Fauntleroy went and stood as near to him as possible without encroaching on the gouty foot.
“What would YOU do in this case?” his lordship asked.
It must be confessed that Mr. Mordaunt experienced for the moment a curious sensation. Being a man of great thoughtfulness, and having spent so many years on the estate of Dorincourt, knowing the tenantry, rich and poor, the people of the village, honest and industrious, dishonest and lazy, he realized very strongly what power for good or evil would be given in the future to this one small boy standing there, his brown eyes wide open, his hands deep in his pockets; and the thought came to him also that a great deal of power might, perhaps, through the caprice of a proud, self-indulgent old man, be given to him now, and that if his young nature were not a simple and generous one, it might be the worst thing that could happen, not only for others, but for himself.
“And what would YOU do in such a case?” demanded the Earl.
Fauntleroy drew a little nearer, and laid one hand on his knee, with the most confiding air of good comradeship.
“If I were very rich,” he said, “and not only just a little boy, I should let him stay, and give him the things for his children; but then, I am only a boy.” Then, after a second’s pause, in which his face brightened visibly, “YOU can do anything, can’t you?” he said.
“Humph!” said my lord, staring at him. “That’s your opinion, is it?” And he was not displeased either.
“I mean you can give any one anything,” said Fauntleroy. “Who’s Newick?”
“He is my agent,” answered the Earl, “and some of my tenants are not over-fond of him.”
“Are you going to write him a letter now?” inquired Fauntleroy. “Shall I bring you the pen and ink? I can take the game off this table.”
It plainly had not for an instant occurred to him that Newick would be allowed to do his worst.
The Earl paused a moment, still looking at him. “Can you write?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Cedric, “but not very well.”
“Move the things from the table,” commanded my lord, “and bring the pen and ink, and a sheet of paper from my desk.”
Mr. Mordaunt’s interest began to increase. Fauntleroy did as he was told very deftly. In a few moments, the sheet of paper, the big inkstand, and the pen were ready.
“There!” he said gayly, “now you can write it.”
“You are to write it,” said the Earl.
“I!” exclaimed Fauntleroy, and a flush overspread his forehead. “Will it do if I write it? I don’t always spell quite right when I haven’t a dictionary, and nobody tells me.”
“It will do,” answered the Earl. “Higgins will not complain of the spelling. I’m not the philanthropist; you are. Dip your pen in the ink.”
Fauntleroy took up the pen and dipped it in the ink-bottle, then he arranged himself in position, leaning on the table.
“Now,” he inquired, “what must I say?”
“You may say, ‘Higgins is not to be interfered with, for the present,’ and sign it, ‘Fauntleroy,’” said the Earl.
Fauntleroy dipped his pen in the ink again, and resting his arm, began to write. It was rather a slow and serious process, but he gave his whole soul to it. After a while, however, the manuscript was complete, and he handed it to his grandfather with a smile slightly tinged with anxiety.
“Do you think it will do?” he asked.
The Earl looked at it, and the corners of his mouth twitched a little.
“Yes,” he answered; “Higgins will find it entirely satisfactory.” And he handed it to Mr. Mordaunt.
What Mr. Mordaunt found written was this:
“Dear mr. Newik if you pleas mr. higins is not to be intur feared with for the present and oblige. Yours rispecferly,
“FAUNTLEROY.”
“Mr. Hobbs always signed his letters that way,” said Fauntleroy; “and I thought I’d better say ‘please.’ Is that exactly the right way to spell ‘interfered’?”
“It’s not exactly the way it is spelled in the dictionary,” answered the Earl.
“I was afraid of that,” said Fauntleroy. “I ought to have asked. You see, that’s the way with words of more than one syllable; you have to look in the dictionary. It’s always safest. I’ll write it over again.”
And write it over again he did, making quite an imposing copy, and taking precautions in the matter of spelling by consulting the Earl himself.
“Spelling is a curious thing,” he said. “It’s so often different from what you expect it to be. I used to think ‘please’ was spelled p-l-e-e-s, but it isn’t, you know; and you’d think ‘dear’ was spelled d-e-r-e, if you didn’t inquire. Sometimes it almost discourages you.”
When Mr. Mordaunt went away, he took the letter with him, and he took something else with him also—namely, a pleasanter feeling and a more hopeful one than he had ever carried home with him down that avenue on any previous visit he had made at Dorincourt Castle.
When he was gone, Fauntleroy, who had accompanied him to the door, went back to his grandfather.
“May I go to Dearest now?” he asked. “I think she will be waiting for me.”
The Earl was silent a moment.
“There is something in the stable for you to see first,” he said. “Ring the bell.”
“If you please,” said Fauntleroy, with his quick little flush. “I’m very much obliged; but I think I’d better see it to-morrow. She will be expecting me all the time.”
“Very well,” answered the Earl. “We will order the carriage.” Then he added dryly, “It’s a pony.”
Fauntleroy drew a long breath.
“A pony!” he exclaimed. “Whose pony is it?”
“Yours,” replied the Earl.
“Mine?” cried the little fellow. “Mine—like the things upstairs?”
“Yes,” said his grandfather. “Would you like to see it? Shall I order it to be brought around?”
Fauntleroy’s cheeks grew redder and redder.
“I never thought I should have a pony!” he said. “I never thought that! How glad Dearest will be. You give me EVERYthing, don’t you?”
“Do you wish to see it?” inquired the Earl.
Fauntleroy drew a long breath. “I WANT to see it,” he said. “I want to see it so much I can hardly wait. But I’m afraid there isn’t time.”
“You MUST go and see your mother this afternoon?” asked the Earl. “You think you can’t put it off?”
“Why,” said Fauntleroy, “she has been thinking about me all the morning, and I have been thinking about her!”
“Oh!” said the Earl. “You have, have you? Ring the bell.”
As they drove down the avenue, under the arching trees, he was rather silent. But Fauntleroy was not. He talked about the pony. What color was it? How big was it? What was its name? What did it like to eat best? How old was it? How early in the morning might he get up and see it?
“Dearest will be so glad!” he kept saying. “She will be so much obliged to you for being so kind to me! She knows I always liked ponies so much, but we never thought I should have one. There was a little boy on Fifth Avenue who had one, and he used to ride out every morning and we used to take a walk past his house to see him.”
He leaned back against the cushions and regarded the Earl with rapt interest for a few minutes and in entire silence.
“I think you must be the best person in the world,” he burst forth at last. “You are always doing good, aren’t you?—and thinking about other people. Dearest says that is the best kind of goodness; not to think about yourself, but to think about other people. That is just the way you are, isn’t it?”
His lordship was so dumfounded to find himself presented in such agreeable colors, that he did not know exactly what to say. He felt that he needed tim
e for reflection. To see each of his ugly, selfish motives changed into a good and generous one by the simplicity of a child was a singular experience.
Fauntleroy went on, still regarding him with admiring eyes—those great, clear, innocent eyes!
“You make so many people happy,” he said. “There’s Michael and Bridget and their ten children, and the apple-woman, and Dick, and Mr. Hobbs, and Mr. Higgins and Mrs. Higgins and their children, and Mr. Mordaunt,—because of course he was glad,—and Dearest and me, about the pony and all the other things. Do you know, I’ve counted it up on my fingers and in my mind, and it’s twenty-seven people you’ve been kind to. That’s a good many—twenty-seven!”
“And I was the person who was kind to them—was I?” said the Earl.
“Why, yes, you know,” answered Fauntleroy. “You made them all happy. Do you know,” with some delicate hesitation, “that people are sometimes mistaken about earls when they don’t know them. Mr. Hobbs was. I am going to write him, and tell him about it.”
“What was Mr. Hobbs’s opinion of earls?” asked his lordship.
“Well, you see, the difficulty was,” replied his young companion, “that he didn’t know any, and he’d only read about them in books. He thought—you mustn’t mind it—that they were gory tyrants; and he said he wouldn’t have them hanging around his store. But if he’d known YOU, I’m sure he would have felt quite different. I shall tell him about you.”
“What shall you tell him?”
“I shall tell him,” said Fauntleroy, glowing with enthusiasm, “that you are the kindest man I ever heard of. And you are always thinking of other people, and making them happy and—and I hope when I grow up, I shall be just like you.”
“Just like me!” repeated his lordship, looking at the little kindling face. And a dull red crept up under his withered skin, and he suddenly turned his eyes away and looked out of the carriage window at the great beech-trees, with the sun shining on their glossy, red-brown leaves.
“JUST like you,” said Fauntleroy, adding modestly, “if I can. Perhaps I’m not good enough, but I’m going to try.”
The carriage rolled on down the stately avenue under the beautiful, broad-branched trees, through the spaces of green shade and lanes of golden sunlight. Fauntleroy saw again the lovely places where the ferns grew high and the bluebells swayed in the breeze; he saw the deer, standing or lying in the deep grass, turn their large, startled eyes as the carriage passed, and caught glimpses of the brown rabbits as they scurried away. He heard the whir of the partridges and the calls and songs of the birds, and it all seemed even more beautiful to him than before. All his heart was filled with pleasure and happiness in the beauty that was on every side. But the old Earl saw and heard very different things, though he was apparently looking out too. He saw a long life, in which there had been neither generous deeds nor kind thoughts; he saw years in which a man who had been young and strong and rich and powerful had used his youth and strength and wealth and power only to please himself and kill time as the days and years succeeded each other; he saw this man, when the time had been killed and old age had come, solitary and without real friends in the midst of all his splendid wealth; he saw people who disliked or feared him, and people who would flatter and cringe to him, but no one who really cared whether he lived or died, unless they had something to gain or lose by it. He looked out on the broad acres which belonged to him, and he knew what Fauntleroy did not—how far they extended, what wealth they represented, and how many people had homes on their soil. And he knew, too,—another thing Fauntleroy did not,—that in all those homes, humble or well-to-do, there was probably not one person, however much he envied the wealth and stately name and power, and however willing he would have been to possess them, who would for an instant have thought of calling the noble owner “good,” or wishing, as this simple-souled little boy had, to be like him.
And it was not exactly pleasant to reflect upon, even for a cynical, worldly old man, who had been sufficient unto himself for seventy years and who had never deigned to care what opinion the world held of him so long as it did not interfere with his comfort or entertainment. And the fact was, indeed, that he had never before condescended to reflect upon it at all; and he only did so now because a child had believed him better than he was, and by wishing to follow in his illustrious footsteps and imitate his example, had suggested to him the curious question whether he was exactly the person to take as a model.
Fauntleroy thought the Earl’s foot must be hurting him, his brows knitted themselves together so, as he looked out at the park; and thinking this, the considerate little fellow tried not to disturb him, and enjoyed the trees and the ferns and the deer in silence.
But at last the carriage, having passed the gates and bowled through the green lanes for a short distance, stopped. They had reached Court Lodge; and Fauntleroy was out upon the ground almost before the big footman had time to open the carriage door.
The Earl wakened from his reverie with a start.
“What!” he said. “Are we here?”
“Yes,” said Fauntleroy. “Let me give you your stick. Just lean on me when you get out.”
“I am not going to get out,” replied his lordship brusquely.
“Not—not to see Dearest?” exclaimed Fauntleroy with astonished face.
“‘Dearest’ will excuse me,” said the Earl dryly. “Go to her and tell her that not even a new pony would keep you away.”
“She will be disappointed,” said Fauntleroy. “She will want to see you very much.”
“I am afraid not,” was the answer. “The carriage will call for you as we come back.—Tell Jeffries to drive on, Thomas.”
Thomas closed the carriage door; and, after a puzzled look, Fauntleroy ran up the drive. The Earl had the opportunity—as Mr. Havisham once had—of seeing a pair of handsome, strong little legs flash over the ground with astonishing rapidity. Evidently their owner had no intention of losing any time. The carriage rolled slowly away, but his lordship did not at once lean back; he still looked out. Through a space in the trees he could see the house door; it was wide open. The little figure dashed up the steps; another figure—a little figure, too, slender and young, in its black gown—ran to meet it. It seemed as if they flew together, as Fauntleroy leaped into his mother’s arms, hanging about her neck and covering her sweet young face with kisses.
VII
On the following Sunday morning, Mr. Mordaunt had a large congregation. Indeed, he could scarcely remember any Sunday on which the church had been so crowded. People appeared upon the scene who seldom did him the honor of coming to hear his sermons.
There were even people from Hazelton, which was the next parish. There were hearty, sunburned farmers, stout, comfortable, apple-cheeked wives in their best bonnets and most gorgeous shawls, and half a dozen children or so to each family. The doctor’s wife was there, with her four daughters. Mrs. Kimsey and Mr. Kimsey, who kept the druggist’s shop, and made pills, and did up powders for everybody within ten miles, sat in their pew; Mrs. Dibble in hers; Miss Smiff, the village dressmaker, and her friend Miss Perkins, the milliner, sat in theirs; the doctor’s young man was present, and the druggist’s apprentice; in fact, almost every family on the county side was represented, in one way or another.
In the course of the preceding week, many wonderful stories had been told of little Lord Fauntleroy. Mrs. Dibble had been kept so busy attending to customers who came in to buy a pennyworth of needles or a ha’porth of tape and to hear what she had to relate, that the little shop bell over the door had nearly tinkled itself to death over the coming and going. Mrs. Dibble knew exactly how his small lordship’s rooms had been furnished for him, what expensive toys had been bought, how there was a beautiful brown pony awaiting him, and a small groom to attend it, and a little dog-cart, with silver-mounted harness. And she could tell, too, what all the servants had said when they had
caught glimpses of the child on the night of his arrival; and how every female below stairs had said it was a shame, so it was, to part the poor pretty dear from his mother; and had all declared their hearts came into their mouths when he went alone into the library to see his grandfather, for “there was no knowing how he’d be treated, and his lordship’s temper was enough to fluster them with old heads on their shoulders, let alone a child.”
“But if you’ll believe me, Mrs. Jennifer, mum,” Mrs. Dibble had said, “fear that child does not know—so Mr. Thomas hisself says; an’ set an’ smile he did, an’ talked to his lordship as if they’d been friends ever since his first hour. An’ the Earl so took aback, Mr. Thomas says, that he couldn’t do nothing but listen and stare from under his eyebrows. An’ it’s Mr. Thomas’s opinion, Mrs. Bates, mum, that bad as he is, he was pleased in his secret soul, an’ proud, too; for a handsomer little fellow, or with better manners, though so old-fashioned, Mr. Thomas says he’d never wish to see.”
And then there had come the story of Higgins. The Reverend Mr. Mordaunt had told it at his own dinner table, and the servants who had heard it had told it in the kitchen, and from there it had spread like wildfire.
And on market-day, when Higgins had appeared in town, he had been questioned on every side, and Newick had been questioned too, and in response had shown to two or three people the note signed “Fauntleroy.”
And so the farmers’ wives had found plenty to talk of over their tea and their shopping, and they had done the subject full justice and made the most of it. And on Sunday they had either walked to church or had been driven in their gigs by their husbands, who were perhaps a trifle curious themselves about the new little lord who was to be in time the owner of the soil.
It was by no means the Earl’s habit to attend church, but he chose to appear on this first Sunday—it was his whim to present himself in the huge family pew, with Fauntleroy at his side.
The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels Page 27