and then said suddenly: ‘Good God, the little chap’s nearly blind!’
It was a most business-like visitor. He gave orders, on his own
responsibility, that Black Sheep was not to go to school or open a book
until Mamma came home. ‘She’ll be here in three weeks, as you know of
course,’ said he, ‘and I’m Inverarity Sahib. I ushered you into this
wicked world, young man, and a nice use you seem to have made of your
time. You must do nothing whatever. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Punch in a dazed way. He had known that Mamma was coming.
There was a chance, then, of another beating. Thank Heaven, Papa wasn’t
coming too. Aunty Rosa had said of late that he ought to be beaten by a
man.
For the next three weeks Black Sheep was strictly allowed to do nothing.
He spent his time in the old nursery looking at the broken toys, for all
of which account must be rendered to Mamma. Aunty Rosa hit him over the
hands if even a wooden boat were broken. But that sin was of small
importance compared to the other revelations, so darkly hinted at by
Aunty Rosa. ‘When your Mother comes, and hears what I have to tell her,
she may appreciate you properly,’ she said grimly, and mounted guard
over Judy lest that small maiden should attempt to comfort her brother,
to the peril of her soul.
And Mamma came—in a four-wheeler—fluttered with tender excitement. Such
a Mamma! She was young, frivolously young, and beautiful, with
delicately-flushed cheeks, eyes that shone like stars, and a voice that
needed no appeal of outstretched arms to draw little ones to her heart.
Judy ran straight to her, but Black Sheep hesitated. Could this wonder
be ‘showing off’? She would not put out her arms when she knew of his
crimes. Meantime was it possible that by fondling she wanted to get
anything out of Black Sheep? Only all his love and all his confidence;
but that Black Sheep did not know. Aunty Rosa withdrew and left Mamma,
kneeling between her children, half laughing, half crying, in the very
hall where Punch and Judy had wept five years before.
‘Well, chicks, do you remember me?’
‘No,’ said Judy frankly, ‘but I said, “God bless Papa and Mamma” ev’vy
night.’
‘A little,’ said Black Sheep. ‘Remember I wrote to you every week,
anyhow. That isn’t to show off, but ’cause of what comes afterwards.’
‘What comes after? What should come after, my darling boy?’ And she drew
him to her again. He came awkwardly, with many angles. ‘Not used to
petting,’ said the quick Mother-soul. ‘The girl is.’
‘She’s too little to hurt any one,’ thought Black Sheep, ‘and if I said
I’d kill her, she’d be afraid. I wonder what Aunty Rosa will tell.’
There was a constrained late dinner, at the end of which Mamma picked up
Judy and put her to bed with endearments manifold. Faithless little Judy
had shown her defection from Aunty Rosa already. And that lady resented
it bitterly. Black Sheep rose to leave the room.
‘Come and say good-night,’ said Aunty Rosa, offering a withered cheek.
‘Huh!’ said Black Sheep. ‘I never kiss you, and I’m not going to show
off. Tell that woman what I’ve done, and see what she says.’
Black Sheep climbed into bed feeling that he had lost Heaven after a
glimpse through the gates. In half an hour ‘that woman’ was bending over
him. Black Sheep flung up his right arm. It wasn’t fair to come and hit
him in the dark. Even Aunty Rosa never tried that. But no blow followed.
‘Are you showing off? I won’t tell you anything more than Aunty Rosa
has, and _she_ doesn’t know everything,’ said Black Sheep as clearly as
he could for the arms round his neck.
‘Oh, my son—my little, little son! It was my fault—_my_ fault,
darling—and yet how could we help it? Forgive me, Punch.’ The voice died
out in a broken whisper, and two hot tears fell on Black Sheep’s
forehead.
‘Has she been making you cry too?’ he asked. ‘You should see Jane cry.
But you’re nice, and Jane is a Born Liar—Aunty Rosa says so.’
‘Hush, Punch, hush! My boy, don’t talk like that. Try to love me a
little bit—a little bit. You don’t know how I want it. Punch-_baba_,
come back to me! I am your Mother—your own Mother—and never mind the
rest. I know—yes, I know, dear. It doesn’t matter now. Punch, won’t you
care for me a little?’
It is astonishing how much petting a big boy of ten can endure when he
is quite sure that there is no one to laugh at him. Black Sheep had
never been made much of before, and here was this beautiful woman
treating him—Black Sheep, the Child of the Devil and the inheritor of
undying flame—as though he were a small God.
‘I care for you a great deal, Mother dear,’ he whispered at last, ‘and
I’m glad you’ve come back; but are you sure Aunty Rosa told you
everything?’
‘Everything. What _does_ it matter? But——’ the voice broke with a sob
that was also laughter—‘Punch, my poor, dear, half-blind darling, don’t
you think it was a little foolish of you?’
‘_No._ It saved a lickin’.’
Mamma shuddered and slipped away in the darkness to write a long letter
to Papa. Here is an extract:—
... Judy is a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman, and
wears with as much gravity as her religious opinions—only eight,
Jack!—a venerable horsehair atrocity which she calls her Bustle! I
have just burnt it, and the child is asleep in my bed as I write.
She will come to me at once. Punch I cannot quite understand. He is
well nourished, but seems to have been worried into a system of
small deceptions which the woman magnifies into deadly sins. Don’t
you recollect our own upbringing, dear, when the Fear of the Lord
was so often the beginning of falsehood? I shall win Punch to me
before long. I am taking the children away into the country to get
them to know me, and, on the whole, I am content, or shall be when
you come home, dear boy, and then, thank God, we shall be all under
one roof again at last!
Three months later, Punch, no longer Black Sheep, has discovered that he
is the veritable owner of a real, live, lovely Mamma, who is also a
sister, comforter, and friend, and that he must protect her till the
Father comes home. Deception does not suit the part of a protector, and,
when one can do anything without question, where is the use of
deception?
‘Mother would be awfully cross if you walked through that ditch,’ says
Judy, continuing a conversation.
‘Mother’s never angry,’ says Punch. ‘She’d just say, “You’re a little
_pagal_”; and that’s not nice, but I’ll show.’
Punch walks through the ditch and mires himself to the knees. ‘Mother,
dear,’ he shouts, ‘I’m just as dirty as I can pos-_sib_-ly be!’
‘Then change your clothes as quickly as you pos-_sib_-ly can!’ Mother’s
clear voice rings out from the house. ‘And don’t be a little _pagal_!’
‘There! ’Told you so,’ says Punch. ‘It’s all different now, and we are
just as much Mother’s as if she had never gone.’
Not altogether, O Punch, for when young lips have drunk deep of the
bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion, and Despair, all the Love in the world
will not wholly take away that knowledge; though it may turn darkened
eyes for a while to the light, and teach Faith where no Faith was.
HIS MAJESTY THE KING
Where the word of a King is, there is power: And who may say unto
him—What doest thou?
‘Yeth! And Chimo to sleep at ve foot of ve bed, and ve pink pikky-book,
and ve bwead—’cause I will be hungwy in ve night—and vat’s all, Miss
Biddums. And now give me one kiss and I’ll go to sleep.—So! Kite quiet.
Ow! Ve pink pikky-book has slidded under ve pillow and ve bwead is
cwumbling! Miss Biddums! Miss _Bid_-dums! I’m _so_ uncomfy! Come and
tuck me up, Miss Biddums.’
His Majesty the King was going to bed; and poor, patient Miss Biddums,
who had advertised herself humbly as a ‘young person, European,
accustomed to the care of little children,’ was forced to wait upon his
royal caprices. The going to bed was always a lengthy process, because
His Majesty had a convenient knack of forgetting which of his many
friends, from the _mehter’s_ son to the Commissioner’s daughter, he had
prayed for, and, lest the Deity should take offence, was used to toil
through his little prayers, in all reverence, five times in one evening.
His Majesty the King believed in the efficacy of prayer as devoutly as
he believed in Chimo the patient spaniel, or Miss Biddums, who could
reach him down his gun—‘with cursuffun caps—_reel_ ones’—from the upper
shelves of the big nursery cupboard.
At the door of the nursery his authority stopped. Beyond lay the empire
of his father and mother—two very terrible people who had no time to
waste upon His Majesty the King. His voice was lowered when he passed
the frontier of his own dominions, his actions were fettered, and his
soul was filled with awe because of the grim man who lived among a
wilderness of pigeon-holes and the most fascinating pieces of red tape,
and the wonderful woman who was always getting into or stepping out of
the big carriage.
To the one belonged the mysteries of the ‘_duftar_-room,’ to the other
the great, reflected wilderness of the ‘Memsahib’s room,’ where the
shiny, scented dresses hung on pegs, miles and miles up in the air, and
the just-seen plateau of the toilet-table revealed an acreage of speckly
combs, broidered ‘hanafitch-bags,’ and ‘white-headed’ brushes.
There was no room for His Majesty the King either in official reserve or
worldly gorgeousness. He had discovered that, ages and ages ago—before
even Chimo came to the house, or Miss Biddums had ceased grizzling over
a packet of greasy letters which appeared to be her chief treasure on
earth. His Majesty the King, therefore, wisely confined himself to his
own territories, where only Miss Biddums, and she feebly, disputed his
sway.
From Miss Biddums he had picked up his simple theology and welded it to
the legends of gods and devils that he had learned in the servants’
quarters.
To Miss Biddums he confided with equal trust his tattered garments and
his more serious griefs. She would make everything whole. She knew
exactly how the Earth had been born, and had reassured the trembling
soul of His Majesty the King that terrible time in July when it rained
continuously for seven days and seven nights, and—there was no Ark ready
and all the ravens had flown away! She was the most powerful person with
whom he was brought into contact—always excepting the two remote and
silent people beyond the nursery door.
How was His Majesty the King to know that, six years ago, in the summer
of his birth, Mrs. Austell, turning over her husband’s papers, had come
upon the intemperate letter of a foolish woman who had been carried away
by the silent man’s strength and personal beauty? How could he tell what
evil the overlooked slip of notepaper had wrought in the mind of a
desperately jealous wife? How could he, despite his wisdom, guess that
his mother had chosen to make of it excuse for a bar and a division
between herself and her husband, that strengthened and grew harder to
break with each year; that she, having unearthed this skeleton in the
cupboard, had trained it into a household God which should be about
their path and about their bed, and poison all their ways?
These things were beyond the province of His Majesty the King. He only
knew that his father was daily absorbed in some mysterious work for a
thing called the _Sirkar_, and that his mother was the victim
alternately of the _Nautch_ and the _Burrakhana_. To these
entertainments she was escorted by a Captain-Man for whom His Majesty
the King had no regard.
‘He _doesn’t_ laugh,’ he argued with Miss Biddums, who would fain have
taught him charity. ‘He only makes faces wiv his mouf, and when he wants
to o-muse me I am _not_ o-mused.’ And His Majesty the King shook his
head as one who knew the deceitfulness of this world.
Morning and evening it was his duty to salute his father and mother—the
former with a grave shake of the hand, and the latter with an equally
grave kiss. Once, indeed, he had put his arms round his mother’s neck,
in the fashion he used towards Miss Biddums. The openwork of his
sleeve-edge caught in an earring, and the last stage of His Majesty’s
little overture was a suppressed scream and summary dismissal to the
nursery.
‘It is w’ong,’ thought His Majesty the King, ‘to hug Memsahibs wiv fings
in veir ears. I will amember.’ He never repeated the experiment.
Miss Biddums, it must be confessed, spoilt him as much as his nature
admitted, in some sort of recompense for what she called ‘the hard ways
of his Papa and Mamma.’ She, like her charge, knew nothing of the
trouble between man and wife—the savage contempt for a woman’s stupidity
on the one side, or the dull, rankling anger on the other. Miss Biddums
had looked after many little children in her time, and served in many
establishments. Being a discreet woman, she observed little and said
less, and, when her pupils went over the sea to the Great Unknown, which
she, with touching confidence in her hearers, called ‘Home,’ packed up
her slender belongings and sought for employment afresh, lavishing all
her love on each successive batch of ingrates. Only His Majesty the King
had repaid her affection with interest; and in his uncomprehending ears
she had told the tale of nearly all her hopes, her aspirations, the
hopes that were dead, and the dazzling glories of her ancestral home in
‘_Cal_cutta, close to Wellington Square.’
Everything above the average was in the eyes of His Majesty the King
‘Calcutta good.’ When Miss Biddums had crossed his royal will, he
reversed the epithet to vex that estimable lady, and all things evil
were, until the tears of repentance swept away spite, ‘Calcutta bad.’
Now and again Miss Biddums begged for him the rare pleasure of a day in
the society of the Commissioner’s child—the wilful four-year-old Patsie,
who, to the intense amazement of His Majesty the King, was idolised by
her parents. On thinking the question out at length, by roads unknown to
those who have left childhood behind, he came to the conclusion that
Patsie was petted because she wore a big blue sash and yellow hair.
This precious discovery he kept to himself. The yellow hair was
absolutely beyond his power, his own tousled wig being potato-brown; but
something might be done towards the blue sash. He tied a large knot in
his mosquito-curtains in order to remember to consult Patsie on their
next meeting. She was the only child he had ever spoken to, and almost
the only one that he had ever seen. The little memory and the very large
and ragged knot held good.
‘Patsie, lend me your blue wiband,’ said His Majesty the King.
‘You’ll bewy it,’ said Patsie doubtfully, mindful of certain atrocities
committed on her doll.
‘No, I won’t—twoofanhonour. It’s for me to wear.’
‘Pooh!’ said Patsie. ‘Boys don’t wear sa-ashes. Zey’s only for dirls.’
‘I didn’t know.’ The face of His Majesty the King fell.
‘Who wants ribands? Are you playing horses, chickabiddies?’ said the
Commissioner’s wife, stepping into the veranda.
‘Toby wanted my sash,’ explained Patsie.
‘I don’t now,’ said His Majesty the King hastily, feeling that with one
of these terrible ‘grown-ups’ his poor little secret would be
shamelessly wrenched from him, and perhaps—most burning desecration of
all—laughed at.
‘I’ll give you a cracker-cap,’ said the Commissioner’s wife. ‘Come along
with me, Toby, and we’ll choose it.’
The cracker-cap was a stiff, three-pointed vermilion-and-tinsel
splendour. His Majesty the King fitted it on his royal brow. The
Commissioner’s wife had a face that children instinctively trusted, and
her action, as she adjusted the toppling middle spike, was tender.
‘Will it do as well?’ stammered His Majesty the King.
‘As what, little one?’
‘As ve wiban?’
‘Oh, quite. Go and look at yourself in the glass.’
The words were spoken in all sincerity, and to help forward any absurd
‘dressing-up’ amusement that the children might take into their minds.
But the young savage has a keen sense of the ludicrous. His Majesty the
King swung the great cheval-glass down, and saw his head crowned with
the staring horror of a fool’s cap—a thing which his father would rend
to pieces if it ever came into his office. He plucked it off, and burst
into tears.
‘Toby,’ said the Commissioner’s wife gravely, ‘you shouldn’t give way to
temper. I am very sorry to see it. It’s wrong.’
His Majesty the King sobbed inconsolably, and the heart of Patsie’s
mother was touched. She drew the child on to her knee. Clearly it was
not temper alone.
‘What is it, Toby? Won’t you tell me? Aren’t you well?’
The torrent of sobs and speech met, and fought for a time, with chokings
and gulpings and gasps. Then, in a sudden rush, His Majesty the King was
delivered of a few inarticulate sounds, followed by the words—‘Go a—way
you—dirty—little debbil!’
‘Toby! What do you mean?’
‘It’s what he’d say. I _know_ it is! He said vat when vere was only a
little, little eggy mess, on my t-t-unic; and he’d say it again, and
laugh, if I went in wif vat on my head.’
‘Who would say that?’
‘M-m-my Papa! And I fought if I had ve blue wiban, he’d let me play in
ve waste-paper basket under ve table.’
_‘What_ blue riband, childie?’
‘Ve same vat Patsie had—ve big blue wiban w-w-wound my t-t-tummy!’
‘What is it, Toby? There’s something on your mind. Tell me all about it,
and perhaps I can help.’
‘Isn’t anyfing,’ sniffed His Majesty, mindful of his manhood, and
raising his head from the motherly bosom upon which it was resting. ‘I
only fought vat you—you petted Patsie ’cause she had ve blue wiban,
and—and if I’d had ve blue wiban too, m-my Papa w-would pet me.’
The secret was out, and His Majesty the King sobbed bitterly in spite of
the arms around him and the murmur of comfort on his heated little
forehead.
Enter Patsie tumultuously, embarrassed by several lengths of the
Commissioner’s pet _mahseer_-rod. ‘Tum along, Toby! Zere’s a _chu-chu_
lizard in ze _chick_, and I’ve told Chimo to watch him till we tum. If
we poke him wiz zis his tail will go _wiggle-wiggle_ and fall off. Tum
along! I can’t weach.’
‘I’m comin’,’ said His Majesty the King, climbing down from the
Commissioner’s wife’s knee after a hasty kiss.
Two minutes later, the _chu-chu_ lizard’s tail was wriggling on the
matting of the veranda, and the children were gravely poking it with
splinters from the _chick_, to urge its exhausted vitality into ‘just
one wiggle more, ’cause it doesn’t hurt _chu-chu_.’
The Commissioner’s wife stood in the doorway and watched—‘Poor little
mite! A blue sash——and my own precious Patsie! I wonder if the best of
us, or we who love them best, ever understood what goes on in their
topsy-turvey little heads.’
She went indoors to devise a tea for His Majesty the King.
‘Their souls aren’t in their tummies at that age in this climate,’ said
the Commissioner’s wife, ‘but they are not far off. I wonder if I could
make Mrs. Austell understand. Poor little fellow!’
With simple craft, the Commissioner’s wife called on Mrs. Austell and
spoke long and lovingly about children; inquiring specially for His
Majesty the King.
‘He’s with his governess,’ said Mrs. Austell, and the tone showed that
she was not interested.
The Commissioner’s wife, unskilled in the art of war, continued her
questionings. ‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Austell. ‘These things are left
to Miss Biddums, and, of course, she does not ill-treat the child.’
The Commissioner’s wife left hastily. The last sentence jarred upon her
nerves. ‘Doesn’t _ill-treat_ the child! As if that were all! I wonder
what Tom would say if I only “didn’t ill-treat” Patsie!’
Thenceforward, His Majesty the King was an honoured guest at the
Commissioner’s house, and the chosen friend of Patsie, with whom he
blundered into as many scrapes as the compound and the servants’
quarters afforded. Patsie’s Mamma was always ready to give counsel,
help, and sympathy, and, if need were and callers few, to enter into
their games with an _abandon_ that would have shocked the sleek-haired
subalterns who squirmed painfully in their chairs when they came to call
on her whom they profanely nicknamed ‘Mother Bunch.’
Yet, in spite of Patsie and Patsie’s Mamma, and the love that these two
lavished upon him, His Majesty the King fell grievously from grace, and
committed no less a sin than that of theft—unknown, it is true, but
burdensome.
There came a man to the door one day, when His Majesty was playing in
the hall and the bearer had gone to dinner, with a packet for His
Majesty’s Mamma. And he put it upon the hall-table, and said that there
was no answer, and departed.
Presently, the pattern of the dado ceased to interest His Majesty, while
the packet, a white, neatly-wrapped one of fascinating shape, interested
him very much indeed. His Mamma was out, so was Miss Biddums, and there
was pink string round the packet. He greatly desired pink string. It
would help him in many of his little businesses—the haulage across the
floor of his small cane-chair, the torturing of Chimo, who could never
understand harness—and so forth. If he took the string it would be his
own, and nobody would be any the wiser. He certainly could not pluck up
sufficient courage to ask Mamma for it. Wherefore, mounting upon a
chair, he carefully untied the string and, behold, the stiff white paper
spread out in four directions, and revealed a beautiful little leather
box with gold lines upon it! He tried to replace the string, but that
was a failure. So he opened the box to get full satisfaction for his
iniquity, and saw a most beautiful Star that shone and winked, and was
altogether lovely and desirable.
‘Vat,’ said His Majesty meditatively, ‘is a ’parkle cwown, like what I
will wear when I go to heaven. I will wear it on my head—Miss Biddums
says so. I would like to wear it _now_. I would like to play wiv it. I
will take it away and play wiv it, very careful, until Mamma asks for
it. I fink it was bought for me to play wiv—same as my cart.’
His Majesty the King was arguing against his conscience, and he knew it,
for he thought immediately after: ‘Never mind, I will keep it to play
wiv until Mamma says where is it, and then I will say—“I tookt it and I
am sorry.” I will not hurt it because it is a ’parkle cwown. But Miss
Biddums will tell me to put it back. I will not show it to Miss
Biddums.’
If Mamma had come in at that moment all would have gone well. She did
not, and His Majesty the King stuffed paper, case, and jewel into the
breast of his blouse and marched to the nursery.
‘When Mamma asks I will tell,’ was the salve that he laid upon his
conscience. But Mamma never asked, and for three whole days His Majesty
the King gloated over his treasure. It was of no earthly use to him, but
it was splendid, and, for aught he knew, something dropped from the
heavens themselves. Still Mamma made no inquiries, and it seemed to him,
in his furtive peeps, as though the shiny stones grew dim. What was the
use of a ’parkle cwown if it made a little boy feel all bad in his
inside? He had the pink string as well as the other treasure, but
greatly he wished that he had not gone beyond the string. It was his
first experience of iniquity, and it pained him after the flush of
possession and secret delight in the ‘’parkle cwown’ had died away.
Each day that he delayed rendered confession to the people beyond the
nursery doors more impossible. Now and again he determined to put
himself in the path of the beautifully-attired lady as she was going
out, and explain that he and no one else was the possessor of a ‘’parkle
cwown,’ most beautiful and quite uninquired for. But she passed
hurriedly to her carriage, and the opportunity was gone before His
Majesty the King could draw the deep breath which clinches noble
resolve. The dread secret cut him off from Miss Biddums, Patsie, and the
Commissioner’s wife, and—doubly hard fate—when he brooded over it Patsie
said, and told her mother, that he was cross.
The days were very long to His Majesty the King, and the nights longer
still. Miss Biddums had informed him, more than once, what was the
ultimate destiny of ‘fieves,’ and when he passed the interminable mud
flanks of the Central Jail, he shook in his little strapped shoes.