were two or three children he might have played with, but his
grandmamma thought them vulgar children, not fit playmates for him; and
so the poor little Earl, with the burden of his greatness, had to walk
soberly and sadly past them, with his little tired red-stockinged legs,
while the little girls said to each other, in a whisper, “There’s a
little lord!” and the boys hallooed out, “He’s the swell that owns the
schooner.” Bertie would sigh, as he heard: what was the use of owning
the schooner, when you had no one to play with on it, and never could
do what you liked?
You have never seen Shanklin, for you have never been in England; and
if you do go now, you will never see it as it was when Bertie walked
there, when it was the prettiest and most primitive little place in
England; now, they tell me, it has been made into a watering-place,
with a pier and an esplanade.
Shanklin used to be a little green mossy village covered up in
honeysuckle and hawthorn; low long houses, green too with ivy and
creepers, hid themselves away in sweet-smelling old-fashioned gardens;
yellow roads ran between high banks and hedges out to the green down or
downward to the ripple of the sea; and the cool brown sands, glistening
and firm, twice a day felt the kiss of the tide. The cliffs were brown
too, for the most part; some were white; the gray sea stretched in
front; and the glory of the place was its leafy chine and ravine that
severed the rocks and was full of foliage and of the sound of birds. It
used to be all so quiet there; now and then there passed in the offing
a brig or a yacht or a man-of-war; now and then farmers’ carts came in
from the downs by Appuldurcombe or the farms beyond the Undercliff;
there were some fishing-cabins by the beach, and one old inn with a
long grassy garden, where the coaches used to stop that ran through
the quiet country from Ryde to Ventnor. It was so green, so still, so
friendly, so fresh when I think of it I hear the swish of its lazy
waves and I smell the smell of its eglantine hedges, and I see the big
brown eyes of my gallant dog as he came breathless up from the sea.
Alas! you will never see it so. The hedges are down, they tell me, and
the grand dog is dead, and the hateful engine tears through the fields,
and the sands are beaten to make an esplanade, and the beach is noisy
and hideous with the bray of bands and the laughter of fools.
What will the world be like when you are twenty? Very frightful, I
fear. This is progress, they say?
But what of the little Earl? you ask.
Well, the little Earl knew Shanklin as I knew it,—when the blackbirds
and thrushes sang in the quiet chine, and the sense of an infinite
peace dwelt on its simple shores. His grandmamma had taken for the
summer the house that stands in its woods at the head of the chine and
looks straight down that rift of greenery to the gray sea. I know not
what that house is now; then it was charming, chalet-like, yet spacious.
Here the little Earl was set free of his studies and kept out in the
air when it was fine, and when it rained was sent, not to his books,
but to his toys. Yet it did not seem to him any great change; for when
he rode, James was with him; and when he walked, Deborah was with him;
and when he bathed, William was with him; and when he was only in the
garden, there was grandmamma.
He was never alone. Oh, how he longed to be alone sometimes! And he
never had any playfellows: how he would watch those two or three vulgar
little boys building sand-castles and sailing their boats! He would
have given all his big schooner and its crew to be one of those little
boys.
He had a cruise now and then off the island, and the skipper came up
bare-headed and hoped my lord enjoyed the sail; but he did not enjoy
it: William and Deborah were always after him, telling him to mind
this, and take care of that, till he wished his pretty snow-white
sailor dress with the gold buttons were only rags and tatters! For the
poor little Earl was an adventurous and curious little lad at heart,
and had a spirit of his own, though he was so meek; and he was tired of
being treated like a baby.
His eighth birthday came round in June, and wonderful and magnificent
were the presents he had sent him; but he only felt a little more tired
than he had done before; the bonbons he was not allowed to eat, the
splendidly-bound books seemed nonsense to a little classic who read
Livy; the toys he did not care for, and the gold dressing-case his
grandmamma gave him was no pleasure: he had one in silver, and his very
hair he was never permitted to brush himself.
“As I may not eat the bonbons, might I send them all to the children on
the sands?” he asked wistfully of his grandmother.
“Impossible, my love,” she answered. “We do not know who they are.”
“May I give them to the poor children then?” said the little lad.
“That would hardly be wise, dear. It would give them a taste for
luxuries.”
Bertie sighed: life on this his eighth birthday seemed very empty.
“Why are people strangers to each other? Why does not everybody speak
to every one else?” he said at last, desperately. “St. Paul says we are
all brothers, and St. Francis——”
“My dear child, do not talk nonsense,” said Lady Avillion. “We shall
have you a Radical when you are of age!”
“What is that?” said Bertie.
“The people who slew your dear Charles the First were Radicals,” said
his grandmother, cleverly.
He was discouraged and silent. He went sorrowfully and leaned against
one of the windows and looked down the green vista of the chine. It
was raining, and they would not let him go out of doors. He thought to
himself, “What use is it calling me ‘my lord,’ and telling me I own so
much, and bowing down before me, if I may never do once, just once,
as I like? I know I am a little boy; but then, if I am an Earl, if I
am good enough to be _that_, I ought to be able to do once as I like.
Else, if not, what is the use? And why does the skipper say always to
me, ‘Your lordship is owner here’?”
And then a fancy came into his little head. Was he like the Princes
in the Tower? Was he a prisoner, after all? His little mind was full
of the pageant of history, and he made his mind up now that he was a
princely captive watched and warded.
“Tell me, dear Deb,” he said, catching his nurse by the sleeve as she
turned from his bed that night, “tell me, is it not true that I am in
prison, though you are all kind to me; that somebody else wants my
throne?”
Nurse Deborah thought he was “off his head,” and ran to the physician
for a cooling draught, and sat up in fright all the night, not even
reassured by his sound tranquil sleep.
Bertie asked her nothing more.
He was more sure than ever that a captive he was, kept in kindly and
honorable durance, like James of Scotland in the Green Tower.
Whilst he was lying awake, a grand and startling idea dawned on him:
What if he were to go out and see the world for himself? This notion
has fascinated many a child before him. Did not St. Teresa of Spain,
when she was a little thing, toddle out with a tiny brother over the
brown sierras? So absolutely now did this enterprise dazzle and conquer
the little Earl that before night was half-way over he had persuaded
himself that a prisoner he _was_, and that his stolen kingdom he would
go and find, just as the knights in his favorite tales sallied forth
to seek the Holy Grail. The passion for adventure, for escape, for
finding out the truth, grew so strong on him that at the first flush
of daybreak he slid out of bed and resolved that go alone he would. He
longed to take Ralph, but he feared it would not be right: who knew
what perils or pains awaited him?—and to make the dog sharer in them
seemed selfish. So he threw a glove of his own for Ralph to guard, bade
him be still, and set about his own flight.
He made a sad bungle of dressing himself, for he had never clothed
himself in his life; but at last he got the things on somehow, and most
of them hind-part-before. But he did it all without awaking Deborah,
and, taking his sailor-hat, he managed to drop out of the window on to
the sward below without any one being aware.
It was quite early day; the sky was red, the shadows and the mists were
still there, the birds were piping good-morrow to each other.
“How lovely it is!” he thought. “Oh, why doesn’t everybody get up at
sunrise?”
He knew, however, that if he wanted to see the world by himself he must
not tarry there and think about the dawn. So off he set, as fast as his
not very strong legs could carry him, and he got down to the shore.
The fog was on the sea and screened it from his sight, and there was no
one on the beach except a boy getting nets ready in an old boat. To the
boy ran Bertie, and held to him two half-crowns. “Will you row me to
Bonchurch for that?” he asked.
The boy grinned. “For sure, little master; and I’d like to row a dozen
at the price.”
Into the boat jumped the little Earl, with all the feverish agility
given to prisoners, who are escaping, by their freed instincts. It was
a very old, dirty boat, and soiled his pretty white clothes terribly,
but he had no eyes for that, he so enjoyed that delicious sense of
being all alone and doing just as he liked. The boy was a big boy and
strong, and rowed with a will; and the old tub went jumping and bobbing
and splashing through the rather heavy swell. The gig of his yacht was
a smart, long boat, beautifully clean, and with rowers all dressed
in red caps and white jerseys; but the little Earl had never enjoyed
rowing in _that_ half so much. There had been always somebody to look
after him and say, “Don’t lean over the side,” or, “Mind the water does
not splash you,” or, “Take care!” Oh, that tiresome “Take care!” It
makes a boy want to jump head-foremost into the sea, or fling himself
head-downwards from the nearest apple-tree! I know you have felt so
yourself twenty times a week, though I do not tell you that you were
right.
Nothing is prettier than the Undercliff as you look up at it from the
sea,—a tangle of myrtle and laurel and beech and birch coming down to
the very shore, all as Nature made it. Bertie, as the boat wabbled
along like a fat old duck, looked up at it and was enchanted, and then
he looked at the white wall of mist on the waters, and was enchanted
too. It was like Wonderland. His dreams were broken by the fisher-lad’s
voice:
“I’ll have to put you ashore at the creek, little master, and get back,
or daddy’ll give me a hiding.”
“Who is ‘daddy’?”
“Father,” said the boy. “He’ll lick me, for the tub’s his’n.”
Bertie was perplexed. He had heard of bears being licked into shape
by their fathers and mothers, but this boy, though rough and rather
shapeless, looked too old for such treatment.
“You were a wicked boy to use the boat, then,” he said, with great
severity.
The lad only grinned.
“Little master, you tipped me a crown.”
“I did not mean to tempt you to do wrong,” said Bertie very seriously
still; and then he colored, for was he very sure that he was not doing
wrong himself?
The old boat was grinding on the shingle then, and the rower of it was
putting him ashore at a little creek that was wooded and pretty, and
up which the sea ran at high tide; there was a little cottage at the
head of it. I have heard that this wood-glen used to be in the old
time a very famous place for smugglers, and it is still solitary and
romantic, or at least was so still when the little Earl was set down
there. “Where am I?” he asked the boy. But the wicked boy only grinned,
and began to wabble back through the water as fast as his long slashing
strokes could carry him. The little Earl felt rather foolish and rather
helpless.
He was not far on his way towards seeing the world, and he began to
wish for some breakfast. There was smoke going out of a chimney of the
cottage, and the door of it stood open, but he was afraid the people
there might stop him if he asked for anything, and, besides, the path
up to it through the glen looked rocky and thorny and impassable, so
he kept along by the beach, finding it heavy walking, for there were
more stones than sands, and the beach was strewn with rocks, large and
small, and stiff prickly furze. But he had the sea beside him and the
world before him, and he walked on bravely, and in a little while he
came into Bonchurch. It was very early yet, and Bonchurch was asleep,
and most of its snug thatched houses, hidden away in their gardens and
fuchsia hedges, were shut up snugly; the tall trees of its one street
made a deep shadow in it, and the broad placid water of its great pool
was green with their reflection: it was a sweet, quiet place, leafy as
any haunt for fairies, yet on the very edge of the sea.
At a baker’s shop, a woman was lifting down the shutters. The little
Earl took his hat off very prettily and said to her,—
“If you please, will you be kind enough to sell me some bread-and-milk?”
The woman stared, then laughed.
“Lord bless your pretty face! I only sell bread, but I’ll give you some
milk in, for sake of your pinched cheeks. Come along inside, little
gentleman.”
He went inside; it seemed a very funny place to him, so small and so
dark, and so dusty with flour; but the smell of baking was sweet, and
he was hungry.
She bustled about a little, and set before him a bowl of
bread-and-milk, with a wooden spoon to eat it with. The little Earl put
his hand in his pocket to pay for it; lo! he had not a farthing!
He turned very red, and then very white, and thought to himself that
the money must have tumbled into the sea with his watch, which was
missing too.
It did not occur to him that the wicked boy had taken both; yet such
was the sad fact.
He rose, very sorrowful and confused and ashamed.
“Madam, I beg your pardon,” he said, in his little ceremonious way: “I
thought I had money, but I have lost it. Thank you very much, but I
cannot take the food.”
The woman was good-natured and shrewd.
“Lord! sup it up, my dear little gentleman,” she said to him. “You are
welcome to it,—right welcome, you are; and your pa and your ma can pay
for it.”
“No, no,” murmured Bertie, getting very red; and, fearing lest his
longing for the meal should overcome his honor, he stumbled out of the
baking-house door and ran up the tree-shadowed road faster than ever he
had run in his life.
To be sure, he had plenty of money of his own; they all said so; but
he never knew well where it was, or what it meant; and, besides, he
intended never to go back to his grandmother and Deborah and Ralph and
Royal any more, till he had found out the truth and seen his kingdom.
So he ran on through Bonchurch and out of it, leaving its pleasant
green shade with a little sigh, half of impatience, half of hunger. He
did not go on by the sea, for he knew by hearsay that this way would
take him to Ventnor, and he was afraid people in a town would know
him and stop him; so he set forth inland, where the deep lanes delve
through the grassy downs, and here, sitting on a stile, the little Earl
saw the ploughboy eating something white and round and big that he
himself had never seen before.
“It must be something very delicious to make him enjoy it so much,”
thought the little Earl, and then curiosity entered so into him, and he
longed so much to taste this wonderful unknown thing, that he went up
to the boy and said to him,—
“Will you be so kind as to let me know what you are eating?”
The ploughboy grinned from ear to ear.
“For certain, little zurr,” he said, with a burr and a drawl in his
speech, and he gave the thing to Bertie, which was neither more nor
less than a peeled turnip.
The little Earl looked at it doubtfully, for he did not much fancy what
the other had handled with his big brown hands and bitten with his big
yellow teeth. But then, to enjoy anything as much as that other had
enjoyed it, and to taste something quite unknown!—this counterbalanced
his disgust and over-ruled his delicacy. One side of the great white
thing was unbitten; he took an eager tremulous little bite out of that.
“But, oh!” he cried in dismay as he tasted, “it has no taste at all,
and what there is is nasty!”
“Turnips is main good,” said the boy.
“Oh, _no_!” said the little Earl, with intense horror; and he threw the
turnip down amongst the grass, and went away sorely puzzled.
“Little master,” roared Hodge after him, “I’ll bet as you aren’t
hungry.”
That was it, of course.
The little Earl was not really hungry,—never had been really hungry in
all his life. But this explanation of natural philosophy did not occur
to him, not even when the boy hallooed it after him. He only said to
himself, “How can that boy eat that filthy thing? and he really did
look as if he liked it so!”
Presently, after trotting a mile or so, he passed a little shop set all
by itself at the end of a lane,—surely the tiniest, loneliest shop in
Great Britain. But a cheery-looking old woman kept it, and he saw it
had bread in it, as well as many other stuffs, and tin canisters that
were to him incomprehensible.
“If you please,” he said, rather timidly, offering the gold anchor off
the ribbon of his hat, “I have lost my money, and could you be so kind
as to give me any breakfast for this?”
The old woman smelt the anchor, bit it, twinkled her eyes, and then
drew a long face. “It ain’t worth tuppence, master,” she said; “but
ye’re mighty small to be out by yourself, and puny like: I don’t say as
how I won’t feed yer.”
“Thanks,” said Bertie, who did not know at all what his anchor was
worth.
“Come in out o’ dust,” said the old woman, smartly, and then she
bustled about and set him down in her little den to milk, bread, and
some cold bacon.
That he had no appetite was the despair of his people and physician at
home, and cod-liver oil, steel, quinine, and all manner of nastiness
had been administered to provoke hunger in him, with no effect: by this
time, however, he had almost as much hunger as the boy who had munched
the turnip.
Nothing had ever tasted to him half so good in his life.
The old woman eyed him curiously. “You’s a runaway,” she thought; “but
I’ll not raise the cry after ye, or they’ll come spying about this bit
o’ gold.”
She said to herself that the child would come to no harm, and when a
while had gone by she would step over to Ryde or Newport and get a
guinea on the brooch.
Her little general shop was not a very prosperous business, though
useful to the field-folk; and sanding her sugar, and putting clay in
her mustard, and adding melted fat to her butter, had not strengthened
her moral principles.
As Bertie was eating, there came a very thin, scantily-clad,
miserable-looking woman, who held out a halfpenny. “A sup o’ milk for
Susy, missus,” she said, in a very pitiful faint voice.
“How be Sue?” asked the mistress of the shop. The woman shook her head
with tears running down her hollow cheeks.
“My boy he’s gone in spinney,” she murmured, “to try and catch summat,
if he can: will you change it, missus, if he git a good bird?”
The old woman winked, frowned, and glanced at Bertie.
“Birds aren’t good eatin’ on fust of July,” she observed, as she handed
the milk. The woman paid the halfpenny and hurried away with the milk.
“I think that woman is very poor,” said Bertie, questioningly and
solemnly.
The old dame chuckled.
“No doubts o’ that, master.”
“Then you are cruel to take her money: you should have _given_ her the
milk.”
“Ho, ho, little sir! be you a parson in a gownd? I’m mappen poor
as she, and _she_ hiv desarved all she gits, for her man he were a
poacher, and he died in jail last Jannivery.”
“A poacher!” said Bertie, with the natural instinctive horror of a
landed gentleman. “And her son was going to snare a bird!” he cried,
with light breaking in on him; “and you would give them things in
exchange for the bird! Oh, what a very cruel, what a very _wicked_
woman you are!”
For an answer she shied at him a round wooden trencher, which missed
its aim and struck a basket of eggs and smashed them, and one of the
panes of her shop-window as well.
Bertie got up and walked slowly out of the door, keeping his eyes upon
her.
“When I see a magistrate, I shall tell him about you,” he said,
solemnly: “you tempt poor people: that is very dreadful.”
The enraged woman, in her outraged feelings, threw a pail of dirty
water after him, some of which splashed him and completed the
disfigurement of his white suit. He looked up and down to see for
the poor woman with the milk, that he might console her poverty and
open her eyes to her sins; but she was not within sight; and Bertie
reflected that if he stopped to correct other people’s errors he should
never see the world and find his kingdom.
He had eaten a hearty meal, and his spirits rose and his heart was full
of hope and valor; and if he had only had Ralph with him, he would have
been quite happy.
So he went away valorously across a broad rolling down, and about half
a mile farther on he came to a little shed. In the shed were a fire,
and a man, and a pig; in the fire was an iron, and the pig was tied by
a rope to a ring. Bertie saw the man take the red-hot iron and go up to
the pig: Bertie’s face grew blanched with horror.
“Stop, stop! what are you doing to the pig?” he screamed, as he ran in
to the man, who looked up and stared.
“I be branding the pig. Get out, or I’ll brand you!” he cried. Bertie
held his ground; his eyes were flashing.
“You wicked, wicked man! Do you not know that poor pig was made by God?”
“Dunno,” said the wretch, with a grin. “She’ll be eat by men, come
Candlemas! I be marking of her, ’cos I’ll turn her out on the downs
with t’other. Git out, youngster! you’ve no call here.”
Bertie planted himself firmly on his feet, and doubled his little fists.
“I will not see you do such a cruelty to a poor dumb thing,” he said,
while he grew white as death, “_I will not._”
The man scowled and yet grinned.
“Will you beat me, little Hop-o’-my-thumb?”
Bertie put himself before the poor black pig, who was squealing from
mere fright and the scorch of the fire.
“You shall not get the pig without killing me first. You are a cruel
man.”
The man grew angry.
“Tell you what, youngster: I’ve a mind to try the jumping-irons on you
for your impudence. You look like a drowned white kitten. Clear off, if
you don’t want to taste something right red hot.”
Bertie’s whole body grew sick, but he did not move and he did not quail.
“I would rather you did it to me than to this poor thing,” he answered.
“I’m blowed!” said the man, relaxing his wrath from sheer amazement.
“Well, you’re a good plucked one, you are.”
“I do not know what you mean,” said Bertie, a little haughtily; “but
you shall not hurt the pig.”
“Darn me!” yelled the man; “I’ll burn you, sure as you live, if you
don’t kneel on your bare bones and beg my pardon.”
“I will not do that.”
“You won’t beg my pardon for cheeking me?”
“No: you are a wicked man.”
Bertie’s eyes closed; he grew faint; he fully believed that in another
instant he would feel the hissing fire of the brand. But he did not
yield.
The man’s hand dropped to his side.
“You _are_ a plucked one,” he said, once more. “Lord, child, it was a
joke. You’re such a rare game un, to humor you, there, I’ll let the
crittur go without marking her. But you’re a rare little fool, if
you’re not an angel down from on high.”
Bertie’s eyes filled with tears. He held his hand out royally to be
kissed, as he was used to do at Avillion.
The big, black-looking man crushed it in his own brown paw.
“My! you’re a game un!” he muttered, with wonder and awe.
“And you will never, never, never burn pigs any more?” said Bertie,
searching his face with his own serious large eyes.
“I’ll ne’er brand this un,” said the man, with a shamefaced laugh.
“Lord, little sir, you’re the first is ever got as much as that out of
me!”
“But you _never_ must do it,” said Bertie, solemnly. “It is wicked of
you, and God is angry; and it is very mean for you, such a big man and
so strong, to hurt a defenceless dumb thing. You must _never_ do it.”
“What is your name, little master?” said the big man, humbly.
“They call me Avillion.”
“William? Then I’ll say William all the days of my life at my prayers
o’ Sundays,” said the man, with some emotion, and murmured to himself,
“Such a game un I never seed.”
“Thanks very much,” said Bertie, gently, and then he lifted his hat
politely, and went out of the shed before the man could recover from
his astonishment. When the little Earl looked back, he saw the giant
pouring water on the fire, and the pig was loose.
“I _was_ afraid,” thought Bertie. “But he should have burnt me all up
every bit: I never would have given in.”
And something seemed to say in his ear, “The loveliest thing in all
the world is courage that goes hand in hand with mercy; and these two
together can work miracles, like magicians.”