BOY
_PUBLISHER’S NOTE._
_This NEW LONG STORY is the most important volume by MARIE CORELLI
published for some years, and the first issued since the Author’s
serious illness._
_May 31, 1900._
BOY
A SKETCH
_By_ MARIE
CORELLI
[Illustration: colophon]
London
HUTCHINSON & CO
Paternoster Row 1900
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
To
MY DEAREST FRIEND IN THE WORLD
BERTHA VYVER
WHO HAS KNOWN ALL MY LIFE FROM CHILDHOOD
AND HAS BEEN THE WITNESS OF ALL MY
LITERARY WORK FROM ITS
VERY BEGINNING
THIS SIMPLE STORY
IS
GRATEFULLY AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED
BOY
CHAPTER I
It is said by many people who are supposed to “know things,” that our
life is frequently, if not always, influenced by the first impressions
we ourselves receive of its value or worthlessness. Some folks,
presuming to be wiser even than the wisest, go so far as to affirm that
if you, while still an infant in long clothes, happen to take a disgust
at the manner and customs of your parents, you will inevitably be
disgusted at most events and persons throughout the remainder of your
earthly pilgrimage. If any truth exists in such a statement, then “Boy”
had excellent cause to be profoundly disappointed in his prospects at a
very early outset of his career. He sat in what is sometimes called a
“feeding-chair,” wedged in by a bar which guarded him from falling
forward or tumbling out upon the floor, and the said bar was provided
with an ingenious piece of wood, which was partially hollowed out in
such wise as to keep him firm by his fat waist, as well as to provide a
resting-place for the plateful of bread-and-milk which he was enjoying
as much as circumstances would permit him to enjoy anything. Every now
and then he beat the plate solemnly with his spoon, as though
improvising a barbaric melody on a new sort of tom-tom,--and lifting a
pair of large, angelic blue eyes upwards, till their limpid light seemed
to meet and mix with the gold-glint of his tangled curls, he murmured
pathetically,--
“Oh, Poo Sing! Does ’oo feels ill? Does ’oo feels bad? Oh, Poo Sing!”
Now, “Poo Sing” was not a Japanese toy, or a doll, or a bird, or any
innocent object of a kind to attract a child’s fancy; “Poo Sing” was
nothing but a Man, and a disreputable creature even at that “Poo Sing”
was Boy’s father, and “Poo Sing” was for the moment--to put it quite
mildly--blind drunk. “Poo Sing” had taken his coat and waistcoat off,
and had pulled out the ends of his shirt in a graceful white festoon all
round the waistband of his trousers. “Poo Sing” had also apparently done
some hard combing to his hair, for the bulk of it stood somewhat up on
end, and a few grizzled and wiry locks strayed in disorderly fashion
across his inflamed nose and puffy eyelids, this effect emphasising the
already half-foolish, half-infuriated expression of his face. “Poo Sing”
staggered to and fro, his heavy body scarcely seeming to belong to his
uncertain legs, and between sundry attacks of hiccough, he trolled out
scraps of song, now high, now low, sometimes in a quavering falsetto,
sometimes in a threatening bass; while Boy listened to him wonderingly,
and regarded his divers antics over the bar of the “feeding-chair” with
serious compassion,--the dulcet murmur of, “Does ’oo feels bad? Poo
Sing!” recurring at intervals between mouthfuls of bread-and-milk and
the rhythmic beat of the spoon. They were a strangely assorted
couple,--Boy and “Poo Sing,” albeit they were father and son. Boy, with
his fair round visage and bright halo of hair, looked more like a
child-angel than a mortal,--and “Poo Sing,” in his then condition,
resembled no known beast upon earth, since no beast ever gets
voluntarily drunk, save Man. Yet it must not for a moment be imagined
that “Poo Sing” was not a gentleman. He _was_ a gentleman,--most
distinctly,--most emphatically. He would have told you so himself, had
you presumed to doubt it, with any amount of oaths to press home the
fact. He would have spluttered at you somewhat in the following terms:--
“My father was a gentleman,--and my grandfather was a gentleman--and my
great-grandfather was a gentleman--and d----n you, sir, our people were
all gentlemen, every sanguinary man-jack of them, back to the twelfth
century! No tommy-rot with me! None of your mean, skulking,
money-grubbing Yankee millionaires in _our_ lot! Why, you d----d
rascal! Call me a gentleman!--I should pretty much think so! I am a
D’Arcy-Muir,--and I have the blood of kings in my veins--d----n you!”
Gentleman! Of course he was a gentleman! His language proved it. And his
language was the first lesson in English Boy received, though he was not
aware of its full significance. So that when two or three years later on
Boy cried out “D----n rascal papa!” quite suddenly and vociferously, he
had no consciousness of saying anything that was not the height of
filial tenderness and politeness. To be a D’Arcy-Muir, meant to be the
descendant of a long line of knights and noblemen who had once upon a
time possessed huge castles with deep dungeons, where serfs and close
kindred could be conveniently imprisoned and murdered at leisure without
distinction as to character or quality;--knights and noblemen who some
generations onward were transformed into “six-bottle-men” who thought it
seemly to roll under their dining-tables dead drunk every evening, and
who, having merged themselves and their “blue blood” into this present
nineteenth-century Captain the Honourable James D’Arcy-Muir, the father
of Boy,--were, we must suppose, in their condition of departed spirits,
perfectly satisfied that they had bestowed a blessing upon the world by
the careful production of such a “gentleman” and Christian.
Captain the Honourable, mindful of his race and breeding, took care to
marry a lady,--whose ancestry was only just in a slight degree lower
than his own. She could not trace her lineage back to the twelfth
century, still she came of what is sometimes called a good old stock,
and she was handsome enough as a girl, though always large, lazy and
unintelligent. Indolence was her chief characteristic;--she hated any
sort of trouble. She only washed herself under protest, as a sort of
concession to the civilisation of the day. She had been gifted with an
abundance of beautiful hair, of a somewhat coarse texture, yet rich in
colour and naturally curly,--it was “a nuisance,” she averred,--and as
soon as she married, she cut it short “to save the bother of doing it in
the morning” as she herself stated. Until she had secured a husband, she
had complied sufficiently with the rules of society to keep herself
tidily dressed;--but both before and after her boy was born, she easily
relapsed into the slovenly condition which she considered “comfort,” and
which was her habitual nature. Truth to tell, she had no incentive or
ambition to appear at her best. She had not been married to Captain the
Honourable D’Arcy-Muir one week before she discovered his partiality for
strong drink, and being far too lymphatic to urge resistance, she sank
into a state of passive resignation to circumstances. What was the good
of a pretty “toilette”? Her husband never noticed how she
dressed,--whether she wore satin or sackcloth was a matter of equal
indifference to him,--so, finding that a short skirt and loose-fitting
blouse formed a comfortable sort of “get-about” costume, she adopted
it, and stuck to it morning, noon, and night. Always inclined to
_embonpoint_, she managed to get extremely stout in a very short time;
and chancing to read in a journal an article on “hygiene,” which
eloquently proved that corsets were harmful and really dangerous to
health, she decided to do without them. So that by the time Boy was four
years old, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, in her continual study of personal ease,
had developed a loose, floppy sort of figure, which the easy fitting
blouse covered, but did not disguise;--to save all possibility of corns
she encased her somewhat large feet in soft felt slippers,--swept the
short hair from off her brows, did without collars and cuffs, and
“managed” her small house in Hereford Square in her own fashion, which
“managing” meant having everything at sixes and sevens,--meals served at
all hours,--and a general preparation for the gradual destruction of
Boy’s digestion by giving him his bread-and-milk and other nourishment
at moments when he least expected it.
Thus, it may be conceded by those who know anything about married life
and housekeeping, that Boy began his career among curious surroundings.
From his “feeding-chair” he saw strange sights,--sights which often
puzzled him, and caused him to beat monotonous time on his plate with
his baton-spoon in order to distract his little brain. Two large looming
figures occupied his horizon--“Muzzy” and “Poo Sing.” “Muzzy” was the
easy-going stout lady with the felt slippers, who gave him his
bread-and-milk and said he was _her_ boy,--“Poo Sing” was, in the few
tranquil moments of his existence, understood to be “Dads” or “Papa.”
Boy somehow could never call him either “Dads” or “Papa” when he was
seized by his staggering fits; such terms were not sufficiently
compassionate for an unfortunate gentleman who was subject to a malady
which would not allow him to keep steady on his feet without clutching
at the sideboard or the mantelpiece. Boy had been told by “Muzzy” that
when “Papa” rolled about the room he was “very ill,”--and the most
eloquent language could not fittingly describe the innocent and tender
emotions of pity in Boy’s mind when he beheld the progenitor of his
being thus cruelly afflicted! Were it possible to touch a drunkard’s
heart in the mid career of his drunkenness, then the gentle murmur of
“Poo Sing!” from the fresh rosy lips of a little child, and that child
his own son, might have moved to a sense of uneasy shame and remorse the
particularly tough and fibrous nature of Captain the Honourable
D’Arcy-Muir. But Captain the Honourable was of that ancient and noble
birth which may be seen asserting itself in rowdy theatre-parties at
restaurants in Piccadilly,--and he, with the rest of his distinguished
set, said openly “D----n sentiment!” As for any sacredness in the life
of a child, or any idea of grave responsibility resting upon him as a
father, for that child’s future, such primitive notions never occurred
to him. Sometimes when Boy stared at him very persistently with solemnly
enquiring grave blue eyes, he would become suddenly and violently
irritated, and would demand, “What is the little beggar staring at?
Looks like a d----d idiot!”
Then pouring more whisky out of the ever-present bottle into the
ever-present glass, he would yell to his wife, “See here, old
woman! This child is going to be an infernal idiot! A regular
water-on-the-brain, knock-down idiot! Staring at me for all the world as
if I were a gorilla! He’s over-fed,--that’s what’s the matter! Guzzling
on bread-and-milk till he can’t get a drop more down. Never saw such a
d----d little pig in all my d----d life!”
Thus would this gentleman of irreproachable descent bawl forth, the
while Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, provokingly passive, irritatingly flabby, and
indolently inert, preserved a discreet silence. Such behaviour on her
husband’s part was of daily occurrence,--“She knew James’s little ways,”
she would remark to any sympathising friends who chanced to discourse
with her on the delicate and honeyed bliss of her matrimonial life. “Why
did you marry him?” was the question often asked of her, whereat she
would answer betwixt a sigh and a yawn,--“Really I don’t know! He seemed
quite as decent as most men, and he belongs to a splendid family!” “Did
you ever love him?” was another query once put to her by a daring
interlocutor inclined rather to romance than reality. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir
looked politely surprised.
“Love! Oh, I don’t think that had very much to do with it,” she said.
“One doesn’t think about love after one is fifteen or sixteen. That’s
all goosey-goosey-gander, you know!”
And a placid smile of superior wisdom lit up her fat face as she thus
clinched the would-be heart-searching enquiries of the mere
sentimentalist. Because, after all, as she argued, if Jim _would_ get
drunk it was no use attempting to thwart him,--he was master of himself
and of his own actions. When, after a good heavy bout of it, he was laid
up in bed with a galloping pulse, throbbing veins, parched tongue, and a
half-crazed brain, that also was no business of hers. She had made no
attempt to either restrain or guide him, because she knew it was no use
trying to do either. If he did not drink in the house, he would drink
outside the house;--if he did not drink openly, he would drink on the
sly,--few men ever took a woman’s advice for their good, though they
would take all women’s recommendations to the bad. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir was
perfectly aware of this peculiar code of man’s morals, as also of the
strange limitations of man’s logic, and knowing these things was content
to make herself as bodily comfortable as she could, and let other
matters go as an untoward fate ordained. Thus it happened that it was
only Boy who really thought at all seriously concerning the puzzle of
existence. Boy, whose proper Christian name was Robert, seemed nearly
always preoccupied about something or other. Judging by the generally
wistful expression of his small features, it might be presumed that he
had memories. Probably most children have, though they are incapable of
expressing them. The enormous gulf of difference between the very young
and their elders, exists not only on account of the disparity in
years,--but also because the elders have retained, for the most part,
nothing more on their minds than the quickly crowding and vanishing
impressions of this present world,--while the children are, we may
imagine, busy with vague recollections of something better than the
immediate condition of things,--recollections which occasionally move
them to wonder why their surroundings have become so suddenly and
strangely altered. It is impossible not to see, in the eyes of many of
these little human creatures, a look of infinite perplexity, sorrow and
enquiry,--a look which gradually fades away as they grow older and more
accustomed to the ordinary commonplace business of natural existence,
while the delicate and dim memories of the Soul in a former state wax
faint and indistinct, never to recur again, perhaps, till death
re-flashes them on the interior sight with the repeated and everlasting
assurance that “here is not our rest.” Boy had thoughts of the past,
though none of the future;--he was quite sure that all was not formerly
as it appeared to him now,--that there was a time, set far away among
rainbow eternities, when “Muzzy” and “Poo Sing” were _non est_,--when
indeed “Muzzy” and “Poo Sing” would have seemed the wildest incoherences
and maddest impossibilities. How it had chanced that the rainbow
eternities had dispersed for awhile,--had rolled back as it were into
space, and had allowed the strange spectacle of “Muzzy” and “Poo Sing”
to intervene, was more than Boy could explain, consciously or
unconsciously. But he was certain he had not always known these two now
apparently necessary personages,--and he was equally certain he had
known some sort of beings infinitely more interesting than they could
ever be. Fully impressed by this inward conviction, he often dwelt upon
it in his own mind,--and this it was that gave him the lovely far-away
look in his dreamy blue eyes,--the tender little quivering smile on his
rosy mouth, and the whole serene and wise expression of his fair and
chubby countenance. Scarcely four years old as he was, it was evident
that he had the intuition of some truer life than those around him
dreamed of,--the halo of divine things was still about him,--the “God’s
image” was just freshly stamped on the bright new coin of his
being,--and it remained for the coming years to witness how long the
brightness would last in the hands of the untrustworthy individuals who
had it in possession. For it is a dangerous fallacy to aver that every
man has the making of his destiny in his own hands: to a certain extent
he has, no doubt, and with education and firm resolve, he can do much to
keep down the Beast and develop the Angel,--but a terrific
responsibility rests upon those often voluntarily reckless beings, his
parents, who, without taking thought, use the God’s privilege of giving
life, while utterly failing to perceive the means offered to them for
developing and preserving that life under the wisest and most harmonious
conditions. It is certainly true that many parents do what they call
their “best” for their children,--that is, they work for them, and
educate them, and “place” them advantageously, as they think, in
life,--but they are apt to forget that this “life” they set store by, is
not only a question of food, clothing, money, and position,--its central
pivot is Thought,--and thought begins with the first brain-pulsations.
There is no use or sense in denying the fact,--it is so. Therefore the
progenitors of those living thought-cells cannot possibly shirk the
moral obligation which they take upon themselves from the very moment of
a child’s birth. “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the
children” is often quoted as a merciless axiom,--but it is merely the
declaration of a natural law, which, if broken, brings punishment in its
train.
Boy, lately arrived from the Infinite, was guiltless of his present
dubious surroundings. He did not make his “honourable” father a
drunkard, or his mother a sloven. He came into the world designed,
perchance, to be the redemption of both his parents, had they received
his innocent presence in that spirit. But they did not. They accepted
him as a natural result of marriage, and took no more heed of him than a
pair of monkeys casually observant of their first offspring. They, by
virtue of the evolution theory, should, as human beings, have been on a
scale higher than the Simian ancestor,--but Captain D’Arcy-Muir was not
even on a par with that hairy personage, inasmuch as the bygone
aboriginal monkey, not being aware of strong drink, could not degrade
himself that way. As long as Boy was fed, clothed, taken out, and put to
bed regularly, “Muzzy” and “Poo Sing” considered they were doing all
their necessary duty by him. “Muzzy” would indeed have been profoundly
astonished if she had known that Boy took her clothing into his
consideration, and wondered why hooks were often off, and buttons often
gone from her garments, and why her hair was so like some of the
stuffing of the old arm-chair,--woolly sort of stuffing, which was
coming through the leather for want of mending. Boy used to compare
“Muzzy” with another lady who sometimes came to visit him,--Miss Letitia
Leslie,--a wonderful vision to Boy’s admiring eyes,--a rustling,
glistening dream, made up of soft dove-coloured silk and violet-scented
old lace, and tender, calm blue eyes, and small hands with big diamonds
flashing on their dainty whiteness,--“Miss Letty,” as she was generally
called, and “that purse-proud old maid,” as Captain the Honourable
frequently designated her. Boy had his own title for her,--it was
“Kiss-Letty,” instead of “Miss Letty,”--and he would often ask, in dull
moments when the numerous perplexities of his small mind became too
entangled for him to bear--“Where is Kiss-Letty? Me wants Kiss-Letty!
Kiss-Letty loves Boy,--Boy loves Kiss-Letty!”
And to hear him sweetly meandering along in this fashion, the
uninitiated stranger might have imagined “Kiss-Letty” to be a kind of
fairy,--an elf, born of moonlight and lilies, rather than what she
really was, a spinster of forty-five, who made no pretences to be a whit
younger than she was,--a spinster who was perfectly content to wear her
own beautiful grey hair, and to wish for no “touching up” on the
delicate worn pallor of her cheeks--a spinster, moreover, who was proud
of her spinsterhood, as it was the sign of her unbroken fidelity to a
dead man who had loved her. Miss Letitia Leslie had had her history, her
own private tragedy of tears and heart-break; but the depths of sorrow
in her soul had turned to sweetness instead of sourness,--her own grief
had taught her to be compassionate of all griefs, and the unkind sword
of fate that had pierced her gentle breast rendered her delicately
cautious of ever wounding, by so much as a word or a look, the
sensitive feelings of others. Death and circumstance had made her the
independent mistress of a large fortune, which she used lavishly for the
private doing of good where evil abounded. Into the foul and festering
slums of the great city--into the shabby dwellings of poorly paid clerks
and half-starved curates,--up among the barely furnished attics where
struggling artists worked for scanty livelihood and the distant hope of
fame, “Kiss-Letty” took her sweet and gracious presence, wearing a smile
that was a very good reflex of God’s sunshine, and speaking comfort in a
voice as tender as that of any imagined angel bringing God’s messages.
Much of the grinding of the ceaseless wheel of tribulation did Miss
Letitia see, as she went to and fro on her various errands of mercy and
friendship; but perhaps among all the haunts and homes where her
personality was familiar, her interest had seldom been more strongly
aroused than in the ill-ordered household in Hereford Square, where
Captain the Honourable D’Arcy-Muir drank and swore, and his wife
“slovened” the hours away in muddle and misanthropy. For here was
Boy,--Boy, a soft, smiling morsel of helpless life and innocent
expectancy,--Boy, who stretched out plump mottled arms to “Kiss-Letty,”
and said, chucklingly, “Ullo!”--(an exclamation he had picked up from
the friendly policeman at the corner of the square, who greeted him thus
when he went out in his perambulator)--“Ullo! ’Ows ’oo, Kiss-Letty?
Wants Boy out! Kiss-Letty take Boy wiz her walk-talk.”
Which observation, rendered into heavier English, implied that Boy
politely enquired after Miss Letitia’s health, and desired to go out
walking and likewise talking with that lady.
And no one in all the world responded more promptly or more lovingly to
Boy’s delightful amenities than Miss Letitia did. The wisely-sweet
expression of the child’s face fascinated her,--she saw in Boy the
possibilities of noble manhood, graced perhaps by the rarest gifts of
genius. Believers in hereditary development would have asked her how she
could imagine it possible for a child born of such parents to possess an
ideal or exceptionally endowed nature? To which she would have replied
that she did not believe in the heritage so much as the environment of
life. Here she was partly wrong and partly right. Such inexplicable
things happen in the evolution of one particular human being from a
whole chain of other human beings that it is impossible to gauge
correctly the result of the whole. Why, for example, the poet Keats
should have had such indifferent parentage will always be somewhat of a
mystery. And why men, lineally descended from “ancient, noble and
honourable” families should, in this day, have degenerated into
turf-gamblers, drunkards and social rascals generally, is also a
bewildering conundrum. In the case of Keats, birth and environment were
against him,--in the case of the modern aristocrat birth and environment
are with him. The one has become an English classic; the other is an
English disgrace. Who shall clear up the darkness surrounding the
working of this law? Miss Letitia made no attempt to penetrate such
physiological obscurities,--she simply argued that for Boy to be brought
up in a “muddle,” and set face to face with the ever-present
whisky-bottle, was decidedly injurious to his future prospects. The
D’Arcy-Muirs were poor, though they had “expectations,”--she, Miss
Letitia, was rich. She had no relatives,--no one in the world had the
least claim upon her,--and she had serious thoughts of adopting Boy.
Would his parents part with him? That was a knotty point, a delicate and
very doubtful question. But she had considered it for some time
carefully, and had come to the reasonable conclusion that, as Boy seemed
to be rather in the way of his father and mother than otherwise, and
that moreover, as her terms of adoption were inclusive of making him her
sole heir, it was probable she might gain the victory. And the very day
on which this true narrative begins, when Captain the Honourable was
executing his whisky war-dance to the accompaniment of his son’s
murmured “Poo Sing!” and rhythmic spoon-tapping, was the one selected by
the gentle lady to commence operations, or, as she put it, “to break the
proposition gradually” to the strange parents whose daily lives
furnished such a singular example of wedded felicity to their observant
offspring. When her dainty brougham, drawn by its sleek and spirited
roans, drew up at the door of the house in Hereford Square, there were
various signs even outside that habitation to fill the order-loving
spirit of Miss Letitia with doubtful qualms and hesitations. To begin
with, there was not a blind in any of the windows that was drawn up
straight; they were all awry. This gave the dwelling a generally
squinting, leering, look which was not pleasant. Then again, the
doorsteps were dirty. There were strange, smeary pieces of paper
floating down the area, in grimy companionship with broken bits of
straw. The bell-handle hung out of its socket, somewhat like an eye
undergoing the latest surgical operation for cataract. There were recent
traces of coal on the pavement,--a ton had evidently just been shot down
the “hole-into-the-cellar” arrangement which some brilliant British
“bright idea” has invented for the greater accumulation of dirt in the
streets; and the coal-men had not troubled to “clean up” after the
performance. Miss Letitia, stepping lightly out of her carriage, was
compelled to crunch the heels of her pretty little _brodequins_ in
coal-dust, and soil the delicate edge of her frilled silk petticoat in
the same. Cautiously she handled the helpless-looking bell-pull, with
the result that a hollow tinkling sound awakened the interior echoes.
The door opened, and a slatternly maid-servant appeared.
“Is Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir----?”
“Yes, ’m, at home to you, ’m, of course, ’m. But she’s hout to most, on
account of master’s bein’ orful bad. Orful bad he is. Step in, please
’m.”
Whereupon Miss Letitia “stepped in,” asking pleasantly as she did so,--
“And how is dear Boy?”
“Oh, jes’ the same, ’m! Allus smilin’ an’ comfoble-like. Never see such
a child for good temper. Seems allus a-thinkin’ pretty. This way, ’m!”
And she escorted her visitor into a small side-room which Mrs.
D’Arcy-Muir called her “boudoir,”--announcing briskly,--
“Miss Leslie, ’m!”
“Dear me!” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, clad in the usual short skirt and
ill-fitting blouse, rose to receive the in-coming guest.
“How nice of you, Letitia, to come! So early too! I’m afraid luncheon
has been cleared--”
“Pray don’t speak of it,” interrupted Miss Leslie--“of course at four
o’clock----”
“Is it four? Dear me!” and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir smiled sleepily. “Why, then
it’s time for tea. You will have some tea?”
“Thank you!” murmured Miss Letty, “but don’t put yourself out in any
way. Is Boy----?”
“Quite well? Oh yes!” and Boy’s mother rang the bell as she spoke. “Boy
is in the dining-room with his father. He has just had his
bread-and-milk. I have left him there because I think he keeps Jim a
little bit in order. Jim is really quite impossible to-day,--but of
course he wouldn’t hurt the child.”
“Do you mean,” said Miss Letitia, her cheeks growing paler, “that your
husband is ... well!--_you_ know! And that Boy is with him while in that
terrible condition?”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir laughed.
“Of course! How horrified you look, Letitia! But you have no idea how
useful Boy is in that way. He really saves pounds’ worth of furniture.
When Boy is strapped in his chair, and Jim is on the booze, Jim never
knocks the things about as he would if he were alone,--because you see
he is afraid of upsetting Boy. It is not out of kindness to Boy exactly,
but simply because he hates to hear a child yell. It gets on his nerves.
Then of course Boy thinks his father is ill, and pities him so much that
the two get on together capitally.”
And this lymphatic lump of a woman laughed again, the while Miss Letitia
gazed blankly at the fireplace and endeavoured to control her indignant
feelings. The maidservant came in just then in answer to the bell.
“Bring the tea, Gerty,”--commanded her mistress with quite a grand air,
as one who should say “bid the thousand menials in the outer court of
the castle serve me with delicacies on their bended knees.”
Gerty had a severe cold, and sniffed violently and unbecomingly.
“Please ’m, the milkman ain’t been yet. This mornin’ he said as he might
be late, as there was a family t’other side of the square as liked their
meals punctual, and he guessed he’d have to go that side first instead
of ours. And there ain’t none left from the mornin’; Master Boy’s ’ad it
all.”
“Dear, sweet, greedy little pig!” smiled Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir affably.
“Well, you can bring the teacups and the teapot, and the kettle and the
bread-and-butter--and--Oh! there is condensed milk, I know: will you
have condensed milk, Letitia?”
Miss Letitia responded somewhat primly,--
“No, certainly not!” Then, regretting her rather sharp tone of voice,
she added, “You must not think me fanciful, but I cannot bear condensed
milk in my tea. You know I come of an old Devonshire family, and I
believe I grew up on genuine milk and genuine cream.”
“Oh, but condensed milk is _quite_ genuine!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir. “I
_love_ it! I eat it on bread-and-butter often instead of jam; you must
not have old maids’ prejudices, Letitia!” And she smiled the provoking
smile of a superior being who knows all the best things of life without
teaching or experience.
Miss Letty sat patiently under the verdict of “old maids’ prejudices,”
wondering how on earth she was going to broach the subject which was
uppermost in her mind to this woman who seemed for the moment to have
absorbed all the intellect of which she was capable into the bland
consideration of condensed milk. She started the conversation again
hesitatingly.
“Is Captain D’Arcy-Muir likely to go out presently, do you think?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” replied Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, still smiling. “You
see he can scarcely stand--he won’t dress himself properly--and he has
just taken to singing: listen!” And she held up a fat forefinger to
invite attention. Miss Letitia had no need to strain her ears for the
extraordinary sounds which came fitfully through the door,--sounds
between a cough and a yell, wherewith were intermingled the familiar
words--
“Ole King Co--ole
Was a jo--olly old so--ul!”
“Pray, pray!” implored Miss Letty nervously,--“do get Boy out of that
room! Really, my dear, it isn’t fit for the child. I beg of you!
I--I--should like to see Boy!”
“Well, _I_ can’t go and fetch him,” declared Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir with a
deeply-injured expression; “I should only get pushed out of the room, or
hit in the eye, if I attempted it when Jim is like this. But I’ll send
Gerty.”
And as Gerty just then entered with all the necessities for tea, minus
the milk, she added,
“Fetch Master Boy in here, will you?”
“Yes, ’m. If he’ll come with me.”
She disappeared to fulfil her mission.
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir sank back into the depths of her easy-chair with the
manner of one who has done every duty that could possibly be expected of
her. Miss Letitia clasped and unclasped her neatly gloved hands
nervously. The noises of mingled coughing and yelling increased in
ferocity,--and soon they were broken by two widely differing sounds,--a
drunken curse, and a child’s laughter.
“D----n you, get out of this!”
“Kiss-Letty! Ooo--ee! My kissy-kissy Kiss-Letty!”
And escaping from Gerty’s hand, Boy literally danced into the room.