The rain now began to fall in heavy earnest, and Boy could not stop to protest further against this obstinate final statement of his sea-faring friend. He put the tiger’s tooth in his pocket, smiled, lifted his cap, and ran, a little light figure flying across the sand, some of his curls escaping loose and gleaming like the sunshine that was now lacking in the sky. Rattling Jack stood still and watched him go, heedless of the rain that began to drift in sweeping gusts round and round him. The sea uprose and lashed the flat shore with fringes of yellow foam, angrily murmuring and snarling like some savage beast of prey. But Jack heard nothing, or, if he heard, he did not heed. Equally he saw nothing but that small child figure racing through the rain over the glistening sand, till at the corner of an old jetty, where the mists of the land and sea hung low like a curtain, it turned and disappeared.
“There ye go,” said the old man, talking to himself—” there ye go — away for ever. An’ the rain failin’, and the mists a gatherin’. There ye go. The way of all the chillun — a bit of sunshine, and then the mist and the rain. There ye go — and good-bye to ye. Ye wor a nice little chap — quiet, yet speerety-like — a nice little chap ye wor, — an’ I’ll think o’ ye kindly as if the good God had took ye, — just as if ye wor dead.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE next day Boy shut himself up in his Own little bedroom, and wrote a letter to Miss Leslie. He was a long time about it, and he took infinite pains to spell carefully. The result of his anxious thought and trouble was the following epistle:
“MY DEER FREND MISS LETTY
“I am gowin to skool nex week you will bee sory to heer it is not a skool in England like Alister Macdonald it is in France ware I have never bin I am sory to tell you I do not like to go thare. Mother expecs me to speek French but I am sory to tell you I do not feel I shall speek very quikly the new langwige if you cood do enny thing to safe me from the skool in France I wood be glad I am afrade Mother will send me before you can cum my close are been packt and I am to bee put on boord a ship to the Captain who is to give me to the skool I am very sory and cannot help cryin if I cood run away wood you meet me enny ware I wood like to see you I think of deer Skotland and Alister and Majer Desmond, pleese give my luv and say I have to go to skool in France Alister will be very sory as he alwas sade he wood fite the french the plase is called Noirville (Boy wrote this very roundly and carefully) in Brittany and the master takes boys who are cheep mother says I am afrade I shal not see you deer miss Letty I am your lovin frend “BOY.”
This letter finished, and put in an envelope, Boy carefully addressed it in a very big, round hand to Miss Leslie, at her house in Hans Place, and then went down to his mother to ask for a penny stamp.
“Whom have you been writing to?” she demanded, with a touch of suspicion.
For one instant Boy was tempted to answer, —
“To Alister McDonald,” but he resisted the temptation bravely. He had promised his dear Miss Letty never to tell a lie again after the fatal affair with the major’s gun. So he answered frankly, —
“To Miss Letty.”
His mother dived into the depths of a capacious pocket, and opening a very bulgy purse, produced the required stamp.
“There you are,” she said, graciously, “I hope you have written her a nice letter.”
“Oh, yes, mother!”
“Well, leave it outside on the hall table. I have some letters to write too, and they can all go together.”
Boy obeyed. He would have liked to go and post his letter himself, but his conscience told him that were he to ask to do so it would look like doubting his mother’s integrity.
“It will be all right!” he said to himself, though there was just a little sinking at his heart as he placed it where he had been told;— “mother wouldn’t touch it.”
He hung about for a while, looking at the precious epistle, which to him involved so much, till, hearing his little shuffling feet in the hall, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir grew impatient.
“Boy!” she called.
“Yes, mother.”
“Come here. I want you to wind off this worsted for me.”
Boy went to her, and meekly accepted the thick hank of ugly grey wool she offered him, and stretching it out, as was his custom when he had to do this kind of duty, on the back of a chair, he set to work patiently winding it off into a ball. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir meanwhile wrote two letters, and sealed them in their respective envelopes. Then she took them out into the hall, and Boy heard her call the servant to take all the letters to the post.
“Is mine gone too?” he asked, as she re-entered.
“Of course! Do you suppose your mother could be so careless as to forget it?”
Boy said nothing, but went on winding the grey worsted till he had made a neat, soft, big round of it; then he handed it to his mother, and ventured to kiss her cheek.
“My own Boy!” she said, gushingly. “You do love me, don’t you?”
“Yes, mother. Only — only—”
“Only what?”
“I wish you were sending me to a school in England. I don’t like going to France!”
“That’s because you don’t know what is for your good, dear!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, with a magnificent air. “Trust to mother! Mother always does everything for the best!”
Boy made no answer, but presently went away to his room, and took down a book in large print, which Major Desmond had given him as a parting gift, entitled “Our Country’s Heroes,” in which there were some very thrilling pictures of young men, almost boys, fighting, escaping from prison, struggling with wild beasts, climbing Alpine heights, swimming tempestuous seas, and generally distinguishing themselves, and as he turned the pages, he wondered wistfully whether he would ever be like any one of them. He feared not; there was no encouragement held out to him to be a country’s hero.
“Alister McDonald will be doing great things someday, I’m sure,” he said to himself. “He’s full of most wonderful ideas about killing all the country’s enemies.”
And while he thus pored over his book, and thought, his mother opened his poor, little letter to Miss Leslie (“for it is a mother’s duty!” she said to herself, to excuse her dishonourable act to a trusting child) and read every word two or three times over. She had, of course, never intended it to be posted, and when she had gone into the hall to apparently give the servant all the letters for the post, she had kept it back and quietly slipped it into her pocket. As she now perused it, her whole large figure swelled with the “noble matron’s” indignation.
“What a wicked old thing that Leslie woman must be!” she exclaimed. “A perfect mischief-maker! She has poisoned my son’s mind! He would evidently run away to her if he could! How fortunate it is that I have intercepted this letter! Not that it matters much, because, of course, I should have soon put a stop to the old maid’s nonsense, and Boy’s too. Stupid child! But it isn’t his fault, poor darling, it’s the fault of that conceited old thing who has put all these foolish notions into his head. Really, a mother has to be always on her guard!”
With which sagacious observation, she posted Boy’s letter to his “deer frend” into the fire. Then, satisfied that she “had done a mother’s duty,” she called Boy, and asked him if he would like a game of draughts with her. He nodded a glad assent, and as he brought out the board and set the pieces, he looked so bright and animated that his mother “swelled” towards him as it were, and shed one of her slowest, fattest smiles upon him.
“I shall be very lonely without you, Boy!” she said, plaintively. “No nice little son to play draughts with me! But it’s for your good, I know; and a mother must always sacrifice herself for her children!”
She sighed in bland self-admiration; but Boy, not being able to argue on the duties of mothers, had already made his first move on the draughtboard, so she had to resign herself with as good a grace as she could to the game, which she had only proposed by way of a ruse to take Boy’s mind off any further possibili
ty of its dwelling on the subject of his letter to Miss Leslie.
But Boy thought of it all the same, though he said nothing. Day after day he waited anxiously for a reply; and when none came, his little face grew paler, and his brows contracted the habit of frowning. One morning when his mother was just opening some letters of her own which had arrived by the first delivery, she looked up and said, smilingly, —
“Have you heard from Miss Letty yet, Boy?”
Boy looked at her with a straight, fearless glance, which, had she been a little less mean and treacherous and poor of soul than she was, might have made her wince.
“No, mother.”
“What a shame!” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir settled herself more comfortably in her chair, still smiling. “But you see, she’s getting rather an old lady now, and she can hardly be expected to write to little boys!”
“She promised me she would always answer me if I wrote to her,” said Boy, his small mouth set and stern, and his eyes looking quite tired and pained. “She promised!”
“And you believed her?” his mother queried, carelessly. “Poor dear child! Yes, of course! So nice of you! But you will have to learn, dear, as you grow older, that people don’t always keep their promises.”
“I can’t think Miss Letty would ever break hers,” said Boy, slowly.
His mother laughed unkindly.
“What a touching faith you have in her,” she said, and laughed again. “Such a little boy! and quite in love with such an old lady! Oh, go along, Boy! Don’t be silly! You really are too absurd! Miss Letty has got quite enough to do with counting up her money and looking after the interest of it, without bothering to write to you!”
“Is she very rich?” asked Boy, suddenly.
“Rich? I should think she is indeed. Do you know” — and she smiled blandly—” she wanted to give you all the money she has got!”
“Me!” exclaimed Boy, and stared, breathlessly. “Yes, you! But then you would have had to go away from me, and be like her son instead of mine! That would have been quite dreadful! And, of course, I could not have allowed such a thing.” Boy said not a word. He grew a little paler still, but was quite silent. “And then,” went on Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, graciously, “you would have had all her thousands of pounds when she was dead.”
This word broke up Boy’s unnatural composure.
“Dead! When she was dead! Oh, I don’t want Miss Letty to die!” he said, the colour rushing up hotly to his brows. “No! no! I don’t want any money — I wouldn’t have it — not if Miss Letty had to die first! I would rather die myself!”
And unable to control his rising emotion, he suddenly burst into tears, and ran out of the room.
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir gazed after him helplessly. Then rising, she paced the room slowly to and fro with elephantine tread, and sniffed the air portentously.
“He’s quite unmanageable! I’m thankful — yes, thankful — that I have decided on that school in Brittany, and the sooner he goes the better!”
Meanwhile Boy was crying quietly, and by himself, in his room.
“Oh, Miss Letty!” he sobbed; “dear Miss Letty! You wanted me to be your Boy! Oh, I wish I was! I wish I was! Not for all the money — I don’t want any — but I want you! I want you, Miss Letty! Oh, I do want you so much! I do want you!”
Alas! the Fates, so often invincibly obstinate in their particular way of weaving the web of a life and sometimes tangling the threads as they go, were apparently set dead against any change for the better occurring in this child’s destiny; and no “occult” forces of sound or other form of spirit communication were vouchsafed to Miss Letty concerning the troubles and difficulties of her little friend. And the day came, when Boy, to quote the ancient ballad of Lord Bateman,
“Shipped himself all aboard of a ship,
Some foreign countries for to see.”
A solitary little figure he stood on the deck where his mother had left him after “seeing him off,” somewhat doubtfully received and considered by the captain of the said ship as a sort of package, labelled, and needing speedy transit; and as he saw the white cliffs of England recede, his heart was heavy as lead, and his soul full of bitterness. Not for his mother or father were his farewells, but for Miss Letty. To her he sent his parting thoughts; to her he silently breathed the last love, the last tenderness of his innocent childhood. For his trust in her remained unbroken. She would have answered his letter, he knew, if she had received it. He felt instinctively certain that it had never been posted, — and when once this idea took root in his young mind, it bore its natural fruit, a deep distrust, which was almost scorn, of the mother who could stoop so low as to deliberately deceive him. The incident made such a strong impression upon him, that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it “had aged him.” He had never been able to respect his father, — and now he was moved to despise his mother. Hence his good-byes to her were cold and lifeless, — the kiss he gave her was a mere touch, his little hand lay limply in hers, — while she, in her sublime selfconceit, thought that this numb and frozen attitude of the child was the result of his grief at parting from her.
“See that he has a good dinner, please,” she said to the captain, in whose care she had placed him, heaving her large bosom expansively as she spoke. “Poor, dear, little fellow! He’s so terribly cut up at parting from me. We have been such friends — such close companions! You will look after him, won’t you?”
The captain grunted a brief assent, thinking what a remarkably stout woman she was; and Boy smiled, — such a pale, cold little smile, — the first touch of the sarcasm that was destined to make his pretty mouth into such a hard line in a few more years. And the ship plunged away from the English shore through the grey-green, foam-crested billows, and Boy leaned over the deck-rail, and watched the churning water under the paddle-wheels, and the sea-birds swooping down in search of stray scraps of food thrown out from the ship’s kitchen; and he remembered what Rattling Jack had said about them, “ Born and bred in a hole of the cliffs, they’ve got to larn to fly, — and larn they do, — and when they flys, they flys their own way — they takes it an’ they keeps it.”
And moved by an odd sense of the injurious treatment of an untoward Fate, he took out from his pocket the precious “tiger’s tooth” the old sailor had given him as a talisman, and dropped it in the waves.
“For it’s evidently not a bit of use,” he said to himself, “Jack said it would take me through difficulties, but it hasn’t. It has been no help to me at all. It’s a humbug, like — like most things. And as for the sea-gulls, I’m sure the world is a better place for birds than boys. I wish I’d never been a boy.”
But youthful wishes like youthful hopes are often vain, and doomed to annihilation through the cross currents of opposing influences, and heedless of Boy’s aching little heart, so full of crushed aspirations and disappointment, the ship went on and bore him relentlessly away from everything in which he had the faintest interest. And while he was on his journey to France, his estimable “Muzzy” sat down at home, and in high satisfaction and importance, wrote two letters. One was to the Master of the “skool” at Noirville, as follows:
“DEAR SIR, —
“My son has left England to-day, so that he will arrive in time to meet your representative at St. Malo, where I understand you will send to receive him. I have no further instructions respecting his education to give you, except to ask you to kindly supervise his letters. He has a young friend named Alister McDonald, son of Colonel McDonald, who is of very good family, to whom he may wish to write, and I have no objection whatever to his doing so. But there is an elderly person named Miss Leslie, who has an extremely unfortunate influence upon his mind, and I shall be obliged to you if you will intercept any letters he may attempt to write to her and forward them to me.
“Mes meilleurs compliments!
“AMELIA D’ARCY-MUIR.”
The other was to Miss Leslie.
“MY DEAR LETITIA, —
>
“I am sure you will be glad to hear that dear Boy has gone to school. I have sent him to a very good establishment in Noirville, Brittany, where he will pick up French very quickly, — and languages are so necessary to a boy nowadays. He left his love for you, and told me to say good-bye to you for him. I hope you are quite well, and that this rather damp weather is not affecting your spirits. I am, of course, rather lonely without my darling son, but to be a good mother one must always suffer something.
“Sincerely yours,
“AMELIA D’ARCY-MUIR.”
It was with a curious sense of self-congratulation that she posted these two letters, and thought of the result they would effect. The one to the French school-master would subject Boy to a sort of espionage, which would, she decided, be “good for him,” — it was part of “a mother’s duty” to make a child feel that he was watched and suspected and mistrusted, and that every innocent letter he wrote was under “surveillance” as if he were a prisoner of war, and the one to Miss Letty would cause that good and gentle creature such grief and consternation as made the worthy Amelia D’Arcy-Muir wriggle with pleasure to contemplate. She was one of those very common types of women who delight in making other women unhappy, and who approve of themselves for doing an unkindness as though it were a virtue. There was nothing she liked better than to meet some sour old beldame-gossip and talk with a sort of condescending pity of some beautiful or well-known person completely out of her sphere, as if the said person were an ancient hooded crow. To pick a reputation to pieces was one of her delights, to make mischief in households, another; and to create confusion and discord where, till her arrival, all had been peace, was an ecstasy whose deliciousness to her soul almost approached surfeit. She always said her disagreeable things in the softest accents, as though she were imparting a valuable secret; and when an inextricably hopeless muddle of affairs among perfectly harmless people had come about through her interference, she put on a grand air of protesting innocence, and looked “like Niobe all tears.” But in secret she hugged herself with joy to think what trouble she had managed to work up out of nothing, — hence her mood was one of the smoothest, most suave satisfaction, as she pictured Miss Letty’s face of woe when she heard that Boy had gone away out of England! She ordered a dozen native oysters, and had a pint of champagne for supper, by way of outward expression for her inward comfort, and enjoyed these luxuries doubly because of the delighted consciousness she had that Miss Letty was unhappy.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 441
