Ah, and such a pity it is for all idle, slovenly women who “let themselves go” and think their children “take no notice” of indolence, dirt, and discordant colours. The sense of beauty and fitness was very strong in Boy. Where he got it was a mystery; it was certainly not a heritage derived from either of his parents. He did not know that “Kiss-Letty” was many years older than Muzzy; but he did know that she was ever so much more charming and agreeable to look at. He judged by appearances, and these were all in “Kiss-Letty’s” favour. For in truth the elderly spinster looked a whole decade younger than the more youthful married woman. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, though she took life with such provokingly indifferent ease, “wore” badly; Miss Leslie, despite many concealed sorrows and disappointments, wore well. Her face was still rounded and soft-complexioned, her eyes were bright and clear, while her figure was graceful and her dress choice and elegant. Boy indeed thought “Kiss-Letty” very beautiful, and he was not without experience. Several well-known “society beauties” of the classed and labelled sort, who are hawked about in newspaper “fashionable” columns as wearing blue or green, or “looking lovely in white” and “stately in pink,” were wont to visit Captain the Honourable and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir on their “at-home” days, and Boy was always taken into the drawing-room to see them, but somehow they made no impression on him. They lacked something, though he could not tell what that something was. None of them had the smile of “Kiss-Letty,” or her soft, dove-like glance of eye. Peering at her now from his present corner, Boy considered her a very angel of loveliness. And he was actually going away with her to her “grand big house,” Muzzy said. Boy tried to think what the “grand big house” would be like. The nearest approach his imagination could make to it was Aladdin’s palace, as pictured in one of the “fairy landscapes” of a certain magic lantern which a very burly gentleman, a Major Desmond, had brought to him at Christmas. Major Desmond was a large, jovial, white-haired, white-moustached personage, with a rollicking mellow laugh, and an immense hand which, whenever it was laid on Boy’s head, caressed his curls with the gentleness of a south wind touching the petals of a flower. Muzzy’s hand was hard and heavy, indeed, compared to the hand of Major Desmond. Major Desmond was a friend of Kiss-Letty’s, — that was all Boy knew about him, that and the magic-lantern incident. Ruffling and crinkling up the pages of the too-familiar “picture book” mechanically, Boy went on with his own little quaint sequence of thought, till suddenly, just as Muzzy and Kiss-Letty had finished their tea, a dull crash was heard in the opposite room, accompanied by a loud oath, — then came silence. Boy trotted out of his corner, his little face pale with fright.
“Oh, poo’ Sing!” he cried; “Dad’s ill! Dad’s hurted! Me go to Dads!”
“No, no!” and Miss Letty hastened to him and caught him in her arms. “No, dear. Wait a minute. Wait, darling. Let mother see first what is the matter.”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir had risen, and was about to open the door and make some casual enquiry, when Gerty came in, somewhat pale but giggling.
“It’s only master, ‘m,” she said. “His foot tripped, and down he fell. He ‘aint hurt hisself. He don’t even trouble to get up; he’s just a sittin’ on the floor with the whiskey-bottle as comfoble as you please.”
Miss Letty shuddered as she listened, and clasped Boy more warmly to her heart, placing her gentle hands against his ears lest he should hear too much.
“Papa’s all right, Boy, dear,” she said. “He has just let something fall on the floor. See?”
“Zat all?” queried Boy, with an anxious look.
“That’s all. Now,” and Miss Letitia took his dumpy wee hand in her own and led him across the room, “come along and we’ll have a nice drive together, shall we? Gerty, have you got Master Boy’s things?”
“Yes, ‘m.” And Gerty, flopping down on both knees in front of the little fellow, pulled a miniature overcoat round his tiny form and stuck a sailor-hat (marked “Invincible” on the ribbon) jauntily on his head. “There you are, Master Boy, dear! Ain’t you grand, eh? Going away visiting all by your own self. Quite like a big man.”
Boy smiled vaguely but sweetly, and turned one of the buttons on his coat round and round meditatively. Quite like a big man, was he? Well, he did not feel very big, but on the contrary particularly small, and especially just now, because Muzzy was standing upright, looking down upon him with a spacious air of infinite and overwhelming condescension. Surely “Muzzy” was a very large woman, — might not one say extra large? Boy stretched out his hand and grasped her skirt, gazing wistfully up at the bulk above him, — the bulk which now stooped, like an over-full sack of wheat toppling forward, to kiss him and bid him good-bye.
“Remember, you’ve never been away from me before, Boy,” and “Muzzy” spoke in a kind of injured tone; “so I hope you will be good and obedient, and keep your clothes clean. And when you get to Miss Leslie’s house, don’t smear your fingers on the walls, and mind you don’t break anything. You know it won’t be as it is here, where you can tumble about as you like all day and play—”
“Oh, but he can!” interposed Miss Leslie, hastily. “I assure you he can.”
“Pardon me, Letitia, he can not,” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir swelled visibly with matronly obstinacy as she spoke. “It is not likely that in your house you can have wooden soldiers all over the floor. It would be impossible. Boy has very odd ways with his soldiers. He likes to ‘camp them out’ in different spots of the pattern on the carpet, and of course it does make a place untidy. When one is a mother, one does not mind these things,” this with a superior and compassionate air; “but you, with your precise notions of order, will find it very trying.”
Miss Leslie protested, with a little smile, that really she had no particularly “precise” notions of order.
“Oh, yes, you have,” declared Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, emphatically. “Don’t tell me you haven’t, Letitia, — all old maids are the same. Then there is that dreadful cow of Boy’s, — the thing Major Desmond gave him along with the magic lantern; he can do without the lantern, of course; but I really am afraid he had better take his cow.”
Miss Letitia laughed, and a very pretty, musical little laugh she had.
“Oh, by all means let us have the cow,” she said, gaily. “Where is it, Boy?”
Boy looked up, then down, — to the east, to the west, and everywhere — into the air without committing himself to a reply. Gerty came to the rescue.
“I’ll fetch it,” she said, briskly; “I saw it on Master Boy’s bed a minute ago.”
She left the room, to return again directly with the interesting animal in question, — quite a respectably-sized toy cow with a movable head, which wagged up and down for a long time when set in motion by a touch of a finger. It had a blue ribbon round its neck, and Boy called it “Dunny.” He welcomed it now as he saw it with the confiding smile of long and experienced friendship.
“Ullo, Dunny!” he said. “Wants out wiz Boy? Turn along zen!” And receiving the pasteboard quadruped in his arms he embraced it with effusion.
“It is most absurd!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, grandiosely. “Still, it would be rather awkward for you, Letitia, if he were to start crying for his cow.”
“It would, indeed!” and the laughter still lighted up Miss Letitia’s soft eyes with a keen and merry twinkle. “I would not be without the cow for worlds.”
Something in her voice or smile caused Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir to feel slightly cross. There was an unmistakable air of youth about this “old maid,” — a sense of fun and a spirit of enjoyment which were not in “Muzzy’s” composition. And Muzzy straightway got an idea into her head that she was “out of it,” as it were; that Miss Letitia, Boy, and “Dunny” all understood each other in a manner which she could never grasp, and knew the way to a fairyland where she could never follow. And it was with a touch of snappishness that she said, —
“Well, if you are going, hadn’t you better go? My husband will probably be
coming in here soon, and he might perhaps make some objection to Boy’s leaving—”
“Oh, I won’t run the risk of that!” answered Miss Leslie, quickly. “Come along, Boy! Say good-bye to mother.”
Holding his “cow” with one hand to his breast, Boy raised his pretty little face to be kissed again.
“Goo’ by, Muzzy dee-ar!” he murmured. “‘Ope Dad’s better soon! Kiss Dads for Boy!”
This was his parting message to the drunkard in the next room, and, having uttered it, he drew a long breath as of one who prepares to plunge into unknown seas, and resigned himself to “Kiss-Letty,” who led him gently along, accommodating her graceful swift step to his toddling movements, through the hall and outside to her brougham, where the footman in attendance, smiling broadly at the sight of Boy, lifted the little fellow in and seated him cosily on the soft cushions. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir and the servant Gerty watched his departure from the house door.
“I will take every care of him,” called Miss Letitia, as she followed her small guest into her carriage. “Don’t be at all anxious.”
She waved her hand, the footman shut the door and mounted the box, and in another minute the smart little equipage had turned the corner of Hereford Square and disappeared. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir remained for a few seconds on the steps of her house, airing herself largely, and patronising with a casual glance the clear blue of the afternoon sky.
“What a vain old woman that Miss Leslie is!” she remarked to Gerty. “Really, she tries to pass herself off as about thirty.”
Gerty sniffed, as usual.
“Oh, I don’t think so, ‘m,” she said. “I don’t think she tries to pass herself off as anythink,’m! And I wouldn’t never call her vain. She’s just the real lady, every inch of her, and of course she can’t help herself lookin’ nice. And what a mercy it is for Master Boy to be took away just now; for I didn’t like to mention it before, ‘m, but I don’t know what we’re going to do with the Cap’en; he’s goin’ on worse than ever, an’ he’s bin an’ torn nearly every mossel of his clothes off, an’ a puffeckly disgraceful sight he is, ‘m, lyin’ sprawled on the floor a’ playin’
‘patience’!”
CHAPTER III.
Miss LETITIA’S house, her “great big house,” as Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir had expansively described it to Boy, was situated on the sunniest side of Hans Place. It was tastefully built, and all the window-ledges had floral boxes delightfully arranged, with flowers growing in pots and hanging baskets, over which, on warm bright days, spacious crimson-and-white awnings stretched forth their protective shade, giving the house-front quite a gay and foreign effect. The door was white, and a highly polished brass knocker glinted in the sunshine with an almost knowing wink, as much as to say, “Use me, And you shall see, Hospitalitee!” When Miss Letty’s brougham drove up, however, this same knowing knocker was not called into requisition, for the butler had heard the approaching wheels and had seen the approaching trotting roans through a little spy-window of his own in the hall, so that before Miss Letty had stepped from the vehicle and had “jumped” her small visitor out also, the door was opened and the butler himself stood, a sedate figure of civil welcome, on the threshold. Without betraying himself by so much as a profane smile, this dignitary of the household accepted the cow and the brown paper parcel which constituted all Boy’s belongings. He took them, so to speak, to his manly bosom, and then, waving away the carriage, coachman, footman, and horses with a slight yet stately gesture, he shut the house door and followed his “lady” and the “young gentleman” through the hall into a room which beamed with light, warmth, and elegance, — Miss Letty’s morning-room, or boudoir, — where, with undisturbed serenity, he set the cow on the table between a cabinet portrait of Mr. Balfour and a small bronze statuette of Mercury. The cow looked rather out of place there, but it did not matter.
“Will you take tea, madam?” he asked, in a voice rendered mellifluous by the constant and careful practice of domestic gentleness.
“No, thank you, Plimpton,” replied Miss Letty, cheerfully; “we have had tea. Just ring the bell for Margaret, will you?”
Plimpton bowed and withdrew, not forgetting to deposit the brown paper parcel on a chair as he made his exit. Boy stood speechless, gazing round him in a state of utter bewilderment, and only holding to any sense of reality in things by keeping close to “Kiss-Letty,” and for the further relief of his mind glancing occasionally at the familiar “Dunny,” who presented the appearance of grazing luxuriously on an embroidered velvet table-cloth. Instinctively aware of the little fellow’s sudden shyness and touch of fear, Miss Letty did not allow him to remain long oppressed by his vague trouble. Kneeling down beside him, she took off his hat, pulled him out of his tiny overcoat, and kissed his little fat cheeks heartily.
“Now you are at home with Kiss-Letty,” she said, smiling straight into his big, innocent blue eyes, “aren’t you?”
Boy’s breath came and went quickly; his heart beat hard. He lifted one dumpy hand and dubiously inserted a forefinger through the loops of Miss Letty’s ever-convenient neck-chain. Then he smiled with responsive sweetness into the kind face so close to his own.
“Ess,” he murmured, very softly, “Boy wiz Kiss-Letty! But me feels awfoo funny!”
Miss Letitia laughed and kissed him again.
“Feels awfoo funny, do you?” she echoed. “Oh, but I feel just the same, Boy! It’s awfoo funny for me to have you here all to myself, don’t you think so?”
Boy’s smile broadened; he began to chuckle, there was the glimmering perception of a joke somewhere in his brain. Just at that moment a comfortable-looking woman in a neat, black dress, with a smart, white apron, entered, and to her Miss Letty turned.
“This is the dear little fellow I told you about, Margaret,” she said, “the only son of the D’Arcy-Muirs. Master Boy he is called. Boy, will you say ‘How do you do?’ to Margaret?”
Boy looked up. He was easier in his mind now, and felt much more at home.
“How do, Margit?” he said, cheerfully. “Me turn to stay wiz Kiss-Letty.”
“Bless the wee laddie!” exclaimed Margaret, in the broad, soft accent of Inverness, of which lovely town she was a proud native, and down she flopped on her knees, already the willing worshipper of one small child’s winsomeness; “and a grand time ye’ll have of it, I’m thinking, if ye’re as good as ye’re bonnie! Come away wi’ me now, and I’ll wash ye’re bit handies and put on anither suit,” for her quick eye had perceived the brown paper parcel, while her quick mind had guessed its contents. “And what time will he be for bed, mem?”
“What time do you go to bed, Boy?” asked Miss Letty, caressing his curls.
“Eight klock,” responded Boy, promptly. “Gerty puts me in barf and zen in bed.”
Both Miss Leslie and her maid laughed.
“Well, it will be just the same to-night,” said “Kiss-Letty” gaily, “only it will be Margaret instead of Gerty. But it’s a long way off eight o’clock. You go with Margaret now, and she will bring you back to me in the drawing-room, and there you shall see some pictures.”
Boy smiled at the prospect. He was ready for anything now. He put his hand trustfully in that of Margaret, merely observing, in a casual sort of way, —
“Dunny, tum wiz me.”
Margaret looked round enquiringly.
“He means his cow,” explained Miss Letty, taking that animal from its velvet pasture-land and handing it to her maid, who received it quite respectfully. “Just remember, Margaret, will you, that he likes the cow on his bed. It sleeps with him always.”
Mistress and maid exchanged a laughing glance, and then Boy trotted off. Miss Letty watched him slowly stumping up her handsome staircase, holding on to Margaret’s hand and chattering all the way, and a sudden haze of tears blinded her sight. What she had missed in her life! what she had missed! She thought of it with no selfish regret, but only a little aching pain, and even now she stilled that pain with a prayer, �
�� a prayer that, though God had not seen fit to bless her with the love of husband or children, she might still be of use in the world, of use perchance if only to shield and benefit this one little human life of Boy’s which had attracted so much of her interest and affection. And with this thought, dismissing her tears, she went up to her own room, changed her walkingdress for a graceful tea-gown of black Chantilly lace which clothed her slender figure with becoming ease and dignity, and went into her drawing-room, where, near the French window which opened into a beautiful conservatory, stood a bluff, big gentleman with a white moustache, chirruping tenderly to a plump bull-finch, who made no secret of the infinite surprise it felt at such strange attempts to imitate melodious warbling. Miss Leslie uttered a low exclamation of pleasure.
“Why, Dick,” she said, “this is delightful! I thought you had gone abroad?”
“So I was going,” responded Dick, — otherwise Major Desmond, advancing to take Miss Letty’s outstretched hand and raise it gallantly to his lips, “ but just as I was about to start I read in the newspapers of a fellow — a man who was once in my regiment — who had got insulted by a dirty ragamuffin of a chap in the custom-house on the French frontier, and I said to myself, ‘What! am I going out of England to be treated as if I were a thief, and have my portmanteau searched by a Frenchy? No! as an English officer I won’t submit to it! I will stay at home!’ It was a sudden resolution. You know I’m a fellow to make sudden resolutions, ain’t I, Letty? Well, give you my word, I never looked upon custom-house regulations in the same light as I do now. Come to think of it, you know, directly we leave our own shores we’re treated like thieves and rascals by all the foreigners, and why should we expose ourselves to it? Eh? I say why?” Miss Leslie laughed.
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know why,”’ she answered. “Only I rather wonder you never thought of all this before. You have always gone abroad some time in the year, you know.”
The major pulled his white moustache thoughtfully.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 432