“Not always,” said Miss Leslie, gently. “You really must not get into the habit of looking on the worst side of life, Dick.”
“I won’t,” responded the major, promptly, “at least, not when you’re looking at me. Out of your sight I can do as I like.”
Miss Letty laughed. Then she returned to the chief subject of interest.
“You see,” she said, “it is not as if the D’Arcy-Muirs were rich, and had plenty of opportunities for their son’s advance in life. They certainly have enough to live comfortably on, if they are frugal and careful, but the man is so incorrigible—”
“And the woman,” put in Major Desmond.
“Well, yes, she too is incorrigible, in another way; but after all slovenliness can scarcely be called a sin.”
“I think it can,” said the major, emphatically. “A slovenly woman is an eyesore, and creates discord and discomfort by her very appearance. She is a walking offence. And when slovenliness is combined with obstinacy, — by Jove, Letty! I tell you pigs going the wrong way home are easy driving compared to Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir!”
“Yes, I know,” and for a moment Miss Leslie’s even brows puckered in a little vexed line. “And her obstinacy is of such a strange kind, — all about the merest trifles. She argues on the question of a tea-cup or a duster to the extreme verge of silliness, but in important matters, such as the health or well-being of her husband, or of Boy, she lets everything go to pieces without a word of protest.”
“Delightful creature!” murmured the major, sipping his glass of port wine with a relish. They were at dessert, and he was very comfortable, — pleased with the elegance of the table which glistened with old silver, delicate glass, and tastefully arranged flowers, and still more pleased with the grace and kindness of his gentle hostess. “I remember her before Jim married her. A handsome, large creature with a slow smile, — one of those smiles which begin in the exact middle of the lips, spread to the corners, and gradually widen all over the face, — an india-rubber smile, I call it; but the men who took to her in her young days used to rave over her smile, and one idiot said she had ‘magnificent maternal brows, like the Niobe in Florence.’ Good old Niobe! Yet, Letty, there are a certain set of fellows who always lose their heads on large women; the larger the better, give you my word! They never consider that the large girl will become a larger matron, and unless attacked by a wasting disease (which heaven fore-fend!) will naturally grow larger every year. And I tell you, Letty, there is nothing in the world that kills a romantic passion so surely and hopelessly as fat! Ah, you may laugh! but it is a painful truth. Poetry, moonlight, music, kisses, all that pleasant stuff and nonsense melt before fat. I have never met a man yet who was in love with a fat, really fat woman! And if a slim girl marries and gets fat in the years to come, her husband, poor chap, may deplore it, deeply deplore it, but it’s very distressing, he cannot help it, his romance dies under it. Dies utterly! Ah, we’re weak creatures, we men, we cannot stand fat! We like plumpness; oh, yes! We like round, rosy curves and dimples, but not actual fat. Now, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir will become — indeed has become — fat.”
“Dear me,” and Miss Leslie laughed; “you really are quite eloquent, Dick! I never heard you go on in this way before. Poor Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir! She really has no alternative—”
“No alternative but to become fat?” enquired the major, solemnly, glaring over his port wine.
“Now, you know I don’t mean it in that way,” laughed Miss Leslie. “You really are incorrigible! What I wished to point out was, that when a woman finds that her husband doesn’t care a bit how she looks or what she wears, she is apt to become careless.”
“It doesn’t follow that because a man is a churl a woman should lose her self-respect,” said the major. “Surely she should take a pride in being clean and looking as well as she can for her own sake. Then in this particular case there is Boy.”
“Yes, — there is Boy,” agreed Miss Letty, meditatively; “and he certainly does notice things.”
“Notice things? I should think he does! He is always noticing. He notices his mother’s untidiness, and he notices his father’s disgracefulness. If I were Jim D’Arcy-Muir I should be ashamed to meet that little chap’s eyes.”
Miss Letty sighed.
“Do you think,” she asked, after a pause, “they will let me have him?”
The major considered; and for some minutes sat twirling the ends of his white moustache reflectively.
“Well, to tell you the truth, Letty, I don’t,” he said at last; “I don’t believe they will for a moment. Some parents would refuse your offer on account of their own love and affection for the child, and their own natural desire not to part with him. That will not be the D’Arcy-Muirs’ reason. They will simply argue that you are trying to ‘patronise’ them. It will be exactly like their muddled minds to put it that way. They will say, ‘she thinks we are going to put our son under obligations to her for her money.’ And though they conduct themselves like pigs, they think a great deal of themselves in a ‘county-family’ fashion. No, Letty, I’m afraid you won’t get a chance of doing any good in that quarter. But if you like I will’ take soundings, — that is, I will just suggest the idea of such a thing and see how they take it. What do you say?”
“Oh, I wish you would!” said Miss Leslie, earnestly. “You see you know Captain D’Arcy-Muir—”
“Well, in a way; yes, I know him in a way,” corrected the major. “I used to know him better than I do now. He was never in my regiment, thank the Lord! But I will try to get hold of him in a sober moment and see what can be done. But I don’t give out any hopes of him.”
“Oh, Dick!” sighed Miss Letty.
“Well, I shall be very sorry for your disappointment, Letty, very sorry, and sorrier still for the little chap, for I think his life literally hangs on the balance of this chance. If he is not allowed to take it, all the worse for him; he will come to no good, I fear.”
“Don’t say that!” pleaded Miss Leslie, with pain in her voice. “Don’t say that!”
“All right, I won’t say it,” said the major; expressing, however, in his face and tone of voice that he would probably think it all the same. “But the world is a bad place to fight in if you are not thoroughly well equipped for the battle. God made the world, so we are told, but I doubt whether He wished it to be quite as overcrowded as it is just now. All the professions, all the trades, all the arts, overdone! Army no go, navy no go. If you are a soldier and get any chance of facing fire you know just what your reward is likely to be, unless you are a Kitchener. You may get a V. C, and after that the workhouse, like some of the Crimean heroes. And in the navy you get literally nothing but very poor pay. The best thing for a man now is to be an explorer, and even when you are that, the world cannot be persuaded to believe that you have explored anything, or been anywhere. You have simply been sitting at home and reading up!” He laughed, and then went on, “If you get Boy, what are you going to do with him?”
“I shall see what he likes to do best himself,” said Letty.
“At present he likes to hug you and see ‘pickshures’ of heavenly places,” said the major. “That’s a bad sign, Letty! Woman and Art spells ruin, like theatrical speculation! Well! Come and have a game of chess with me before I go home to my lonely bachelor rooms; it is really too bad of you to make a sour old man of me in this way!”
Miss Leslie laughed heartily.
“No one will ever call you a sour old man, Dick,” she said, as she rose from the table, “you are the most genial and generous-hearted fellow I know.”
“Then why won’t you have me?” pleaded Desmond.
“Oh, you know why!” said Letty. “What is the use of going over it all again?”
“Going over it all; yes, I know!” said the major, dismally, “You have got it into your head that if you were to marry me, and that then afterwards we died, as we shall do, and went to heaven — which is a question — you would find your Harry up
there in the shape of a stern, reproving angel, ready to scold you for having a little happiness and sympathy on earth when he was not there. Now, if things are to be arranged in that way, some folks will be in awful trouble. The ladies who have had several husbands, the husbands who have had several wives, stern reproving angels all around — Good gracious, what a row there will be! Fact is fact, Letty; there cannot possibly be peace in heaven under such circumstances!”
“Do stop talking such nonsense,” said Miss Leslie, still laughing. “Really, I begin to wish you had gone abroad, after all.”
“No you don’t,” said Dick, confidently, as he followed her into the drawing-room, “you are pleased to see me, you know you are! Hullo! Here’s Margaret. What’s up? Something wrong with Boy?”
“Oh no, sir,” said Margaret, who had just entered the room; “but I thought perhaps Miss Leslie would like to see him asleep. He is just the bonniest wee bairnie!”
“Oh, I must go and look at him!” said Miss Letty, eagerly, “Will you come too, Dick?”
The major assented with alacrity, and they followed Margaret upstairs, treading softly and on tip-toe as they entered the pretty, airy room selected for Boy’s slumbers. It was a large room, and one corner of it was occupied by the big bed allotted to Margaret; in an arched recess, draped with white muslin, was a smaller and daintier couch, and here Boy lay in his first sleep, his fair curies tossed on the pillow, his round soft face rosy with warmth and health, his pretty mouth slightly parted in a smile. Miss Leslie bent over him tenderly and kissed his forehead. Major Desmond looked on in contemplative and somewhat awed silence. Presently he noticed a piece of string tied to the little fellow’s wrist. Pointing to it, he whispered, solemnly, —
“What’s that?”
Margaret smiled.
“Oh, he just begged me to get him a bit of string,” she said. “He said he always had to fasten his cow up at night lest it should run away. Margaret laughed. “Bless the wee lad! And there you see is the cow at the foot of the bed, and he has tied it to the string in that way himself!”
“Good gracious me!” said the major, staring, “I never heard of such a thing in my life! And the cow can’t run away! Lucky cow!”
Boy stirred in his sleep and smiled. A slight movement of the chubby wrist to which the beloved “Dunny” was tied caused it to wag its movable head automatically, and for a moment it looked quite a sentient thing nodding wisely over unexpressed and inexpressible pastoral problems.
“Come away,” then said Miss Letty, gently, “we shall wake him if we remain any longer.”
“Yes,” said the major, dreamily, “we shall wake him! And then the cow might bolt, or take to tossing somebody on its horns, which would be very alarming. God bless my soul! What a little chap it is! Beginning to look after a cow at his time of life! A budding farmer, upon my word! Letty, Australia is the place for him, — a wild prairie and cattle, you know, — he is evidently a born rancher!”
Letty laughed, and they left the room together. Margaret watched them as they went downstairs, and gave a little regretful sigh.
“Poor, dear Miss Letty!” she thought. “The sweetest lady that ever lived, and no man has ever been wise enough to find it out and marry her.” She bent over Boy’s bed and adjusted the coverlet to keep him warm, then lowering the light, left him sleeping peacefully, with “Dunny” on guard.
CHAPTER V.
IT is a trite axiom, but no less true than trite, that we are always happiest when we are most unconscious of happiness, — when the simple fact of mere existence is enough for us, — when we do not know how, or when, or where the causes for our pleasure come in, and when we are content to live as the birds and flowers live, just for the one day’s innocent delight, untroubled by any thoughts concerning the past or the future. This is a state of mind which is generally supposed to vanish with early youth, though there are some few peculiarly endowed natures, sufficiently well poised, and confident of the flowing in of eternal goodness everywhere, to be serenely joyous with all the trust of a little child to the very extreme of old age. But even with men and women not so fortunately situated the days when they were happy without knowing it remain put away in their memories as the sweetest time of life, and recur to them again and again with more or less poignancy, when pain and disappointment, deceit, cruelty, and harshness unwind the rose-coloured veil of romance from persons and things and show them the world at its worst. Boy, in the house of Miss Letitia Leslie, was just now living the unconscious life, and making for himself such a picture gallery of sweet little souvenirs as were destined to return to him in years to come, sharpened with pain, and embittered by a profitless regret. Every morning he rose up to some new and harmless delight, — among surroundings of perfect sweetness and peace; order, cleanliness, kindness, good humour, and cheerfulness were the hourly investiture of the household; and after he had been with “Kiss-Letty” two or three days Boy began dimly to wonder whether there really was such an individual as “Poo Sing” or such a large lady as “Muzzy” in the world. Not that the little fellow was forgetful of his parents; but the parents themselves were of so hazy, and vague, and undeterminate a character that the individuality of the servant Gerty was far more real and actual to the infant mind of their son than their distinguished personalities. It is to be feared that Boy would have been but faintly sorry had he been told he was never to see his “kind good Muzzy” any more. This was not Boy’s fault, by any means: the blame rested entirely with the “kind good Muzzy” herself. And probably, if Boy had felt any regrets about it, they would have been more for the parting from the “Poo Sing” gentleman who was so often ill. For the delusive notion of chronic illness on the part of “Poo Sing” had got firmly fixed into Boy’s little head; he felt the situation to be serious; he was full of a wistful and wondering compassion, and he had a vague idea that his Dads did not get on so well without him. But this he kept to himself. He was for the present perfectly happy, and wished for no more delightful existence than that which he enjoyed in the company of “Kiss-Letty.”
He was going through some wonderful experiences of life as well. For instance, he was taken for the first time to the Zoo and had a ride on an elephant, a ride which filled him with glory and terror: glory that he could ride an elephant, — for he thought it was entirely his own skill that guided and controlled the huge beast’s gentle meanderings along the smoothly rolled paths of the gardens, — and terror lest, skilful and powerful though he was, he should fall, deeply humiliated, out of the howdah in which he was proudly seated. Then he was taken to Earl’s Court Exhibition, and became so wearied with the wonders there shown to him from all parts of the world — there were so many wonders and the world seemed so immense — that he fell fast asleep while going round a strange pond in a strange boat called a Venetian gondola, and Major Desmond took him up in his arms, and he remembered nothing more till he found himself in his little bed with Margaret tucking him up and making him cosey.
Then there were the days when he was not taken out sight-seeing at all, but simply stayed with Miss Letty and accompanied her everywhere, and he was not sure that he did not like these times best of all. For after his dinner in the middle of the day, and before they went for their drive, “Kiss-Letty” would take him on her knee and tell him the most beautiful and amazing fairy stories, — descriptions of aerial palaces and glittering-winged elves, which fascinated him and kept him in openmouthed ecstasy; and, somehow or other, he learned a good deal out of what he heard. Miss’ Leslie was not a brilliant woman, but she was distinctly cultured and clever, and she had a way of narrating some of the true histories of the world as though they were graceful fantasies. In this fashion she told Boy of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, and ever afterwards the famous navigator remained in Boy’s mind as a sort of fairy king who had made a new world. Happy indeed were all those first lessons he received concerning the great and good things done by humanity, sweet and refining was the influence thus exci
ted upon him, and, if such peaceful days could have gone on expanding gradually around his life the more that life needed them, who can say what might not have been the beneficial result? But it often seems as if some capricious fate interfered between the soul and its environment; where happiness might be perfect, the particular ingredient of perfection is held back or altogether denied, and truly there would seem to be no good reason for this. Stoic philosophy would perhaps suggest that the fortunate environment is held back from the individual in order that he may create it for himself, and mould his own nature in the struggle; but, then, it so often happens that this holding back affects the nature that is not qualified either by birth or circumstances to enfranchise itself. A grand environment is frequently bestowed on a low and frivolous character, that has not and never will have any appreciation of its fortunate position, while all rights, privileges, and advancements are obstinately refused to the soul that would most gladly and greatly have valued them. And so it was fated to be with Boy. The happy days of his visit to Miss Letty came, as all happy days must do, to an end, and one morning, as he sat at breakfast eating a succulent slice of bread-and-jam, he was startled to see “Kiss-Letty’s” blue eyes brimming over with tears. Amazing grief and fear took possession of him; he put down his bread-and-jam and looked pitifully at his kind friend and hostess.
“Zoo kyin’, Kiss-Letty,” he said. “Where does it hurt ‘oo?”
Miss Letty tried to smile, but only feebly succeeded. She could have answered that “it” hurt her everywhere. “It” was a letter from Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir requesting that Boy might be returned to his home that afternoon. And Miss Letty knew that this peremptory summons meant that her wish to adopt Boy was frustrated and that the cause was lost. She looked tenderly at the sweet little face that was turned so wistfully to hers, and said gently, though with a slight quiver about her lips, —
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 434