Harry and the stick, and turned white. Aunty Rosa had hidden a light
cane behind her, and Punch was beaten then and there over the shoulders.
It was a revelation to him. The room-door was shut, and he was left to
weep himself into repentance and work out his own gospel of life.
Aunty Rosa, he argued, had the power to beat him with many stripes. It
was unjust and cruel, and Mamma and Papa would never have allowed it.
Unless perhaps, as Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret
orders. In which case he was abandoned indeed. It would be discreet in
the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters
in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to ‘show off.’
He had ‘shown off’ before visitors when he had attacked a strange
gentleman—Harry’s uncle, not his own—with requests for information about
the Griffin and the falchion, and the precise nature of the Tilbury in
which Frank Fairlegh rode—all points of paramount interest which he was
bursting to understand. Clearly it would not do to pretend to care for
Aunty Rosa.
At this point Harry entered and stood afar off, eyeing Punch, a
dishevelled heap in the corner of the room, with disgust.
‘You’re a liar—a young liar,’ said Harry, with great unction, ‘and
you’re to have tea down here because you’re not fit to speak to us. And
you’re not to speak to Judy again till Mother gives you leave. You’ll
corrupt her. You’re only fit to associate with the servant. Mother says
so.’
Having reduced Punch to a second agony of tears, Harry departed upstairs
with the news that Punch was still rebellious.
Uncle Harry sat uneasily in the dining-room. ‘Damn it all, Rosa,’ said
he at last, ‘can’t you leave the child alone? He’s a good enough little
chap when I meet him.’
‘He puts on his best manners with you, Henry,’ said Aunty Rosa, ‘but I’m
afraid, I’m very much afraid, that he is the Black Sheep of the family.’
Harry heard and stored up the name for future use. Judy cried till she
was bidden to stop, her brother not being worth tears; and the evening
concluded with the return of Punch to the upper regions and a private
sitting at which all the blinding horrors of Hell were revealed to Punch
with such store of imagery as Aunty Rosa’s narrow mind possessed.
Most grievous of all was Judy’s round-eyed reproach, and Punch went to
bed in the depths of the Valley of Humiliation. He shared his room with
Harry and knew the torture in store. For an hour and a half he had to
answer that young gentleman’s questions as to his motives for telling a
lie, and a grievous lie, the precise quantity of punishment inflicted by
Aunty Rosa, and had also to profess his deep gratitude for such
religious instruction as Harry thought fit to impart.
From that day began the downfall of Punch, now Black Sheep.
‘Untrustworthy in one thing, untrustworthy in all,’ said Aunty Rosa, and
Harry felt that Black Sheep was delivered into his hands. He would wake
him up in the night to ask him why he was such a liar.
‘I don’t know,’ Punch would reply.
‘Then don’t you think you ought to get up and pray to God for a new
heart?’
‘Y-yess.’
‘Get out and pray, then!’ And Punch would get out of bed with raging
hate in his heart against all the world, seen and unseen. He was always
tumbling into trouble. Harry had a knack of cross-examining him as to
his day’s doings, which seldom failed to lead him, sleepy and savage,
into half-a-dozen contradictions—all duly reported to Aunty Rosa next
morning.
‘But it _wasn’t_ a lie,’ Punch would begin, charging into a laboured
explanation that landed him more hopelessly in the mire. ‘I said that I
didn’t say my prayers _twice_ over in the day, and _that_ was on
Tuesday. _Once_ I did. I _know_ I did, but Harry said I didn’t,’ and so
forth, till the tension brought tears, and he was dismissed from the
table in disgrace.
‘You usen’t to be as bad as this,’ said Judy, awe-stricken at the
catalogue of Black Sheep’s crimes. ‘Why are you so bad now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Black Sheep would reply. ‘I’m not, if I only wasn’t
bothered upside down. I knew what I _did_, and I want to say so; but
Harry always makes it out different somehow, and Aunty Rosa doesn’t
believe a word I say. Oh, Ju! don’t _you_ say I’m bad too.’
‘Aunty Rosa says you are,’ said Judy. ‘She told the Vicar so when he
came yesterday.’
‘Why does she tell all the people outside the house about me? It isn’t
fair,’ said Black Sheep. ‘When I was in Bombay, and was bad—_doing_ bad,
not made-up bad like this—Mamma told Papa, and Papa told me he knew, and
that was all. _Outside_ people didn’t know too—even Meeta didn’t know.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Judy wistfully. ‘I was all little then. Mamma
was just as fond of you as she was of me, wasn’t she?’
‘’Course she was. So was Papa. So was everybody.’
‘Aunty Rosa likes me more than she does you. She says that you are a
Trial and a Black Sheep, and I’m not to speak to you more than I can
help.’
‘Always? Not outside of the times when you mustn’t speak to me at all?’
Judy nodded her head mournfully. Black Sheep turned away in despair, but
Judy’s arms were round his neck.
‘Never mind, Punch,’ she whispered. ‘I _will_ speak to you just the same
as ever and ever. You’re my own own brother though you are—though Aunty
Rosa says you’re bad, and Harry says you are a little coward. He says
that if I pulled your hair hard, you’d cry.’
‘Pull, then,’ said Punch.
Judy pulled gingerly.
‘Pull harder—as hard as you can! There! I don’t mind how much you pull
it _now_. If you’ll speak to me same as ever I’ll let you pull it as
much as you like—pull it out if you like. But I know if Harry came and
stood by and made you do it I’d cry.’
So the two children sealed the compact with a kiss, and Black Sheep’s
heart was cheered within him, and by extreme caution and careful
avoidance of Harry he acquired virtue, and was allowed to read
undisturbed for a week. Uncle Harry took him for walks, and consoled him
with rough tenderness, never calling him Black Sheep. ‘It’s good for
you, I suppose, Punch,’ he used to say. ‘Let us sit down. I’m getting
tired.’ His steps led him now not to the beach, but to the Cemetery of
Rocklington, amid the potato-fields. For hours the gray man would sit on
a tombstone, while Black Sheep would read epitaphs, and then with a sigh
would stump home again.
‘I shall lie there soon,’ said he to Black Sheep, one winter evening,
when his face showed white as a worn silver coin under the light of the
lych-gate. ‘You needn’t tell Aunty Rosa.’
A month later he turned sharp round, ere half a morning walk was
completed, and stumped back to the house. ‘Put me to bed, Rosa,’ he
muttered. ‘I’ve walked my last. The wadding has found me out.’
They put him to bed, and for a fortnight the shadow of his sickness lay
upon the house, and Black Sheep went to and fro unobserved. Papa had
sent him some new books, and he was told to keep quiet. He retired into
his own world, and was perfectly happy. Even at night his felicity was
unbroken. He could lie in bed and string himself tales of travel and
adventure while Harry was downstairs.
‘Uncle Harry’s going to die,’ said Judy, who now lived almost entirely
with Aunty Rosa.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Black Sheep soberly. ‘He told me that a long time
ago.’
Aunty Rosa heard the conversation. ‘Will nothing check your wicked
tongue?’ she said angrily. There were blue circles round her eyes.
Black Sheep retreated to the nursery and read _Cometh up as a Flower_
with deep and uncomprehending interest. He had been forbidden to open it
on account of its ‘sinfulness,’ but the bonds of the Universe were
crumbling, and Aunty Rosa was in great grief.
‘I’m glad,’ said Black Sheep. ‘She’s unhappy now. It wasn’t a lie,
though. _I_ knew. He told me not to tell.’
That night Black Sheep woke with a start. Harry was not in the room, and
there was a sound of sobbing on the next floor. Then the voice of Uncle
Harry, singing the song of the Battle of Navarino, came through the
darkness:—
‘Our vanship was the Asia—
The Albion and Genoa!’
‘He’s getting well,’ thought Black Sheep, who knew the song through all
its seventeen verses. But the blood froze at his little heart as he
thought. The voice leapt an octave, and rang shrill as a boatswain’s
pipe:—
‘And next came on the lovely Rose,
The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed,
And the little Brisk was sore exposed
That day at Navarino.’
‘That day at Navarino, Uncle Harry!’ shouted Black Sheep, half wild with
excitement and fear of he knew not what.
A door opened, and Aunty Rosa screamed up the staircase: ‘Hush! For
God’s sake hush, you little devil. Uncle Harry is _dead_!’
THE THIRD BAG
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
‘I wonder what will happen to me now,’ thought Black Sheep, when
semi-pagan rites peculiar to the burial of the Dead in middle-class
houses had been accomplished, and Aunty Rosa, awful in black crape, had
returned to this life. ‘I don’t think I’ve done anything bad that she
knows of. I suppose I will soon. She will be very cross after Uncle
Harry’s dying, and Harry will be cross too. I’ll keep in the nursery.’
Unfortunately for Punch’s plans, it was decided that he should be sent
to a day-school which Harry attended. This meant a morning walk with
Harry, and perhaps an evening one; but the prospect of freedom in the
interval was refreshing. ‘Harry’ll tell everything I do, but I won’t do
anything,’ said Black Sheep. Fortified with this virtuous resolution, he
went to school only to find that Harry’s version of his character had
preceded him, and that life was a burden in consequence. He took stock
of his associates. Some of them were unclean, some of them talked in
dialect, many dropped their h’s, and there were two Jews and a negro, or
some one quite as dark, in the assembly. ‘That’s a _hubshi_,’ said Black
Sheep to himself. ‘Even Meeta used to laugh at a _hubshi_. I don’t think
this is a proper place.’ He was indignant for at least an hour, till he
reflected that any expostulation on his part would be by Aunty Rosa
construed into ‘showing off,’ and that Harry would tell the boys.
‘How do you like school?’ said Aunty Rosa at the end of the day.
‘I think it is a very nice place,’ said Punch quietly.
‘I suppose you warned the boys of Black Sheep’s character?’ said Aunty
Rosa to Harry.
‘Oh yes,’ said the censor of Black Sheep’s morals. ‘They know all about
him.’
‘If I was with my father,’ said Black Sheep, stung to the quick, ‘I
shouldn’t _speak_ to those boys. He wouldn’t let me. They live in shops.
I saw them go into shops—where their fathers live and sell things.’
‘You’re too good for that school, are you?’ said Aunty Rosa, with a
bitter smile. ‘You ought to be grateful, Black Sheep, that those boys
speak to you at all. It isn’t every school that takes little liars.’
Harry did not fail to make much capital out of Black Sheep’s
ill-considered remark; with the result that several boys, including the
_hubshi_, demonstrated to Black Sheep the eternal equality of the human
race by smacking his head, and his consolation from Aunty Rosa was that
it ‘served him right for being vain.’ He learned, however, to keep his
opinions to himself, and by propitiating Harry in carrying books and the
like to get a little peace. His existence was not too joyful. From nine
till twelve he was at school, and from two to four, except on Saturdays.
In the evenings he was sent down into the nursery to prepare his lessons
for the next day, and every night came the dreaded cross-questionings at
Harry’s hand. Of Judy he saw but little. She was deeply religious—at six
years of age Religion is easy to come by—and sorely divided between her
natural love for Black Sheep and her love for Aunty Rosa, who could do
no wrong.
The lean woman returned that love with interest, and Judy, when she
dared, took advantage of this for the remission of Black Sheep’s
penalties. Failures in lessons at school were punished at home by a week
without reading other than school-books, and Harry brought the news of
such a failure with glee. Further, Black Sheep was then bound to repeat
his lessons at bedtime to Harry, who generally succeeded in making him
break down, and consoled him by gloomiest forebodings for the morrow.
Harry was at once spy, practical joker, inquisitor, and Aunty Rosa’s
deputy executioner. He filled his many posts to admiration. From his
actions, now that Uncle Harry was dead, there was no appeal. Black Sheep
had not been permitted to keep any self-respect at school: at home he
was, of course, utterly discredited, and grateful for any pity that the
servant girls—they changed frequently at Downe Lodge because they, too,
were liars—might show. ‘You’re just fit to row in the same boat with
Black Sheep,’ was a sentiment that each new Jane or Eliza might expect
to hear, before a month was over, from Aunty Rosa’s lips; and Black
Sheep was used to ask new girls whether they had yet been compared to
him. Harry was ‘Master Harry’ in their mouths; Judy was officially ‘Miss
Judy’; but Black Sheep was never anything more than Black Sheep _tout
court_.
As time went on and the memory of Papa and Mamma became wholly overlaid
by the unpleasant task of writing them letters, under Aunty Rosa’s eye,
each Sunday, Black Sheep forgot what manner of life he had led in the
beginning of things. Even Judy’s appeals to ‘try and remember about
Bombay’ failed to quicken him.
‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘I know I used to give orders and Mamma
kissed me.’
‘Aunty Rosa will kiss you if you are good,’ pleaded Judy.
‘Ugh! I don’t want to be kissed by Aunty Rosa. She’d say I was doing it
to get something more to eat.’
The weeks lengthened into months, and the holidays came; but just before
the holidays Black Sheep fell into deadly sin.
Among the many boys whom Harry had incited to ‘punch Black Sheep’s head
because he daren’t hit back,’ was one more aggravating than the rest,
who, in an unlucky moment, fell upon Black Sheep when Harry was not
near. The blows stung, and Black Sheep struck back at random with all
the power at his command. The boy dropped and whimpered. Black Sheep was
astounded at his own act, but, feeling the unresisting body under him,
shook it with both his hands in blind fury and then began to throttle
his enemy; meaning honestly to slay him. There was a scuffle, and Black
Sheep was torn off the body by Harry and some colleagues, and cuffed
home tingling but exultant. Aunty Rosa was out: pending her arrival,
Harry set himself to lecture Black Sheep on the sin of murder—which he
described as the offence of Cain.
‘Why didn’t you fight him fair? What did you hit him when he was down
for, you little cur?’
Black Sheep looked up at Harry’s throat and then at a knife on the
dinner-table.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said wearily. ‘You always set him on me and
told me I was a coward when I blubbed. Will you leave me alone until
Aunty Rosa comes in? She’ll beat me if you tell her I ought to be
beaten; so it’s all right.’
‘It’s all wrong,’ said Harry magisterially. ‘You nearly killed him, and
I shouldn’t wonder if he dies.’
‘Will he die?’ said Black Sheep.
‘I daresay,’ said Harry, ‘and then you’ll be hanged, and go to Hell.’
‘All right,’ said Black Sheep, picking up the table-knife. ‘Then I’ll
kill _you_ now. You say things and do things and—and _I_ don’t know how
things happen, and you never leave me alone—and I don’t care _what_
happens!’
He ran at the boy with the knife, and Harry fled upstairs to his room,
promising Black Sheep the finest thrashing in the world when Aunty Rosa
returned. Black Sheep sat at the bottom of the stairs, the table-knife
in his hand, and wept for that he had not killed Harry. The servant-girl
came up from the kitchen, took the knife away, and consoled him. But
Black Sheep was beyond consolation. He would be badly beaten by Aunty
Rosa; then there would be another beating at Harry’s hands; then Judy
would not be allowed to speak to him; then the tale would be told at
school, and then—
There was no one to help and no one to care, and the best way out of the
business was by death. A knife would hurt, but Aunty Rosa had told him,
a year ago, that if he sucked paint he would die. He went into the
nursery, unearthed the now disused Noah’s Ark, and sucked the paint off
as many animals as remained. It tasted abominable, but he had licked
Noah’s Dove clean by the time Aunty Rosa and Judy returned. He went
upstairs and greeted them with: ‘Please, Aunty Rosa, I believe I’ve
nearly killed a boy at school, and I’ve tried to kill Harry, and when
you’ve done all about God and Hell, will you beat me and get it over?’
The tale of the assault as told by Harry could only be explained on the
ground of possession by the Devil. Wherefore Black Sheep was not only
most excellently beaten, once by Aunty Rosa and once, when thoroughly
cowed down, by Harry, but he was further prayed for at family prayers,
together with Jane who had stolen a cold rissole from the pantry, and
snuffled audibly as her sin was brought before the Throne of Grace.
Black Sheep was sore and stiff but triumphant. He would die that very
night and be rid of them all. No, he would ask for no forgiveness from
Harry, and at bedtime would stand no questioning at Harry’s hands, even
though addressed as ‘Young Cain.’
‘I’ve been beaten,’ said he, ‘and I’ve done other things. I don’t care
what I do. If you speak to me to-night, Harry, I’ll get out and try to
kill you. Now you can kill me if you like.’
Harry took his bed into the spare room, and Black Sheep lay down to die.
It may be that the makers of Noah’s Arks know that their animals are
likely to find their way into young mouths, and paint them accordingly.
Certain it is that the common, weary next morning broke through the
windows and found Black Sheep quite well and a good deal ashamed of
himself, but richer by the knowledge that he could, in extremity, secure
himself against Harry for the future.
When he descended to breakfast on the first day of the holidays, he was
greeted with the news that Harry, Aunty Rosa, and Judy were going away
to Brighton, while Black Sheep was to stay in the house with the
servant. His latest outbreak suited Aunty Rosa’s plans admirably. It
gave her good excuse for leaving the extra boy behind. Papa in Bombay,
who really seemed to know a young sinner’s wants to the hour, sent, that
week, a package of new books. And with these, and the society of Jane on
board-wages, Black Sheep was left alone for a month.
The books lasted for ten days. They were eaten too quickly in long gulps
of twelve hours at a time. Then came days of doing absolutely nothing,
of dreaming dreams and marching imaginary armies up and downstairs, of
counting the number of banisters, and of measuring the length and
breadth of every room in handspans—fifty down the side, thirty across,
and fifty back again. Jane made many friends, and, after receiving Black
Sheep’s assurance that he would not tell of her absences, went out daily
for long hours. Black Sheep would follow the rays of the sinking sun
from the kitchen to the dining-room and thence upward to his own bedroom
until all was gray dark, and he ran down to the kitchen fire and read by
its light. He was happy in that he was left alone and could read as much
as he pleased. But, later, he grew afraid of the shadows of
window-curtains and the flapping of doors and the creaking of shutters.
He went out into the garden, and the rustling of the laurel-bushes
frightened him.
He was glad when they all returned—Aunty Rosa, Harry, and Judy—full of
news, and Judy laden with gifts. Who could help loving loyal little
Judy? In return for all her merry babblement, Black Sheep confided to
her that the distance from the hall-door to the top of the first landing
was exactly one hundred and eighty-four handspans. He had found it out
himself.
Then the old life recommenced; but with a difference, and a new sin. To
his other iniquities Black Sheep had now added a phenomenal
clumsiness—was as unfit to trust in action as he was in word. He himself
could not account for spilling everything he touched, upsetting glasses
as he put his hand out, and bumping his head against doors that were
manifestly shut. There was a gray haze upon all his world, and it
narrowed month by month, until at last it left Black Sheep almost alone
with the flapping curtains that were so like ghosts, and the nameless
terrors of broad daylight that were only coats on pegs after all.
Holidays came and holidays went, and Black Sheep was taken to see many
people whose faces were all exactly alike; was beaten when occasion
demanded, and tortured by Harry on all possible occasions; but defended
by Judy through good and evil report, though she hereby drew upon
herself the wrath of Aunty Rosa.
The weeks were interminable, and Papa and Mamma were clean forgotten.
Harry had left school and was a clerk in a Banking-Office. Freed from
his presence, Black Sheep resolved that he should no longer be deprived
of his allowance of pleasure-reading. Consequently when he failed at
school he reported that all was well, and conceived a large contempt for
Aunty Rosa as he saw how easy it was to deceive her. ‘She says I’m a
little liar when I don’t tell lies, and now I do, she doesn’t know,’
thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa had credited him in the past with petty
cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his head. By the light
of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to him he paid her back
full tale. In a household where the most innocent of his motives, his
natural yearning for a little affection, had been interpreted into a
desire for more bread and jam, or to ingratiate himself with strangers
and so put Harry into the background, his work was easy. Aunty Rosa
could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but not all. He set his
child’s wits against hers and was no more beaten. It grew monthly more
and more of a trouble to read the school-books, and even the pages of
the open-print storybooks danced and were dim. So Black Sheep brooded in
the shadows that fell about him and cut him off from the world,
inventing horrible punishments for ‘dear Harry,’ or plotting another
line of the tangled web of deception that he wrapped round Aunty Rosa.
Then the crash came and the cobwebs were broken. It was impossible to
foresee everything. Aunty Rosa made personal inquiries as to Black
Sheep’s progress and received information that startled her. Step by
step, with a delight as keen as when she convicted an underfed housemaid
of the theft of cold meats, she followed the trail of Black Sheep’s
delinquencies. For weeks and weeks, in order to escape banishment from
the bookshelves, he had made a fool of Aunty Rosa, of Harry, of God, of
all the world! Horrible, most horrible, and evidence of an utterly
depraved mind.
Black Sheep counted the cost. ‘It will only be one big beating and then
she’ll put a card with “Liar” on my back, same as she did before. Harry
will whack me and pray for me, and she will pray for me at prayers and
tell me I’m a Child of the Devil and give me hymns to learn. But I’ve
done all my reading and she never knew. She’ll say she knew all along.
She’s an old liar too,’ said he.
For three days Black Sheep was shut in his own bedroom—to prepare his
heart. ‘That means two beatings. One at school and one here. _That_ one
will hurt most.’ And it fell even as he thought. He was thrashed at
school before the Jews and the _hubshi_ for the heinous crime of
carrying home false reports of progress. He was thrashed at home by
Aunty Rosa on the same count, and then the placard was produced. Aunty
Rosa stitched it between his shoulders and bade him go for a walk with
it upon him.
‘If you make me do that,’ said Black Sheep very quietly, ‘I shall burn
this house down, and perhaps I’ll kill you. I don’t know whether I _can_
kill you—you’re so bony—but I’ll try.’
No punishment followed this blasphemy, though Black Sheep held himself
ready to work his way to Aunty Rosa’s withered throat, and grip there
till he was beaten off. Perhaps Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black Sheep,
having reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself with a new recklessness.
In the midst of all the trouble there came a visitor from over the seas
to Downe Lodge, who knew Papa and Mamma, and was commissioned to see
Punch and Judy. Black Sheep was sent to the drawing-room and charged
into a solid tea-table laden with china.
‘Gently, gently, little man,’ said the visitor, turning Black Sheep’s
face to the light slowly. ‘What’s that big bird on the palings?’
‘What bird?’ asked Black Sheep.