"Is it well with the child?"--2 KINGS iv. 26.
A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their
power to bestow; second only to implanting the habit of obedience, which
puts the child in training for the habit of obeying himself later on.
A happy childhood is like a welcome into the world. This welcome John
never had. No one had been glad to see him when he arrived. No little
ring of downy hair had been cut off and treasured. No one came to look
at him when he was asleep. No wedded hands were clasped the closer for
his coming. The love and awe and pride which sometimes meet over the
cradle of a first child were absent from his nursery. The old nurse who
had been his mother's nurse took him and loved him, and gave herself for
him, as is the marvellous way of some women with other people's
children. I believe the under-housemaid occasionally came to see him in
his bath, and I think the butler, who was a family man himself, gave him
a woolly lamb on his first birthday. But excepting the servants and the
village people, no one took much notice of John. It is not even on
record whether he ever crept, or what the first word he could say was.
It was all chronicled on Mitty's faithful heart, but nowhere else. Mitty
was proud when he began to sway and reel on unsteady legs. Mitty walked
up and down with him in her arms night after night when teeth were
coming, crooning little sympathetic songs. Mitty dressed him every
afternoon in his best frock with blue sash and ribboned socks, just like
the other children who go downstairs. But John never went downstairs at
teatime; never gnawed a lump of sugar with solemn glutinous joy under a
parent's eye; or sucked the stiffness out of a rusk before admiring
friends. No one sent for John; he was never wanted.
Mitty had had troubles. She had buried Mr. Mitty many years ago, and,
after keeping a cow of her own, had returned to the service of the
Fanes, with whom she had lived before her marriage. But I do not think
she ever felt anything so acutely as the neglect of her "lamb."
When Mr. Tempest was expected home John was put through tearful and
elaborate toilets. His hair, dark and straight, the despair of Mitty's
heart, was worked up till it rose like a crest on the top of his head;
his bronze shoes (which succeeded the knitted socks) were put on. But
after these great efforts Mitty always cried bitterly, and kissed John
till he cried too for company, and then his smart things would be torn
off, and they would go down to tea together in the housekeeper's room.
That was a treat. There was society in the housekeeper's room. Mrs.
Alcock was very large, spread over with black silk which had a rich
aroma of desserts and sweet biscuits. There were in her keeping certain
macaroons John knew of, for she was a person of vast responsibilities.
He sat on her knee sometimes, but not often, for she breathed and rose
and fell all over, and creaked underneath her buttons. She was kind, but
she was billowy, and the geography of her figure was uncertain, and she
could never think of anything to interest him but macaroons, and she was
enigmatical as to how the almond was fastened into the top. The butler,
Mr. Parker, was estimable, but Mr. Parker, like Mrs. Alcock, was averse
to answering questions, even when John inquired, "Why his head was
coming through his hair?" Charles the footman was more amusing, but he
never came into the housekeeper's room. It was difficult to see as much
of Charles as could be wished. He was really funny when Mitty was not
there. He could dance a hornpipe in the pantry. John had seen him do it;
and Charles was always ready to pull off his coat and give John a ride.
What kickings and neighings and prancings there were going upstairs on
these occasions. How John clutched round his horse's neck urging him not
to spare himself, till he pressed his charger's shirtstud into his
throat. Once on a wet day they went out hunting in the garret gallery,
but only once, when Mitty was out: and the housemaid with the red
cheeks was the fox. Ah! what an afternoon that was. But it came to an
end all too soon. Charles wiped his forehead at last, and said the fox
was "gone to ground," though John knew she was only in the housemaid's
closet, giggling among the brooms. That was an afternoon not to be
forgotten, not even to be spoilt by the fact that when Mitty and a bag
of bull's-eyes came home she was very angry, and called the fox an
"impudent hussy." Perhaps that event was the first that remained
distinctly in his memory. Certainly afterwards people and incidents
detached themselves more clearly from the haze of confused memories that
preceded it.
The following day as it seemed to John--perhaps, in reality many weeks
later--he had a vague recollection of a stir in the house, and of seeing
various kinds of candles laid out on a table near the storeroom; and
then he was in a new black velvet suit with a collar that tickled, and
they were in the picture-gallery, he and Mitty, and there were lamps,
and all the white sheets were gone from the furniture, and it was all
very solemn; and Mitty held his hand tight and told him to be a good
boy, and blew his nose for him with a handkerchief of her own that had
crumbs in it, and then wiped her eyes and gave him a flower to hold,
telling him to be very careful of it; and John was _very_ careful. Years
later he could see that flower still. It was a white orchis with
maidenhair; and then suddenly a door at the further end of the gallery
opened, and a tall man, whom John had seen before, came out.
Mitty loosed John's hand and gave him a little push, whispering, "Go and
speak to your papa, and give him the pretty flower." But John stood
stock still and looked at the advancing figure.
And the tall gentleman came down the gallery, and stopped short rather
suddenly when he saw them, and said, "Well, nurse, all flourishing, I
hope? Well, John," and passed on.
And Mitty and John were much depressed, and went upstairs again the back
way; and Mrs. Alcock met them at the swing door and said _she never
did_, and Mitty cried all the time she undressed him, and he pulled the
orchis to pieces, and found on investigation that it had wire inside;
and experienced the same difficulty in putting it together again next
morning that he had previously found in readjusting the toilet of a dead
robin after he had carefully undressed it the night before. After that
"Papa" became not a familiar but a distinct figure in John's
recollection. "Papa" was seen from the nursery windows to walk up and
down the bowling-green on the wide plateau in front of the castle,
where the fountain was, with Neptune reining in his dolphins in the
middle. John was taught by Mitty to kiss his hand to papa, but papa, who
seldom looked up, was apparently unconscious of these blandishments. He
was seen to arrive and to depart. Sometimes other men came back with him
who met John in the gardens and made delightful jokes, and were almost
equal to Charles, only they did not wear livery.
One event followed close upon another.
A lady came to Overleigh. Mitty and Mrs. Alcock agreed that no lady had
ever stayed at Overleigh since--and then they stopped: and that very
evening John was actually sent for to come down to dessert. Charles, who
had run up to the nursery during dinner to say so, remarked with a
prefatory "Lawks" that wonders would never cease. John was quite ready
at the time the message came, sitting in his black velvet suit and his
silk stockings and his buckled shoes in his own chair by the fire. He
had grown out of several suits whilst he waited. It was one of the many
inexplicable things that he took in wondering silence at the time, that
when he wore those particular garments a certain red cushion was always
put on the seat of his little cane-bottomed chair. Mitty told him when
he inquired into it that was because of the pattern coming off on his
velvets, "blesh" him, and John did not understand, but turned it over in
his mind together with everything he heard, and pondered long beside the
nursery fire over many things, and was a very solemn, richly-dressed,
lonely little boy.
He had always been ready, always waiting when Mr. Tempest was at home.
Now at last he was sent for. He took it with a stoic calm. Mitty and
Charles were much more excited than he was. Even Mrs. Alcock, who had
seen too much of the ways of scullery and dairymaids to be capable of
being surprised at anything in this world--even she was taken aback.
Mitty and he went together down the grand staircase; and the carved
figures on the banisters had lamps in their hands, so many lamps that
they made him wink, and in the great stone hall there was a blazing log
fire, and among the statues there were tall palms and growing things.
John was still looking at the white fur rugs upon the stone floor, and
counting the claws of the outstretched bear's paws when Charles came to
tell them that dinner was over. The moment had come. Mitty took him to
the door, opened it, and pushed him gently in.
The dining-hall looked very large and very empty. John had never been in
it at night before. A long way off at a little table in the bay window
two people were sitting. A glow of shaded light fell on the table. Mr.
Parker was not there. Even Charles, whom John had always considered
indispensable in the highest circles, was absent. John walked very
slowly across the room and stopped short in the middle, his strong
little hands tightly clasped behind his back on the clean folded pocket
handkerchief that Mitty had thrust into them at the last moment. He was
not afraid, but he did not know what was going to happen next.
The lady turned and looked towards him.
She was pale, with white hair, and a sad, beautiful face as if she had
often been very, very sorry. She was older than Mitty and Mrs. Alcock,
and Mrs. Evans of the shop, and quite different, very awful to look
upon.
John wondered whether she was Queen Victoria, and whether he ought to
kneel down.
"Come here, John," said Mr. Tempest, but John did not stir.
"So this is John," said the lady, and she put out her wonderful jewelled
hand with a very gentle smile, and John went straight up to her at once
and stood close beside her, on her gown, in fact; and it was not Queen
Victoria. It was Mrs. Courtenay.
After that night a change came over John's life. He was not forgotten
any more. Mrs. Courtenay during the few days that she remained at
Overleigh came up several times to the nursery, and had long
conversations with Mitty. John, arrayed in the stiffest of white sailor
suits with anchors at the corners, came down to see her in the sunny
morning-room where his mother's picture hung, and showed her at her
request his Noah's Ark which Mitty had given him, and afterwards
conversed with her on many topics. He repeated to her the hymn Mitty had
taught him,
"When little Samiwell awoke,"
and mentioned Charles to her with high esteem. She was very gentle with
him, very courteous. She gave him her whole attention, looking at him
with a certain pained compassion. Gradually John unfolded his mind to
her. He confided to her his intention of marrying Mitty at a future
date, and of presenting Charles at the same time with a set of studs
like Mr. Parker's. He was very grave and sedate, and every morning
shrank back afresh from going to see her, and then forgot his fears in
the kind feminine presence and the welcome that was so new and strange
and sweet. Once she took him in her arms and held him closely to her.
Her eyes were stern through her tears.
"Poor little fatherless, motherless child!" she said, half to herself,
and she put him down and went to the window and looked out--looked out
across the forest to the valley and over the stretching woods to the
long lines of the moors against the sky. Perhaps she was thinking that
it would all belong to that little child some day; the home where she
had once hoped to see her own daughter live happily with children
growing up about her.
Mr. Tempest came into the room at that moment.
"What, John here?" he said.
"Yes," she replied, and was silent. There was a great indignation in her
face.
"Mr. Tempest," she said at last, "evil has been done to you, not once,
but twice. You have suffered heavily at the hands of others. Be careful
that some one does not suffer at _your_ hands!"
"Who?"
"Your," Mrs. Courtenay hesitated, "your _heir_."
"He _is_ my heir," said Mr. Tempest, sternly; "that is enough!"
"Then do your duty by him," said Mrs. Courtenay. "You do it to others;
do it also to him." And thenceforward, and until the day of his death,
Mr. Tempest did his duty as he conceived it! never a fraction more, but
never a fraction less.
* * * * *
John was put early to school. No one went down to see the place before
he came to it. No one wrote anxiously about him beforehand, describing
his health and his attainments in the Latin grammar. Mr. Goodwin, who
was afterwards his tutor, long remembered the arrival of the little,
square, bullet-headed boy with a servant, with whom he gravely shook
hands on the platform. Mr. Goodwin had come to meet him, and Charles,
the last link to home, was parted from in silence. The small luggage was
handed over. Once as they left the station, John looked back, and Mr.
Goodwin saw the little brown hands clench tightly. John had a trick of
clenching his hands as a child, which clung to him throughout life, but
he walked on in silence. He was seven years old, and in trousers.
_Pantalon oblige._ Mr. Goodwin, a good-natured under-master fresh from
college, with small brothers at home, respected his silence. Perhaps he
divined something of the struggle that was going on under that brand new
little great-coat of many pockets. Presently John swallowed ominously
several times.
Mr. Goodwin supposed the usual tears were coming.
"Those are very large puddles," said John suddenly, with a quaver in his
voice, "larger than----" The voice, though not the courage, failed.
"They are, Tempest," said Mr. Goodwin, "uncommonly large!"
And that was the beginning of a lasting friendship between the two. That
friendship took a long time to grow. John was reserved with the
reticence that in a child speaks volumes of what the home-life had been.
He had not the habit of talking to anyone. He listened and obeyed. At
first he held aloof from the other boys. Mr. Goodwin advised him to make
friends, and John listened in silence. He had never been with boys
before. He did not know how. The first half he was very lonely. He would
have been bullied more than he actually was had he not been so strong
and so impossible to convince of defeat. As it was, he took his share
with a sort of doggedness, and would have started on the high road to
unpopularity in his new little world if he had not turned out good at
games. That saved him, and before many weeks were over long blotted
accounts of football and cricket and racquets were written to Mitty and
Charles. Mr. Goodwin noticed that the weekly letter to his father never
contained any particulars of this kind.
There had been a difficulty at first about his correspondence,
which--after long pondering upon the same--John had brought to Mr.
Goodwin for advice.
"I want to send a letter to some one," he said one day, when Mr. Goodwin
had asked him into his study. "Not father."
"To whom, then?"
"To Mitty. I said I would write; I promised." And he produced a very
much blotted paper and spread it before Mr. Goodwin.
"It's a long letter." It was indeed; the writing had been so severe and
the paper so thin, that it had worked through to the other side.
"For Mitty," said John. "That is the person it's for; and another for
Charles, with a picture in it." And a second sheet, suggestive of severe
manual labour, was produced.
"I see," said Mr. Goodwin, his hand laid carelessly over his mouth,
"but--yes, I see. This for Charles, and this for--ahem!--Mitty. And you
want them to go to-day?"
"Yes." John was evidently relieved. He extracted from his trousers
pocket two envelopes, not much the worse for seclusion, and laid one by
each letter. One envelope was stamped. "I had two stamps," he explained;
"one I put on, and the other I ate in a mistake. I licked it, and then I
could not find it."
"Well, we will put on another," said Mr. Goodwin, who was a person of
resources. "Now, what next? Shall we put them into their envelopes?"
John cautiously assented.
"And perhaps you would like me to direct them for you?"
"Yes." John certainly had a nice smile.
"Well, here goes; we will do Charles first. Who is Charles?"
"He lives with us. He brought me in the train."
"Really! Well, what is his name? Charles what?"
"He is not Charles anything," said John, anxiously. "That's just it;
he's only Charles."
Mr. Goodwin laid down the pen. He saw the difficulty.
"He must have another name, Tempest," he said. "Try and think."
"I _have_ thought," said John. "Before I came to you I thought. I
thought in bed last night."
"And don't you know Mitty's name either?"
"No." John's voice was almost inaudible.
"Dear me!" said Mr. Goodwin, smiling, and not realizing the gravity of
the situation. "We can't put 'Mitty' on one letter, and 'Charles' on the
other. That would never do, would it?"
There was a moment's silence, in which hope went straight out of John's
heart. If Mr. Goodwin could not see his way out of the difficulty, who
could? He turned red, and then white. His harsh-featured, little face
took an ugly look of acute distress.
"I said I would write," he said, in a strangled voice. "I promised
Charles in the pantry; it was a faithful promise."
Mr. Goodwin looked up in surprise, and his manner changed.
"Wait a minute," he said, eagerly; "the letters shall go. We will manage
it somehow. Is Charles the butler at home?"
"No; that is Mr. Parker."
"What is he, then?"
"He does things for Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker points, and Charles hands the
plates."
"Footman, perhaps?"
"Yes," said John, with relief, "that's Charles."
"Now," said Mr. Goodwin, with interest, "shall we put, 'The footman,
Overleigh Castle,' on the envelope? Then it will be sure to reach him."
"There's Francis; he's a footman, too," suggested John, but with dawning
hope. "Francis might get it then. He took a kidney once!"
"We will put 'Charles, the footman,' then," said Mr. Goodwin, writing
it. "'Overleigh Castle,' Yorkshire. Now then, for the other."
"When I write to father, what do I put at the end?" said John, his eyes
still riveted on the envelope. "'J. Tempest,' and then something else."
"Esquire?" suggested Mr. Goodwin.
"Yes," said John. "I think I should like Charles to be the same as
father, please."
Mr. Goodwin added a large esquire after the word footman.
"Now for Mitty," he said. "I suppose Mitty is the housekeeper?"
"Why, the housekeeper is Mrs. Alcock!" said John, with a smile at Mr.
Goodwin's ignorance.
"There seem to be a good many servants at Overleigh."
"Yes," replied John, "it is a nice party. We are company to each other.
You see, father is always away almost, and he does not play anything
when he is at home. Now, Charles always does his concertina in the
evenings, and Francis is learning the flute."
After the direction of the second letter had been finally settled, John
licked them carefully up, and looked at them with triumph.
"You must go now," said Mr. Goodwin. "I'm busy."
John retreated to the door, and then paused.
"Me and Mitty and Charles are much obliged," he said, with dignity.
"Don't mention it," said Mr. Goodwin.
But the incident remained in his mind.