LADY BASSETT was paralyzed for a minute or two by this speech. At last
she replied by asking a question--rather a curious one. “Who nursed
you, Charles?”
“What, when I was a baby? How can I tell? Yes, by-the-by, it was my
mother nursed me--so I was told.”
“And your mother was a Le Compton. This poor boy was nursed by a
servant. Oh, she has some good qualities, and is certainly devoted to
us--to this day her face brightens at sight of me--but she is
essentially vulgar; and do you remember, Charles, I wished to wean him
early; but I was overruled, and the poor child drew his nature from
that woman for nearly eighteen months; it is a thing unheard of
nowadays.”
“Well, but surely it is from our parents we draw our nature.”
“No; I think it is from our nurses. If Compton or Alec ever turn out
like Reginald, blame nobody but their nurse, and that is Me.”
Sir Charles smiled faintly at this piece of feminine logic, and asked
her what he should do.
She said she was quite unable to advise. Mr. Rolfe was coming to see
them soon; perhaps he might be able to suggest something.
Sir Charles said he would consult him; but he was clear on one
thing--the boy must be sent from Huntercombe, and so separated from all
his present acquaintances.
Mr. Rolfe came, and the distressed father opened his heart to him in
strict confidence respecting Reginald.
Rolfe listened and sympathized, and knit his brow, and asked time to
consider what he had heard, and also to study the boy for himself.
He angled for him next day accordingly. A little table was taken out on
the lawn, and presently Mr. Rolfe issued forth in a uniform suit of
dark blue flannel and a sombrero hat, and set to work writing a novel
in the sun.
Reginald in due course descried this figure, and it smacked so of that
Bohemia to which his own soul belonged that he was attracted thereby,
but made his approaches stealthily, like a little cat.
Presently a fiddle went off behind a tree, so close that the novelist
leaped out of his seat with an eldrich screech; for he had long ago
forgotten all about Mr. Reginald, and, when he got heated in this kind
of composition, any sudden sound seemed to his tense nerves and boiling
brain about ten times as loud as it really was.
Having relieved himself with a yell, he sat down with the mien of a
martyr expecting tortures; but he was most agreeably disappointed; the
little monster played an English melody, and played it in tune. This
done, he whistled a quick tune, and played a slow second to it in
perfect harmony; this done, he whistled the second part and played the
quick treble--a very simple feat, but still ingenious for a boy, and
new to his hearer.
“Bravo! bravo!” cried Rolfe, with all his heart,
Mr. Reginald emerged, radiant with vanity. “You are like me, Mr.
Writer,” said he; “you don't like to be cooped up in-doors.”
“I wish I could play the fiddle like you, my fine fellow.”
“Ah, you can't do that all in a minute; see the time I have been at
it.”
“Ah, to be sure, I forgot your antiquity.”
“And it isn't the time only; it's giving your mind to it, old chap.”
“What, you don't give your mind to your books, then, as you do to your
fiddle, _young gentleman?”_
“Not such a flat. Why, lookee here, governor, if you go and give your
mind to a thing you don't like, it's always time wasted, because some
other chap, that does like it, will beat you, and what's the use
working for to be beat?”
“'For' is redundant,” objected Rolfe.
“But if you stick hard to the things you like, you do 'em downright
well. But old people are such fools, they always drive you the wrong
way. They make the gals play music six hours a day, and you might as
well set the hen bullfinches to pipe. Look at the gals as come here,
how they rattle up and down the piano, and can't make it sing a morsel.
Why, they _couldn't_ rattle like that, if they'd music in their skins,
d--n 'em; and they drive me to those stupid books, because I'm all for
music and moonshine. Can you keep a secret?”
“As the tomb.”
“Well, then, I can do plenty of things well, besides fiddling; I can
set a wire with any poacher in the parish. I have caught plenty of our
old man's hares in my time; and it takes a workman to set a wire as it
should be. Show me a wire, and I'll tell you whether it was Hudson, or
Whitbeck, or Squinting Jack, or who it was that set it. I know all
their work that walks by moonlight hereabouts.”
“This is criticism; a science; I prefer art; play me another tune, my
bold Bohemian.”
“Ah, I thought I should catch ye with my fiddle. You're not such a muff
as the others, old 'un, not by a long chalk. Hang me if I won't give ye
'Ireland's music,' and I've sworn never to waste that on a fool.”
He played the old Irish air so simply and tunably that Rolfe leaned
back in his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft voluptuous ecstasy.
The youngster watched him with his coal-black eye.
“I like you,” said he, “better than I thought I should, a precious
sight.”
“Highly flattered.”
“Come with me, and hear my nurse sing it.”
“What, and leave my novel?”
“Oh, bother your novel.”
“And so I will. That will be tit for tat; it has bothered me. Lead on,
Bohemian bold.”
The boy took him, over hedge and ditch, the short-cut to Meyrick's
farm; and caught Mrs. Meyrick, and said she must sing “Ireland's music”
to Rolfe the writer.
Mrs. Meyrick apologized for her dress, and affected shyness about
singing: Mr. Reginald stared at first, then let her know that, if she
was going to be affected like the girls that came to the Hall, he
should hate her, as he did them, and this he confirmed with a naughty
word.
Thus threatened, she came to book, and sang Ireland's melody in a low,
rich, sonorous voice; Reginald played a second; the harmony was so
perfect and strong that certain glass candelabra on the mantel-piece
rang loudly, and the drops vibrated. Then he made her sing the second,
and he took the treble with his violin; and he wound up by throwing in
a third part himself, a sort of countertenor, his own voice being much
higher than the woman's.
The tears stood in Rolfe's eyes. “Well,” said he, “you have got the
soul of music, you two. I could listen to you 'From morn till noon,
from noon till dewy eve.'”
As they returned to Huntercombe, this mercurial youth went off at a
tangent, and Rolfe saw him no more.
He wrote in peace, and walked about between the heats.
Just before dinner-time the screams of women were heard hard by, and
the writer hurried to the place in time to see Mr. Basset hanging by
the shoulder from the branch of a tree, about twenty feet from the
ground.
Rolfe hallooed, as he ran, to the women, to fetch blankets to catch
him, and got under the tree, determined to try and catch him in his
arms, if necessary; but he encouraged the boy to hold on.
“All right, governor,” said the boy, in a quavering voice.
It was very near the kitchen; maids and men poured out with blankets;
eight people held one, under Rolfe's direction, and down came Mr.
Bassett in a semicircle, and bounded up again off the blanket, like an
India-rubber ball.
His quick mind recovered courage the moment he touched wool.
“Crikey! that's jolly,” said he; “give me another toss or two.”
“Oh no! no!” said a good-natured maid. “Take an' put him to bed right
off, poor dear.”
“Hold your tongue, ye bitch,” said young hopeful; “if ye don't toss me,
I'll turn ye all off, as soon as ever the old un kicks the bucket.”
Thus menaced, they thought it prudent to toss him; but, at the third
toss, he yelled out, “Oh! oh! oh! I'm all wet; it's blood! I'm dead!”
Then they examined, and found his arm was severely lacerated by an old
nail that had been driven into the tree, and it had torn the flesh in
his fall: he was covered with blood, the sight of which quenched his
manly spirit, and he began to howl.
“Old linen rag, warm water, and a bottle of champagne,” shouted Rolfe:
the servants flew.
Rolfe dressed and bandaged the wound for him, and then he felt faint:
the champagne soon set that right; and then he wanted to get drunk,
alleging, as a reason, that he had not been drunk for this two months.
Sir Charles was told of the accident, and was distressed by it, and
also by the cause.
“Rolfe,” said he, sorrowfully, “there is a ring-dove's nest on that
tree: she and hers have built there in peace and safety for a hundred
years, and cooed about the place. My unhappy boy was climbing the tree
to take the young, after solemnly promising me he never would: that is
the bitter truth. What shall I do with the young barbarian?”
He sighed, and Lady Bassett echoed the sigh.
Said Rolfe, “The young barbarian, as you call him, has disarmed me: he
plays the fiddle like a civilized angel.”
“Oh, Mr. Rolfe!”
“What, you his mother, and not found that out yet? Oh yes, he has a
heaven-born genius for music.”
Rolfe then related the musical feats of the urchin.
Sir Charles begged to observe that this talent would go a very little
way toward fitting him to succeed his father and keep up the credit of
an ancient family.
“Dear Charles, Mr. Rolfe knows that; but it is like him to make the
best of things, to encourage us. But what do you think of him, on the
whole, Mr. Rolfe? has Sir Charles more to hope or to fear?”
“Give me another day or two to study him,” said Rolfe.
That night there was a loud alarm. Mr. Bassett was running about the
veranda in his night-dress.
They caught him and got him to bed, and Rolfe said it was fever; and,
with the assistance of Sir Charles and a footman, laid him between two
towels steeped in tepid water, then drew blankets tight over him, and,
in short, packed him.
“Ah!” said he, complacently; “I say, give me a drink of moonshine, old
chap.”
“I'll give you a bucketful,” said Rolfe; then, with the servant's help,
took his little bed and put it close to the window; the moonlight
streamed in on the boy's face, his great black eyes glittered in it. He
was diabolically beautiful. “Kiss me, moonshine,” said he; “I like to
wash in you.”
Next day he was, apparently, quite well, and certainly ripe for fresh
mischief. Rolfe studied him, and, the evening before he went, gave Sir
Charles and Lady Bassett his opinion, but not with his usual alacrity;
a weight seemed to hang on him, and, more than once, his voice
trembled.
“I shall tell you,” said he, “what I see--what I foresee--and then,
with great diffidence, what I advise.
“I see--what naturalists call a reversion in race, a boy who resembles
in color and features neither of his parents, and, indeed, bears little
resemblance to any of the races that have inhabited England since
history was written. He suggests rather some Oriental type.”
Sir Charles turned round in his chair, with a sigh, and said, “We are
to have a romance, it seems.”
Lady Bassett stared with all her eyes, and began to change color.
The theorist continued, with perfect composure, “I don't undertake to
account for it with any precision. How can I? Perhaps there is Moorish
blood in your family, and here it has revived; you look incredulous,
but there are plenty of examples, ay, and stronger than this: every
child that is born resembles some progenitor; how then do you account
for Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined with me last week, and sang
me 'Ah perdona,' rather feebly, in the evening? Bust and figure like
any other lady, hand exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with long,
silky hair from the elbow to the wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of
black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an excrescence, chin pure monkey,
face all covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct ten thousand years
before Adam, yet it could revive at this time of day. Compared with La
Pastrana, and many much weaker examples of antiquity revived, that I
have seen, your Mauritanian son is no great marvel, after all.”
“This is a _little_ too far-fetched,” said Sir Charles, satirically;
“Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our
family that all the Bassetts were as black as ink till they married
with you Rolfes, in the year 1684.”
“Oho!” said Rolfe, “is it so? See how discussion brings out things.”
“And then,” said Lady Bassett, “Charles dear, tell Mr. Rolfe what I
think.”
“Ay, do,” said Rolfe; “that will be a new form of circumlocution.”
Sir Charles complied, with a smile. “Lady Bassett's theory is, that
children derive their nature quite as much from their wet-nurses as
from their parents, and she thinks the faults we deplore in Reginald
are to be traced to his nurse; by-the-by, she is a dark woman too.”
“Well,” said Rolfe, “there's a good deal of truth in that, as far as
regards the disposition. But I never heard color so accounted for; yet
why not? It has been proved that the very bones of young animals can be
colored pink, by feeding them on milk so colored.”
“There!” said Lady Bassett.
“But no nurse could give your son a color which is not her own. I have
seen the woman; she is only a dark Englishwoman. Her arms were
embrowned by exposure, but her forehead was not brown. Mr. Reginald is
quite another thing. The skin of his body, the white of his eye, the
pupil, all look like a reversion to some Oriental type; and, mark the
coincidence, he has mental peculiarities that point toward the East.”
Sir Charles lost patience. “On the contrary,” said he, “he talks and
feels just like an English snob, and makes me miserable.”
“Oh, as to that, he has picked up vulgar phrases at that farm, and in
your stables; but he never picked up his musical genius in stables and
farms, far less his poetry.”
“What poetry?”
“What poetry? Why, did not you hear him? Was it not poetical of a
wounded, fevered boy to beg to be laid by the window, and to say 'Let
me drink the moonshine?' Take down your Homer, and read a thousand
lines haphazard, and see whether you stumble over a thought more
poetical than that. But criticism does not exist: whatever the dead
said was good; whatever the living say is little; as if the dead were a
race apart, and had never been the living, and the living would never
be the dead.”
Heaven knows where he was running to now, but Sir Charles stopped him
by conceding that point. “Well you are right: poor child, it was
poetical,” and the father's pride predominated, for a moment, over
every other sentiment.
“Yes; but where did it come from? That looks to me a typical idea; I
mean an idea derived, not from his luxurious parents, dwellers in
curtained mansions, but from some out-door and remote ancestor; perhaps
from the Oriental tribe that first colonized Britain; they worshiped
the sun and the moon, no doubt; or perhaps, after all, it only came
from some wandering tribe that passed their lives between the two
lights of heaven, and never set foot in a human dwelling.”
“This,” said Sir Charles, “is a flattering speculation, but so wild and
romantic that I fear it will lead us to no practical result. I thought
you undertook to advise me. What advice can you build on these cobwebs
of your busy brain?”
“Excuse me, my practical friend,” said Rolfe. “I opened my discourse in
three heads. What I see--what I foresee--and what, with diffidence, I
advise. Pray don't disturb my methods, or I am done for; never disturb
an artist's form. I have told you what I see. What I foresee is this:
you will have to cut off the entail with Reginald's consent, when he is
of age, and make the Saxon boy Compton your successor. Cutting off
entails runs in families, like everything else; your grandfather did
it, and so will you. You should put by a few thousands every year, that
you may be able to do this without injustice either to your Oriental or
your Saxon son.”
“Never!” shouted Sir Charles: then, in a broken voice, “He is my
first-born, and my idol; his coming into the world rescued me out of a
morbid condition: he healed my one great grief. Bar the entail, and put
his younger brother in his place--never!”
Mr. Rolfe bowed his head politely, and left the subject, which, indeed,
could be carried no farther without serious offense.
“And now for my advice. The question is, how to educate this strange
boy. One thing is clear; it is no use trying the humdrum plan any
longer; it has been tried, and failed. I should adapt his education to
his nature. Education is made as stiff and unyielding as a board; but
it need not be. I should abolish that spectacled tutor of yours at
once, and get a tutor, young, enterprising, manly, and supple, who
would obey orders; and the order should be to observe the boy's nature,
and teach accordingly. Why need men teach in a chair, and boys learn in
a chair? The Athenians studied not in chairs. The Peripatetics, as
their name imports, hunted knowledge afoot; those who sought truth in
the groves of Academus were not seated at that work. Then let the tutor
walk with him, and talk with him by sunlight and moonlight, relating
old history, and commenting on each new thing that is done, or word
spoken, and improve every occasion. Why, I myself would give a guinea a
day to walk with William White about the kindly aspects and wooded
slopes of Selborne, or with Karr about his garden. Cut Latin and Greek
clean out of the scheme. They are mere cancers to those who can never
excel in them. Teach him not dead languages, but living facts. Have him
in your justice-room for half an hour a day, and give him your own
comments on what he has heard there. Let his tutor take him to all
Quarter Sessions and Assizes, and stick to him like diaculum,
especially out-of-doors; order him never to be admitted to the
stable-yard; dismiss every biped there that lets him come. Don't let
him visit his nurse so often, and never without his tutor; it was she
who taught him to look forward to your decease; that is just like these
common women. Such a tutor as I have described will deserve 500 pounds
a year. Give it him; and dismiss him if he plays humdrum and doesn't
earn it. Dismiss half a dozen, if necessary, till you get a fellow with
a grain or two of genius for tuition. When the boy is seventeen, what
with his Oriental precocity, and this system of education, he will know
the world as well as a Saxon boy of twenty-one, and that is not saying
much. Then, if his nature is still as wild, get him a large tract in
Australia; cattle to breed, kangaroos to shoot, swift horses to thread
the bush and gallop mighty tracts; he will not shirk business, if it
avoids the repulsive form of sitting down in-doors, and offers itself
in combination with riding, hunting, galloping, cracking of rifles, and
of colonial whips as loud as rifles, and drinking sunshine and
moonshine in that mellow clime, beneath the Southern Cross and the
spangled firmament of stars unknown to us.”
His own eyes sparkled like hot coals at this Bohemian picture.
Then he sighed and returned to civilization. “But,” said he, “be ready
with eighty thousand pounds for him, that he may enjoy his own way and
join you in barring the entail. I forgot, I must say no more on that
subject; I see it is as offensive--as it is inevitable. Cassandra has
spoken wisely, and, I see, in vain. God bless you both--good-night.”
And he rolled out of the room with a certain clumsy importance.
Sir Charles treated all this advice with a polite forbearance while he
was in the room, but on his departure delivered a sage reflection.
“Strange,” said he, “that a man so valuable in any great emergency
should be so extravagant and eccentric in the ordinary affairs of life.
I might as well drive to Bellevue House and consult the first gentleman
I met there.”
Lady Bassett did not reply immediately, and Sir Charles observed that
her face was very red and her hands trembled.
“Why, Bella,” said he, “has all that rhodomontade upset you?”
Lady Bassett looked frightened at his noticing her agitation, and said
that Mr. Rolfe always overpowered her. “He is so large, and so
confident, and throws such new light on things.”
“New light! Wild eccentricity always does that; but it is the light of
Jack-o'-lantern. On a great question, so near my heart as this, give me
the steady light of common sense, not the wayward coruscations of a
fiery imagination. Bella dear, I shall send the boy to a good school,
and so cut off at one blow all the low associations that have caused
the mischief.”
“You know what is best, dear,” said Lady Bassett; “you are wiser than
any of us.”
In the morning she got hold of Mr. Rolfe, and asked him if he could put
her in the way of getting more than three per cent for her money
_without risk._
“Only one,” said.Rolfe. “London freeholds in rising situations let to
substantial tenants. I can get you five per cent that way, if you are
always ready to buy. The thing does not offer every day.”
“I have twenty thousand pounds to dispose of so,” said Lady Bassett.
“Very well,” said Rolfe. “I'll look out for you, but Oldfield must
examine titles and do the actual business. The best of that investment
is, it is always improving; no ups and downs. Come,” thought he,
“Cassandra has not spoken quite in vain.”
Sir Charles acted on his judgment, and in due course sent Mr. Bassett
to a school at some distance, kept by a clergyman, who had the credit
in that county of exercising sharp supervision and strict discipline.
Sir Charles made no secret of the boy's eccentricities. Mr. Beecher
said he had one or two steady boys who assisted him in such cases.
Sir Charles thought that a very good idea; it was like putting a wild
colt into the break with a steady horse.
He missed the boy sadly at first, but comforted himself with the
conviction that he had parted with him for his good: that consoled him
somewhat.
The younger children of Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were educated
entirely by their mother, and taught as none but a loving lady can
teach.
Compton, with whom we have to do, never knew the thorns with which the
path of letters is apt to be strewn. A mistress of the great art of
pleasing made knowledge from the first a primrose path to him.
Sparkling all over with intelligence, she impregnated her boy with it.
She made herself his favorite companion; she would not keep her
distance. She stole and coaxed knowledge and goodness into his heart
and mind with rare and loving cunning.
She taught him English and French and Latin on the Hamiltonian plan,
and stored his young mind with history and biography, and read to him,
and conversed with him on everything as they read it.
She taught him to speak the truth, and to be honorable and just.
She taught him to be polite, and even formal, rather than free-and-easy
and rude. She taught him to be a man. He must not be what brave boys
called a molly-coddle: like most womanly women, she had a veneration
for man, and she gave him her own high idea of the manly character.
Natural ability, and habitual contact with a mind so attractive and so
rich, gave this intelligent boy many good ideas beyond his age.
When he was six years old, Lady Bassett made him pass his word of honor
that he would never go into the stable-yard; and even then he was far
enough advanced to keep his word religiously.
In return for this she let him taste some sweets of liberty, and was
not always after him. She was profound enough to see that without
liberty a noble character cannot be formed; and she husbanded the curb.
One day he represented to her that, in the meadow next their lawn, were
great stripes of yellow, which were possibly cowslips; of course they
might be only buttercups, but he hoped better things of them; he
further reported that there was an iron gate between him and this
paradise: he could get over it if not objectionable; but he thought it
safest to ask her what she thought of the matter; was that iron gate
intended to keep little boys from the cowslips, because, if so, it was
a misfortune to which he must resign himself. Still, it _was_ a
misfortune. All this, of course, in the simple language of boyhood.
Then Lady Bassett smiled, and said, “Suppose I were to lend you a key
of that iron gate?”
“Oh, mamma!”
“I have a great mind to.”
“Then you will, you will.”
“Does that follow?”
“Yes: whenever you say you think you'll do something kind, or you have
a great mind to do it, you know you always do it; and that is one thing
I do like you for, mamma--you are better than your word.”
“Better than my word? Where does the child learn these things?”
“La, mamma, papa says that often.”
“Oh, that accounts for it. I like the phrase very much. I wish I could
think I deserved it. At any rate, I will be as good as my word for
once; you shall have a key of the gate.”
The boy clapped his hands with delight. The key was sent for, and,
meantime, she told him one reason why she had trusted him with it was
because he had been as good as his word about the stable.
The key was brought, and she held it up half playfully, and said,
“There, sir, I deliver you this upon conditions: you must only use it
when the weather is quite dry, because the grass in the meadow is
longer, and will be wet. Do you promise?”
“Yes, mamma.”
“And you must always lock the gate when you come back, and bring the
key to one place--let me see--the drawer in the hall table, the one
with marble on it; for you know a place for every thing is our rule. On
these conditions, I hereby deliver you this magic key, with the right
of egress and ingress.”
“Egress and ingress?”
“Egress and ingress.”
“Is that foreign for cowslips, mamma--and oxlips?”
“Ha! ha! the child's head is full of cowslips. There is the dictionary;
look out Egress, and afterward look out Ingress.”
When he had added these two words to his little vocabulary, his mother
asked him if he would be good enough to tell her why he did not care
much about all the beautiful flowers in the garden, and was so excited
about cowslips, which appeared to her a flower of no great beauty, and
the smell rather sickly, begging his pardon.
This question posed him dreadfully: he looked at her in a sort of comic
distress, and then sat gravely down all in a heap, about a yard off, to
think.
Finally he turned to her with a wry face, and said, “Why _do_ I,
mamma?”
She smiled deliciously. “No, no, sir,” said she. “How can I get inside
your little head and tell what is there? There must be a reason, I
suppose; and you know you and I are never satisfied till we get at the
reason of a thing. But there is no hurry, dear. I give you a week to
find it out. Now, run and open the gate--stay, are there any cows in
that field?”
“Sometimes, mamma; but they have no horns, you know.”
“Upon your word?”
“Upon my honor. I am not fond of them with horns, myself.”
“Then run away, darling. But you must come and hunt me up, and tell me
how you enjoyed yourself, because that makes me happy, you know.”
This is mawkish; but it will serve to show on what terms the woman and
boy were.
On second thoughts, I recall that apology, and defy creation. “THE
MAWKISH” is a branch of literature, a great and popular one, and I have
neglected it savagely.
Master Compton opened the iron gate, and the world was all before him
where to choose.
He chose one of those yellow stripes that had so attracted him. Horror!
it was all buttercups and deil a cowslip.
Nevertheless, pursuing his researches, he found plenty of that
delightful flower scattered about the meadow in thinner patches; and he
gathered a double handful and dirtied his knees.
Returning, thus laden, from his first excursion, he was accosted by a
fluty voice.
“Little boy!”
He looked up, and saw a girl standing on the lower bar of a little
wooden gate painted white, looking over.
_“Please_ bring me my ball,” said she, pathetically.
Compton looked about; and saw a soft ball of many colors lying near.
He put down his cowslips gravely, and, brought her the ball. He gave it
her with a blush, because she was a strange girl; and she blushed a
little, because he did.
He returned to his cowslips.
“Little boy!” said the voice, “please bring me my ball again.”
He brought it her, with undisturbed politeness. She was giggling; he
laughed too, at that.
“You did it on purpose that time,” said he, solemnly.
“La! you don't think I'd be so wicked,” said she.
Compton shook his head doubtfully, and, considering the interview at an
end turned to go, when instantly the ball knocked his hat off, and
nothing of the malefactress was visible but a black eye sparkling with
fun and mischief, and a bit of forehead wedged against the angle of the
wall.
This being a challenge, Compton said, “Now you come out after that, and
stand a shot, like a man.”
The invitation to be masculine did not tempt her a bit; the only thing
she put out was her hand, and that she drew in, with a laugh, the
moment he threw at it.
At this juncture a voice cried, “Ruperta! what are you doing there?”
Ruperta made a rapid signal with her hand to Compton, implying that he
was to run away; and she herself walked demurely toward the person who
had called her.
It was three days before Compton saw her again, and then she beckoned
him royally to her.
“Little boy,” said she, “talk to me.”
Compton looked at her a little confounded, and did not reply.
“Stand on this gate, like me, and talk,” said she.
He obeyed the first part of this mandate, and stood on the lower bar of
the little gate; so their two figures made a V, when they hung back,
and a tenpenny nail when they came forward and met, and this motion
they continued through the dialogue; and it was a pity the little
wretches could not keep still, and send for my friend the English
Titian: for, when their heads were in position, it was indeed a pretty
picture of childish and flower-like beauty and contrast; the boy fair,
blue-eyed, and with exquisite golden hair; the girl black-eyed,
black-browed, and with eyelashes of incredible length and beauty, and a
cheek brownish, but tinted, and so glowing with health and vigor that,
pricked with a needle, it seemed ready to squirt carnation right into
your eye.
She dazzled Master Compton so that he could do nothing but look at her.
“Well?” said she, smiling.
“Well,” replied he, pretending her “well” was not an interrogatory, but
a concise statement, and that he had discharged the whole duty of man
by according a prompt and cheerful consent.
“You begin,” said the lady.
“No, you.”
“What for?”
“Because--I think--you are the cleverest.”
“Good little boy! Well, then, I will. Who are you?”
“I am Compton. Who are you, please?”
“I am Ruperta.”
“I never heard that name before.”
“No more did I. I think they measured me for it: you live in the great
house there, don't you?”
“Yes, Ruperta.”
“Well, then, I live in the little house. It is not very little either.
It's Highmore. I saw you in church one day; is that lady with the hair
your mamma?”
“Yes, Ruperta.”
“She is beautiful.”
“Isn't she?”
“But mine is so good.”
“Mine is very good, too, Ruperta. Wonderfully good.”
“I like you, Compton--a little.”
“I like you a good deal, Ruperta.”
“La, do you? I wonder at that: you are like a cherub, and I am such a
black thing.”
“But that is why I like you. Reginald is darker than you, and oh, so
beautiful!”
“Hum!--he is a very bad boy.”
“No, he is not.”
“Don't tell stories, child; he is. I know all about him. A wicked,
vulgar, bad boy.”
“He is not,” cried Compton, almost sniveling; but he altered his mind,
and fired up. “You are a naughty, story-telling girl, to say that.”
“Bless _me!”_ said Ruperta, coloring high, and tossing her head
haughtily.
“I don't like you _now,_ Ruperta,” said Compton, with all the decent
calmness of a settled conviction.
“You don't!” screamed Ruperta. “Then go about your business directly,
and don't never come here again! Scolding _me!_ How dare you?--oh! oh!
oh!” and the little lady went off slowly, with her finger in her eye;
and Master Compton looked rather rueful, as we all do when this
charming sex has recourse to what may be called “liquid reasoning.” I
have known the most solid reasons unable to resist it.
However, “mens conscia recti,” and, above all, the cowslips, enabled
Compton to resist, and he troubled his head no more about her that day.
But he looked out for her the next day, and she did not come; and that
rather disappointed him.
The next day was wet, and he did not go into the meadow, being on honor
not to do so.
The fourth day was lovely, and he spent a long time in the meadow, in
hopes: he saw her for a moment at the gate; but she speedily retired.
He was disappointed.
However, he collected a good store of cowslips, and then came home.
As he passed the door out popped Ruperta from some secret ambush, and
said, “Well?”