“Then you don’t really care about it, perhaps?” queried Miss Letty, determined to get something out of him somehow concerning his tastes or aversions, “ you don’t really love the work of preparing for the army?”
“Oh, I don’t think any of the fellows care much about the work” said Boy, carelessly. “You couldn’t expect them to love work. You see, they do just what their fathers and mothers want them to do. Some chaps have a choice, I believe — but I don’t know any. It’s no good saying you want to be one thing when your father wants you to be something else.”
Major Desmond listened attentively, and his eyes, twinkling with anger a moment before, softened a little.
“What did you want to be? — if ever you did want to be anything?” he asked.
Boy hesitated and shuffled his feet under the table. Miss Letty looked at him anxiously; so did Violet. Catching Miss Letty’s loving glance, he took courage.
“When I was quite a small chap like,” he explained stammeringly, “I used to think I would be an explorer. I wanted to travel a long, long way off to strange countries, and find things nobody had ever found.”
He checked himself abruptly. The waiter was handing round new dishes to tempt the appetite, and Boy had to choose between “vol-au-vent” and “côtelettes d’agneau, points d’asperges.”
“Well,” said the major, “that wasn’t a bad idea. There’s nothing to prevent your doing that still. A soldier can be an explorer as well.”
“Yes, but I think that all gets knocked out of you at college,” said Boy, beginning to gain more confidence as he talked. “You see, you can’t be an explorer very well unless you can get some Government to commission you to explore, and find you all the money and the rig-out. And when you’re an officer in the Army, you’ve got to obey orders, and go where you’re told, — not where you like.”
This statement was unanswerable, and for a few minutes the little party of four at luncheon ate “vol-au-vent” and “côtelettes d’agneau” without much recognition of the delicacies they were supposed to be enjoying. Miss Letty had certainly lost her appetite. But, as was her usual habit, she mentally scolded herself for allowing any sense of hurt or disappointment to weigh upon her mind. “What am I bothering my head about?” she thought. “The boy is going through the usual training necessary for his career, and is being turned out just like other boys.” But there, though she did not admit it to herself, was the chief source of her regret, “ just like other boys.” That was the pity and pain of it. Ground down into the same educational pattern, crammed with the same assorted and classified facts, trained by the same martinet rules of discipline, without any thought taken as to diversity of character or varying quality of temperament, Boy was being shaped, like a jelly in a cook’s mould, to the required size and type of the military automaton. There would be no room left for the expansion of any new or bold form of disposition, no chance would be given for any originality of ideas; he was destined to become merely one of a set of army chess-men, moving in strict accordance with the rules of the game, — rules, not only of the game of war, but of the game of life. And part of this game of life with latter-day Englishmen is to check all natural emotion, kill enthusiasm, and let all the wonders of the world and the events of time and history pass by, while you stand in the place where fortune or circumstance has thrown you, never budging, and indifferent to all things but your own precious and (if you only knew it!) most unimportant and ridiculously opinionated self. It was the knowledge of this system of education that gave Miss Letty the uncomfortable little ache at her heart as she noted Boy’s evident listlessness and cynicism, for in the sweet, eminently idealistic, but unpractical way of women she had hoped something better and higher might have chanced for him. She watched him as he ate his “vol-au-vent,” — which, after a slow consideration, causing much irritation to the vivacious French waiter who served it to him, he had chosen as the most tempting of the two “entrees” offered, — and wondered what would be his ultimate fate. In prospective fancy she saw him as an officer on half-pay, like his father, — perhaps married to a slovenly woman, like his mother, — and — who could tell? — finally taking to the same dissolute courses which marked the daily existence of the Honourable Jim. And while she was thinking this with a little inward shudder, Violet was endeavouring to “draw him out” on some other subject than the way in which he considered his career, — a way which she could see was distinctly vexatious to both her uncle and Miss Letty. Drawing towards her one of the graceful clusters of flowers which so lavishly decorated the table, she said, —
“How lovely the English roses are! — much sweeter than the American. Are you fond of flowers?”
This with a bright glance at Boy.
“I don’t mind them much,” he replied, indifferently.
Violet coloured a little and was silent. Her attempt to turn the conversation into a lighter and more pleasant vein was frustrated. But now the major spoke.
“You don’t ‘mind’ flowers!” he said. “Well, what do you mind? — anything?”
Boy laughed.
“I don’t know.”
“I wish you did know,” said the major, with impressive mock-solemnity. “I should like to ascertain from you just exactly the worth of things. I am sure you could tell me.”
Boy took this quite seriously.
“How?” he enquired.
“Well, in this way. You are learning more at your college than I learned in all my life. When I was a young chap drilling for the army, I didn’t know anything except the rough-and-tumble glory of it. I had no one to ‘cram’ me, — I passed no ‘exams.’ It’s all altered, you see. A young subaltern knows nearly as much (on paper) as his commanding officer nowadays. That’s why I want you to tell me things.”
“Don’t, Dick,” remonstrated Miss Letty, with a faint smile.
Don’t’ what? — don’t try to learn any more than I know at my age? All right! — if you ask me I won’t.” And the old gentleman gave one of his hearty, jolly laughs. “Now, for goodness’ sake, Boy, eat some pudding!”
“I don’t care for pudding, thanks,” said Boy, allowing the suggested dainty to pass him; “I never eat sweets.”
“God bless my soul!” ejaculated the major. “Here, waiter, pudding for me, please! — I’m a boy! A boy! — by Jove! — I’m a child! — this young gentleman has so far outgrown me that I’m a positive baby!”
Boy looked vaguely surprised at the major’s hilarity over this trifle, but he was not personally moved by it, nor did he accept it as a good-humoured satire on himself. He smiled, and sat, civilly serene, crumbling a bit of bread on the table, and when the luncheon was finished everyone, even Miss Letty, seemed glad that an exceptionally embarrassing meal had come at last to an end.
After it, however, there was nothing more to be done. Any display of affection towards Boy was rendered, by the impassibility of the lad himself, out of place. Miss Letty felt that she could not have kissed him for all the world as she used to do, and Violet saw that it would be a hopeless business to try and remind him of his old friend Margaret who had tended him with such devoted care in bygone days. The major, in his strong interest and affection for Miss Letty, did his best to enliven the dull atmosphere and to coax Boy to express himself with freedom and fearlessness and candour, but it was no use. There was a piano in the room, and Violet, who had a very sweet and beautifully trained voice, gave them a pretty old “plantation” song, eliciting from Boy the remark that he “had not heard that one before.” Asked as to the health of his father and mother, he said they were both “all right.”
“I thought your father was ill?” said Miss Letty.
“Oh, yes, if you mean that kind of illness. He can’t move one of his legs, but he’s been like that a good while.”
Pressed for his opinion on what he would like best in the world, he answered, with more brightness than he had yet displayed, —
“Plenty of money.”
“Why?�
� asked the major.
“Well, you can do anything with it, you see. There’s a fellow in our college, for instance, — he’s an awfully low chap, — and if his father hadn’t got what they call a ‘boom’ in some stock or other he couldn’t have got in, for it’s supposed to be a college of gentlemen’s sons only, and his father kept a fish-stall, so they say. And he’s going in for the army now. You can do everything with money.”
“You can’t buy friends with it,” said the major.
“Can’t you? I thought you always could.” And Boy smiled, the smile of the superior cynic who knows he has uttered an unpleasant truth.
The major was taken aback for a moment, but he returned to the charge.
“You can buy social friends, no doubt,” he said, “but not true ones.”
“I shouldn’t care for very true friends,” said Boy, calmly. “They would be sure to interfere with whatever you wanted to do.”
No one vouchsafed a comment on this remark, and Boy went on, —
“Mother says friends are always prying about and bothering you. If you get too much of them like, they are an awful nuisance.”
Still no observation was volunteered by either of the elderly people or the one young girl who sat listening to these cutting statements from a lad of sixteen.
“If I had a lot of money — heaps and heaps of money,” continued Boy, “I could do just as I liked. I could leave the army, go travelling, or do nothing but just amuse myself, which, of course, would be best of all.”
“You think so?” said the major. “Well, you would find it a pretty hard task to amuse yourself, if you had no fixed occupation and no friends. You’d go to the devil, as they say, in double-quick time, without so much as a halt by the way.”
Boy laughed, but looked incredulous.
“Work,” pursued the major, sententiously, “is the greatest blessing in the world. If a man has no work to do, he should find some.”
“I don’t see how that is,” said Boy; “people only work in order to have no need to work.”
Miss Letty suddenly rose from her chair. She was looking tired and pale.
“I think,” she said, gently, “I will say goodbye to you now, Boy. I am going out for a drive, — and you — you have to go for your exam., haven’t you?”
“Yes,” — and Boy glanced furtively at the clock, “ I’ve got to be there by three.”
“Well, it’s time you were off, then,” said the major, somewhat gruffly. “I’ll walk with you part of the way.”
Boy scrambled about for a minute or two in search of his hat, found it, and stuck it on his head.
“Good-bye!” he said, nodding at Miss Letty.
“Take your hat off, sir!” said the major, bluntly.
Boy looked exceedingly foolish, and blushed deeply as he removed the offending “bowler.” Miss Letty felt sorry for him, and came up in her own gracious, gentle manner to pat his shoulder, and to press a little knitted silk purse into his hand. She had made the purse, dear soul, herself, with loving thoughts as well as loving fingers.
“Good-bye, Boy!” she said, rather sadly. “This is just a little present, — you can buy what you like with it. I hope you will pass your exam. If you have time will you let me know?”
“Oh, yes,” said Boy, taking the purse and cramming it into his pocket without a look or a smile or a “thank-you,”
“as soon as I know myself. Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” said Violet, without offering her hand this time.
“Good-bye!”
The major clapped on his hat.
“Come along!” he said, brusquely.
Boy looked round, — at the ceiling, at the walls, and finally at Miss Letty.
“Good-bye!” he said again.
“Good-bye, dear Boy!”
The door opened — closed; he was gone, following the major, who, in somewhat irritated haste, led the way.
When the echo of their footsteps had passed through the outer passage and sunk into silence, Miss Letty sat quietly down in her arm-chair again. Half mechanically she fingered the old Irish point lace at her neck, and looked at the soft silken folds of her “best” gown that swept the floor. After all, she need not have been so particular about her dress. Boy had not noticed her appearance with any visible amount of affectionate liking or observation.
Still slowly and musingly she played with her delicate lace and sighed almost unconsciously, till Violet, after sympathetically watching her for a few minutes, could bear it no longer.
“My own Miss Letty!” she said fondly, going up to her chair and kneeling down beside it. “You are tired?”
“A little, my dear.”
“And — and disappointed?” murmured Violet, timidly.
Miss Letty paused before replying. Then she took the girl’s hand in her own and patted it tremblingly.
“Well, I won’t be a humbug about it, child!” she said, with a faint smile, “I am disappointed. Yes. I don’t know why I should be, but I am.”
“He is a very nice-looking boy,” said Violet, soothingly. “It is only his manner that seems so curt and ungracious. But all English boys are like that, I think, and he is at an awkward age.”
Miss Letty shook her head.
“Yes, that may be,” she said. “But it is not his manner, Violet, it is his heart, — that is what frets me. It is the sweet little heart of the child I loved so much. That heart is gone, Violet, quite gone! There is something withered and hard in its place that is not a heart at all — the heart has gone!”
Violet was silent.
“The heart has been killed in him,” went on Miss Letty, regretfully, “it has been crushed out of him. There is no warmth, no brightness of feeling in that starved little soul. He is not to blame. It is the fault of his bringing-up. I am very sorry for him — very! Poor Boy!”
She sat quiet for a few minutes, trying to control the little, nervous trembling which, like a cold ague, now and then shook her thin and delicate frame; then she said suddenly, —
“Violet, do you know I feel very strangely about Boy.”
“Do you, my own Miss Letty!” and Violet slipped an affectionate arm about her. “What do you feel?”
“Well, — you will think me a very foolish old woman perhaps, my dear, — but I feel that Boy — the Boy I loved — is not here any more. He is not dead, but he has gone, — gone in some way that I cannot explain, — but I shall meet him in heaven. Yes,” and Miss Letty smiled, “I shall find him again, — I shall find the little fair soul of the child that used to call me ‘Kiss-Letty’ — the soul that is no longer here, — but — there!”
She raised her soft blue eyes, radiant with love and trust; and Violet looked at her with the worship of a devotee for a shrined saint. Miss Letty, presently meeting this upturned, adoring gaze, bent down and kissed her very tenderly.
“And so, dear girl,” she continued, “we will say no more of Boy just now. Boy is put away among an old woman’s sentimental memories. The last illusion of a life, my dear! — the last illusion of a life! Let it go, — back to God, where it came from. Because He will restore to us all our lost beautiful things, and teach us why they were taken from us for a little while — only for a little while!” She pressed Violet’s hand, — then, with a slight effort, rose from her chair and smiled cheerfully.
“Put your things on, little one,” she said, “We will go for a drive. And we will think of nothing except just how to make ourselves pleasant and kind to everyone for the passing hour, for that is as much a duty as anything else in this world. Run away! — dress quickly!”
Violet kissed her and ran off.
When she was gone, Miss Letty stood gazing into vacancy, with a strangely wearied expression. A grey shadow, like a hint of death, clouded her sweet old face for the first time.
“Good-bye, Boy!” she whispered softly to the silence... “Good-bye, dear little Boy! God bless you!”
CHAPTER X
ONE of the greatest
among our most English of English poets has finely expressed the melancholy transformation which one brief day may make in human destinies thus:
“One day! one night! yet what a change they bring!
High in the clouds the same sweet birds may sing,
The same green leaves may rustle in the air,
And the same flowers unfold their blossoms fair, —
Still Nature smile, unchanged in all her plan,
But, oh, what change may blight the soul of man!
The sun may rise as brightly as before,
But many a heart can hail its beams no more;
’Tis but one turn of earth’s incessant ball,
Yet in that space what myriad hopes may fall!
What love depart! what friendship melt away!
Ay, Virtue’s self may wane to her decay,
Torn from her throne, heart-placed, in one eventful day!”
And if this be true, — as it is, — none of us should be surprised at the changes wrought in six years. Yet Major Desmond was so far removed from the philosophy of indifferentism as to be more than surprised at the complete metamorphosis of “young D’Arcy-Muir,” as he now called him in his own mind, instead of the old, familiar, and endearing name of “Boy.” In half-an-hour’s walk with him through the London streets the major, who had seen all sorts and conditions of men, young and old, — lads beginning their career, and veterans on the verge of finishing it, — gauged his disposition and temperament pretty correctly. Two characteristics were particularly marked in him which did not augur well for his future. One was a slighting contempt for women, — the result, of course, of contact with his mother’s shiftless, sloven, useless mode of life. Her inability to awaken either admiration or respect in her son’s mind was a seed of mischief which was beginning to bear abundant harvest. The other dominating point was a spirit of weariness, listless boredom, and cynicism, which might be real or might be affected, but which, whether it were one or the other, was indescribably irritating to a man of the major’s frank and vigorous type. “Nil ad-miran” was not his Gospel. His particular habit of life was to consider all things with gratitude and appreciation, to be thankful for the simple privilege of being alive, and having eyes wherewith to see the many varying wonders and beauties of the world which Providence had ordained to him as his home. But it may be remarked, in passing, that this is unfortunately not the “habit” which is generally encouraged by the latter-day masters of schools and colleges among their boys. They make much of the difficulties of life, but little of its pleasures. The hardships of learning are insisted upon, but not the delights. The little, dry pedagogues who undertake the high and responsible business of fostering the growth and guiding the education of young, unspoilt natures do their best, as a rule, to cramp and destroy all that is fresh and eager and enthusiastic. A young colt gallops about in the meadows, and frisks and rolls on the soft green turf, rejoicing in his youth and strength, but the young boy must take his college “sports” as he takes his lessons, — by rule and line and with more or less severity, under the control of a master. Absolute freedom of body and soul, or what may be called pure revelry in the mere fact of life, is almost unknown to the “crammed” modern lad, — he is old before his time, — and it is no uncommon thing to see a stripling of fourteen or fifteen quite wrinkled in face, with that dull film in his eyes which used to be the special and distinctive sign of extreme old age. It is a sad pity! — for youth is a gracious thing, and life is full of beauty, and the natural joy, the opulent vivacity, and radiating force of a truly young heart are the most cheerful of all physical influences. One of the pagan philosophers asserts that “if a country is peopled with joyous inhabitants, — that is, those who take pleasure in innocent and healthful pastimes, in which lads and lasses take equal part, such as country games, village feasts and dances, — it is a safe and good country to live in, and you may be sure that the people thereof are more virtuous than vicious, more wise than foolish; but if things are in such a condition that the youth of both sexes are constrained to dulness, and have no mirth set forth for them, such as meadow festivals of flowers, and harmless tripping forth together to the sound of music, then beware, for it is a country full of languors and vapourish discontents, where there will be seditions and troubles, if not sooner, then late, and men will agitate with those who labour for excess of payment rather than excess of toil, while honesty and open dealing will be more known by memory than present fact.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 446
