“What are you going to be when you are a man?” she asked.
Boy considered.
“A man is a long way off,” he answered gravely, “and, you see, you can never tell what may happen. Dads is a man, but he isn’t anything.”
“He’s an officer in the Army, dear,” corrected Miss Letty, gently, “ a retired officer, but still an officer.”
“What is the good of being an officer if you retire before you ever fight?” asked Boy.
All the ladies smiled, but volunteered no answer. “You see it wouldn’t be any use,” went on Boy, reflectively.— “I shouldn’t care to have to learn how to fight if I wasn’t ever wanted to do it. I think I’d rather be like Rattling Jack.”
“Who on earth is Rattling Jack?” asked the youngest lady present, suppressing a laugh.
“He is an old man at home,” explained Boy. “He used to be on a merchant-vessel, trading to India, Japan, and China, and all that, and he says he has seen nearly the whole world. People say he’s got a lot of money hidden away in his mattress, and that when he was in Ceylon he managed to steal a ruby worth ten thousand pounds!
Fancy! Wasn’t that clever of him? And he’s got it still.”
“Then he’s a thief!” said Miss Letty, trying to look severe. “It isn’t at all clever to steal, — it’s very wicked. He must be a bad man.”
“Yes, I suppose he is,” said Boy, with a little sigh. “But, of course, the person from whom he stole the ruby ought to have come after him. But he never did. So that was lucky! And some people say it’s only a bit of red glass he’s got.”
“Whatever it is, a bit of glass or a ruby, he had no business to steal it,” said Miss Letty.
“Oh, but he hasn’t been found out,” answered Boy, “and he doesn’t mind telling people he’s got it.”
There was a pause. Miss Letty was a trifle vexed; the other two ladies were merely amused.
“I’ll tell you another thing about him,” said Boy, suddenly warming into confidence; “he buys things off us.”
They all laughed outright.
“Buys things off us!” exclaimed Miss Letty. “Oh, Boy, dear, what do you mean?”
“Well, you see, all along the shore there are the most curious things washed in from the sea,” said Boy, “silver spoons and forks and penknives and boxes and sometimes money. Just before I came away I found a gold bracelet in the sand, and Rattling Jack gave me one-and-six-pence for it, and he had it cleaned, and it was solid gold, and he sold it for three pounds. Wasn’t that clever of him?”
Again the laughter broke out, but Miss Letty sighed.
“I don’t think Rattling Jack is quite a nice person for you to talk to,” she said. “Does your mother know anything about him?”
“Oh, no! Mother doesn’t know anybody, answered Boy, candidly. “I make my own friends.”
“Well, we don’t want you to be a Rattling Jack,” said the young lady who had before spoken, “we want you to be a brave, honest man, and a gentleman. You must try for the Navy — not the Merchant Navy, but the regular fighting Navy — the Queen’s Navy.”
“Yes, you never get higher than ‘admiral’ there!” said Boy, with a matter-of-fact cynicism. “Rattling Jack told me that was just an honour without sufficient pay to keep it up. It isn’t worth working for, I fancy.”
“My dear Boy!” exclaimed Miss Letty, distressed, “ not worth working for! How did you get such ideas in your head? What is worth working for?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Boy, “ not much, I expect. All you can do is to amuse yourself, and you want lots of money for that.”
The pained expression deepened on Miss Letty’s sweet old face, but she could say nothing just then, as a diversion was created by the sudden bouncing entrance of Alister McDonald, accompanied by his mother, both damp with rain, but both with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, back from Edinburgh, and fresh from their drive through the storm from the Callander station.
“Please excuse us,” laughed Mrs. McDonald, “but we thought you might be having tea about this time. So we risked coming in.”
Miss Leslie welcomed them heartily, with the unaffected sincerity which was her great charm, and ordered fresh tea and scones, while Alister, drawing Boy aside, related to him with graphic picturesqueness of detail his thrilling experiences at the dentist’s.
“He said, would I have gas? I said, ‘What is gas?’ And mother said it was a stuff you took though a tube, and you went off stiff and silly, and didn’t know what was going on. And I said no, I wouldn’t have gas. I liked to know what was being done to me, anyhow. ‘It will hurt you, sir,’ said he. I said, ‘All right, it hurts now.’
‘Sit in this chair,’ he said, ‘and keep still.’ I sat in a big chair with a sort of iron swivel on to it, and I laid my head back and opened my mouth wide. And he looked in. And I thought of the execution of Charles the First! Then he said, ‘ Now, sir, steady!’ And he put a thing in to keep my jaw open. Then I shut my eyes and repeated in my head, —
‘The boy stood on the burning deck,
When all but him had fled!’
and before I got to ‘fled’ out came the tooth with a big prong at the end. And I never cried. And he said to me, ‘Did it hurt you?’ ‘Not a bit,’ said I. But of course it did. Only he wasn’t going to crow over me — not if I knew it! And he didn’t. He looked pretty small, I can tell you, with that tooth in his nippers. My! what scones! Such a jolly lot of butter!” And his conversation terminated abruptly in a huge bite of the succulent material offered to him by one of the ladies already on duty to attend on his budding masculinity.
Boy watched him enjoying his tea with wonder and a touch of envy. He, too, would have bidden defiance to the terrors of the dentist as carelessly as Alister, but it would have been out of sheer indifference, not combativeness. Here was the contrast between the temperaments of the two boys, and a very serious contrast it was. The slight affair of Alister’s tooth was a test of character. Boy would have gone through the painful ordeal with quiet stoicism because he would not have considered it worth while to do otherwise. Alister went through it with the idea that somehow or other he was more than a match for the dentist. Herein was the varying quality of environment which would make of the one boy a warm-blooded, courageous man, and of the other perhaps a languid cynic. Young as the children were, any close student of human nature could trace the diverging possibilites of each mind already, and the uncomfortable little pang at Miss Letty’s heart was not hurting her without some cause. However, she was not of a morose or morbid disposition, and she would not allow herself to give way to these first premonitions of doubt as to Boy’s development. She resolved to make one more effort to rescue him from his uncouth home surroundings, and meanwhile she contented herself with letting him enjoy his holiday as much as possible, and giving him all the liberty he seemed to need.
One day, however, there occurred a grand catastrophe. Major Desmond had left his gun in the hall, with express orders that it was not to be touched. But just about an hour before dinner there was the sound of a tremendous explosion and a crash of glass, and on a contingent of the household running to see what was the matter, lo! there was the major’s gun in the same place and position, but a charge was missing, and one of the windows in the hall was shivered to atoms. The major had a temper, and he lost it for the immediate moment.
“Now, who has done this?” he shouted. “Didn’t I give express orders that my gun was to be left alone? By Jove, whoever has been meddling with it ought to have a sound thrashing! Might have killed somebody, besides breaking windows. Come, now, who did it?”
There was nobody to answer. The servants were all at a loss, — Boy and Alister were out in the grounds, so it was said, — no one had touched the gun, — it must have gone off by itself.
“D — d nonsense!” roared the major, forgetting the presence of Miss Leslie, who stood looking at the broken window in perplexity. “I put the gun up in a safe corner out of ha
rm’s way. If it had gone off by itself the charge would have been lodged in the ceiling, not through the window. I am not such an ass as not to see that. Someone has been playing pranks with it. Where’s Boy?”
“Oh, Boy wouldn’t touch it,” protested Miss Letty, “ I’m sure he wouldn’t!”
“Well, where is he?” persisted the major. “He may know something about it,” and marching outside the door he called, “Boy!” in a voice strong enough to awaken all the fabled sleeping giants of the hills.
Boy answered the call with quite an amazing promptitude.
“Yes, major!”
The major stared.
“Where did you come from so suddenly?” he demanded. “You young rascal! You have been meddling with my gun!”
“I’m sure I haven’t,” replied Boy, coolly.
“Then who has?”
“How can I tell?” said Boy, with airy indifference.
“Boy!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Look at me straight.”
Boy obeyed. The clear eyes met the major’s stare without flinching.
“You swear on your honour — now, sir, remember! I am a soldier, and ‘on your honour’ is a very serious thing to say — swear on your honour that you never touched that gun?”
Boy hesitated — just a second’s pause. And suddenly a high, piping voice called out, —
“Own up, Boy! Own up! Don’t be caddish!”
Boy flushed crimson to the roots of his fair curls and cast down his eyes. He had no occasion to speak. The major’s face grew grave and stern.
“You may go, sir!”
“Oh, Boy!”
The cry came from Miss Letty, and Boy tried to shuffle past without looking at her, but she caught him by the arm.
“Boy,” she said, her sweet voice shaking with suppressed excitement, “how could you tell a lie!”
He stopped, uneasily shifting one foot against the other and keeping his eyes cast down. She stretched out her soft, kind little hand.
“Come with me,” she continued; “come and talk to me alone, and tell me why you were so wicked, and then we will go and ask the major’s pardon.”
She looked at him fully. And her sweet face, and tender eyes full of tears, were more than the child’s unnatural stoicism could bear. His little chest heaved, his lips quivered.
“I — I” and he got no further, but broke down in a wild fit of sobbing. Miss Letty put her arm round him and gently led him away. The major, who had stood grim and rigid in the hall, watched her go and coughed fiercely, unaware that the ubiquitous Alister McDonald was standing on the threshold of the hall where the little scene had taken place, and was watching him inquisitively, with his little hands in his little trouser pockets as usual.
“Hullo, major!” said this imp, “don’t you cry!”
“Eh — what! Cry! Me! God bless my soul! Go to — the North Pole with you!” snapped out the major, irascibly. “What business have you here, sir, staring at me?”
“Oh, come, now, I say,” returned the unabashed Alister, “don’t be raspy. I suppose I can look at you as well as anybody else, can’t I? I like looking at you.”
The major gave a short laugh.
“Oh, you do, do you?” he returned. “Much obliged to you, I’m sure.”
He coughed again, laughed, chuckled, and then settled his features into gravity.
“Now, look here, you scamp,” he said, resting his big hand on Alister’s small shoulder, “how did it happen?”
“Well, we were playing soldiers,” explained Alister, “and I was the Britisher, and he was the Britisher’s enemy. He was half starved, and he had to get behind an entrenchment. The entrenchment was the hall, and he was in a terrible way, because, you see, he had no water, no food, and he was run down with fever-and-ague. You see, I was the well-fed Britisher, and I had everybody looking after me, and all the world watching what I was going to do, and I had prayers put up for me in all the churches, and he was only a savage and a brother. But he said, ‘I have got a way to surprise you,’ said he, and he turned a somersault, and he said, ‘Yah!’ as savages do, you know, — and he ran behind his entrenchment (the hall door), and just without thinking took up the gun and fired it through the window. I was lying low waiting attack, and I was nearly killed — not quite — and then he was frightened and ran out, and we said, ‘We’ll be brothers,’ and we hid in ambush, and then you called—”
“Yes, that’s all very well,” said the major, suppressing his strong desire to grin at this account of warfare; “but why did he tell a lie?”
“Oh, I suppose because he was the enemy,” replied Alister, calmly. “You see, in the camp he had nobody watching him, and no churches to pray for him, — he was only a savage! I expect that’s what it was.”
The major looked reflective.
“Well, now you had better go away home,” he said. “There’ll be no more fighting or games between Christian brotherhoods to-day. Boy will have to be punished.”
Alister’s small face became exceedingly serious.
“I say, don’t be hard on him,” he said, expostulating. “He’s such a little chap.”
The major preserved his solemnity.
“He’s only two years younger than you are — quite old enough to know how to tell the truth.”
“Has he got a mother?” asked Alister.
“Yes.”
“Well, you see, she isn’t here, and he can’t go and ask her about it, so perhaps he got a bit muddled like. I hope you will let him down easy.”
The major bit his lips under his fuzzy white moustache, to hide the smile that threatened to break into a roar of laughter, as the young gentleman, after giving expression to these sentiments, sauntered off somewhat dejectedly, and then, turning into the house, put away the gun that had been the cause of all the mischief, and went round to the stables to devise some means of stuffing up the broken window in the hall for the night. And his thoughts were touched with sorrow as well as pity.
“Unfortunate little chap!” he muttered. “Once let him take to lying, and he is done for. All the Lettys in the world could not save him. I wonder how the devil he came to begin it? It is not his first lie — he did it too well, and looked too cool for it. I should like to know how he began.”
And this was just what Miss Letty was finding out, bit by bit, as she sat in her own quiet room with Boy on her knee clasped in her arms, and talking to him gently. She heard all about his life on the sea-shore, and the little scavengers he met there who had taught him how clever it was “to do” people, and to cheat, and generally mislead and deceive the simple and unsuspecting; and as she listened to the strange moral axioms he had picked up, and gradually, gathered from him as he talked some idea of the lonely life he led, uncared for and untaught, save in the most superficial and slip-shod fashion, her heart warmed to him more and more with an almost painful tenderness; and when, with a short sigh, he paused in his disjointed narrative, the tears were heavy in her eyes. She set him gently down from her knee and kissed him.
“We’ll say no more about it, Boy,” she whispered. “Run to the major and tell him you are very sorry, and that you will never tell a lie again.”
Boy hesitated a moment. Then, impulsively throwing his arms round her neck and kissing her, he ran quickly away. He found the major in the billiard-room reading his newspaper and smoking, and went straight up to him.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” he faltered.
Major Desmond laid down his paper and looked at him full in the face, with the straight, steel-blue eyes that had in them as much command as tenderness.
“Sorry for what?” he demanded, “for touching the gun, or for telling a lie?”
Boy’s heart swelled, and his eyes were misty and aching.
“For both, sir,” he said.
The major held out his hand, and Boy laid his own little, trembling, hot fingers in that cool, clean palm.
“That’s right!” said Desmond. “Dis
obedience is bad, but a lie is worse, — don’t do either. Is that agreed?”
“Yes, sir.”
Boy answered bravely enough, but his spirit sank as he thought that if he never disobeyed, his obedience, instead of a virtue, would oblige him to do the most foolish and unnecessary things under his mother’s orders, and if he never told a lie, his hours of freedom and play would be considerably if not altogether curtailed, and he be made the poor little peg on which his parents would hang their many quarrels and discussions. The major noticed the touch of hesitation in his answer as well as in his manner and did not like it. But he repressed his own forebodings and smiled cheerily down upon the small, forlorn lad in whom lay the budding promise of a man who might, or might not, be fit for good fighting in the combat of life.
“When you are bigger and stronger I’ll show you how to handle a gun,” he said. “At present you are too small a chap. You would blow yourself into bits as easily as you blew out the hall window. Now come along with me and I’ll show you the birds we got to-day.”
He strode out into the grounds, and Boy followed him with an odd mixture of feeling. Sorrow and shame, united to wonder and scorn, put him into a mental condition not easy to explain. To his childish mind it seemed difficult to understand why Major Desmond and Miss Letty should be such straight, honest, sober folk, and his own father and mother such shiftless, indifferent, careless people.
“They don’t seem to see that a boy can’t do just as well with a father who doesn’t care about him as he could with a father who does,” he mused. “I suppose I’m bound to be a lonely boy.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 438