The summer flew by,--on wings of romance for Violet Morrison, but
somewhat burdened with anxiety for Major Desmond and Miss Leslie. Max
Nugent, millionaire and man of the world, was most charming in his
manner to both the elderly people, and most tender and deferential in
his devotion to the young girl in their charge,--but Major Desmond was
not altogether satisfied about him. He wore a glass in his eye for one
thing. People laughed at the Major when he made objection to such a
trifle,--even Miss Letty laughed. But Desmond was obstinate.
“Well, will you tell me,” he demanded, “the practical use of a glass in
one eye? It can’t assist the sight, for Nugent always reads without it.
What’s it for, then? To look at the scenery? That won’t do, for the man
always clicks it out of his eye whenever he glances at the landscape!
There is only one reason for his wearing it--and that is to conceal his
true expression!”
“Now look here, Desmond,” said one of his club friends--“You really are
going too far. How the deuce can an eyeglass conceal expression?”
“I’ll tell you how”--and the Major proceeded to demonstrate. “Suppose
you succeed in training one eye to look straight while you told a
crammer, and you can’t train the other? Suppose that other eye insists
on shifting about and blinking as the lie pops out of your mouth? Why
then, clap the eyeglass on, and there you are!”
And though he was laughed at for this theory, he, to put it in his own
way, “stuck to his guns.”
And the middle of October saw Miss Letty back in England. October is
often a very beautiful month in these “Happy Isles,” and Miss Letty was
not sorry to see the old country once again. Her house in Hans Place was
still occupied by her tenants, whose lease did not expire till the
coming Christmas; so she took a suite of rooms in one of the many
luxuriously appointed hotels which nowadays make London such a habitable
resort, and fixed this as her headquarters, while, in compliance with
Major Desmond’s ideas, she took Violet for various visits to some of the
grand old country seats in England. For both she and Major Desmond had
many friends among the best of the county folks who had beautiful homes,
and loved those homes with a love which unfortunately is being relegated
to the list of old-fashioned virtues, and Violet had plenty of chances
to see for herself how English lives were lived, and what English young
men were like. But the girl was not attracted by any of the _jeunesse
dorée_ of her native country. Compared with the courtesy and attention
she had received from the sterner sex in America, who are accustomed to
treat women with the greatest honour and reverence, she found the
English young man brusque, conceited, and often coarse in manner and
conversation. And her love for the polished and deferential Max Nugent
grew stronger and deeper, and all the graceful fancies, hopes and dreams
of her young life clustered around him as the one inevitable centre of
her existence. And the “eyeglass,” to which her uncle attached such
grave importance, never troubled her thoughts at all, except to move her
to a smile when she thought of “uncle’s fancy” regarding it. And Miss
Letty watched her as a mother would have watched her, and noted all the
little signs of this deep first love absorbing her life, with a
tenderness and interest which were, however, not without a vague touch
of foreboding.
Soon after their return to England, there came an excitement for Miss
Letty herself, in the shape of a letter from Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir. Miss
Letty had written to announce her return, but had scarcely expected any
reply, though she had ventured to express the hope that “dear Boy” was
quite well. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir now wrote as follows, dating from a suburb
of London:--
“MY DEAR LETITIA,
Your letter was quite a surprise to me, as I thought you had gone
to America for good. I had a funny idea that you would perhaps get
married there after all, for one hears of so many elderly women
marrying nowadays, that there really seems a chance for everybody.
Boy is at his military college preparing for Sandhurst, but as he
will be up in London for an exam. next week I have told him to go
and see you. I thought he had quite forgotten you, but he appears
to remember you fairly well. Of course he was barely ten when you
saw him last, and he is now sixteen, almost a young man as you will
find. He is very tall, and _I_ think good-looking, though that may
be only a mother’s fondness. Jim has been very ill lately;--a touch
of what the doctors call hemiplegia, brought on of course by his
own recklessness. I have to nurse him, and so you must excuse me if
I do not make a formal call upon you. I have had to make many
sacrifices in order to keep Boy at college, but a mother never
grudges what she does for her son. Hoping you will be pleased to
see Boy, and that you are as well as a woman of your age can expect
to be,
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
AMELIA D’ARCY-MUIR.
P.S.--Boy will call and see you on Wednesday afternoon next, unless
you write to say that the day is inconvenient.”
With an inward delight which she felt was foolish, yet which she could
not suppress, Miss Letty straightway wrote an answer to this, saying
that she would be very pleased indeed to see Boy to luncheon on the
Wednesday named; and having despatched this missive, she called Violet
and told her of the expected visit of the child, now grown to a young
stripling, whom she had loved so fondly. Violet listened with attentive
sympathy.
“He was such a dear, pretty little fellow!” said Miss Letty
affectionately. “He had such droll ways, and was altogether so quaint
and lovable!”
“And how old is he now?” asked Violet.
“He is sixteen,--yes--of course he must be getting on for seventeen!”
said Miss Letty almost wonderingly. “Dear me! How the time flies!”
“Just a year younger than I am!” said Violet.
“Yes. But you are quite a woman--thinking of getting married too! Well,
well!”--and Miss Letty heaved a little sigh of resignation. “However,
young women grow older much more quickly than young men, and I daresay
Boy is quite a boy still!”
“I hope he is,--for your sake, my own Miss Letty!” said Violet
tenderly--“I shouldn’t like you to be disappointed in him!”
Miss Letty looked thoughtful.
“Of course he will be changed,” she said--“very much changed! He was
changed even when he came to stay with me in Scotland, and he was not
quite ten then. He seemed to me much sadder and older than a child of
his years ought to have been. But he has had a long time of study at a
very excellent military college somewhere down in the country, and I
daresay that the training there has made quite a man of him. Poor Boy!
Margaret will tell you all about him if you ask her.”
And Violet did ask Margaret, who now, grown extremely stout and jolly,
had come over from her home in Scotland to serve her beloved Miss Letty
once more. The trip to America had been too much for the worthy woman’s
contemplation, and when her mistress had gone there, she and the
respectable butler Plimpton had made a match of it, and were now the
proprietors of a small but extremely cosy hotel on the picturesque
shores of Loch Etive. But as soon as she heard that Miss Letty had
returned to England for a time, nothing would serve but that she must
come to London and attend upon her again,--an idea which entirely met
with her husband’s approval. And so here she was, established in the
hotel in a room adjoining Miss Letty’s, wearing a smart white apron, and
sewing away as if she had never left her situation at all, and as if the
six years of her married life that had intervened were nothing but a
dream.
“Do I remember Master Boy?” she said now, as Violet asked her the
question,--“I should think I do indeed! Just the bonniest wee lad! And
Miss Letty was sair fashed about him,--and she would have given her
best of all in the world to have got him wi’ her, and adopted him as her
own. Ah, she’s a grand leddy! What a wife and mither she would ha’ made
to any man gude enough for her!”
“And she loved Boy very much then?” went on Violet, playing abstractedly
with a gold chain she always wore, on which Max Nugent had hung a heart
of fine rubies and diamonds.
“Ay, that she did!” said Margaret, stitching away at the frill of one of
her “leddy’s” silken gowns. “And she loves him still just as much, I’ll
be bound. You mark my words, Miss Violet,--I’m pretty sure the dear
woman hasna done wi’ Master Boy!” and she nodded her head and pursed up
her lips mysteriously.
“You think he will want Miss Letty to help him on in his career
perhaps?” said Violet.
“I couldna tell--I canna say!” replied Margaret. “But if ever a lad had
feckless parents, it’s this same lad--and if ever a bairnie had a bad
start to begin life upon, it’s this same bairnie! You tell me what you
think of him, Miss Violet, after ye’ve had a bit look at him?”
“Oh, if he knows you are here, he’ll want to see you himself, surely!”
said the girl.
Margaret looked up with a shrewd smile in her kind eyes.
“Don’t ye be thinking of that, Miss Violet,” she said. “There is
naebody like myself for kennin’ how soon we’re forgotten by the folks we
have loved. I mind me when I used to put Master Boy to bed, he would
throw his wee arms round me and say, ‘I’ll never forget ye, Margit,’ and
it just pleased me for a while to believe it. But when I married
Plimpton, I sent the laddie a bit o’ wedding cake marked ‘from Margit,’
and never a word did I hear o’ the lad or the cake at all. And I was a
fule to expect it; for ye see, when he was in Scotland wi’ us, we had a
bit few of his old toys, and with them there was one he used to be
amazing fond of----”
“I know!” said Violet quickly--“The Cow!”
Margaret laughed.
“Yes--just the Cow!” she said--“The wee wise-looking thing you see ever
on a shelf somewhere near Miss Letty, with the old shoes Master Boy left
behind him when he first stayed with her. Well, when he came to
Scotland, he didna care for the puir beastie any more,--and that’s just
how it is wi’ me,--he’s just as indifferent to me as he is to the toy he
put away in his babyhood. That’s where all we women have to suffer, Miss
Violet,--when the bairnies we ha’ loved and tended grow up to be men and
women, they never give us more thought than the playthings they have
done with!”
Violet heard, and went away, thinking gravely of many things. She was
growing a little more serious and wistful in her manner; the
difficulties and disappointments of life were beginning to suggest
themselves to her young spirit, although vaguely as yet and
dimly. She had nothing to complain of at present in her own
fortunes--except--except that Max Nugent’s letters were all very brief
and scrappy. She would have liked longer and more ardent epistles from
her declared lover,--and she scolded herself for this wish, which she
said was selfish, because of course, with all his great responsibilities
of wealth, he must have a great deal to do. But despite her struggle
with herself, the little shadow of disappointment hung like a faint
cloud in her sky, and made her particularly sensitive to the possible
griefs of others.
“It must be so hard to be disappointed in persons you love!” she
thought. “To find that they are not the good or noble beings you
imagined them--it must be so hard! I do hope Miss Letty will find Boy
all that she expects him to be--and more!”
The anxiously expected Wednesday came at last, and Miss Letty ordered a
charming little luncheon in her private sitting-room, and decorated the
table herself with the loveliest flowers to welcome Boy. Violet, with
instinctive tact, arranged to go out that morning with her uncle, and
not to return till it was quite the luncheon-hour, in order that Miss
Letty might have the first meeting with her young friend alone. The dear
lady was in a great flutter; she was for once quite fastidious about her
appearance, and put on her newest gown, a soft, silver-grey silk,
trimmed with an abundance of fine old Irish point lace. And when she was
dressed, it was no exaggeration on the part of the faithful Margaret to
say she looked “quite beautiful”! With her sweet, good face, and soft
hair, now snow-white, raised from her clear, open brow, and that
indefinable grace of perfect breeding which always distinguished her,
Miss Letty looked much fairer than many a young woman in the pride of
her earliest days. And when, as the hour grew nearer for Boy’s arrival,
a little pink flush coloured the pale transparency of her cheeks, she
had such a charm about her as would certainly have made fresh havoc in
the good Major’s warm heart, had he seen her just at that moment. There
was an elaborate Parisian clock in the sitting-room, the pendulum of
which was an unpleasant-featured gilt nymph in a swing, and Miss Letty
looked anxiously at the ugly and inflexible young lady as she jerked the
minutes away with a seemingly infinite tedium. At last the hotel waiter
appeared with the brief announcement,--
“A young gentleman to see you, mum!”
Miss Letty advanced trembling, as a slim lad, getting on for six feet in
height, stumbled over the door-mat and entered awkwardly.
“Boy! I am so glad to see you again!”
The stripling giggled nervously.
“Yes--er,--how d’you do?” he stammered; and he sought anxiously about
for a place to put his bowler hat, and finally set it carefully down on
an empty flower-pot and began to stare doubtfully at the ceiling. But
Miss Letty was not disheartened by these signs of indifference.
“What a big fellow you are!” she said tenderly, looking at him with eyes
that were almost tearful. “I really don’t think I should have known you
if I had met you in the streets by chance!”
Boy giggled again.
“N--o! I don’t suppose you would!” he said. “Mother said you wouldn’t!”
“Have you just come from your college?” asked Miss Letty, her heart
beginning to sink a little as she noticed that his eyes wandered
completely away from her, and considered the wall-paper more attentively
than herself.
“Yes. Some fellows came up for the exam. with me. Two are going for the
medical. I’ve done that!”
“Oh! And have you passed?”
“Oh yes! I’m all right!”
Boy smiled foolishly, scratched his chin, and sitting down on a high
chair measured the toes of his boots carefully together.
“What exam. are you going up for now?” asked Miss Letty, sitting down
also, and realising with a sudden pang that he was not in the least
moved to any affectionate outburst by seeing her.
“Oh, just the first one for Sandhurst. I don’t expect I shall pass it.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, it’s pretty stiffish. I don’t care much if I don’t pass. There’ll
be another.”
Good Miss Letty was not very deeply instructed on the subject of exams.,
so she changed the subject.
“I’ve been a long time away in America, you know,” she said. “I have
only just come back.”
“Yes. So I heard.”
Miss Letty looked steadfastly at him. He was a good-looking lad, thin
but well made, and delicately featured,--but his eyes were shifty and
avoided hers.
“Do you remember me at all, Boy?” she asked very tenderly.
Boy coloured and hesitated.
“I--I think I do,” he said. “I stayed with you in Scotland.”
“Yes. And you used to play with a little boy named Alister McDonald,--do
you ever think of him?”
Boy looked puzzled for a moment.
“Oh, yes! I know! A little round-faced chap!”
Miss Letty went on patiently,--
“Do you remember Major Desmond?”
“Yes--a little.”
Miss Letty took up her sewing. She required that useful embroidery to
steady her trembling fingers.
“I asked you when we were in Scotland to write to me sometimes,” she
said gently. “And you said you would. Why didn’t you?”
“I did!” burst out Boy suddenly, getting very red, and remembering the
old injury which had rankled far more deeply in his soul all these years
than any remembrance of affection. “And you never answered!”
Miss Letty laid down her work with a look of surprise and indignation
darkening her gentle eyes.
“You wrote and I never answered!” she repeated. “My dear Boy, there must
be some mistake! I have never heard a word from you since you said
good-bye to me in Scotland!”
Boy’s cheeks paled as suddenly as they had reddened, and he took to the
re-measuring of his boot toes.
“Mother didn’t send the letter!” he said slowly,--“that’s how it was. It
was not my fault. I wrote to you before I went to school in France!”
Silence fell between them. Miss Letty had much ado to keep back the
outward expression of her wounded feeling,--and, as she looked at the
lad and began to notice the air of listless indifference which
surrounded him like a natural atmosphere exhaled from his own
personality, she was conscious of a great bitterness and resentment in
her own mind. After a little, however, she managed to control herself,
and said gently,--
“Can you recollect what it was you wrote to me about?”
“Oh yes,”--Boy answered readily,--“I wrote to tell you that I was being
sent to a school in France, and asked you to try if you could help me
not to go. I was a little chap and did not like it.” He paused a moment
and reddened at the recollection,--then smiled sheepishly. “But it did
not matter!”
Miss Letty thought it did matter,--but she said nothing.
“I went to France,” continued Boy. “It was all right!”
“Did you like the school there?”
“Oh, it was fairly decent!” he answered briefly.
At that moment a diversion was created by the entrance of Major Desmond
and his niece. Miss Letty looked a little wearied and wistful as she
said,--
“Violet, this is Boy. Boy, this is Major Desmond’s niece who has been
with me in America, Miss Violet Morrison.”
Boy jerked himself up out of his chair, glanced at the young lady shyly,
and smiled vaguely.
“Won’t you shake hands?” said Violet kindly.
Boy went through this act of courtesy with a curiously limp
ungraciousness, the Major staring at him the while.
“He has grown very tall, hasn’t he?” said Miss Letty, with a little
sigh, as she rang the bell for luncheon to be served.
“Tall! I should think so!” replied the Major. “He’s grown out of all
knowledge. Well, sir, how are you?”
“Very well, thank you!” answered Boy, without raising his eyes from
their study of the carpet.
“I suppose you don’t remember me at all,” pursued the Major--“do you?”
“Y--yes! You took me to Scotland to see Miss Letty.”
As he uttered her name thus--“Miss Letty,”--a sudden sparkle came into
his eyes, and he looked at her with more interest than he had yet shown.
Some little brain-cell was stirred which awakened old past associations,
and a number of half-forgotten memories began to run through his mind
like the notes which form the cadence of a song. “It was always like
this,” he considered--“beautiful rooms and beautiful flowers,--and
she--she always wore beautiful silks and lace like to-day,--but then, as
mother says, she’s got any amount of money.”
Just then, the waiter entered with the luncheon, and they all sat down
to table, Violet glancing at Boy from time to time under the shadow of
her long eyelashes, not knowing quite what to make of him.
“Well, what are you doing with yourself now?” asked the Major. “Going up
for Sandhurst?”
“Yes.”
“Are you glad you are going to be a soldier?”
Boy was engaged in fastidiously picking one or two bones out of the
small piece of fish which had just been served to him, and he replied
abstractedly,--
“Oh, I don’t mind it!”
“Don’t mind it!” exclaimed Desmond. “But--God bless my soul!--don’t you
_like_ it? Don’t you _love_ it? Don’t you think it’s the finest thing a
young chap can do,--to learn how to fight for the glory of his country?”
Boy looked quite surprised at this outburst. Then it seemed to dawn upon
him in the light of a joke, for he sniggered.
“Oh, not so much as all that!” he said, and fell to carefully
considering the fish-bones again.
The Major gave a portentous cough, and swallowed his portion of fish
recklessly, somewhat as if he were swallowing a big “D----n!” by way of
sauce and flavour to the whole. Violet flushed and paled
alternately,--she was feeling worried on behalf of Miss Letty, who
looked nervous and preoccupied.
“Would you have preferred some other profession?” she asked gently,
venturing to join in the conversation.
“I never thought about it,” said Boy, eating his fish now that it was
picked and prepared to his particular liking. “When I came back from
France, father sent me just where he chose---- and--that’s how it is.”
“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
‘cotelettes 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 ‘cotelettes 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
‘entrées’ offered,--and wondered what would be his ultimate fate!
In prospective fancy she saw him as an officer on halfpay,
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, every one,--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 good-bye 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 every one 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!”