of this world.
Morning and evening it was his duty to salute his father and mother—the former with a graveshake of the hand, and the latter with an equally grave kiss. Once, indeed, he had put his arms round his mother’s neck, in the fashion he used towards Miss Biddums. The openwork of his sleeve-edge caught in an earring, and the last stage of His Majesty’s little overture was a suppressed scream and summary dismissal to the nursery.
‘It is w’ong,’ thought His Majesty the King, ‘to hug Memsahibs wiv fings in veir ears. I will amember.’ He never repeated the experiment.
Miss Biddums, it must be confessed, spoilt him as much as his nature admitted, in some sort of recompense for what she called ‘the hard ways of his Papa and Mamma.’ She, like her charge, knew nothing of the trouble between man and wife—the savage contempt for a woman’s stupidity on the one side, or the dull, rankling anger on the other. Miss Biddums had looked after many little children in her time, and served in many establishments. Being a discreet woman, she observed little and said less, and, when her pupils went over the sea to the Great Unknown, which she, with touching confidence in her hearers, called ‘Home,’ packed up her slender belongings and sought for employment afresh, lavishing all her love on each successive batch of ingrates. Only His Majesty the King had repaid her affection with interest; and in his uncomprehending ears she had told the tale ofnearly all her hopes, her aspirations, the hopes that were dead, and the dazzling glories of her ancestral home in ‘Calcutta, close to Wellington Square.’
Everything above the average was in the eyes of His Majesty the King ‘Calcutta good.’ When Miss Biddums had crossed his royal will, he reversed the epithet to vex that estimable lady, and all things evil were, until the tears of repentance swept away spite, ‘Calcutta bad.’
Now and again Miss Biddums begged for him the rare pleasure of a day in the society of the Commissioner’s child—the wilful four-year-old Patsie, who, to the intense amazement of His Majesty the King, was idolised by her parents. On thinking the question out at length, by roads unknown to those who have left childhood behind, he came to the conclusion that Patsie was petted because she wore a big blue sash and yellow hair.
This precious discovery he kept to himself. The yellow hair was absolutely beyond his power, his own tousled wig being potato-brown; but something might be done towards the blue sash. He tied a large knot in his mosquito-curtains in order to remember to consult Patsie on their next meeting. She was the only child he had ever spoken to, and almost the only one that he had ever seen. The little memory and the very large and ragged knot held good.
‘Patsie, lend me your blue wiband,’ said His Majesty the King.
‘You’ll bewy it,’ said Patsie doubtfully, mindful of certain atrocities committed on her doll.
‘No, I won’t—twoofanhonour. It’s for me to wear.’
‘Pooh!’ said Patsie. ‘Boys don’t wear sa-ashes. Zey’s only for dirls.’
‘I didn’t know.’ The face of His Majesty the King fell.
‘Who wants ribands? Are you playing horses, chickabiddies?’ said the Commissioner’s wife, stepping into the veranda.
‘Toby wanted my sash,’ explained Patsie.
‘I don’t now,’ said His Majesty the King hastily, feeling that with one of these terrible ‘grown-ups’ his poor little secret would be shamelessly wrenched from him, and perhaps—most burning desecration of all—laughed at.
‘I’ll give you a cracker-cap,’ said the Commissioner’s wife. ‘Come along with me, Toby, and we’ll choose it.’
The cracker-cap was a stiff, three-pointed vermilion-and-tinsel splendour. His Majesty the King fitted it on his royal brow. The Commissioner’s wife had a face that children instinctively trusted, and her action, as she adjusted the toppling middle spike, was tender.
‘Will it do as well?’ stammered His Majesty the King.
‘As what, little one?’
‘As ve wiban?’
‘Oh, quite. Go and look at yourself in the glass.’
The words were spoken in all sincerity, and to help forward any absurd ‘dressing-up’ amusement that the children might take into their minds. But the young savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty the King swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw his head crowned with the staring horror of a fool’s cap—a thing which his father would rend to pieces if it ever came into his office. He plucked it off, and burst into tears.
‘Toby,’ said the Commissioner’s wife gravely, ‘you shouldn’t give way to temper. I am very sorry to see it. It’s wrong.’
His Majesty the King sobbed inconsolably, and the heart of Patsie’s mother was touched. She drew the child on to her knee. Clearly it was not temper alone.
‘What is it, Toby? Won’t you tell me? Aren’t you well?’
The torrent of sobs and speech met, and fought for a time, with chokings and gulpings and gasps. Then, in a sudden rush, His Majesty the King was delivered of a few inarticulate sounds, followedby the words—‘Go a—way you—dirty—little debbil!’
‘Toby! What do you mean?’
‘It’s what he’d say. Iknowit is! He said vat when vere was only a little, little eggy mess, on my t-t-unic; and he’d say it again, and laugh, if I went in wif vat on my head.’
‘Who would say that?’
‘M-m-my Papa! And I fought if I had ve blue wiban, he’d let me play in ve waste-paper basket under ve table.’
‘Whatblue riband, childie?’
‘Ve same vat Patsie had—ve big blue wiban w-w-wound my t-t-tummy!’
‘What is it, Toby? There’s something on your mind. Tell me all about it, and perhaps I can help.’
‘Isn’t anyfing,’ sniffed His Majesty, mindful of his manhood, and raising his head from the motherly bosom upon which it was resting. ‘I only fought vat you—you petted Patsie ’cause she had ve blue wiban, and—and if I’d had ve blue wiban too, m-my Papa w-would pet me.’
The secret was out, and His Majesty the King sobbed bitterly in spite of the arms around him and the murmur of comfort on his heated little forehead.
Enter Patsie tumultuously, embarrassed byseveral lengths of the Commissioner’s petmahseer-rod. ‘Tum along, Toby! Zere’s achu-chulizard in zechick, and I’ve told Chimo to watch him till we tum. If we poke him wiz zis his tail will gowiggle-wiggleand fall off. Tum along! I can’t weach.’
‘I’m comin’,’ said His Majesty the King, climbing down from the Commissioner’s wife’s knee after a hasty kiss.
Two minutes later, thechu-chulizard’s tail was wriggling on the matting of the veranda, and the children were gravely poking it with splinters from thechick, to urge its exhausted vitality into ‘just one wiggle more, ’cause it doesn’t hurtchu-chu.’
The Commissioner’s wife stood in the doorway and watched—‘Poor little mite! A blue sash——and my own precious Patsie! I wonder if the best of us, or we who love them best, ever understood what goes on in their topsy-turvey little heads.’
She went indoors to devise a tea for His Majesty the King.
‘Their souls aren’t in their tummies at that age in this climate,’ said the Commissioner’s wife, ‘but they are not far off. I wonder if I could make Mrs. Austell understand. Poor little fellow!’
With simple craft, the Commissioner’s wife called on Mrs. Austell and spoke long and lovinglyabout children; inquiring specially for His Majesty the King.
‘He’s with his governess,’ said Mrs. Austell, and the tone showed that she was not interested.
The Commissioner’s wife, unskilled in the art of war, continued her questionings. ‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Austell. ‘These things are left to Miss Biddums, and, of course, she does not ill-treat the child.’
The Commissioner’s wife left hastily. The last sentence jarred upon her nerves. ‘Doesn’till-treatthe child! As if that were all! I wonder what Tom would say if I only “didn’t ill-treat” Patsie!’
Thenceforward, His Majesty the King was an honoured guest at the Commissioner’s house, and the chosen friend of Patsie, with whom he blundered into as many scrapes as the compound and the servants’ quarters afforded. Patsie’s Mamma was always ready to give counsel, help, and sympathy, and, if need were and callers few, to enter into their games with anabandonthat would have shocked the sleek-haired subalterns who squirmed painfully in their chairs when they came to call on her whom they profanely nicknamed ‘Mother Bunch.’
Yet, in spite of Patsie and Patsie’s Mamma, and the love that these two lavished upon him, His Majesty the King fell grievously from grace, andcommitted no less a sin than that of theft—unknown, it is true, but burdensome.
There came a man to the door one day, when His Majesty was playing in the hall and the bearer had gone to dinner, with a packet for His Majesty’s Mamma. And he put it upon the hall-table, and said that there was no answer, and departed.
Presently, the pattern of the dado ceased to interest His Majesty, while the packet, a white, neatly-wrapped one of fascinating shape, interested him very much indeed. His Mamma was out, so was Miss Biddums, and there was pink string round the packet. He greatly desired pink string. It would help him in many of his little businesses—the haulage across the floor of his small cane-chair, the torturing of Chimo, who could never understand harness—and so forth. If he took the string it would be his own, and nobody would be any the wiser. He certainly could not pluck up sufficient courage to ask Mamma for it. Wherefore, mounting upon a chair, he carefully untied the string and, behold, the stiff white paper spread out in four directions, and revealed a beautiful little leather box with gold lines upon it! He tried to replace the string, but that was a failure. So he opened the box to get full satisfaction for his iniquity, and saw a most beautiful Star that shone and winked, and was altogether lovely and desirable.
‘Vat,’ said His Majesty meditatively, ‘is a ’parkle cwown, like what I will wear when I go to heaven. I will wear it on my head—Miss Biddums says so. I would like to wear itnow. I would like to play wiv it. I will take it away and play wiv it, very careful, until Mamma asks for it. I fink it was bought for me to play wiv—same as my cart.’
His Majesty the King was arguing against his conscience, and he knew it, for he thought immediately after: ‘Never mind, I will keep it to play wiv until Mamma says where is it, and then I will say—“I tookt it and I am sorry.” I will not hurt it because it is a ’parkle cwown. But Miss Biddums will tell me to put it back. I will not show it to Miss Biddums.’
If Mamma had come in at that moment all would have gone well. She did not, and His Majesty the King stuffed paper, case, and jewel into the breast of his blouse and marched to the nursery.
‘When Mamma asks I will tell,’ was the salve that he laid upon his conscience. But Mamma never asked, and for three whole days His Majesty the King gloated over his treasure. It was of no earthly use to him, but it was splendid, and, for aught he knew, something dropped from the heavens themselves. Still Mamma made noinquiries, and it seemed to him, in his furtive peeps, as though the shiny stones grew dim. What was the use of a ’parkle cwown if it made a little boy feel all bad in his inside? He had the pink string as well as the other treasure, but greatly he wished that he had not gone beyond the string. It was his first experience of iniquity, and it pained him after the flush of possession and secret delight in the ‘’parkle cwown’ had died away.
Each day that he delayed rendered confession to the people beyond the nursery doors more impossible. Now and again he determined to put himself in the path of the beautifully-attired lady as she was going out, and explain that he and no one else was the possessor of a ‘’parkle cwown,’ most beautiful and quite uninquired for. But she passed hurriedly to her carriage, and the opportunity was gone before His Majesty the King could draw the deep breath which clinches noble resolve. The dread secret cut him off from Miss Biddums, Patsie, and the Commissioner’s wife, and—doubly hard fate—when he brooded over it Patsie said, and told her mother, that he was cross.
The days were very long to His Majesty the King, and the nights longer still. Miss Biddums had informed him, more than once, what was the ultimate destiny of ‘fieves,’ and when he passedthe interminable mud flanks of the Central Jail, he shook in his little strapped shoes.
But release came after an afternoon spent in playing boats by the edge of the tank at the bottom of the garden. His Majesty the King went to tea, and, for the first time in his memory, the meal revolted him. His nose was very cold, and his cheeks were burning hot. There was a weight about his feet, and he pressed his head several times to make sure that it was not swelling as he sat.
‘I feel vevy funny,’ said His Majesty the King, rubbing his nose. ‘Vere’s a buzz-buzz in my head.’
He went to bed quietly. Miss Biddums was out and the bearer undressed him.
The sin of the ‘’parkle cwown’ was forgotten in the acuteness of the discomfort to which he roused after a leaden sleep of some hours. He was thirsty, and the bearer had forgotten to leave the drinking-water. ‘Miss Biddums! Miss Biddums! I’m so kirsty!’
No answer. Miss Biddums had leave to attend the wedding of a Calcutta schoolmate. His Majesty the King had forgotten that.
‘I want a dwink of water,’ he cried, but his voice was dried up in his throat. ‘I want a dwink! Vere is ve glass?’
He sat up in bed and looked round. There was a murmur of voices from the other side of the nursery door. It was better to face the terrible unknown than to choke in the dark. He slipped out of bed, but his feet were strangely wilful, and he reeled once or twice. Then he pushed the door open and staggered—a puffed and purple-faced little figure—into the brilliant light of the dining-room full of pretty ladies.
‘I’m vevy hot! I’m vevy uncomfitivle,’ moaned His Majesty the King, clinging to the portière, ‘and vere’s no water in ve glass, and I’msokirsty. Give me a dwink of water.’
An apparition in black and white—His Majesty the King could hardly see distinctly—lifted him up to the level of the table, and felt his wrists and forehead. The water came, and he drank deeply, his teeth chattering against the edge of the tumbler. Then every one seemed to go away—every one except the huge man in black and white, who carried him back to his bed; the mother and father following. And the sin of the ‘’parkle cwown’ rushed back and took possession of the terrified soul.
‘I’m a fief!’ he gasped. ‘I want to tell Miss Biddums vat I’m a fief. Vere is Miss Biddums?’
Miss Biddums had come and was bending over him. ‘I’m a fief,’ he whispered. ‘A fief—like vemen in ve pwison. But I’ll tell now. I tookt—I tookt ve ’parkle cwown when ve man that came left it in ve hall. I bwoke ve paper and ve little bwown box, and it looked shiny, and I tookt it to play wif, and I was afwaid. It’s in ve dooly-box at ve bottom. No oneneverasked for it, but I was afwaid. Oh, go an’ get ve dooly-box!’
Miss Biddums obediently stooped to the lowest shelf of thealmirahand unearthed the big paper box in which His Majesty the King kept his dearest possessions. Under the tin soldiers, and a layer of mud pellets for a pellet-bow, winked and blazed a diamond star, wrapped roughly in a half-sheet of notepaper whereon were a few words.
Somebody was crying at the head of the bed, and a man’s hand touched the forehead of His Majesty the King, who grasped the packet and spread it on the bed.
‘Vat is ve ’parkle cwown,’ he said, and wept bitterly; for now that he had made restitution he would fain have kept the shining splendour with him.
‘It concerns you too,’ said a voice at the head of the bed. ‘Read the note. This is not the time to keep back anything.’
The note was curt, very much to the point, and signed by a single initial. ‘If you wear thisto-morrow night I shall know what to expect.’ The date was three weeks old.
A whisper followed, and the deeper voice returned: ‘And you drifted as far apart asthat! I think it makes us quits now, doesn’t it? Oh, can’t we drop this folly once and for all? Is it worth it, darling?’
‘Kiss me too,’ said His Majesty the King dreamily. ‘You isn’tvevyangwy, is you?’
The fever burned itself out, and His Majesty the King slept.
When he waked, it was in a new world—peopled by his father and mother as well as Miss Biddums; and there was much love in that world and no morsel of fear, and more petting than was good for several little boys. His Majesty the King was too young to moralise on the uncertainty of things human, or he would have been impressed with the singular advantages of crime—ay, black sin. Behold, he had stolen the ‘’parkle cwown,’ and his reward was Love, and the right to play in the waste-paper basket under the table ‘for always.’
He trotted over to spend an afternoon with Patsie, and the Commissioner’s wife would have kissed him. ‘No, not vere,’ said His Majesty the King, with superb insolence, fencing one corner ofhis mouth with his hand. ‘Vat’s my Mamma’s place—vereshekisses me.’
‘Oh!’ said the Commissioner’s wife briefly. Then to herself: ‘Well, I suppose I ought to be glad for his sake. Children are selfish little grubs and—I’ve got my Patsie.’