“Is Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir — ?”
“Yes, ‘m, at home to you, ‘m, of course, ‘m. But she’s hout to most, on account of master’s bein’ orful bad. Orful bad he is. Step in, please, ‘m.”
Whereupon, Miss Letitia “stepped in,” asking pleasantly as she did so, —
“And how is dear Boy?”
“Oh, jes the same, ‘m! Alius smilin’ an’ comfoble-like. Never see such a child for good-temper. Seems alius a-’ thinkin’’ pretty. This way, ‘m!”
And she escorted her visitor into a small side-room which Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir called her “boudoir,” announcing briskly, —
“Miss Leslie,’m!”
“Dear me!” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, clad in the usual short skirt and ill-fitting blouse, rose to receive the incoming guest.
“How nice of you, Letitia, to come! So early, too! I’m afraid luncheon has been cleared—”
“Pray don’t speak of it,” interrupted Miss Leslie; “of course, at four o’clock—”
“Is it four? Dear me!” And Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir smiled sleepily. “Why, then it’s time for tea. You will have some tea?”
“Thank you,” murmured Miss Letty. “But don’t put yourself out in any way. Is Boy — ?”
“Quite well? Oh, yes!” and Boy’s mother rang the bell as she spoke. “Boy is in the dining-room with his father. He has just had his bread-and-milk. I have left him there because I think he keeps Jim a little bit in order. Jim is really quite impossible to-day, but, of course, he wouldn’t hurt the child.”
“Do you mean,” said Miss Letitia, her cheeks growing paler, “that your husband is — well! — you know! and that Boy is with him while in that terrible condition?”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir laughed.
“Of course! How horrified you look, Letitia! But you have no idea how useful Boy is in that way. He really saves pounds’ worth of furniture. When Boy is strapped in his chair, and Jim is on the booze, Jim never knocks the things about as he would if he were alone, because, you see, he is afraid of upsetting Boy. It is not out of kindness to Boy exactly, but simply because he hates to hear a child yell, — it gets on his nerves. Then, of course, Boy thinks his father is ill, and pities him so much that the two get on together capitally.”
And this lymphatic lump of a woman laughed again, the while Miss Letitia gazed blankly at the fireplace and endeavoured to control her indignant feelings. The maid-servant came in just then in answer to the bell.
“Bring the tea, Gerty,” commanded her mistress with quite a grand air, as one who should say “Bid the thousand menials in the outer court of the castle serve me with delicacies on their bended knees.”
Gerty had a severe cold, and sniffed violently and unbecomingly.
“Please, ‘m, the milkman ain’t been yet. This mornin’ he said as he might be late, as there was a family t’other side of the square as liked their meals punctual, and he guessed he’d have to go that side first instead of ours. And there ain’t none left from the mornin’, Master Boy’s ‘ad it all.”
“Dear, sweet, greedy little pig!” smiled Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, affably. “Well, you can bring the tea-cups and the tea-pot and the kettle and the bread and butter and — oh! There is condensed milk, I know. Will you have condensed milk, Letitia?”
Miss Letitia responded somewhat primly, —
“No certainly not!” Then, regretting her rather sharp tone of voice, she added, “You must not think me fanciful, but I cannot bear condensed milk in my tea. You know I come of an old Devonshire family, and I believe I grew up on genuine milk and genuine cream.”
“Oh, but condensed milk is quite genuine!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir. “I love it! I eat it on bread-and-butter often instead of jam. You must not have old maids’ prejudices, Letitia!” And she smiled the provoking smile of a superior being who knows all the best things of life without teaching or experience.
Miss Letty sat patiently under the verdict of “old maids’ prejudices,” wondering how on earth she was going to broach the subject which was uppermost in her mind to this woman, who seemed for the moment to have absorbed all the intellect of which she was capable into the bland consideration of condensed milk. She started the conversation again hesitatingly.
“Is Captain D’Arcy-Muir likely to go out presently, do you think?”
“I am sure I couldn’t say,” replied Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, still smiling. “You see, he can scarcely stand; he won’t dress himself properly; and he has just taken to singing — listen!” and she held up a fat forefinger to invite attention. Miss Letitia had no need to strain her ears for the extraordinary sounds which came fitfully through the door, — sounds between a cough and a yell, wherewith were intermingled the familiar words, —
“Old King Co-ole Was a jo-olly old so-ul!”
“Pray, pray!” implored Miss Letty, nervously, “do get Boy out of that room! Really, my dear, it isn’t fit for the child. I beg of you! I — I — should like to see Boy!”
“Well, I can’t go and fetch him,” declared Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, with a deeply injured expression. “I should only get pushed out of the room, or hit in the eye, if I attempted it when Jim is like this; but I’ll send Gerty.”
And as Gerty just then entered with all the necessities for tea, minus the milk, she added, “Fetch Master Boy in here, will you?”
“Yes, ‘m. If he’ll come with me.”
She disappeared to fulfil her mission.
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir sank back into the depths of her easy-chair with the manner of one who has done every duty that could possibly be expected of her. Miss Letitia clasped and unclasped her neatly gloved hands nervously. The noises of mingled coughing and yelling increased in ferocity, and soon they were broken by two widely differing sounds — a drunken curse and a child’s laughter.
“D — n you, get out of this!”
“Kiss-Letty! Oo — ee! My kissy-kissy Kiss-Letty!”
And, escaping from Gerty’s hand, Boy literally danced into the room.
CHAPTER II.
MAKING straight for Miss Letitia, the jumping bundle of dimples, gold curls, short knickers, and waggling pinafore came with a wild bound into that lady’s arms.
“Oo-ee!” he once more exclaimed. “Vi’lets!”
And, discovering a bunch of those sweet blossoms half-hidden in the folds of Miss Leslie’s soft lace necktie, he burrowed his little nose into them with delighted eagerness; then looking up again, and smiling angelically, he repeated in a dulcet murmur, “‘Es! — Vi’lets!’Oo is vezy sweet, zoo Kiss-Letty!”
Miss Letitia pressed him to her breast, patted him, smoothed his towzled locks, and took off his loosely-hanging pinafore, thereby disclosing his whole chubby form clad in what city tailors euphoniously term a “small gent’s Jack Tar.”
“Well, Boy,” she said, her gentle voice trembling with quite a delicious cooing sweetness, “how are you to-day?”
“Me vezy well,” answered Boy placidly, twining round his dumpy fingers a long delicately-linked gold chain which “Kiss-Letty” always wore; “vezy well, ‘sank ‘oo!” (this with a big sigh). “Me awfu’ bozzered” (bothered) “‘bout Dads! Poo Sing! Vezy, vezy ill!”
And Boy conveyed such a heart-rending expression of deep distress into his beautiful blue eyes that Miss Letitia was quite touched, and was almost persuaded into a sense of pity for the degraded creature who was “putting a thief into his mouth to steal away his brains,” in the opposite room.
“You see, Letitia,” murmured Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, with a fat, complacent smile, “you see just how Boy takes it. He and his father are the most perfect friends in the world!”
Good Miss Leslie looked as she felt, pained and puzzled. How was she to broach the idea she had of adopting Boy, if he was already considered by his stupid mother to be a sort of stop-gap, or “buffer,” between herself and the drunken rages of her “honourable” lord and master? She resolved to temporize.
“I have been wondering,” she began, gently, as s
he settled the little fellow more comfortably on her lap, “whether you would let Boy come and stay with me for a few days—”
“Stay with you!” exclaimed Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, and so surprised was she that she actually lifted her bulky form an inch or two out of its sunken attitude in the arm-chair, “with you, Letitia? A child like that? Why, you would not know in the least what to do with him!”
“I think I should,” submitted Miss Letty, with a little smile; “besides, of course, you could send Gerty with him if you liked. But I do not think it would be necessary. I have an excellent maid who is devoted to children; and then he could have a large room to play about in, and —— — —”
“Oh, it would never do! — never!” declared Boy’s mother, shaking her head with a half reproachful, half-compassionate air. “You see, my dear Letitia, it is not as if you were married and had children of your own. You wouldn’t understand how to manage Boy a bit.”
“You think not?” said Miss Letty, patiently. “Well, perhaps I might be a little ignorant; but would you let me try?”
“I could not, I really could not,” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir smoothed her floppy blouse over her massive bosom with a protective pat of her large hand. “Boy would simply break his heart without me. Wouldn’t you, Boy?”
Boy, thus adjured, looked round inquiringly. He had been busy arranging “Kiss-Letty’s” gold chain in loops and twists, such as pleased his fancy, and thus employed had failed to follow the conversation.
“How wouldn’t Boy?” he demanded.
“Boy wouldn’t like to leave Muzzy,” explained Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, unctuously; “would he?” Boy was still meditatively concerned with the looping of the gold chain.
“Leave Muzzy?” he queried. “Wha’ for?”
“What for?” echoed his mother. “To go with Miss Letty, all by your own self, and no kind, good Muzzy to take care of you.”
Boy stopped twisting the gold chain. Things began to look serious. He put one rosy finger into his rosier mouth and started to consider the question. “No kind, good Muzzy to take care of you.” Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir was her own trumpeter on this occasion. That she was a “kind, good Muzzy” was entirely her own idea. If Boy had been able to express himself with thorough lucidity, he would most probably have given the palm for “kindness and goodness” and “taking care of him” to the servant Gerty rather than to Muzzy. But his little heart told him that he ought to love his Muzzy best of all; and yet — how about “Kiss-Letty”? He hesitated.
“Me loves Muzzy vezy much,” he murmured, lowering his pretty eyes, while his sensitive little under-lip began to quiver. “But me loves Kiss-Letty too. Me would like out wiz Kiss-Letty!”
And having thus taken courage to declare his true sentiments, he felt more independent, and raised his golden head with a curious little air of defiance and appeal intermingled. Just then a diversion occurred in the entrance of the servant Gerty, carrying a jug.
“Oh, here is the milk at last!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, with a sigh of relief. “Now we can have tea. Gerty, what do you think! Here is Miss Leslie wanting to take Boy to stay with her for a few days. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”
Gerty sniffed her usual sniff, which, as she gave it, almost amounted to an enigma.
“I should let him go, ‘m, if I were you, ‘m,” she said; whereat Miss Letty could have embraced her. “He ain’t doin’ no good ’ere, with the master on in his tearin’ tantrums an’ swillin’ whiskey fit to bust hisself; an’ really there’s no tellin’ what might happen. Oh, yes, ‘m, I should let him go, ‘m!”
“Would you really?” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir rose and lolled herself lazily along to the tea-table. “Well, do you want him to-day, Letitia?”
“Why, yes, I can take him at once,” replied Miss Leslie, quite trembling with excitement, and commending Gerty to all the special favours of Providence for the evident influence she exerted on the flabby mind of her mistress. “Nothing will please me better.”
“Such a funny notion of yours,” smiled Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, hovering over the tea-things like a sort of large loosely-feathered bird. “You are such a regular old maid, Letitia, that I should have thought you wouldn’t have had a child messing about in your beautiful home for the world. However, if you really want him, take him; but you must have him alone. I can’t spare Gerty.”
Gerty smiled broadly.
“Oh, Miss Leslie won’t want me, ‘m,” she cheerfully declared. “Master Boy don’t give no trouble. Shall I put his clothes together, ‘m? He ain’t got nothing but his white flannel sailor-suit and two little shirts and night-gowns.”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir sighed wearily.
“Oh, dear, don’t bother me about such things,” she said. “Just make a brown-paper parcel of what you think the child will want for a week, and put it in Miss Leslie’s brougham. You came in your brougham, Letitia? Of course. Yes, that will be all right. Put it all in the brougham, Gerty.”
“Yes, ‘m. Shall I bring Master Boy’s hat and overcoat in here?”
“Certainly. Dear me, what a fuss!” Here Gerty promptly left the room. “One would think the child was going to the wilds of Africa. Do you take sugar, Letitia? Yes? Ah, you are not inclined to be at all stout, are you?” this with a somewhat envious glance at Miss Leslie’s still perfectly graceful and svelte figure. “No, I should think you must be nearly all skin and bone. Now, I can never take sugar. I put on flesh directly. Here is your tea. Boy, do you want any more milk?”
Boy had during the past few minutes remained in a condition of bland staring. Vague notions that his “wanting out” with Kiss-Letty was going to be a granted and accomplished fact pleased his little brain, but he had no skill to discourse on his sensations, even in broken language. He was, however, too happy to require any extra feeding. He therefore declined the offer of “more milk” with a negative shake of his gold curls, and, after a little further consideration, clambered off Miss Letitia’s knee and went to his mother.
“Me goin’ out wiz Kiss-Letty?” he inquired, with a solemn air.
“Yes. You are going to stay with her in her grand big house, away from poor Muzzy,” replied the “poor Muzzy” in question, taking a large mouthful of bread-and-butter and swallowing it down with a gulp of tea. “And I hope you’ll be a good boy.”
“‘Ope me be a goo’ boy!” he echoed, thoughtfully. “‘Ess! Me tell Dads?”
Miss Letitia looked startled, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir smiled.
“No. You had better not tell Dads. He is ill, you know. When you come back he will be quite well.”
“Sink so?” queried Boy, dubiously.
“Think so? Of course I think so. Now, don’t stand staring there. Here’s your picture-book; look at that till Gerty brings you your hat and coat.”
Boy took the interesting volume offered him, docilely, but without enthusiasm. He knew it well. Its torn covers, the impossible beasts and birds depicted within it, the extraordinary jumble of rhymes which Gerty would read to him at odd moments, and which he would afterwards think about in pained silence, — all these things worried him. There was a large and elaborately ornamented B in the book, and, twisted in and out its curly formation, were two designs which were utterly opposed to each other, — a cricket-bat and a bumble-bee. The “poetry” accompanying it said,
Fetch me the BAT
To kill the RAT.
After this ferocious couplet came the flamboyant-coloured drawing of a large yellow flower, unlike any flower ever born in any field of the wide world. The yellow flower being duly considered as a growth of distinct individuality, other two lines appeared, —
Look here and see
The BUMBLE-BEE.
This particular page of his “picture-book” had often puzzled Boy. When Gerty had first read to him
“Fetch me the Bat
To kill the Rat,”
he had at once asked, —
“Where rat?”
Gerty had sought everywhere all over the orna
te capital letter and the other designs on the page for the missing animal, but in vain. Therefore she had been reluctantly compelled to admit the depressing truth, —
“There ‘aint no rat, Master Boy, dear!”
“Why no rat?” pursued Boy, solemnly.
Driven to desperation, a bright idea suddenly crossed Gerty’s brain.
“I ‘xpect it’s cos it’s killed,” she said. “See, Master Boy! It’s ‘a bat to kill a rat.’ And the rat’s killed!”
“Poo’ rat!” commented Boy, thoughtfully. “Gone! poo’ rat! gone altogezzer!”
He sighed, and refused to “look here and see the Bumble-bee.” He really wished to know who it was that had asked for a bat to kill a rat, and why that unknown individual had been so furiously inclined. But he kept these desires to himself; for he had an instinctive sense that, though Gerty was all kindness, she was not quite the person to be trusted with his closest confidences.
Just now he went away into a corner, picture-book in hand, and sat watching his “Muzzy” and “Kiss-Letty” taking tea together. Muzzy’s back was towards him, and he could not help wondering why it was so big and broad? Why it was so difficult to get round Muzzy, for example. He had no such trouble with Kiss-Letty. She was so slim and yet so strong; and once, when she had lifted him up and carried him from one room to the other, he felt as though he were “throned light in air,” so easy and graceful had been the way she bore him. Now Muzzy always took hold of him as if he were a lump. Not that he argued this fact at all in his little mind, — he was simply thinking — thinking; yes, if the sober truth must be told, he was thinking quite sadly and seriously how it happened that Muzzy was ugly and Kiss-Letty pretty! It was such a pity Muzzy was ugly! for surely it was ugly to have red blotches on the face and hair like the arm-chair stuffing. Such a pity, such a pity for Muzzy. Such a pity too for Boy.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 431