AN OUTRAGEOUS PROPOSAL.
"HOW interested you look, Cecil!" said Maurice.
The four boys were all waiting at the little station of Hazlewick when
Cecil alighted on the platform.
"You look jolly well," interrupted Jimmy.
"Yes, I feel as well as possible," said Cecil.
"Then give us a hug, do," said Teddy.
He flung his arms roughly round his sister's neck, pushing her hat
crooked and disarranging her black necktie.
"Oh, I say, how red your cheeks are!" said Charlie. "London must be a
jolly healthy place; you were as white as a sheet when you went there,
and now you've come back with your eyes shining, and your cheeks like
apples. I say, had you lots of fun? What sort is the old lady? Did she
give you a good time, and have you brought us back anything?"
"Yes; I have a parcel here," said Cecil.
"I say! gimini! crikey! golluptious!" burst from Teddy's lips. He
instantly began to dance a hornpipe, and Jimmy rushed down the
platform, head over heels, to the distress and agony of several
passengers.
"Oh, do come out of this, boys!" said Cecil. "How can I say anything to
you in the midst of all this noise? Yes, I have news. I'm afraid it's
rather selfish news--I mean it is very good for me; but--but you may
not like it at present. Whether anything can come of it or not rather
depends on the way you take it. Oh, I will tell you after tea; you must
have patience till then--you really must."
"When is that parcel to be opened?" asked Charlie. "We can wait for the
news, if you will only open the parcel. I say, let's sit by the hedge
and get that part done. The news will keep, if you let us see what
you've brought us, Cecil. Oh, I say, do have pity on a fellow! My skull
will burst if I'm exposed to suspense another moment."
"Nonsense, boy!" said Maurice. He gave a quick glance at his sister,
who, under all her excitement, looked tired. "It was awfully good of
Ceci to bring anything back, and you're not even to smell the contents
of this parcel until she wishes it opened. Come, you know me, you three
rascals--so no more words."
Jimmy made a face, Teddy gave a heart-rending sigh, and Charlie danced
in front of the rest of the party.
"Oh, I'll be good!" said Charlie; "I'll be as good as gold, and Ceci
will have mercy then; won't you, Ceci? I do hope you've brought me a
knife, Cecil--a knife with two blades, and a corkscrew, and one of
those things for picking stones out of horses' feet; that's the sort
of knife I want. Ben Lester has a knife of that sort, and I bet him
sixpence I'd have one before the month was out. You've got me a knife,
haven't you, Cecil?"
"Shut up!" growled Maurice. "Take my arm, Cecil. Now, boys, you can run
on in front. Tell Miss Marshall that Cecil is back, and ask her to make
the tea; and hark, don't you make a row, or I'll punch your ears. Now,
off the whole three of you!"
The younger boys rushed on, and Cecil was alone with Maurice.
He was tall for his age; he had broad shoulders and an upright
carriage. Cecil found his young, strong arm full of support. She leaned
on it gladly, but while she did so, a thrill of pain went through her
heart. Had she any right to leave the boys? Could she leave them? Was
she not selfish in putting this great chance, which was so unexpectedly
offered her, before her duty to the boys? Cecil's mind had been
tormented with doubts all the way home, and now, as she leaned on
Maurice and walked toward Miss Marshall's lodgings, these doubts seemed
to get worse than ever.
"You don't look so well as you did five minutes ago," said Maurice,
glancing at her.
"I am very happy, and yet I am very much worried," she said. "Mrs.
Lavender sent for me to make a most astounding proposal. I will tell
you frankly, Maurice, that it took my breath away yesterday; and I
could think of nothing but myself, and the delight of the whole thing.
But to-day, and especially since I have seen your dear old face, I
fear--I greatly fear--that I shall only be a selfish girl if I think of
it."
"No; that I'm sure you won't," said Maurice heartily. "Just tell me
what it is before you talk to the other boys. We needn't discuss it,
but I may as well think it over while we are having tea."
"You're such an old brick, Maurice," said his sister. "I do declare
you've got an old head on young shoulders."
"I'd need to have," said Maurice, with a sigh; "those boys are enough
to worry any fellow sometimes--oh, not that I mean to complain; it
is nothing at all to what you have to bear. Now, out with your news,
Cecil."
"I don't see how it's to be done," said Cecil, turning pale.
Maurice stopped abruptly.
"Out with it before we go a step farther," he said. "Now, then. Why,
Cecil, you're trembling, old girl!"
"I am," said Cecil, tears suddenly filling her eyes. "It means so much,
and I'm tempted."
"Those young rascals will be back if you're not quick, Ceci."
"Well, here it is then, Maurice; here's the subtle temptation. Mrs.
Lavender wants to make me a present of five hundred pounds."
"I say!" exclaimed Maurice.
"Yes--five hundred pounds; she wants to give it to me now for my
education. She wants me to go to Redgarth, where Molly is, you know,
Maurice. She wants me to join Molly at St. Dorothy's. She will pay all
my expenses out of this sum of money, and will allow me ten pounds a
term for pocket-money. That is the proposal, Maurice, and it dazzles
me--and I'm weak, and I long to take it; but--but,--oh, Maurice,
darling, don't look at me with your grave eyes like that,--do you think
I'll desert you? No, no--never, never!"
"Stuff!" said Maurice abruptly. He turned his head away; he didn't
speak at all for a moment.
"You are angry with me, Maurice, for even speaking about it," said
Cecil; "but I promise--yes, I promise! the look on your face is enough.
Don't think of it again, dearest, and the younger boys need never know."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Maurice. "You will forgive me for being a
little bit stunned, just for a minute, Cecil. I never thought of life
without you just at present, but if you think I'm going to be such a
brute as to stand in your way---- Oh, I say, Cecil, don't talk to the
boys to-night. Let us wait until the morning. I must arrange my ideas.
Why, the whole thing is just splendid, Cecil! Think of you, educated as
you ought to be! Why, we none of us have talents like you."
"Oh, yes! _you_ have, Maurice."
"No, I haven't; not a bit of it. Oh, I don't pretend I'm stupid, or
any humbug of that sort, but I'm not like you. Give you advantages and
you'd set the Thames on fire. Yes, now, that's the very word. Listen to
me now, Cecil; don't say a word to the other fellows until you and I
have had a conference and put this thing straight. Promise--we're just
home."
"Maurice, you're the dearest fellow in all the world."
"Not a bit of it, only I've got common sense, and I know when a good
thing is offered to us all. Now, here we are. Well, you lads, is the
tea ready?"
Tea was a very joyous and exciting meal. Even the knowledge that Mrs.
Rogers was in the house could not keep the boys from shouting with
laughter, and expending their wit on that crooked and bulging brown
paper parcel which Cecil had brought back from London with her. Maurice
was one of the gayest of the group. When Maurice gave himself away, as
the other boys phrased it, they felt that the cords of discipline were
thoroughly relaxed; they were almost too excited to eat, and Cecil, in
spite of herself, could not help joining in their mirth.
Immediately after tea, however, Maurice got up and prepared to leave
the room.
"Where are you off to?" said Jimmy. "She'll open the parcel now. What
in the world are you going away for?"
"Oh, I'll be back soon," said Maurice. "You can give the boys those
things, Cecil. If you have thought of me, keep it. I will see what it
is when I come back."
"Well, of all the rum starts----" began Teddy.
But Maurice slammed the door behind him, and a moment later was seen
marching down the street. He walked quickly, his hands shoved deep into
his pockets, his cap pulled over his eyes. Presently he reached an
ugly and very unpretentious house, which stood a little back from the
Grammar School. He rang the bell vigorously. His summons was attended
to by a little man with a shock of red hair and a freckled face. The
little man had humorous blue eyes, a stern mouth, lantern jaws, and a
chin which testified to the extreme obstinacy of his character.
"Now, what have you come about, Ross?" he said. "I really can't be
bothered at this hour. I've been working with you boys all day, and
it's monstrous to have a man's time taken up out of school hours. No;
if you want me to tell you anything about your Latin translation, or
that passage in Homer which you made such a mess of this morning, I
won't; so there!"
"I want nothing of the kind," said Maurice. "You can scold me when I
make you angry, Mr. Danvers. I want to speak to you for a moment. May I
come in?"
Mr. Danvers had only opened his door from four to five inches while he
was expostulating with Maurice. Now he flung it open with a sort of
snarl, and said:
"Come in, if you wish to; come in, if you insist. This is my parlor,
bedroom, kitchen, all in one. A pretty cheerful-looking apartment, is
it not?"
"It's all right," said Maurice. "I haven't come to see your room, but
to see you."
"Well, well; find a chair if you can, lad. I was frizzling bacon when
you came in. Do you mind if I go on with it?"
"Let me help," said Maurice.
"Preserve us, no! I like my bacon done to a turn. Hands off, youngster!
You can talk to me while I am eating my supper."
Maurice lounged against the window-sill. There was literally not a
disengaged seat in the room. Mr. Danvers had described it as kitchen,
bedroom, parlor, but it was also, and above all these things, library.
Books on the floor, books crowding the bookcases, books in heaps on the
windowsill, books on the bed, books on every table and every chair,
marked all too vividly the tastes of John Danvers, the classical
master of the Grammar School, the most hard-headed, soft-hearted,
irascible-tempered, touchiest, most generous man in the whole of
Hazlewick.
"Now, then, Ross, you can state your business," said Danvers, as he
munched his bacon with appetite. "Do you see that pile of exercise
books there? I've got to look through them all between now and ten
o'clock. They are every one of them the choice productions of idiotic
asses, so you may imagine the treat which lies before me. Now then,
Ross, speak out."
"I'd best plump it," said Maurice. "I want to know, Mr. Danvers, if
you'll board me and my three brothers? Don't say 'no,' till you think
it over. We won't be any trouble, and you've heaps of room in this
house."
When Maurice made this astounding proposal, Mr. Danvers' face became a
study. His mouth opened until it formed itself into a round O; his blue
eyes twinkled with the queerest mixture of anger and uncontrollable
mirth. He was in the act of helping himself to a delicious morsel of
frizzled bacon; he kept his fork suspended in mid air.
"Please don't speak for a minute," said Maurice, whose face was
crimson. "I knew you'd funk it; I knew you'd hate it; I know perfectly
well it would be beastly for you. All the same, I want you to do it; it
will be beastly for us too, but I want you to do it. Yes, you shall do
it, because--because----"
"Your reasons, lad?" said John Danvers.
He sprang to his feet, pushed aside his meal with a clatter, walked to
the door, turned the key in it, and then strode up to where Maurice
was, half sitting, half lounging.
"Now, out with your reasons, and be quick!" he said. "I don't want my
bacon spoiled and my evening spoiled; I'll turn you out of this room,
you young rascal, if you're not quick! Why am I to turn my life into an
inferno? Now, be quick; out with your thought, lad!"
Mr. Danvers' last sentence was spoken with a certain softening of voice
which encouraged Maurice to proceed.
"I'm desperate," he said, "and desperate people come to desperate
resolves. It is for Cecil; she's the best girl in all the world, and
the cleverest; but she's not half educated. She was at a school, not
a tip-top school, but just a middling sort of place. I wish now she'd
gone to a decent High School, but mother didn't like High Schools, and
anyhow, there she is, nearly eighteen, with more talents than all the
rest of us put together, but shut out of everything, because she hasn't
got certificates, and all that sort of rot. Well, she's got a chance;
an old lady, a friend of ours, wants to pay her expenses at Redgarth
College. Perhaps you've heard of Redgarth, Mr. Danvers?"
"I have, and of Miss Forester," said John Danvers. "Women are being
taken more and more out of their sphere day by day. Go on, boy--your
ideas amuse me; so I'm to enter purgatory for the sake of a girl. Go
on, pray!"
"No," said Maurice; "I wish I were the same age as you, sir, or you
were the same age as me, and we'd fight this out, not for the sake of a
girl in the ordinary sense of the word, but because of the best sister
a fellow ever had, and we want to give her a chance--at least I do."
"And you propose to send me to a lunatic asylum?"
"Not quite; we wouldn't be as bad as that. You own the whole of this
house, don't you?"
"What's that to you, you young dog?"
"Yes; but don't you?"
"Fact, Maurice Ross; I also own a digestive system, which is going to
be put frightfully out of gear by this night's work."
"Oh, I wish you'd take the matter seriously. We boys want a bedroom,
and any ramshackle sort of place to work in. I engage, on my honor,
to keep the three younger lads in order. I know a bit of cooking, and
we can manage our own meals, and we can pay you for every scrap of
expenses you are put to, and you can have a bit of profit over and
above."
"You can leave the profit out, young Ross."
"Well," said Maurice, "will you, or won't you? Will you make yourself
beastly miserable for the sake of a brave girl? She can't help being a
girl, but she can help being brave, and she is--oh, you don't know how
plucky she is. It puts me to shame the way she works, and the way she
denies herself. Do you know what she's got in the back of her head?
To send me to Oxford by and by, to make a man of me, and to provide a
comfortable home for the other boys when they are older and need it
more. I couldn't ask a woman to put herself out to give Cecil this
chance, but I thought a man might, if he were worth the name."
"Upon my word, you're pretty frank, you British schoolboy," said
Danvers; but his eyes danced again, and he ceased to cast loving
glances in the direction of his bacon.
"Will you, or won't you?" said Maurice; "that's just it? You needn't
deliberate--you can say a frank 'yes' or 'no.' I don't pretend you'll
like it--of course you won't; but maybe---- Oh, I don't want to cant,
but if there's anything in those words, 'It is more blessed----'"
"I know 'em; you needn't finish them," interrupted Danvers. "It's
'yes' or 'no,' then. What a queer world this is! Here am I, bullied by
one of the boys in my class, a young ruffian who murders his Homer,
and nearly turns my brain over his Virgil; he comes and beards me in
my own private den, with the most astounding, outrageous, unheard-of
proposal--and it's 'yes' or 'no' with the monkey. What will you do if I
say 'no,' sir?"
"I'll be as I was before," answered Maurice; "but you won't, sir."
"I won't! Is that the way you take it?"
"No, sir; I see yielding in your face. I wouldn't have come to another
master in the whole school."
"You needn't blarney me, Ross; blarney is the last straw. Now, you've
stated the fact from your point of view. Allow me to tell you what this
will mean to me. Lunacy, an asylum, in three months. Tell me to my
face, is there a girl living who is worth that?"
"It won't be all that," said Maurice, with one of his slow smiles; "and
Cecil is worth nearly that."
There was a look in Maurice's eyes just then, that made Danvers turn
his head aside.
"Upon my word, there must be something in the girl," he said to
himself. "What a lad this is, after all!"
Aloud he said, after a brief pause, "And suppose I agree?"
"Cecil will be perfectly happy and contented."
"But she doesn't know me, and I never laid eyes on her in my life."
"Oh, yes, you did! you must. She goes to church with us every Sunday."
"I never look at women when I can help it," said Danvers. "I keep my
eyes on my book in church, and when your head master preaches, I shut
them; no, I don't go to sleep, so you needn't wink, you dog! I can
think better with my eyes shut."
"Well, at any rate," said Maurice, "Cecil knows about you; she knows
we'd be safe with you."
Danvers uttered a deep groan.
"Oh, get out of this, Ross," he said; "don't let me see your face again
until to-morrow at school, so out you go--quick--run--get out of my
presence! A pretty nut you've given me to crack."